Regular Meeting - January 5, 2022

001yeah why not uh [Music] the signature the whole weekend she's gonna make it work for her don't worry but i want to remind everyone business and staff that you should keep your mask on at all times if not you'll have to leave the building thank the other you oh i'm sorry um okay in this building masks are required both staff and and visitors you cannot comply then you need to leave now [Music] one time [Music] oh we need you good afternoon and welcome to the regular board meeting on savannah chatting board of public education this is wednesday january 5th 2022 this is our regular board meeting and it is indeed our first meeting of the new year and i would say happy new year to each of you i hope you are winning a break

002and when our vacation was good we welcome you here we do have this is with us today that are here present as they were in december and i take a special pleasure in welcoming all of you because it's nice to have um parents and interested citizens back in the room with us as we begin today i would ask ms davis brown if indeed uh this meeting has been posted in accordance with all the state laws and she assures me that it has so we've done what we need to do to publicly advertise this meeting uh for those of you who are with us today we also stream this meeting we have people in person with us but it will also be being streamed at the same time on our website and so we welcome you

003in whatever format or whatever media social media that you're using to watch us today as we begin i would ask that uh uh you stand with me well you wanna that's why he has and the national anthem and then we'll also stand for the pledge of allegiance good afternoon this afternoon for our opening exercises we have singing the national anthem mr russell watkins from savannah arts academy he is the choral director there mr watkins has been teaching for 14 years nine of those years being at savannah arts i ask that after the national anthem you please remain standing for the pledge [Music] as the twilight's last [Music] gave proof through the night that our flag was still there [Music] for the [Music] r [Applause] of the united states of america and to the republic for

004which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you sir [Music] as we begin today i'd like to have our safety briefing uh presented on our screens please um you this greetings all i am coral hollis with the savannah chatham county board of education police department for safety and security purpose it is essential that i provide you with a public safety briefing in the event that we experience an on-scene crisis or emergency first and foremost you need to know where the exit doors are located when directed the public should exit through the doors to the left or the right behind you expeditiously the exit for the cabinet member and board will be behind me through the small doors to the right that leads to the hallway where the bathrooms

005are located you should ask either the left or the right based on the instructions given by campus police all should go to the assembled area that will be designated by campus police at that time if 9-1-1 needs to be called the responsibility will align with campus police or destiny also if we are in need of an aed prior to arrival of ems that will be located on the left side wall adjacent to the exit door it will be responsibility of campus police to utilize that or does it need upon the arrival of ems it will be the responsibility of campus police or security personnel that are outside at the time to spot and direct them if we experience a small fire you should find the fire extinguisher behind me through the small doors where the

006restrooms are located to the left adjacent to the exit doors thank you and have a great day should i have a motion to approve the agenda from dr howard hall please thank you dr buck i move that the agenda be approved with divisions to items 4.01 5.03 and 8.15 and add item 9.01 budget process update you've heard that motion is there a second second by dr bringman any questions or concerns from board members all in favor of approving the agenda as it has been amended raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight motion passes eight zero zero let the records show that mr kashmar is absent and will be in later he ended up being called for a meeting unfortunately um we need to move to amend the approved budget also

007thank you i move that the approved agenda be amended to add item 7.06 proposed district boundaries of chatham county board of education heard that motion second by mr johnson any discussion from board numbers all in favor of the addition to the um uh agenda raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight motion passes eight zero zero moving on to announcements uh there will be a an audit committee meeting on january 20th at 8 am in this room in this building i'm also announcing that a letter of intent to open a charter school has been received from the excel center chart excel center savannah charter high school and will be made part of the official record this is for a new charter school that serves only young people who have not graduated

008from high school so far and uh this is we must announce that into our record which i have just done um i don't think there are any other announcements uh moving on it is customary that we recognize those employees and students who have passed away during the last month since our last meeting it is always sad to make this announcement but in even sadder when it happens to be a student today i announced that a marion tashan robinson a ninth grade smith a gross high school died on december 6 2021. i would ask that you stand with me as we honor this young man thank you my pleasure to uh introduce our superintendent dr hannah lavette dr lovett thank you president officers of the board it's my pleasure to um wish everyone a happy new

009year we are looking forward to a much smoother 2022 and i'll begin my report by introducing you to the december student of the month our featured student of the month for december is a sophomore at the school of liberal studies at savannah high his nominator describes our scholar as having an inquisitive nature that looks beyond the standards being presented in the classroom in order to fully understand the content being taught he is described as an ambitious and respectful young man that will represent the school of liberal studies and sccpss with honor and distinction he maintains a current grade point average of 90.1 demonstrates a very positive attitude and rarely misses school our honors student also serves on the chatham county youth commission where he uses his position to advocate for his peers at the school

010of liberal studies at sand high and throughout our community in addition our student has a part-time job at zaxby's where he is known for his ready smile and his willingness to work hard and we have probably met him on occasion we are very proud that our student of the month will be taking home several gifts from our community partners the savannah schools federal credit union and members first federal credit union additionally he will receive a one topping small pieces certificate donated by our partner donald's pizza he will receive a sweet treat from and his class will receive his choice and receive copies of his favorite book which will be provided by our partner book sellers and finally he will take home a portrait by upscale photography which is provided by savannah county public schools i

011am proud to announce that the superintendent of student of the month for december is aiden week fall [Applause] congratulations [Applause] i'd like to again offer congratulations to aiden his family and the faculty and staff of the school of liberal studies at savannah high he is joined today with his uh with his parents his nominator mr lee and dr jenkins who is the principal of the school liberal studies we'd like to thank aiden for his um great representation of our scholars at the manchester county public schools we wish him the best in his future endeavors we look forward to seeing him again uh here in the horseshoe and we uh also thank uh his family and his school family for being here with us today thank you so much for coming [Applause] we have a number

012of good news items um number one i'd like to just thank all of the staff and families for their support we are happy to open up second semester yesterday um and actually had really good figures in terms of attendance uh about 85 86 of our staff was present and ready to work on the very first day and student attendance was just as good so we'll be doing what we always do which is publishing our information in regard uh to cases recognizing that certainly those who are at home [Music] recovering um did not contract during the school period but certainly their their absences are recorded by us and we're providing as much support as we can so to begin uh fccpss has joined wtoc to support a new books for kids initiative the program is designed

013to put books in the hands of children who need them most especially those who do not have books at home children who own books are shown to excel in reading and communication skills translating to a greater academic success we thank wtlc and sponsor ken nugent for stepping in to help our youngest readers our good friend and long-term partner international paper recently donated literacy kits to the students at barnes city elementary in addition they conducted a cult drive among their employees for operation warm coat for the partner school garden city we thank international paper for their continued support of our schools both white bluff elementary school and women's elementary school were selected as shoes from the heart an event partner the first schools in georgia to do so choose from the heart is a missouri based

014organization that believes in making a difference in the lives of those who've been affected by unforeseen circumstances 50 students from each school received a new pair of tennis shoes dual enrollment in georgia is a phenomenal opportunity for high school students to take college-level courses recognizing that recent changes for dual enrollment state funding have limited the number of courses that students can take georgia southern and savannah county public schools have developed a special scholarship opportunity to facilitate dual enrollment opportunities beyond the state funded 30 credit hours for the select students from savannah county public schools we'd like to take a moment and thank george's southern for their partnership and their continued support of our efforts to support those students who wish to go above and beyond in dual enrollment we'd like to offer a big spanish

015county public school shout out to our sila and high school science teacher uh she is a long time educator in our district she was honored with the laughter stem excellence in teaching award mrs ennis is only one of 10 award recipients nationwide recipients were recognized for their passion for teaching advancement of expert experiential learning creativity and curriculum design innovation and instruction and commitment to student success additionally ms ennis participated in the high school panel discussion about reversing learning loss at the left connected conference in november is listening thank you so much for all you do for our sales students and a much deserved huge congratulations to you our students and staff at coastal middle school were busy during the holiday season in a student council blood initiative the school collected 973 pounds of food during

016a recent food drive the food collected will provide 811 meals to those in need in our community students and staff also collected donations for happy bags for the homeless special thanks to the entire team at coastal middle school for your outreach efforts and for your continued connection to our community our very own sherry dennis georgia teacher of the year who is with us today deliver the commencement address at the georgia southern university fall commencement exercises her message to her fellow eagles was simple and heartfelt go out into the world with your eyes and your hearts wide open go out into the world and make something beautiful it starts with something so very simple something so very possible that is within your reach just being kind we appreciate always the representation of mrs dennis and the

017work that she does and her continued representation of our school and all the educators in the state of georgia thank you mr dennis now i'm going to take over the podium for a moment madam superintendent we are honored and fortunate to have a dynamic and innovative superintendent who leads through effective communication practices and demonstrates a commitment to every child and every staff member across our district it dr has is been recognized by the national school public relations association through a program that recognizes just school district leaders across the nation each year innsbruck seeks to identify superintendents who demonstrate dynamic fast-paced leadership with strong communication at its core we are excited to announce that is a 2021 superintendent to watch award [Applause] i appreciate all of the support and we couldn't do it without a great

018team from board members to staff we do it all together thank you so much um one final announcement we've received lots of questions about our annual event our 2022 student success expo and stem festival if you have been around at all you know that is the largest family engagement activity that we have every year and based on current public health conditions we will not be able to have that event in person uh this year to our chagrin however with always uh having safety first we will be announcing shortly um the way that we will engage our parents during this time period and so i want to thank the staff for the work that they've done we have been able to pivot throughout the pandemic last year we had a virtual stem festival we did very

019very well with that and so we will communicate through our schools over the next few days how that stem festival will take place this year but it will not be an in-person event but we do hope that conditions will allow us to engage in some other ways over the next few months you know every year we also have our books blankets and family fun uh event which is outside and we hope that we will be able to do that this year but thank you to the staff uh and to the families for their understanding of our need to put safety first thank you again for your support we look forward to a great second semester thank you very much we do have an operational update that should be pretty brief i think you have seen

020this already um just for the record and i think my op-ed in this fan morning news and all of my correspondence to families and staff indicates that the goal remains that we will maintain a safe healthy learning environment so that all schools will remain open five days a week um i think we've done pretty well first semester we learned a lot of lessons and that continues to be our goal and we expect to do that not only for the second semester but for beyond this time as you see on the screen here those time those tested layered mitigation strategies we continue to require face masks we continue to use ppe our cleanliness and sanitation practices are still in place our social distancing where possible we have implemented event capacity limits and controls there is weekly

021testing for athletes especially during the winter simply because we are inside um vaccinations and boosted shots are made available for those who wish to have them we have limitations for visitors and volunteers and we are encouraging people not to think about being having perfect attendance um but under these circumstances we are asking people to stay home when they are not feeling well um you will see on the screen which of course is available for everyone's review the guidance from the cdc the world health organization we continue to stay in touch with all of our medical professionals and seek their guidance especially when conditions are changing as they are right now on our website and also available to those who need it is a flowchart which helps one understand parents particularly what happens if your child

022has symptoms of copa19 was exposed and is not fascinated and was exposed and is fascinated um we also have a nurse we are very fortunate to have nurses in our buildings and also lead nurses who are able to help parents work through those scenarios so this is prominently on our website and we ask that you refer to it if you have any questions we will remind you as i did in my communication uh across the holiday and last year we remind you that we will definitely look at quarantining and all of those procedures we certainly try to keep buildings open if we can um we recognize that with the negative infections that we may have for out so we have emergency plans available but there may possibly be rolling closures so as indicated in my

023communication to parents i ask all parents to have an emergency plan available we often are not able to give you a whole lot of notice if we need to close out a classroom or a wing so we ask you to have a plan available if we need to i'm very proud that we are able to say that as of december 17 2021 of our 5600 employees 40 40 738 of them confirmed were confirmed as being vaccinated 300 plus are in the process of review for confirmation that means that about 85 84.7 or so have been confirmed for being fascinated that's important because what we want to do is ensure that our staff is fascinated they are able to be there to provide services for our children but also another layer of protection for our children

024and our staff we have met regularly with our medical advisory committee and i want to take a few minutes right now a few seconds and thank them publicly i continue to thank them for their service to us um even up to yesterday we were able to convene um those professionals to ask for their guidance with changing conditions it's important to know what they are seeing in the community and what they think about the procedures that we put in place um they suggested always that we continue to use the later layered mitigation approach um they said to us stay the course maintain your existing safety practices of course they share our concern about uptick and transmission with the new variant and they've also pointed out that the severity of the impact of winter break must be

025considered before we make any changes um that was our thought along the way and they thought they suggested that we consider um two weeks after the break at least before we even think about making any substantial changes to practices at this point and as always fascination is critical and those who can uh should consider that and encourage boosters as well i want to make a point that just before the break we also talked about visitors and volunteers so people are so eager to get back to march 12th i'll say on march 11th of 2020 and we want to get back there too but we also want to make sure that we're being as sick as possible and i do want to point out that we not only listen to families but we also listen to

026staff they're the people it's a joint process so it's staff and it's also students and families that we are concerned about um we're looking at visitors and volunteers across the district uh events and athletics capacity um i've got several calls we need more seats we need more of this we need more of that um what we're finding is our approach to the capacity limits are very much very common especially because we have indoor sports there is weekly testing of athletes available and we have found that to be very helpful is to reduce the number of cancellations that we've had to have uh based on positive tests and we'll continue to screen upon building entry um based on a significant rise in copic transmission since december first we will maintain our existing code mitigation strategies um

027so we're not looking to make any major changes we are looking to keep reminding people to be safe to wear them as to keep their hands clean the social distance when possible and also to make sure that they continue to seek guidance from medical professionals when they're not feeling well and we ask people to follow the quarantine protocols that have been established as you see here i do want to point out you know that last year we talked about will we ever get in the green and actually we were in the green last year it was so nice we were all experiencing this joy of seeing the color green and now we're back in the red again but i will tell you that we had much success uh when we were in the red the

028last time so we are watching these numbers and we are disappointed that the numbers are where they are but we've also talked with our medical professionals found that they study like we do the patterns of the surges and we expect and hope that we'll be able to see some drop off some decrease in those numbers in the coming days and that is my update thank you uh dr vette any quick questions for board members i just wanted to say thank you to the district staff personnel that are staying the course um for continuing to give us updates but also to really as a healthcare professional echo the if you feel sick stay home for both staff and students alike um not only are we at uh we have about several people who have signed up

029ahead and some who have signed up since we came today i'm taking these in the order in which they were signed up uh originally and as we begin our time of public appearances today i would want to remind those who have signed up to speak that you've been sent a notice about what the state law requires i'm sure that some of you at least have seen last month's meeting where i said that there is no absolute right to free speech we certainly respect your right to be here and to speak but i will tell you that civility and decorum are expected and required if you indeed plan to do your five minutes in front of the public for those of you who did not sign up until today you have not had a chance to

030get that but you also saw a notice on the front door about what is expected so we had a few months when we were not particularly good about doing what we knew we needed to do that is now changed first person i'll call on today and we welcome her is ms lisa peterson i believe she will be talking about inappropriate books in the library is that correct thank ma'am that's all right and okay good afternoon my name is lisa peterson a resident of chatham county as you are being made aware today if you haven't known before there exists in our middle school and high school libraries many inappropriate books that normalize teenage sex in the context of heterosexuality homosexuality transsexuality and masturbation age of consent is never mentioned these are not books written by lean

031psychologists and therapists educators or parents this is the reality facing our children as they navigate the minefields of predators and pornographers who infiltrate the once sanctified space known as the school library i would like to read an excerpt from one of these books beyond magenta by susan cullen which is currently housed at islands jenkins new hampshire grove and windsor i am reading as the books are written that are in these libraries i quote i was sexually mature what i mean sexually mature is that i knew about sex from six up i used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood make out with them and perform oral sex on them i liked it i used to love oral and touch their you know what we were really young but that's what we did i was making

032out with girls too i used to love making out with girls because everyone thought i was so cool everybody was encouraging me look frank's not gay he's making out with a girl they wanted to know how the hell i learned to kiss like that i don't know how i learned it was pretty weird guys used to hit on me perverts pedophiles i see guys giving me the look and it kind of freaked me out they would touch themselves saying come here sweetie something told me not to go i ran away i ran toward a lot of people unhooked this is another quote from the same book around the time i turned five some guy on the street said yo you're not supposed to be wearing those clothes why not i always got defensive about this

033because everyone was always telling me because you have a dick what's a dick i didn't know what it was boys have dicks and girls have what's a a vagina a vagina i don't even know how to say the word no vagina oh okay they said so you're not a girl you have a dick what's a dick that thing you have between your legs and i'm like i thought everyone has that no not everyone has that i thought the man was crazy and hooked i remember a time when we used to have our parents permission to participate in what was called sex ed the scientific version where boys and girls were separated now our children have asked access to graphic sexual material parental consent that has no scientific foundation restore the dignity and protect our children

034that they deserve do not sacrifice them to the gods of hedonism and provision that want to rob them of their brief time as innocence if we fail to throw out these books and refuse this infiltration of pornography then let the ages record all of us colluding with the steelers of innocence stand with me and others who are speaking today and just say no to pornography access for our students by removing inappropriate books from our public school libraries i thank you kindly for listening to my speech and i hope you take this topic as seriously as you do concerning covet thank you [Music] thank you [Applause] next uh ms cheryl gay [Music] here [Music] thank you ma'am this is gay hi my name is cheryl gay i'm a lifelong chatham kennedy resident i'm a graduate of

035jenkins high school and armstrong it was armstrong state college i've been following this book controversy for the past few months when i hear about it in other states i was sure those books weren't here but as you can hear from the previous reader they are here and there are books even worse than some of the ones we read about in other systems um dr buckeye our commitment to support your to bring stability to these meetings and um no profanity that's a reasonable approach for adults and children in 2017 our city council took a stand for disability when an alderman was formally censored for calling an adult female reporter the c word i i can't say that word i think what i'm talking about but yeah there are books in our media centers that include the

036c word and the p word and we can't encourage students to read books that are full of the worst profanity in demeaning sexual representations of men and women and then that shock when these students internalize that it becomes who they are you are what you read so i'm going to read a couple passages and you need to know that i'm just picking a few but i didn't these aren't just cherry picking like the one best section of the book i could i could spend 15 or 20 minutes just for this one book of things but they leave the room complaining about how stupid i am as soon as they're out the door marisol shoves me away from bed disgusting that's actually a spanish profanity so we're teaching profanity in other languages you smell like p-u-s-s-y

037through your holy panties another section from allegedly by tiffany jackson what the is taking so damn long girls underground i can't believe this f-u-c-k-i-n-g s-h-i-t and you go and f-u-c-k him again allegedly is found at beach islands new hampshire savannah arts savannah high johnson windsor and tompkins there's one other book i want to talk about but it has multiple drawings that depict one male getting oral sex to another male 1 and it shows it totally completely like it would be it's it's there's pictures of masturbation there's dialogue debating the merits of various types of pornography amazon describes genderqueer as erotic gay fan fiction and this is some dialogue that's under one of the um drawings of the boy masturbating memorably this school system is betraying parents trust when books like this are allowed to be

038in the school system there need to be safeguards and procedures so that these books are not only removed but don't come back into the system these books are outrageous thank you for your time thank you [Applause] our next speaker dr barry crackdown just give her a chance doctor [Music] is thank you thank you for your time this is my second time here before the board i appreciate the opportunity for free speech and uh i will say that you probably from the first two speakers already got the drift of the conversation which is that how is it there are these books in the public school libraries that's that i think is the prevailing question we research this and we get the impression that you don't even know that some of these books are in the middle

039schools and the high schools which raises the question of what's the oversight just like the last time i was here i was asking the question about what was the oversight to bring social emotional learning which leads to crt what was the oversight in that process so that's a very big deal i i have before me a very interesting book called the origins of totalitarianism and if you read books about the origins of totalitarianism tyranny what is one of the things that's often done it's the degradation of society is it not fill people's minds with polluted ideas fill them with ideas that are obscene and degrade human sexuality which is for the purpose of creating children so we can have public schools and have public school libraries that's the purpose of human sexuality now keep in

040mind this is not about censorship we also believe in the first amendment nobody's just talking about censorship these books may be perceived by others as good works of whatever and adults are allowed to read them so be it that's not why we're here why is this being put in access to these children and adolescents ask yourselves the question you all have children grandchildren nieces and nephews would you be reading the things you just heard to them would you allow them to go to a movie that had that you would you're shaking your head you would really okay yeah well that's that's very interesting that you're comfortable uh with this degree of degradation being approved for your children so so if if you're listening you know to what you do reading to your children um the

041men we perform for this is for a book by ellen hopkins called tricks the men we perform for like when we dance with each other or belly to ass i so enjoy reducing them to masturbation it's like they are masturbating for me i can control when they come by how they move so can you imagine yourself sitting there reading this to your children and grandchildren your nieces and your nephews do you think that sounds appropriate we don't we don't think it's appropriate and we don't think you've investigated this and we don't think you've given up but we don't know once again we don't know what exactly the board's involvement is with this and whether it's actually taking the time to look into this and made a decision about what books are appropriate so we would

042appreciate you doing that and if i could have an extra 30 seconds i would like to say i'm a medical doctor i've been in medicine for this is going into my fifth decade you should know what's the fastest way to hurt immunity do you know get a disease a virus highly transmissible with low severity to health therefore taking off your masks and allowing people to be able to be exposed to omicron is actually the fastest way to [Applause] people like pierre mccullough from bail university a famous cardiologist epidemiologist this point has been discussed over and over again this pandemic can come to an end very quickly by removing the masks allowing the transmission to develop what the most important safe part of all humanity in these cases something our creator gave us natural immunity thank

043you for your time [Applause] our next speaker is ms margironi [Music] retired reading specialist reading recovery teacher of 12 years with a master's in reading education and reading recovery certification from ohio state university i worked primarily with students from underserved neighborhoods learning to read is the number one survival skill for all students but an especially important survival skill for those underserved children to transport them out of their current circumstances and model for them how to find and use their gifts whether it was learning that things don't always go your way from alexander in the terrible horrible no good very bad day to the harry potter series that teaches that life's choices determine our own destinies the characters model for us how to grapple with their past circumstances and have hope in spite of it unfortunately

044in today's middle and high school libraries and yes even in savannah chatham county instead of finding role models in books students are frequently finding a normalization of teenage sex without the age of consent ever being mentioned sexual assault is even glorified in some cases in addition to sex these suicide drugs cutting prostitution rape incest hatred porn abuse and the debasement of women they also suggest that all children must make gender choices sooner than later and all of this before their prefrontal cortex or their rational brain is fully developed which usually happens around age 18. consider the message that this passage from felix ever after by case and calendar sends the students at islands jenkins groves savannah arts savannah high and johnson who choose to read this book i quote from a girl character it wasn't

045until i was 12 almost five years ago now that i read this book that had a trans character in it i am jay by chris beam reading about jay it was like i don't know not only did the light bulb go off in me but the sun itself came out from behind these eternal clouds and everything inside me blazed with the realization i'm a guy unquote to be clear consenting adults and the pivotal word as adults should have the freedom to choose their sexual practice gender identification and be respected under the law however a passage like i just read paints the heavy gravity decision about gender choice to be as benign as choosing a college and paints it as an appropriate decision to make at age 12 without professional counseling or before many have even

046gone through puberty did you know that ireland's high house is one of the most egregious examples of pornography entitled genderqueer and pictures cartoons of young boys giving oral sex i include that in your packet i'll leave today as an example i also include in your pack and a list of the research our team has done with the electronic card catalog that my open records request generated identifying the books we have found in each middle and high school library please note i'm sure there are many more book titles we've missed we didn't have a password to search the galileo virtual library system but it's been that within five clicks of galileo graphic sexuality is currently available to those 11 and up due to the lack of filters in place in georgia i include the link for

047her recent interview in your packet noel also makes us aware that georgia code while making it illegal for anyone to share obscenity with underage slash minor children includes two loopholes that exclude school and public libraries from this law where is the bill that writes this wrong with school libraries i will close with two of our many examples one heterosexual and one homosexual caution extremely graphic language in both from monday's night coming by tiffany jackson housed in beach island jenkins savannah high johnson and winter forest i quote me and mundy we did do something he took a deep breath she sucked my dick i didn't really want it to happen it just kind of did her top lip curled up wait a minute is that what was really going on she did your homework and you

048ate her c-o-o-c-h-i-e is that why you crying because monday's not around to do your homework no more unquote from the book all boys he reached his hand down and pulled out my d-i-c-k he quickly went to giving me h-e-a-d i just sat in this time of division on so many issues and now armed with this information i challenge all parents school board members and school personnel to join me and others today and unite to protect our children from pornography by purging our school libraries of inappropriate books if not you then who in addition i challenge all politicians to have the courage to stand up to the school lobbyists and yes there are school lobbyists and pass a bill to close the loophole of school libraries as it relates to obscenity if not you then who

049thank you very much next speaker is geraldine gibbs welcome miss gibbs i'm a mother a grandmother taxpayer town county when i look around this room i see people who are probably parents grandparents maybe if you're old like me and maybe an aunt and uncle but certainly people are concerned about children so i have to believe that you were not previously aware that books inappropriate for children were in our school libraries before recently no one was aware in fact the national child traumatic stress network even stated that children and young people should be protected in the online space in the same way that they are protected in the offline world well apparently even they weren't aware of the offline world in our school libraries and the lack of protection there everyone from psychologists to the american

050bar association directs our attention and their warnings about sexual content to the internet not to our hallowed schools ignorant as they all were or have been of the content of our libraries they are very aware of the harm that sexually explicit contact hatred and swear words pose for our children it is believed that early exposure to sexual content may have a profound effect on children's values attitudes and behaviors the american bar association warns that exposure to sexual content can compromise a young person's ability to establish and maintain healthy intimate relationships and the research is just beginning to assess the potential damage so the goal here isn't to avoid the subject and i i think that you are probably addressed with your children very specifically um these issues about sex and relationships and they get they

051get it from their most trusted source you their parents their grandparents that individual in their lives who's concerned about them and their personal interests and they're looking out for their personal interest so that's where we want them to learn this not from sherman alexie who wrote the absolute absolutely true diary of a part-time indian this book contains sexual language and content x-rated drawings and hatred for white people and i'm going to say these words i hope you don't kick me out but they're in the book the word the word the dick word are used over and over again i'm sure you don't like hearing these words and i don't like saying them but these are the words the content the drawings that our children are exposed to and even worse think about this these children

052must think that the adults around them approve of this language this behavior this explicitness and sexuality is being normalized for them the national child traumatic stress networks counsels parents on how important it is to give clear positive messages about modesty boundaries and privacy and children need these messages as they move through childhood even through high school meanwhile alexi is seeing the praises of naked women and masturbating and boasting how incredibly good he is he is at it from the pages of his book i have the pages here and i could read them if you want if you want me to i don't want to but if you think it's important i will i think it's important thank you i will say that at one point he talks about the curves of girls and the curvier

053curves of women on the pages where he goes hormonal what's a grown man doing talking about the curves of girls and what girls anyway the girls in high school or middle school who are reading this book how creepy is that what are they supposed to see themselves reflected on these pages this is a disturbing book written by a disturbed individual alexi has his own sexual demons he was credibly charged with sexual harassment by 20 women a few years ago all of them authors his awards were rescinded his books were moved from various lists and bookstores but this book is in the libraries of the following high schools here in savannah islands beach jenkins new hampshire savannah arts savannah high johnson and tompkins it is also in the libraries of two middle schools coastal and mercer

054some might say gee whiz sherman alexie is an internationally known author i would reply isn't it time we look past fame money and power and success to protect our children sexually charged literature in our schools creates a situation where our children are over exposed and underprepared the potential damage is documented and the warnings are addressed everywhere in the movies online everywhere except where you'd expect it to occur you'd least expect it to so i'm asking that you remove this book and others like it from our public school libraries we're counting on you [Applause] thank you mr gibbs uh next speaker is ms brooks miss frankie brooks thank you ma'am mrs brooks hello thank you for allowing me to speak today my name is frankie brooks and i'm a follower of jesus and a parent of

055two teenagers in the savannah chatham county school district i was upset to learn about some of the library books within our school system that contain triggering sexual material that is easily accessible by students reading pornographic material teaches boys to sexually objectify girls to see them as sex objects or sexual commodities instead of human beings made in the image of god these kind of books foster the idea that the degradation of females is acceptable and oftentimes these books incorporate violence against girls which in turn normalizes and promotes aggressive behaviors in speech in teenagers it is these types of books that is helping to turn our culture into a highly sexualized and volatile world where morals and self-control are nowhere to be found in consequences like teenage pregnancies abortions and sexually transmitted diseases are rampant as well

056as physical abuse among young people i have two short excerpts from two different books i would like to read and just by the titles of the books themselves you can see they are both very dark books and can consciously consciously and subconsciously cause fear in children the first excerpt is from murder trending by gretchen mcneil house at islands jenkins johnson and windsor forest this book is categorized as dystopian fiction and in summary and i just pulled those descriptions right off the internet this read is abiding satire of reality shows in today's u.s political atmosphere seventeen-year-old dee guerrera is framed for the murder of her stepsister then dropped into a nightmarish island in san francisco bay where she must fight for her life against state-sponsored killers welcome to the near future where good and honest citizens

057can enjoy watching the executions of society's most infamous convicted felons streaming live on the postman app from the suburbanized prison island alcatraz here is an excerpt from the book jasper wasn't even my boyfriend just this dude i did some hacking with every once in a while he was pretty basic library systems low security not in my league at all but he had a big d-i-c-k and sometimes the girl just needs a big d-i-c-k applying the motion picture association of america rating guidelines to this book murder training is rated r for language and sexual language the second excerpt is from a book titled monday's not coming from tiffany jackson which beth masaroni also read an exit from this one is housed at beach islands jenkins savannah high johnson and winter forest this book is categorized as

058mystery thriller suspense fiction and in summary this is a gripping novel about the mystery of one teenage girl's disappearance and the traumatic effects of the truth claudia asked her parents teachers classmates and even the police to help her find her friend monday but nothing happens claudia decides to start her own investigation and what she finds will change her forever is the excerpt i see her coming out of some cars and tight aas shorts talking fast telling me she's about to leave me i grab her by the neck and start punching her she wanted to be all big and bad trying to face me like a grown aas woman she's going to get beat like a grown woman the motion picture association of america raises this book are for language sexual language content and appropriate conduct

059and mature topics now for those of you that have sons and daughters i want you to imagine these sentences coming out of their mouths it's pretty horrifying isn't it well when teenagers read this type of literature putting those thoughts and words in their heads it can't be undone and they could likely start talking like this or acting out these scenes because words have power and influence especially over children this is how brainwashing or mind control happens by putting thoughts into children's minds by the books they read i am asking that you please remove these inappropriate books from the schools for the health and well-being of the students of fccpss i'm not asking for you to ban the books i am asking you to choose and helping to protect the hearts and the minds of this

060younger generation in hopes of positively impacting our schools and community for the better this is not about censorship this is not about control this is about loving and caring for the children of the public school system here in savannah god bless you all thank you man [Music] our next speaker is mr robin robin [Music] here sir my name is pete robine r-o-b-y-n i'm a tax-paying resident of savannah georgia i'm the son of a world war ii vet a historian and a patriot and christian the savannah county savannah county public school system needs to be dissolved it's too big too expensive too wasteful you're out of touch with parents you dispense sexual deviancy you promote sel launches by the crt your high-handed autocratic and arrogant approach education does not work you force children to wear face

061masks that according to the cdc does nothing to stop a virus and two months ago i dropped off the paper to you remember that 146 page report remember that in november i was working december i couldn't be here i'm here now i gave you this thing a report because she hadn't read the emails i personally believe that you're forcing your requirement for similar mass is nothing but public safety you know it it is the political left in this country in their ardent desire to raise up a generation of subservient obedient robots than free thinking critical thinking freedom-loving americans that's what this is about no joke you're trying to create these children a mindset that you are to be subservient to the government and you are to obey no questions asked and don't think and don't

062think for yourself that's what your fixed maximum is about and we know it the cursed system needs to be dissolved and replaced with 10 mini school systems one in each district each independent of each other where this will create a sense of community and school districts parents and teachers and administrators will become closer have a closer line of communication this will be beneficial for the school for the children mainly when in a small setting parents and administrators get closer together better communication education children would see the parents getting involved in the school system those many school districts would then be able to compete educationally the same way sports teams uh compete on the athletic fields basketball courts students intellectually between different districts you guys are disgraceful you hear these ladies you guys are disgraceful the

063final days of this of this board should have been fun the billionaire the first million should be divided equally as a bonus to the police firemen and first responders the remainder should be divided equally amongst the property taxpayers from whom the money came you guys should go away you have failed this your disgrace you continue to wear a mask it's a straight cleaning off this is theater you might spend half an hour of our time talking about the cover is dead it no longer exists that was unleashed chinese communist party is gone you should know this how is that you do not know this how do you not know this and the autocross single person worldwide diseases and viruses why do you not know this you're unbelievable unbelievable pornography in schools face masks child abuse

064is what it's about this whole thing should be dissolved and we should have ten new many school districts in town county and we will be the example for the entire country and this stupid mask thank you sir put your mask you know would you ask him to leave please gentlemen our next speaker is uh i'm not certain laster perhaps is that okay i just this this is on calendar accountability is that correct good afternoon dr buck and the board i spoke before the board several months ago when we uh moved to uh savannah and i'm happy to be here with you again today can you give us your name i'm here today to speak about uh your calendar and also an acronym i'm just going to call act accountability communication and transparency but firstly with

065regards to your calendar for the upcoming 22-23 school year in my introduction a couple months ago i mentioned i spent 20 years serving both on private and public school boards i have a lot of experience in finance uh 30-year professional and we have i found during that time that is incredibly important to involve the community in the discussion of a budget long before one would get to a may discussion of the military i notice here on the proposed calendar that here in savannah we would not be meeting in the evening until may 18th which by that time in my experience most budgets are pretty well baked and i would ask that the board consider a situation whereby the board chair of the finance function along with the liaisons from the administration conduct one or two

066budget workshops preferably in the evening preferably at a location that's much more accessible to many of our parents perhaps in the auditorium of one of our larger high schools wherein we go through the budget parents and taxpayers are very concerned about the year that our children went through remote learning very concerned about the percentage of our students that are functioning at or above the grade school the grade level in language arts math and sciences they want to know where the money is going in terms of helping us to backfill for that very difficult year and i do know that the administration and the teaching staff across the district has worked very hard but there's much more to do these parents are looking for assistance before during and after school they want to see the money

067in the classroom they they challenged me when we look at relatively flat enrollment over the past decade and i know i'm making a broad rush so bear with me but relatively flat enrollment and are spent both uh inflation adjusted and gross is almost 50 higher where is that money going we need to make sure the taxpayers and importantly the parents understand the priorities of the board and what actions are being taken under the board principles to make sure that we're spending the money in the most efficient way to bring all of our students up to grade just very quickly one of the guiding principles of this board number two the academic achievement of students will be at a level that will enable them upon graduation from high school to enter the college or workforce fully

068prepared to be successful without the need of remediation we need to do any remediation now we need to make sure the dollars are right there with the children not doing things that we'd like to do but that we must do and so i encourage you to do these budget workshops early in the year so that you can hear the parents concerns so the taxpayers who have experienced in these matters can have an opportunity to share with you in a civil and and constructive manner and the last thing um so that's all about the calendar but i do hope that you think about that getting this is a lovely facility but let's face it unless you're retired or you're here on a special purpose to get an award like that young man earlier it's tough to

069get away two in the afternoon let's get out there and have these workshops when folks can hear you and hear your story and hear the good things that are being done but lastly very quickly um in following this school border the last nine months many many points are raised during these public uh sessions during the public comments section of your meeting i think it might be helpful for you to consider having an extra tab on your board page where these questions or concerns are documented and the board and the administration have an opportunity to to um log their response to these concerns on two points number one it closes the circle they answer the question number two uh hopefully over the years you won't have duplication of effort and again on that act accountability communication

070and transparency i think it would serve that purpose to get both sides documented and thank you so much thank you very much ma'am for your interest i appreciate it [Applause] uh next is uh broderick i believe broderick oh that's no that's not right obviously hey is it broderick okay thank you well this is a surprise i didn't really get expected to have a chance to speak after signing in last so i appreciate it um i don't have a prepared paper or a process i wish to read to you or to give you direction i just want to ask a question first of all for those of you that have heard the complaints today the request to remove the filthy books from the libraries the degrading context of volumes of material that affect our children how

071many of you are aware or were aware or have heard of the title of any of those books how many of you have had a chance to discuss with anyone who selects those books how many of you have had that chance to read the list of those that are going into our schools how many of you would care to read the list of those going into our schools in order to make a difference i see therein lies one of the problems secondly i've heard a lot of minutes on cobid covered protection et cetera et cetera i'm not going to discuss kobe because as someone spoke the truth is out there for those who want to see but i am going to say that i have heard about covet and i've heard about the horrible reading

072material that is available to our students but i have not yet heard anyone discuss anything about what you plan to do to elevate our children's education to a higher level i haven't heard one person speak about curriculum of the schools how are you going to improve the studies how are you going to get the minds filled with reading writing arithmetic and history this is why we are here this is why you are elected or positioned in your position it is your job to care for the children's minds in order to elevate them to a higher standard of learning at a higher level and most of you depending on your age did have that opportunity at one time it is not right it is not fair it is not biblical it is not constitutional to deny

073these children our children your children our future it is not right nor is it fair nor is it your privilege nor your choice to condone this kind of service to our children is your place in your positioning to elevate our children in a higher education with matters that will have them excel in life which will not teach them hate amongst themselves which will not teach them the differences amongst yourselves rank you in another caste system i thought that was in india in different places but i see that it's highly becoming phenomenal in the united states we are to raise the graduation levels of these children i'm not even sure what the testing is now for the children is there proper testing to see that these kids are ready for jobs for do they have life

074skills can they do a math problem can they figure out how to work in a lumber yard or can they figure out how to work as an architect have they learned proper math and skills do they know from which history came is that even going on our talk anymore we need to go back and implement civics into every school in this nation and we probably should go back by the way and the direction that the colleges are going now we should definitely go back and implement something that we used to call um when you when you would go to and i probably just forgot the name when you would have a class in school where it would talk teach you a skill where you could go out and be ready to make money college is

075not for everybody and most colleges today isn't for anybody so i'm asking you to reevaluate why you are here and for those of you who do not care for god i will pray for you for those of you who are ever raised in a christian home or ever had any any relationship with god or affiliation with him whatsoever i'm asking you to reach back to your roots and if you haven't gotten it i suggest that you do some reading in the bible um your time is up ma'am my time is up and i hope this does not fall on deaf ears because the people of chatham county are not accepting what has been happening any longer thank you thank you ma'am next speaker is a brandon i believe bran says someone here named brannon [Music]

076good afternoon sir good afternoon thank you very much i'm not going to say too much right now because much has already been said i'd like to get some answers i'd like you to be able to say something now i want answers to what are you going to do about the books in the library we've been talking about for the schools i want to know what plans you have for reviewing what is ordered to put into the schools who is responsible for doing that some sort of a plan i want to be advised very important word we should be advised on what you're doing you should want to be able to educate us as you supposed to educate children and unlike right now to stop and use the rest of my time as much as you'd

077like to have for each one of you to tell me what are you doing about these problems sir this is uh the the board meeting is at this point is set aside for appearances from the public we do not engage in questions answered back we will if you choose to ask for that i will make certain that you do get some answers back but not at this time and uh what i've heard you say is you want to see what will be done about the books and whether or not any action will be taken and advise you of that i will be happy more than happy to respond to you in that way sir i appreciate that and i'll hold you to that i remember you from way back in armstrong thank you sir very

078much tell me your first name alex okay thank you sir and by the way i've had two shots i don't know why we stopped where the math was supposed to be immune well i agree with you but the doctors keep telling us we need to wear them and so we're wearing them i i would love to take mine off too and i hope sometime soon we can and they have studies showing the way these masks are made yes the virus is smaller you can get right through it like sandal and through a tennis racket right so thank you sir thank you that was our last speaker moving on we have board of education matters uh we have several policies i'll ask quickly thank you mr ford president uh taking the board through the policy action

079under board matters do you have two policy reviews for the board on this agenda item 7.01 and item 7.02 your first policy review is policy did entitled audits falls under the ownership of the finance department this is a four-year review and first reader the main changes you'll find is language uh it has been edited to really clarify existing language and we've also found that through this process that the regulation being as specific as it is uh created some redundancies in the overarching requirements of the policies so we could and would recommend the deletion of the regulation any uh any questions any concerns any things you think should be looked at we move again this is a four-year policy review first reader this particular area falls under the ownership of operations department and under the transportation

080department operations division and transportation department primarily needed to review this as we went through it to ensure that the regulation language aligned clearly with policy language and also it gave us an opportunity to look at this very closely and ensure that the policy language is written in a way uh that does not create conflicts for us when we do find that we have resource issues such as staffing shortage shortages and we're limited in the amount of transportation that we can provide extensively across the entire district any uh questions concerns mr johnson uh thank you mr president um the i know i sent an email about the also the word of assigned um i don't know if you had a chance to look through that uh but it's the second well one two four paragraph down

081um it's in there um also i just do want to make sure that we can figure out some way to work in that about the ieds and transportation yeah definitely we did take that into account and did uh provide a written response to the board uh we will do a double check on that we're assigned of course it's important that we all understand too the definition of the word as the sign is used properly throughout the policy language as well as in a student that may be assigned as enrolled versus a zoned school but for consistency we appreciate that observation we'll do a double check on that students for example that might have an iep uh or some sort of a requirement uh say a 504 plan or other legal requirement where transportation is required

082the district is certainly providing that transportation and if the board feels that that needs to be enumerated in policy language we can certainly add that do want to already that we did send a very detailed response to those questions so if you'll uh check your email you'll see that information available to you thank you any other comments from other board members questions officers calendar of meetings and committee appointments uh next item on our agenda is the election of board offices uh i would tell the public that this is uh election done within the board by the board and we select the vice president of vice president pro tempore and an assistant secretary each year the superintendent serves as the treasurer and the secretary ex officio of the board and the chief financial officer serves as

083assistant treasurer each of these are one-year terms this year mr cashmore has served as vice president and there's dr tanya howard has served [Music] and because they're one-year terms they will not be succeeding themselves in essence but i wanted to give my personal thanks to the two of them for the meetings arranging to be sometimes changed at the last minute when we needed to uh coming to extra meetings and we needed to have those and dr kyle holmes want to thank you very much for serving the board like you have this year i am open to accepting we have a um we've had a tradition on the board to try to build our bench depth and give uh people experience in various leadership positions as community carers and also in these vice president and positions

084so in that spirit i nominate dr howard hall as vice president and dr bringman is vice i would say remembering that mrs mary davis brown will also be in that group as assistant secretary nominations mrs holm moves that all in favor of closing the nominations raise your hand one two three four five six seven eight nine all in favor of the motion as stated how is it vice president of dr another degree all in favor of that motion right hand please one two three four five six seven eight nine congratulations to all of you as we uh move forward for another year i appreciate you next is the 200 200 2022 calendar of our board meetings uh in partial response to what the speaker from the citizens just spoke about public hearings and etc uh

085i would just want to say to the public that our most successful public hearings throughout the years have been district hearings where board members hosted district meetings that they answered questions it was usually done in home ground and it was always successful we have not been able to do that throughout the pandemic i would certainly hope that we will be able to do that secondly we have heard before about night meetings uh and i would only say once again i'm sure we'll try them somewhere along the way but even at the budget meetings when we have a budget meeting as board members know and the staff knows we're lucky if we get 10 people here and uh in regular times pre-pandemic we always have a packed house of public and parents at meetings at two

086o'clock in the afternoon so we will continue to examine that we see very um we take very seriously our own obligation to the public but we will always be looking at ways to make certain that the public knows what we're doing and how how we can hear them better so that's just me 2002 calendar you've got your listing there thus be it resolved that the 2002 calendar board of education meetings be adopted mrs hines moves is their second second howard hall anything like howard hall anything any comments from mr um thank you dr buck um to your earlier comments about our meetings i would say that even though we haven't had as many in-person district meetings many of us are still attending pta or school council meetings i've done a lot of zoom pta and

087school council meetings and i know other colleagues have done that as well so i know um we're still talking to folks in our district right we just haven't had as many um large um in-person meetings as i had in past years um second i'm supportive of the calendar um i for years since i've been on this board i've talked about you know having more night meetings and every time we do there's one person from the public there or none um we go through a cycle there um if my colleague if a majority of the colleagues would support it i would support maybe having trying to have a night meeting like the september or october meeting of the year we're having one in may we're having one in june i'm just throwing it out there that

088would be one third of our meetings would be evening um making a suggestion thank you yeah i i bear witness that when we have the evening meetings people don't come however this is a different political climate so it may be that folks would demonstrate interest um the request of today's meeting was not just to have an evening meeting which she did mention but she specifically asked for earlier an evening meeting that occurred earlier than may so that budget discussion feedback on the budget could be received so um i would be open to accommodating an evening meeting but i think that if we're if we're going to do that that perhaps having it earlier um not only would it accommodate the request to have some time like march or so but also um an evening meeting

089in the fall is a meeting um where the days are shorter and it's darker and may represent a safety issue for individuals i would like to suggest this without changing the motion i would like to suggest i believe that i'm correct in saying that we can make two changes to the approved meeting schedule during the year we've done that before if that's the case then we could add it at a time a night meeting when we wanted to that would be one way of handling what are you looking at um so the motion would be to ex to um approve the calendar as published with the change that there be two changes in the future i had always been told we could make two changes in the calendar of meetings that we vote on at

090this meeting by statute right you know i don't know that's for sure but deborah andrews always told me that and holiday could certainly provide feedback on that under the auspices of state code for public meetings secondly i would say uh instead of a ninth board meeting i would suggest a ninth forum on the budget earlier as the lady we're not going to take any action at that board meeting anyway so it's calling in a forum it does not have to meet all the same requirements but we would have it at night so yes ms hall has got him first am i correct that our public hearing number one two and three are supposed to be at specific times right before the final adoption or can that happen i mean the meeting that's for june 15th

091that could happen on april 13th um [Music] that might the person who spoke to us today made the suggestion but she's not the first one to make that request and i think it is a disservice to previous speakers who made the request to tailor our action on one individual today and so i understand that having an evening forum would meet the needs of budget discussion because it is true we would just be giving feedback on the budget if there are other items that individuals would want to address that modification to the calendar would not address the request that we've had for an evening activity from those folks um so i i just offer that for consideration i also do support what you said about our district meetings we have not been having them recently but

092our proficiency in the virtual environment will make that maybe more possible now than it has been okay we've got the resolution as it is stated uh you've heard two other suggestions oh there is there anyone who would choose to amend the motion to include one or both of those suggestions before [Music] um and as uh dr brown said we are in a different political climate than we've ever been before even pandemic we have a lot of interest in school board policy and politics these days and i think it would show a um a bit of goodwill to the public if we were to at least have changed one of these um i like the idea of the september october one um two evening like mrs casper said um so i guess in that case i

093think that we may count the proposed calendar for the september 7th meeting to be changed to uh 6 p.m yeah i mean going back to the discussion about the forum versus the formal meeting prior to the budget part of the challenge having it too early is we don't have a budget number one we don't know what the military is number two so often we start talking in february march and april and may about here board goals here superintendent strategy if we have the money here's where we're going to put it but if we don't have the money and we might need to find 15 million dollars because of changes to the trs or whatever so um there's a challenge there uh i'm i'm seconding the motion for the fall um i would also support a

094further public meeting prior to the budget when there can be a discussion as well purpose of this motion is to set your regular fees once you've done that those meetings are set frankly you don't have to notice those and so that's the purpose i appreciate the legal decoupling um i think that's very helpful um on the matter of the extra meeting prior to the budget process we we've just been asked to listen we don't have to have all this preparation to listen if you listen to the comments and i don't agree with all the comments that were that were given but the comment was that people have reaction and thoughts about how spending occurs in relation to their past experience it wasn't in reaction to they didn't want time to talk about the budget being

095proposed they wanted to reflect on the spending that they have witnessed so it doesn't really matter that the budget won't be prepared and in fact i think it would demonstrate more transparency if there is a feedback process early on we can listen to that and then that can be used to inform the budget process much like it occurred when we had a budget committee that was convenient i'd like to call a halt of this discussion because we've got the amendment still we need to vote on that first which we haven't done okay so the amendment is based on the perception of how the amendment is based on the fact that on september the 7th that september 7th that regular board meeting will be at 6 00 pm i understand because part of the suggestion was

096to have an evening meeting so this is cool i can i gotta vote and i can this is cool but then we can discuss what you were just discussing if you choose to have the september meeting be our regular meeting and at 6 00 pm raise your hands one two three four five six seven all opposed two so did i say six or seven six raise your hands again if you went from seven so the motion to move the september meeting time date remains the same until 6 p.m now is there any follow-up that you wish about the suggestion that we were discussing that dr hoskins brown had brought up because of one of our speakers basically any further thing you want to go with that i i feel like it used to happen people

097probably didn't show up to the budget meetings when there was a budget committee but it sounds as if this individual and maybe other individuals we've had more people come and talk about the character money and the multiple you know how that's been given up that there might be more people that want to come and talk about budget are we willing to call especially able to tell people we are only going to discuss the budget or can they bring other things into that meeting as well i just wanted to turn into another board meeting where everybody brings other concerns but i can definitely see a special meeting discussing the budget while it's being [Music] come and attend however um the requests that we got for evening meetings have occurred over the last four or five months

098and have ranged the topics uh masking to cope with mitigation to everything else we have so many hearings um meetings in the evening that are specifically budget that people don't come to i'm not enamored with the idea of creating another one committed only to budget um but i also in this discussion have received the information that if if i have a commitment to community feedback there are mechanisms available to me that i can exercise that does not require the board convening an evening meeting and and i'm okay with that in our packet the budget calendar states that march 7th will begin community stakeholder input presentations and surveys does that not coincide with an earlier opportunity for the community and i don't know if that stakeholder is more narrow than the broader public just make some

099tweaks and maybe it's a meeting maybe it's a forum but i think it would be helpful to hear from the staff thoughts on how we might be able to achieve earlier transparency information and opportunities to hear from the community as part of that budget say here is process i think in march march that would be too early i feel because i don't believe that we've had time to get out information about the military we don't know what it's going to be so the folks that are coming in uh we won't be able to give them very much information so i i think mark can be a little too early probably around the first of april if we could but then i don't see a in here possibly that we want to do that but um

100i think march second will be too early mr jackson um good afternoon pretty much anything we do before march um historically we would just get budget input feedback from the community um prior to the pandemic we will try to take advantage of your town hall meetings and do a quick presentation at some of your meetings to get budget input so if if things are in our favor we will have the opportunity to do that again to visit some of your town hall meetings and to give folks an attendance and an opportunity to get some budget and put us a bunch of feedback or suggestions um for um fortunately you have more people attend your town hall meetings then we would have come here to attend a budget workshop so we try to take advantage of

101that and hopefully we can get back into the swing of that this year i would uh i would ask um if the board will allow the new officers and myself as we meet with the superintendent and her staff to discuss this further with the understanding that indeed we will come back to you as a board and offer something uh i have a i have a very different impression than some of you because after many years a good number of years on this board the people who have come to the ninth meetings i believe without exception have always been concerned about military they're not concerned about the budget when someone's talking about how much budget is going to academic affairs and things like that that's a whole different matter and i think we need to discuss

102how best to bring that i happen to remember that when i ran for office the last time that all of the other candidates running for this seat that i'm in made great to do about how they couldn't understand the budget because it was so complicated well it is complicated and it's not like my checking account at home by any means and and if someone thinks a special meeting or a forum is going to totally educate them they are wrong and secondly it is almost impossible in a meeting like that to come to grips with what their own private concerns are but let us come back to you with something yes doctor if have a six o'clock meeting to convene on september 7th for the regular meeting will there be a informal even on that day

103probably would it be an hour prior [Laughter] be careful because you're now one of us no i think that is that okay as opposed to the budget meetings well i just sat through a lot of night meetings where staff had to be we voted on oh yeah so all in favor of the resolution as amended with the september meeting being at 6 00 pm instead of two all the rest remaining the same raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes nine zero zero the last item uh the next item has to do with the committee appointments of the board i am the one who makes those committee assignments i chose this year to keep the assignments the same as last year because it had been somewhat of a

104different kind of year in terms of meetings and whether we were able to get enough work done that we were aiming for do you see the resolution i mean you see the committees there i need a resolution to accept those committees before i ask for the resolution i will say though that there will be a ad hoc committee on charter school policies and mr kashmar in his wisdom has agreed to chair that committee and so we will be asking some of you others to serve on that committee with him and i have a motion that we approve the committees for the year mr johnson moved our house and brown second all in any comment any financial border members all in favor raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion

105passes nine zero zero is that all of the board matters district boundaries of chatham county board of education based on census data it is periodically the responsibility of the board of education to work with county commission to revise districts of chatham county based on changes in population through the metropolitan planning commission both the savannah county board of education county commission have received and reviewed information on proposed changes to district maps the proposed chatham county district boundaries have also been reviewed by the legislative and congressional reapportionment office of the georgia general assembly and technical certification has been granted the map has been posted to board docs and has been previously provided to board members in conjunction with this agenda action it is now being presented for review and final approval for submission to the state legislature

106must be resolved district boundaries as identified by the map that was identified in the technical certification form as c-h-a-t-h-a-m ccsb import 2-20-21 be approved by the board of education you've heard the resolution that bringman is out of motion dr bringman moved mr johnson's second dr debrin i would just like to thank all parties involved in the process of uh working to put these maps together um with our counterparts on the county commission but also with the metropolitan planning with the committee systems to walk us through to try to create districts that still represent what the prior districts were as also want to remind the well that um everybody gave us something we all had a compromise um and i would like to say to um my partner if i'm here in the sixth district welcome

107to the west side any other time ms hall i'd like to thank mr prabowski for helping us um move over um any problems that we might have run into at the end of this process i was very proud of how we handled it so i'm very happy that we're making this resolution today [Laughter] in favor of this motion raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine the motion passes nine zero zero i would uh i would like for our minutes to reflect our sincere thanks to the metropolitan planning commission and mr wilson and all who had a point because it was very nicely done in a most professional way and i really think we if we can reflect that i would appreciate it in fact once it's settled i'd like

108to have her come and so we could call it thank you personally and if we could just remind everyone that um this is just a part of the process that we have done uh yeoman's work to this point i appreciate your uh full support of this process dr buck and i had an opportunity to stand to the side and just watch everything work out it does go to the state legislature before it is finally approved and we thank senator watson for giving us the timeline to work with them it's my understanding from talking with the chairman today of county commission that their plans to have uh everything done in the next couple of weeks so we should be able to afford our consensus uh to the was aware of the fact that we were about

109to vote on this today so because they had not voted yet we didn't want to surprise them all in favor have we already voted we voted [Music] we need we need a motion to approve the consent agenda please uh ms huns moved mr dr bringman second all in favor of passing on i mean voting affirmative land consenting generation hands one two three four five six seven eight all opposed any extensions motion passes eight zero one with one extension uh i believe we only have one item in is that right yeah the budget process update oh there she is good evening everyone this evening i'm going to go over a budget process update and i'm going to focus on our projected enrollment for our school district for next school year in our enrollment forecast of the

110important things we do is we look at the past and current patterns of change we incorporate our predictions and how what trends that are going to occur in the future that we predict um to forecast our enrollment we use census state and local data and population growth student promotion and birth rates and i just want to kind of give you a brief discussion the way we get started is the budget office at first puts together the data and they put it we put it into a spreadsheet and analysis which focuses on historic data mainly we do look at the birth rates from five years ago after we come up with our figures we then provide these figures to all the school sites their principals and staff so that they can provide input to us so

111they see what numbers we came up with and we have it by grade at each school site the principals and school staff may know something we don't such as there is a um large apartment complex being built in their community and they alert us to that that there may be quite a few more students that may be attending their school next year and we then it is sent back to the budget office we compile all that information and then once we've gotten those numbers together what we believe to be the um the best answer the best numbers for that we then call in um the other period um the other heads of our departments and divisions of our school districts the associate superintendents and the hr personnel and we sit down first we submit it

112out to them and then they give us their feedback and then we meet which this year was remotely but we met in a microsoft teams meeting and we got together and they were able to get more input and tell us yes or no they agreed with it so then we came back together once everybody agreed on the numbers and we then sent them out to the schools so that is essentially our process with our enrollment um when we do our enrollment forecast as we all know enrollment is very important the forecasted projected in student enrollment one of the reasons is so important is it determines the staffing at the school sites so if their enrollment goes down they lose staffing if their moment is going up they're going to gain staffing um we as a

113district have been on a slow decline due to birth rates in chatham county and this is nationwide also we have lost a total of 1 167 students since fiscal year 19 to this year compared to this year um the loss of enrollment is due as i said to the decline in the birth rate and possibly the pandemic and one another important thing besides the staffing that the enrollment drives is our enrollment is extremely important because that also determines our state funding on this graph it shows you you can look at 2017 birth rates in chatham county and those would be our kindergarten students for next school year and as you can see from the graph our birth rate is declining in a downward trend on this next slide this shows um the five-year regular enrollment

114summary for grades one through five this does not include the pre-k or self-contained students and for next fiscal year there is a projected loss of 189 students um compared to what we have this year that's what we've projected for elementary grades in this slide we project a loss of three students next school year compared to the 20th day count this year so that one is remaining fairly steady in grades six through eight that does not include any pre-k or self-contained students on this graph we project a gain of 87 students in grades 9-12 to grow 87 students compared from this year to next school year and this graph shows the total school enrollment and it does include the pre-k and the self-contained special ed students and we project losing a total of 105 students next

115school year as compared to the 20th account this school year this graph shows um the school the school year this shows the enrollment for profits but the private school enrollment which from compared to last year to this year they grew 537 students this graph shows the comparison of the trends for private and public school enrollment private school enrollment is less than one-fifth of the size of our public school enrollment the trend in public school enrollment is a slow downward trend private school enrollment wasn't a downward trend through fiscal year 20 and they've shown an upward trend since fiscal year 21. this shows our future on what we predict we project a slow decline in enrollment over the next three years due to the decline in birth rates in chatham county this is a slide of

116the budget calendar that was just previously being discussed and this is another slide of the budget calendar one of the things that's one that i'd like to take notice we have put down june 22nd as the final board of adoption for our budget and this concludes the presentation if anybody has any questions any questions from board members ms hall mr johnson hi paige hi what is the correlation between a lower enrollment and state funding what would you say well of course when we go down in enrollment our state funding goes down because it is based on the fte per student which is based on the student being enrolled in school all day they have they are divided into six segments so if we lose students we obviously lose enrollment sometimes we can gain it based

117on some students getting more fte than others such as special ed gifted you get a little bit more because you have a smaller classroom but all in all um enrollment loss of enrollment means less state funding to us um you know they can increase the funding per child but as far as overall every time we lose a child that is a loss to the district of state funding do we notice it much up until a certain level doesn't have to reach a certain level before we really feel the pinch of it or um well the way ours has been going down at a very slow rate we've kind of been able to absorb it slowly through attrition and you know just we're always in need of teachers and um school staff it seems like you

118know the way the turnover for the summer you always have needs so we haven't had to utilize any sort of laying off of any staff in years and years so um in that regard we're fairly lucky because we're not doing like big drops of enrollment it's slow so we've been able to kind of absorb it slowly and it doesn't hurt as much as well as the fact that locally our um the local textiles we receive we've been very fortunate because our community and where we live is very prosperous so it has helped the local is the majority of our money we receive now i know when i first started this job 27 years ago um it was the opposite we got more state money than local but now we have more local we use the

119local more and that's one reason that during the pandemic we were not as hurt as some communities that are more reliant on the state when they did the austerity of huge austerity reduction i've just been thinking about the fact that since this is not a trend it's just here in chatham county this is statewide nationwide that how that will affect the state if all the districts in the state are seeing this kind of movement how that might affect um their decisions on funding uh i'd be interested you know that makes them decide to be more generous you know because it's happening well probably not but i think it would be interesting for us to keep an eye on that i know that um some of the state we're in the top ten we're like the

120tenth largest school district in the state and most of the ones that are larger than us they are in that growing state because they're like in the atlanta area fulton county and those are growing still forsyth county so there are some areas growing um so they seem to be able to you know it's not affecting them as much as others and of course obviously rural areas are much more effective than we are so we're kind of a little ways in the middle there but thank goodness for our local tax dollars well and you actually just touched on a point that i was going to ask about i understand the state and national trends of declining birth rates but we're also one of the fastest growing counties in georgia and so i wonder how that is

121playing into your projections for enrollments the growth rate of chatham county specifically well most of what we've looked at is the birth rate of the children and even though we're growing i believe that we're growing mostly with uh as a retirement type community it seems like we're getting people to move down here after they've had children and maybe retire people are moving from up north down south in a lot of cases and as you can see a lot of the even the communities the landings and stuff is a lot of people that are retired moved down here from up north so i think that may be why the birth even though we may be growing in size the birth rate we keep going down as you can see the trend is decreasing every year and

122it doesn't look like it's there's one year when it picked up a little bit but it is well i guess i just want us to be cognizant of not putting all our eggs in one basket and only looking at the birth rate because we have families that are moving here yes there are a lot of retirees but there are also a lot of families who are moving here from other parts of the country as well who come with children that are already school agents i just think it's something for us to be very cognizant of and and and perhaps take a look um see if there's a way to get a little bit more information um about how that might play into our projections thank you i appreciate that uh i have miss heinz the

123bringman mr johnson first signs oh okay mr johnson dr bringman howard um well first off uh mr took one of my points with um the whole growth and stuff especially on the west side of the building and everything else and i do know that y'all work with um the deputy superintendent um with what's going on with the npc and growth and how many moves are going to be um put out there so i do know you do that and i just wanted to um this with everything that's going on i want to thank you and mr jackson with all the hard work with the budget because i know this is moving target um working with the budgets process that i've built on this board uh i know how hard that how much time and effort

124it is i just want to thank you for you thank you sir thank you um we need to move on would you be able to just give a ballpark figure per student fte state funding with that and if not that's a crazy number for me to ask how many sections of gifted do they have um remedial it's 10 000 student drop it seems like you're confident that with our budget process and with the money we bring in locally we're easily able to deal with that it's not a problem yes and that was like not just from last year a thousand you know several a few years back but um yes because we've just been very slowly decreasing we've been able to absorb it and of course obviously if we have less students we have less

125teachers because we don't have we base them on a class size so that's another thing because we always are in need of teachers i'm never worried about that we always need teachers creek area there are so many apartments that are um being erected as long as as well as housing for younger families so with with that being said communication what we found is that that area is growing tremendously and going up but what's happening is people are moving from other parts of savannah to the west side to those cooler areas it's not like we're gaining people from outside of our county it's just a distribution of instead of being maybe in midtown or something they have moved people have moved from one area of savannah to another and that area now is the west side

126the cooler areas the big growth area now we're not finding that we're bringing that many people in from outside of our county it's just that we are redistributing them so it's like when we know that this one is going down even though like in cooler i keep adding more and more in those areas because that's what we're finding is they just move from one to you know from one area to the other area of savannah any other comments to be thinking about this discussion when you start thinking about the military medicine rate please remember this discussion the millage rate thank you ma'am thank you we've still got a long way to go as we begin this process um we've got lots of people moving in but a good number on them are moving in the

127counties adjacent to us and and i would disagree with what mr said because the numbers are not showing all the families you've said so many um brings you financial statements for the period ending the month of november for all funds we've suspended 41.6 of the fiscal year uh revenues are coming along pretty good as expected um we're at 57.7 um 56.2 which is lower than last year we're higher than uh total general phone revenues are 50 percent of the current modified budget which is higher than last year at this time just from expenditures are pretty much on target similar to what what it was last year um a little bit slower pace than free pandemic expenses but we're still coming along pretty good at this time we have no other um outstanding concerns with any

128other funds we should have some federal funds that the state is still working on updating and finalizing like as i mentioned last month they have some funds that some grants that they extended the grand period so they gave us some more time to spend some of those so common forms on the budget um out of whack but we should be clearing some of those up pretty soon any questions earlier last year i'm sorry uh around march we received some money from the governor for um some teacher bonuses so this ratification that's for the money we received from the state last year they changed the way they wanted us to record it so we have to record it on our books as if it was a carriage grant to the district so the 5.4 million dollars

129we received from the state which is actually money that we paid the teachers last march is not the second so let's be able ratification in the amount of 5 million other board members [Music] one of the things we're working on we started in these number one things we're working on is a dedicated care of that website to put some for their approval and acceptance so i would say within the next couple of months they've been kind of behind at this stage um they started the process with the cares act office of one person um i know they hired a few people right before christmas so they're playing catch-up any other comments hearing none voting on the uh the resolution all in favor of the motion raise your hand one two three four five six seven

130uh motion passes seven zero zero uh seven zero zero let the record show that ms hall and tyson brown have left the room so uh any other business to come before this group motion to adjourn from dr bring one second by mr johnson all in favor raise your hands thank you happy new year um