November 4, 2020 Regular Board Meeting

001[Music] california you just invigorated my whole spirit good afternoon and welcome to this regular board meeting of the savannah chatham board of public education this is wednesday november the 4th 2020. this is our regular board meeting as we begin i would want to announce that this is being live streamed for the public as we meet i would ask our board secretary ms davis brown if this meeting has been advertised in accordance with all the required state statutes she assures me that it has and so we are now in session if you will as board members please stand with me well everyone in the room as we pledge allegiance to the flag i pledge the united allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice

002for all thank you i could ask uh our vice president um dr hoskins brown for a motion to approve the agenda as uh amended or changed yes sir uh i move that the agenda be approved with the following revisions and that is changes to items 4.02 deaths 7.01 appearances 8.05 the deletion of jdda assignment to alternative programs 9.01 approval of minutes and 9.24 georgia power easement for jenkins high school you've heard that motion besides seconds all in favor raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion uh is approved the agenda is approved as revised moving president buck i have a second motion i'm sorry i forgot i also moved that the agenda be approved with the following revisions i'm sorry that the agenda be amended to add item 8.01

003in-person school operation board motion and item 8.02 threshold for virtual learning for motion to board of education matters thank you you've heard that motion behind seconds all in favor raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine that motion passes also moving on to announcements the only announcement that i have is that the board will have a working board retreat on friday at 8 30 at the armstrong center of the georgia southern university campus and we will be working on strategic plan and various other items that we need to make it is customary for us to have a fall retreat we moved it by one month because of the pandemic but we will be meeting on friday thank you any other announcements from board members it is also customary always for

004us to recognize those people who have passed away during the last month and and today we have to recognize winfred kristen bus monitor from transportation cynthia tisdale certification specialist retired from human resources bernestein batts paraprofessional at windsor forest elementary and we also wanted to recognize a charter school employee who had been with oglethorpe charter school for many years mark case if you would please stand as we reflect on these former family members thank you moving on uh do we have we have a operational update from the superintendent and it's my pleasure to welcome her and thank you dr buck officers and members of the board it is my pleasure to bring you an operational update i'd like to start by thanking all of our staff and families for their patients as we have had this

005unusual year unfold and thank everyone for understanding that schooling has been impacted much like the rest of our lives we also wish to acknowledge that next week we will have the opportunity to celebrate with the veterans in our community and around the world we want to thank them for their service so we have a holiday on november 11th and on november 12th we will host our annual celebration where we recognize those persons who have served our country and continue to serve our country who are part of the school district and those persons have been invited to participate with us next week we have since we last start last met begun phase three which by your vote we started october 26th we added uh two our capacity limits those persons in grades three four five seven

006eight are returning ninth graders 10th 11th and 12th grades in-person staff levels continue to require the use of waitlist and in-school online learning pods the parent registration query was issued in advance giving parents an opportunity to have their students considered for in person or staying virtual and transportation was offered or is offered on a limited basis here's the information on our phase three registration responses as you see here we had a number of persons who requested hybrid a number who chose deliberately indicating their preference to stay virtual and some who looked who actually took the survey but did not make a selection we had a total of 7855 who participated in that process and as you see the survey participation was about 40 percent one part of this phase included transportation we all all recognize

007that we would not be able to transport the full number of students who wanted to participate the routing team the transportation team as a whole deserve a big round of applause for making sure that they got the routing completed when i say working day night and sunday that's exactly what happened because of the very short time frame which we acknowledged during the last meeting we had to get the surveys back decide which staff might be available then choose the different cohorts then decide how we would transport also including those who were in the previous cohort so it was a mammoth job and unless you were doing the work you had no idea we also were routing for two different cohorts so during a typical year we route of course for one group one big group

008of 24 000 plus kids in this case we were writing for two different sets of students as we have stated from the very beginning bus capacity levels are d are limited due to social distancing requirements the bell schedule modifications were necessary to meet the transportation schedule so while some people did not find it comfortable that we needed to change the bell schedules if we were going to provide transportation that was a given and it was stated on several occasions i think like everything else until it hits you it doesn't really register but in order to transport kids drivers were of course based on the limited number of kids that we could transport having to double back having to do lots of things in order to get the limited number of students to the building that

009that influenced the bell schedule and any change that we make that involves transportation will have some impact on everything else so thank you for understanding that that as long as we offer transportation it's going to impact all other schedules in some way or another excessive cleaning protocols were implemented or continue to be implemented but certainly with more students in the building that means we are having to enhance that cleaning protocol even while we did home to school delivery home to school transportation we were still delivering meal service to our students at the bus stops and that's because we have a significant number of our students who are learning virtually we have made a commitment to ensure that those students are able to get their meals as conveniently as possible we also want to acknowledge that

010we have been operating under the usda waiver so that students could get both their breakfast and their lunch for free we still encourage our families to complete their free or reduced meal applications that is a very critical task we want you to make sure that those are completed and i make every time i do a friday free talk i remind people that that is an important task and we'll keep that in front of you we have been granted a waiver by the usda for meals to be free through the rest of this academic year meaning until the close of the school year however it is important for students and families to complete the free and reduced meal applications because there are other academic services that hinge upon those totals so if you have not completed

011it please do we will continue to campaign with our families so that they can can complete that critical task i'm going to ask the staff to share the phase 3 opening observations so that you have some idea factually of what we've experienced with the opening of phase three i will begin with mrs miller kegeler who will talk specifically about the student transportation service and what what that means thank you dr zavette good afternoon dr buck board members again the transportation staff not only just the routers and dispatchers but also our drivers and monitors who had to receive those routes in such a short period of time and go out and do what we call our practice runs we're able to get that done so we'll be ready to pick up our students and make sure

012that they arrive to school on time on october the 26th so as soon as we received the directive we started working with the team making sure that we had enough drivers and monitors in place you see what the approximate number of students that we routed and what our ridership was the first week we'll continue to track that information make sure we assure our families that we're practicing all of the safety protocols as we're transporting our students the drivers and monitors are operating the buses at about 33 of capacity right now which means we're only transporting 24 to 28 students per bus as dr leves stated we are operating a cohort eight and a cohort b which means that we have one group of students on mondays and tuesdays wednesday is our virtual independent learning day

013and deep cleaning then on thursday and friday there's a different set of routes that those drivers are now being responsible to maintain and they're continuing with our virtual meal deliveries on monday wednesdays and fridays and continuing to serve our twilight students on monday wednesdays and fridays in the afternoon and you see the total number of routes that we are running at the end of the school year we were operating about 291 routes you see the number of routes that we're running in a partial or in a hybrid so our drivers are continuing to report to work we're tracking the number of telephone calls that we receive for the first week and make sure that we can be responsive to the needs of the students and to the families as well and to ensure that we

014are following our safety protocols and that we are not delaying the departure we have implemented a cure our qr code for screening we've been able to successfully have our drivers and monitors operate at a 98 level so that allows them to come in be screened on their telephone that data is then downloaded we monitor each and every one of those submissions so in the event there's a response that triggers our attention it does it in a timely manner and we make the necessary adjustments based on that we're continuing to work to ensure that we have staff on hand this is the current number of drivers that are functioning and have agreed to return to work 232 106 monitors and again we are continuing to operate our wi-fi buses the home to school delivery as well

015as the instructional support learning centers school nutrition you see the breakdown of meals in each of our phases in phase one through three we're continuing to deliver meals as of the 29th we delivered 500 and 1 000 meals to our students and families dr lavette thank you for reminding families of the need to complete those lunch applications you can see where we were at the time we're at 61 completed same time last year we're at 63 percent but we did have a robust and a vigorous outreach this last week so we'll be monitoring to make sure we can if not meet where we were last year we can exceed next part and relative to maintenance and operations we're continuing to work with our custodians we're continuing to make sure that all of our schools have

016the necessary ppes supplies are in an abundance we do have them we're making sure that they know where they are in the buildings it is our commitment to this district to families and students and to staff that we will provide the necessary ppes and cleaning supplies in a timely manner we'll continue to work with our staff to ensure that the items are there just as with our buses we do have a ppe kit that each driver was supplied with with mass sanitizer and with gloves not just for the drivers but for students who could possibly come to the bus stop without a mass mass and a ppe kit is on each and every bus we'll make sure that we keep that ample supplied we just ordered some additional equipment for disinfecting and sanitizing so hopefully

017we're going to be able to reduce the time in between our routes we were able to place that order so we're expecting our first shipment relative to the enhanced equipment for sanitizing our buses filters are being installed we have completed the replacement in five of our schools and we'll continue that process and you'll see that we'll continue that on a quarterly basis as it relates to how we manage the ventilation in our schools relative to buses whenever the opportunity presents itself when it's not raining we make sure that all of the windows are down on the bus and the ac is running as an attempt to mitigate the spread while our students are on the bus so that concludes the operations division update here's the very important uh part of this conversation that i want

018to make sure i reiterate um i think there's not a day that goes by that i don't receive an email from someone who simply does not understand how we are managing positive covert cases so i think it's important that i spend some time during this meeting talking about how we manage those cases we since opening october 5th have had time thank you miss hall for giving us we appreciate miss hall giving us some comic relief because you know we're really really serious about all this stuff and i just think it's you know life happens thank you miss hall um but i i do every day i think since we have opened october 5th get a message from someone who simply thinks that we are just trying to make things difficult for children and for staff

019and that just is not the truth but i do want to take some time reminding you of some things that we've spoken about before now that we opened october 5th which tomorrow makes one month we've had the unfortunate task of closing three schools we do not take this lightly but we do take help and safety seriously we've had to close west chatham elementary followed by west chatham middle school in both instances we collaborate in all instances we collaborate with the department of public health in all of our materials it is clearly laid out what happens individually based on classroom based on school what happens when there is a positive case to the board earlier it's laid out in narrative and and also diagrams but most people don't look at narratives and diagrams they only think

020about it when it happens to them or if they have a question about it when we are notified by the department of public health or presented evidence by a staff member or a family member that there has been a positive case then we then move into contact tracing and we have a phenomenal contact tracing team it is headed up by risk management and our nurses in the human resources department as a part of that process you also have the supervisors or governance team that is involved with that school and or department we also have the other professionals who are responsible for school operations and communication all of that is a very intensive process that often goes may start one day and go over across several days in each of the cases where we've had to

021close schools it is because of a number of factors so while we have a general outline each case is different and when we say we're going to close the school it's not because we don't have anything else to do it's because the circumstances are not safe if for example the stem academy we closed a classroom because we could isolate it to that classroom in the other instances there were multiple factors which led us to close the schools and i appreciate very much the risk management staff nurse uh chauncey who leads that effort along with our other nurses nifs wilson our governance persons our principals and our communications team because they all get together they look at the data along with the department of public health who's a major player in that if we decide through

022contact tracing that we have an extensive of persons who will need to be quarantined or isolated then it is not necessarily feasible for us to open the school so the length of time the school may be closed or classroom may be closed is based on that unique information so thank you for understanding we do not like announcing closures but as we have been discussing the entire time the more people that are in the buildings the more we can expect rolling closures and i'd have to give our parents a big round of applause because they are understanding of what it takes and i appreciate everyone's understanding there's an extensive team review the contact tracing protocols are clearly laid out the guidance comes directly from the department of public health and the data as you will note

023is posted very clearly on the website so that you can look every tuesday afternoon and see the number of persons number of cases number adults number of students who've been impacted and that information may change during the week because very often when we start the contact tracing we start out with one number and then we find that there are other persons who've been affected we will continue to have rolling closures we may have classroom closures we may have schoolwide closures but nonetheless in each case we are looking at protecting the identity of those persons who've been impacted staying close to them letting them know that we're here to support them and doing what is right and what we would want done with our own families so i do hope that's very helpful for you and

024understanding that that isn't this is not a situation where the superintendent sits in the side we're going to close that school there's an extensive team of professionals who are helping us to make that decision i want to give a special shout out to the communications team who takes that burden off of the principal and takes that information and writes it in a way that principals don't have to worry about finding the words to calm their staff calm their parents and then send messages home and when we do that we are trying to do it in a way that allows us to be respectful and informative all at once so thank you for understanding our my colleagues here are going to give you the information about october 26th in that opening you'll hear from them as

025you did last time i do want to share with you that as you have requested we have provided you the staff numbers but we have noted a discrepancy and with some clarification so we'll get some updated information to you about staff but here's what i do want you to remember whatever the numbers are it doesn't change the fact that we have a limited in-person staff which has negatively impacted the number of students that can be served in person and i also want to point out that virtual learning continues to be an option for all families who wish to continue with virtual learning i want to invite the associate superintendents to give you their opening observations we'll start with mrs aikens with elementary k-8 and we'll move from there good afternoon i'm pleased to share some

026of the observations for our phase 3 hybrid for elementary and k-8 first starting with our successes it was really a seamless transition from phase two into phase three phase three parents came in the same way that our phase two they understood the protocol of how to let their students out of the car in the mornings and picking them up in the afternoons so we're very pleased with that success also as we visited the buildings our team we noticed that the smaller children they were actually socially distancing that was surprising we felt that that would be a major hurdle but they have they seem to have adapted to socially distancing in the classroom as well as in the hallways they really stop at those placards they take that serious and we're we're very pleased about that

027the teachers and the principals they were energized and pleased as the new students came on board for phase three and also in most settings because we have the a and b cohort there are smaller class sizes for the teachers to manage so that is a very positive piece of our in-person hybrid doing the a and b model however we do have challenges our challenges of course and this has been mentioned before is the fact that we have wait lists at our schools and that is due to the fact that the teachers had the option to work remotely or to work in person so that continues to be a challenge also in visiting the schools in a few instances we had to remind the teachers as well as the students to wear their mask properly let's

028put it over your nose not under your chin so we're still working on that to make sure that there's a safe learning environment for all of our students during this pandemic at the very beginning of phase three there was a little confusion about the start and the end times but quickly our principals started working with our parents to help them understand the new bell times and so now that is flowing very very smoothly in addition principals and teachers are concerned about the learning packets the learning packets is the other option versus using virtual and what we're finding is it's very difficult to have the parents pick up the packets on time and bring the assignments back on time so that uh definitely is something that we are working on our social workers are working to

029help those parents to ensure that the students are receiving what they need on the paper packets and the parents take the responsibility of bringing those pack packets back in so we can keep them on track so that's my conclusion for elementary k-8 for successes and challenges so good afternoon our secondary schools so our logistics are one of our successes and if you know anything about middle schoolers and high schoolers we're very pleased that our class transitions are going well they are embracing it they are following the safety protocols and as a part of that arrival and dismissal as well and we want to thank our parents because they've been very supported in ensuring that that occurs on time they arrive on time they're checked in using a qr code which makes it easy very little

030if any loss of instructional time and then they're picked up in a timely manner as well so that has gone very well at secondary those were some of the things that we thought would be a challenge our students did not look at the mask as a fashion statement but they have taken taken it seriously and they are following the guidelines our challenges again the teaching staff available for in-person instruction as it relates to high school that is especially difficult because those courses are credit bearing and we need those teachers certified in those areas if that is where students are receiving instruction so our schedules then present a challenge for us and by having limited staff in person some courses are not available in person so we do have students that have to participate in hubs

031or either they opt out of the in-person learning because the majority of their learning is more of a hub fashion and they can do it at home virtually we continue to have a large wait list we still have over 400 students that are wait listed for this phase west chatham middle school being our largest with 122 students that have been wait listed they have not been able to serve any of the students that requested in person for phase three in seventh and eighth grade and then savannah arts academy with a wait list of 66 followed by southwest middle with a wait list of 48 students those are our top three and that is our update on secondary schools good afternoon our phase three observations from k-12 transformation are as follows our successes the students and

032families are very still very compliant with all of the the protocols and procedures and our students are having a great experience they're having a positive learning experience there um surprisingly parents parents continuously request to come to in-person learning for the positive experience so we're really excited about that we continue to be very well organized in terms of screening with the help of campus police and all of our available staff that's in the building that could possibly help so our arrival and our dismissal procedures are good parents are picking up children on time we're not having to wait around to make sure that those children are picked up and and taken home schedules seem to be very well planned so all of that's working consistently and our class sizes continue to be small as we don't

033have the number of children to come in because we don't have the staff availability to provide them instruction we do have our series of challenges so transferring from the learning packets to the in-person learning has been a challenge because on the learning packets we cannot really tell whether or not the children did the packets by themselves or they were they had assistance with doing the packets or sometimes they don't return the assignments and it's very difficult to get them to turn in the assignment sometimes so when they come in for in-person learning just not really sure in terms of where their performance is because they have been on the learning packets at that time but we're making great strides and trying to make sure we provide them that skill based instruction families are showing up

034without registration that's a positive and that can be a negative because when we have families that show up on that day of course we're going to accommodate them but we have to make sure that there is availability as whereas as well as there is a teacher that can provide that instruction we do have a struggle with sometimes the children not bringing their devices they all have devices that wanted to have a device but then bringing that device with them to school because as you know when we give out the devices there's not necessarily a a plethora of advice of devices in the building to be able to provide additional support while they're there so we're still making challenge struggles with those but we're working that out um and then consistent attendance that seems to still

035be a a difficulty a challenge some days they'll come some days that they'll stay home so we understand that our families are still struggling with um determining on the days that the children come in the in the days that the children are consistent um so if they're in a cohort maybe sometimes they'll come in a cohort but then the next week they don't come um but they'll come the following week so we're working on that our social workers are reaching out to families um we're making lots of parent calls and we're even doing home visits so we're trying to get those children in to get that valuable instruction and of course it all hinges upon us our teachers being available there for in-person learning right now based upon yesterday's numbers and we're not quite accurate

036with all of those we do have a series of children that are a number of children that are on the waitlist and that's about 152 students that are that have the desire to come in but they're on the wait list now thank you that's our update from k-12 transformation good afternoon i will be presenting the updates for the least independent learners during phase three we were able to increase the number of days for in-person instruction to two days per week in an attempt to increase the number of students being served in person the superintendent authorized a coveted supplemental stipend to staff working in person with the least independent learners the stipend was one thousand dollars for classroom staff assigned to students the entire day and five hundred dollars for intermittent staff working periodically with them

037i am pleased to say that on october the 19th 108 staff members received their covid supplemental stipend i'm sorry on october 19th they showed up on october 26 they received their stipend so we were pleased with that this increase in staff serving in person allowed us to increase our services to 63 percent of the students who requested in-person learning students have adjusted well to the safety measures in place in their return to the classroom there were several challenges with phase three for the least independent learners the most urgent and important is the lack of staff opting to return to in-person instruction 128 students who requested in-person instruction will have to continue learning virtually due to the lack of available staff 11 sites were unable to serve any of the least independent learners with in-person instruction

038due to lack of staff these included coastal middle durand middle haven elementary isle of hope rice creek southwest elementary southwest middle west chatham middle windsor forest high a.b williams and coastal comprehensive academy dual teaching has been a challenge for staff due to trying to provide services for virtual and in-person learners at the same time is challenging we are currently working diligently to increase the number of days students are served in person who have requested to do so we've moved staff to other locations to accommodate more students for in-person learning the work is continuous and ongoing at this moment in our district we are at a crossroads the critical staffing shortage for our least independent learners and our students in general is real and it's urgent to serve more students in person it is essential that

039we have more staff returning to schools to teach in person and that concludes the academic affairs update excuse me mr feliciano will provide an update in terms of the technology good afternoon i would like to touch base on uh the karzak funds that was covered by mr jackson our cfo during the informal board meeting on august 12th the board approved the purchase of 7 000 ipads for pre-k 2 for the amount of 2 million 500 and 5 650 those devices have been delivered to our local vendor that is configuring them and preparing them for our students all seven thousand were received they will be delivered in two phases starting november 30th uh they have two delivery trucks the first phase will have about half 3 500 of them and they'd look to deliver them during

040that week so the week between november 30th and december 4th the second delivery uh which is the other the rest of them will be delivered during the week of december 7th total devices requested by the schools was 4458 so we will have an additional amount that will be distributed to the schools for to support any computer labs new students that enroll and also replacement of devices concerning the chromebook devices our first bulk of 8 000 chromebooks have been delivered configured and completed the second bulk which consisted of sixty four hundred uh we have started that delivery in october and we're down to the last four thousand of the sixty four hundred uh and we're doing another round starting with the high schools and proceeding to the middle schools k-8 and elementary schools the total amount

041requested by the schools was six thousand and fifty-one out of the 6400 that we're receiving thank you at the last meet thank you at the last meeting the board approved a motion on october the 7th asking me to consider various funding resources to develop an incentive recommendation if any of course we reviewed the options for staff incentives as indicated in that meeting with input from the board attorney it has been determined that this approach would not be feasible for legal reasons that would violate the gratuities clause of the georgia constitution therefore an incentive plan to provide bonus pay to any staff member for reporting to their designated work site to perform work duties described in his or her job description and or contract is not permissible for legal reasons i believe we've communicated that to

042you previously but because it has been a part of the board meeting and action and certainly a subject of lots of discussion by staff i wanted to make sure that was a part of this report today so here we are staffing in-person needs staff are needed in person to effectively provide services to students who are reporting to school i would re-emphasize the acute need that we have for our students with who are least independent and we still have about 37 percent of those young people who are not able to receive services based on requesting to be in person teleworking agreements lots of conversation lots of emails to you and to me about teleworking agreements we learned a lot from the spring and i pointed this out earlier and one thing that was reported to you

043consistently and certainly reported to me consistently was the lack of clear expectations and guidelines for working remotely at the beginning of this year we put into place a teleworking agreement every contracted person has a contract which is dictated by the state of georgia as the ceo of the organization i can decide what the conditions are for people to get the work done and when we decided that people would have a choice on whether to work in a building or whether to work at home we put a teleworking agreement into place so there would not be any confusion about our expectations we made some adjustments to that so you're receiving emails about it but the bottom line is people need clear expectations about what the expectations are for serving children and we expect that those who

044have an agreement will comply supplements as mentioned earlier prior to the conversation that popped up in the october 7th meeting we had been working with staff and hr and finance to find ways to ensure that those persons who needed our services the most at least independent learners that that staff whose duties and responsibilities vary greatly from the traditional educator had an opportunity to receive a supplement and that work is that supplement is based on their job duties and the nature of their work i sent a very clear communication to the staff explaining that that supplement was something that i felt was necessary and i stand by that and i believe those educators responded and kind to you and to their colleagues they appreciated the recognition that their work is very different from the traditional educator

045please note that the family's first coronavirus response act which allows for employee paid leave rights expires december 31st of 2020 mr hedger will review as i've promised in a previous meeting that every 30 days we would provide an update for your review in terms of decision making regarding the transmission rates and the daily case rates and we have tried to continue to do that so as a part of this report the information is there and he will review it very quickly thank you madam superintendent to our members of the board our chairman of the board as we promised we had indicated uh by resolution of the board we did have two data points that were included in our original plan for operating through our phases the original path forward from that did indicate that we

046would be paying attention to daily case rates and also the community transmission index which is also known as the cti these are data metrics that come from the coastal health district the chatham county health department as you heard earlier from the superintendent in our task force in our review when it comes to determining if there are any sort of closures we're in very close contact with individuals from the health department can't say enough how much of a great resource that they are for us and many times we're taking this data daily we are looking at it daily in fact we are on the email service list from dr davis who is a wealth of great information and resource for us as we receive this data and then it is posted of course to the website

047this information was updated as soon as yesterday you'll note that the daily case rate there is a clear downward trend here in chatham county uh hey guess what we're in the yellow so that's how i'm celebrating as you'll note as soon as october 31st we were in the red so this has come down as of november 3rd there are 8.0 for the daily case rate per 100 000 in chatham county that puts us in the yellow however not so rosy when you look at the numbers on the community transmission index it is still in the red anything that is over 100 on this index and of course as you know you can see the data in front of you this is used by determining a rate based on the per 100 000 residents of uh

048given counties and the coastal health department is very clear in the fact that they came up with these rates as a way to try to have some equal comparison because they recognize that there are different population rates across any given state the reality of it is back in july when we made the determination to go full virtual the cti was over 600 in chatham county that is substantial and clearly something that was a determining factor for us in our way forward in determining the need to stay to operate open in a virtual model and of course we stayed through that model based on this information so all along we've been clearly operating on data points we've been looking at the science fairly closely we look at it daily and we now are looking at these

049indicators these metrics and we will continue to do so through all phases and no matter the outcome of how we look at our way forward and as we're moving into second semester this data remains very important for us as a metric as we also make local decisions and determinations on uh positive case impacts and the task force that we mentioned earlier so the reality of it is of these two key data points that have been determined as important by the board one of them is in yellow very much a positive indicator for our area one of them does still remain in red which says there's still some pause for concern there and certainly be careful in the decisions that you make for this i will indicate as everyone can see though this trend is clearly

050going downward the final piece that i will leave everyone with as we close out and the superintendent moves on in her report we have received information from our professional senate superintendent's professional senate superintendent thought it was very important to poll this group and get with them quickly and ask them some very appointed questions about how they feel about returning and operations under pandemic as we come out of the winter break one one concern that was raised was what is this transmission rate going to look like after the winter break when clearly families will likely be traveling for holidays thanksgiving the winter break and going into the new year it's very likely that we will see some travel so we will continue to monitor this and use it as a great tool for making our operational

051decisions and of course it's a clear factor in our guiding principles for school operations thank you so much mr hediker just want to remind everyone of the guiding principles that we have been using along the way as we've made decisions and of course in bringing you these operational updates these reports are lengthy but i will tell you that it's important for people to have an understanding because in regular terms people just kind of know how school operates and they have some ideas about what's happening these are the principles that we have used in making our decisions number one looking at ensuring safety providing learning formats with options that can be delivered flexibly as we've seen with our school closures we've had to be flexible one day we're in school the next day we're virtual and

052based on the work that you've done the work that the staff has done we have some options for people to exercise we're also looking at making those decisions based on public health data and ensuring that we are providing educational options as dr cave and the others spoke about we're concerned about the learning packets that's an option for some parents but is it effective and our job is to make sure that we are providing the kind of support we need to training time clear communication with translations one of the things that we've had to focus on is making sure that we're translating our website allows you to really trans to translate any item but when we need to make extra effort we'll do that and also making sure that we're being able to move seamlessly from

053in-person to remote or virtual instruction making sure everyone understands transportation cannot be provided as prior to the pandemic that has been very difficult for people to get their arms around because so much of what we do depends on transportation going from 24 000 to 5400 that's a big drop and it's because drivers social distancing and very few options based on state code in terms of how we do things we have made a clear commitment to art music physical education and all those other pieces of our academic programming and extracurricular activities have been available to our students maybe not in the way that they always have been but certainly we look at whole child development mrs schatterger move to the next slide please so here is where we are second semester planning and in typical world

054second semester planning would be completed by this time and right now we are in a position of looking at planning scheduling routing we must re-survey our parents based on whatever decision that you make feedback will has been received from professional senate we have a meeting planned with our reopening task force about second semester and we have a meeting planned with our school principals about second semesters so those things are happening um very shortly but certainly our full planning scheduling routing surveying of staff and students must happen in the next few days so here are some unique considerations for expanding in-person options for second semester as mr hedger said in professional senate one of the things that was pointed out was the second semester calendar those independent learning days and how we might move into second

055semester based on coming off of a break staff availability continues to be a challenge you've heard it repeatedly the safest time for increased in-person options looking at weighing the potential impact of holiday travel review of wednesdays or independent learning days while we've made some adjustments for seconds nine weeks i'm certainly what we continue to get questions on is the value of wednesday and of course like everything else we've got mixed results or those students that are struggling or those ap students they find those advanced study students they find wednesdays to be helpful for others whether they have evidence or not they don't find wednesdays to be helpful so it's like everything else based on opinion and sometimes based on a particular situation still the use of information for you to consider about what you consider

056to be acceptable levels of risk and use of social distancing and mass to mitigate transmission rates we have received communication from some people who say they don't think anybody needs to wear a mask they don't think we have the social distance so we're in this period of everybody's opinion is the truth that's the period we're working in but they also don't have charge for 37 000 plus children either transportation needs and schedules are based on the premise of social distancing and less busload capacity so those are things that you will be considering as certainly things that govern our work and we wanted to make sure that we brought those to you this afternoon before i opened for discussion um i wanted to ask a question and it's really asking of staff for those of you

057who are on the academic side each of you and your challenges mentioned the shortage of teachers in the classroom could you tell me a pretty solid number it does not have to be exact how many you're short in elementary and middle and higher you all listed a number but i didn't get them all written down i think the the report that we issued to you that's on the back of this they will need to modify this to indicate the total number of teachers period and then the total number of record yes sir thank you um but we do have a handout for that i would then ask in indeed since we appear to be several hundred short in the classrooms how many would we have to hire newly newly hire or if that number of

058teachers are already under contract and being paid those teachers are already under contract they are just working remotely well but every need could be filled without having to hire any new teachers correctly how many vacancies do we have so i'm not exactly showing the vacancies i think that would be um dr bilton may be able to speak to exact numbers but for secondary school it would vary based on student schedules for example i used west chatham middle school he would need 7th and 8th grade teachers to return enough that he could serve all 122 because all seventh and eighth grade teachers pretty much have opted not to return so i think the needs based on the number of students that have opted to return if i'm understanding your question will be based on the number

059of students that are coming back in person if if i'm understanding the question correctly that the buildings are staffed for the most part but then the teachers are not in person returning and so depending on how many students opted to return in person that would dream even though obviously some would have preconditions but even those that don't have preconditions signed a contract but they're not returning to the classroom where we have a need is that right that's correct and for example at mercer no children can be served in that building because we have no teachers that are willing to come in except for a band teacher so it does not allow us to be someone to make sure i understood and dr buck i would like to add that we do have some schools where

060the staff as a whole chose not to come back as a group such as what happened at coastal comprehensive so they decided as a group we were either you know all or none all or none which is where we are right now and dr bucket it varies from school to school we have some schools that have an adequate amount of staff to serve and we have on the other end you know maybe two or three teachers so it varies from st from school to school also dr bilton doesn't have a mic but district-wide in terms of vacancies we have less than 10 vacancies in our district but we just don't have them in the building's teaching our impact i guess what i'm concerned about is the fact that as a public school district our sole

061and primary concern certainly safety is important but our primary concern is serving all of the children's educational needs and i would question that right now i have miss waden and miss hall so i want to just thank you i want to make sure procedurally i know where we are for the for this issue i have some questions about specific to the presentation and then i also have some general comments sh is what is now the time for the questions on this well i was responding to the questions that had just been made i'm as soon as we finish these questions i'm going to ask dr bringman to read his proposed motions and before we bring the public speakers in but i don't know what your comments are about so okay let me start with but

062i can ask questions about this oh sure okay that's that's what it says discussion got it okay so that's what i'm gonna do i just want to i know last time we got a little flipped around so i want to make sure i'm following the rules i do um have just i'm going to flip through some notes i've made on this um going to page 3 the 40 response rate regarding people um making the choice to determine whether they're going virtual or in person to me that's a really low number and i'm wondering if 60 percent got the email saw the email and said i'm staying virtual i don't need to do it or if we have a significant portion of our population that did not have the opportunity to make a choice and if

063it's the latter what are we doing to reach those parents to ask them what their choices and are we seeing that number break down on any sort of demographic lines so if i could respond to that we were operating on a very short timeline last time and that's one of the reasons why we're saying today we want to make sure that people are really clear we need a decision this board has been making the decisions about how we're going to operate we need that decision as soon as possible so that we can canvas our families and give them a longer period to respond because when they have that time period like last time if they didn't have an adequate or appropriate email on file you saw that big red banner across the board and we

064had lots of parents to respond so that we could get those emails done and we also would under this time period if we have a decision made pretty quickly then we can also follow up with people so we didn't have that necessarily this past period but we did have parents who learned about it and then as i think dr cave said some people just showed up and if they showed up then we did what we could to accommodate them but we would like to have a much longer period of time so that we can follow up with all parents and have them all respond and have we looked at the demographics of the 60 are there any trends or is it just kind of all over the place or have we not looked at that

065okay i'd be without a four day comprehensive review if there's trends where it's certain areas of the community if it's based on income or maybe more high schools responded than elementary or something if there's some trends that we can glean from that and it's not too entrance because that really what stood out to me i highlighted it and made it real big um i wanted to ask about transportation i i know that that is um the tail wagging the dog here in many respects my impression is that transportation was only going to be offered to those who needed it but that was not the case and if it because i was assigned a bus and i said i didn't need a bus i don't need a bus and i was assigned a bus so why

066are we providing busing to families who have said they don't need it there was a priority sort set least independent learners students who were in phase two and we went down that sort and we were matching based on the number of drivers and we did to take the information that was in the survey some families did not decline if they did not decline on the survey then they were routed they may have overlooked that particular one so if the child did not need the um services then we discontinued that particular route okay okay i just wanted to make sure that yeah we were trying to because of the short window we had to operate with them we took the information from the survey and the data that was provided to us as well okay so

067if there was someone that was added and they did not want the services then certainly we didn't run that route any longer okay page six is regarding the staffing of transportation and i know we discuss some bus drivers may have some either more vulnerable medical situations or something is staffing base being done on that so for example if i'm a bus driver but i'm in one of the more vulnerable classes can i do the wi-fi on wheels as opposed to drive a bus with students are we making staff meetings we are and you can also be a part of the meal preparation because we are partnering with school nutrition where there are vacancies and we can take some of the transportation staff because and you're already certified we want to be able to keep you

068with us then we'll have them move over and work in that particular area and so for for groups of staff that have to come to work like we've talked before you can't be a stay-at-home bus driver we're able to accommodate the different medical situations and we're working very hard to do that and we've been successful in that effort excellent i really appreciated the detailed discussion about the rolling closures um dr love that's right we've received some criticism about that but i think we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing the whole part of this and i've brought the cdc guidelines and i'm going to talk about those in a minute is is when something happens we want to take all safety precautions possible i had a sixth grade child at the stem academy in

069phase one or phase two when there was a positive diagnosis i shared with the board the school handled it very very well the communication was measured and just everything was handled very very well and we returned to school very confident that all safety measures were taking place so when we see a school closure instead of saying being negative that's good that's being proactive and being safe so i just really appreciated the detailed description about that um and again that's part of this process you open and then you may close for a little bit and you open and close and i think that is all of my comments and then i do again i have some general comments just about this whole issue um and i as my board members now will not be at the

070retreat on friday so i would like the opportunity to share some of my general concerns since i won't be there okay miss hall miss johnson mr johnson let's catch more i just wanted to make sure everybody recalls the survey that we were given back in either august or september which showed us that there were 2 000 almost 2 500 teachers who were willing and ready and at that time actually seemed chopping it a bit to come back to in-person learning that's kind of what drove everything that happened since then and of course what we found out is that rather than have a general survey like that it would have been better for principals to actually in their building find out are you actually willing to come back i think the general nature of that survey

071is what kind of threw everything off dr buck uh mr johnson and then thank you mr president um first question the data that's on the website about the positive cases with students and staff and then the quarantine number is that accumulative or just for the past week it is not cumulative okay i think it might be beneficial if it was cumulative because that could because that could lead people to believe that we've only had like what's on the website right now one case in the entire district um instead of saying because instead of saying that there is there has been multiple cases within the district at certain schools or do both so we had some general discussion about this and it was determined that it was important to give a real-time snapshot of what's actually

072happening in the week so it doesn't appear that there's more than what's going on in the given week that we're reporting well maybe we could do both so people can know that we'll take a look especially when we talk about that you know we've we've closed west chatham elementary west china middle closed classroom at stem and now poor wentworth is saying well if you've only had one positive case why all these schools have been closed even though they can go back and look at the news media and say that it was but it's one place a one-stop shop would be nice for us yeah and i i recognize that and but the data would tell the story certainly the next week so if you track it you'd be able to find that but i understand

073people will not do that investigation so it helps to provide the info for them so thank you for that observation you're welcome um and the only other thing is more of a comment about the supplements that we gave to the teachers for our least independent learners um i have no problem with that however it's being looked upon by staff that that was an actual incentive for one specified group and now you know and with everything coming out saying that we can't give incentives or it's anything there is getting some jealousy and resentment within the ranks i've had some a lot of teachers reach out to me about that um so i there's i think it needs maybe even more clarification because i get that i'm still getting those emails even today thank you could i

074speak to that would that be okay i would like to say so for the co supplemental stipend these teachers are in full ppe all day most of these students cannot wear a mask they cannot social distance we've got very small classrooms where teachers have have opted to come teachers in paris have opted to come in person all day in a room with these students so they are in full ppe they wear the the gloves the the robes the mask so um we went to the superintendent and so we thought this as a stipend because they are doing that some have to do um change bodily fluids i mean it's just that kind of role um so we felt that not not like a incentive but a stipend for the the stuff that they're doing above

075and beyond what a regular classroom teacher does the ones that are intermittent they're coming in and they're having to suit up as well because this is a whole different level than we've dealt with in our schools prior so i was very my my staff and i were very excited that the superintendent supported this idea because as i've shared with you all we we're in a crisis we we you all get the emails i get many parents want their students back in person but without the staff we can't do that it doesn't work both ways so the stipend helped as you saw our numbers went up we are serving more kids not as many as i want to serve but that was really the the basis of that mr johnson of why we we went to

076the superintendent for the stipend it wasn't about the incentive it was about what these people are having to physically do every day to come in person and like i said i understand the reasoning behind it i was just letting staff know that that that's kind of what that's what i'm hearing on the ground from other from the from other teachers and staff members about it and we would be very happy for a regular teacher who would want to take on these responsibilities to join us because we do need assistance in that area so if you don't mind helping us getting full ppe helping us with diapering feeding whatever we need to do with those young with those young people we need to serve them and they're very dedicated staff who are willing to go above

077and beyond and we appreciate their service i don't want them to go away thinking that we do not value because they have a very very different kind of job thank you ma'am mr katjamar please name it and all the teachers that reached out to me on that issue i basically told them that which is their available positions if they want to assume those job duties but my issue is not with the supplement or stipend or whatever you want to call it it's fully deserved my issue is the previous slide it was fully devoted to if we call it an incentive it's illegal and then on the next page it says but we're offering supplements to staff who come in to help our least independent learners so if we call it a supplement it's okay but

078if we call it an incentive it violates the gratuities clause i mean i could sit here and do a draw distinction on job duties as well the teachers that are coming into the classroom every day are doing much more than the teachers who are teaching virtually and i'm not saying the teachers who are teaching virtually are not doing their jobs they're teaching they're doing lesson plans they're pivoting as well but if we're making a job duties based distinction i can make that argument all day long now that said we've been we have been struggling with trying to address this pandemic every board meeting and every time we've had issues come up we've tripped over ourselves we've gone back and forth because there is no manual for this there's no game plan we're all trying to

079figure out best practices on the fly so i think we're kind of past the issue of incentives because later on in this meeting we're going to talk about teachers coming back to the classroom but you know there's teachers are struggling on all sides of this virtual in-person and with the least independent learners and i think i think we could have done a better job of trying to meet them where they are and listen to their needs more than we have any other comment in this miss hall um dr buck it would be interesting to see what the job description was that the teachers who are working with our least independent students responded to when they were hired because i'm thinking despite covid that working in the conditions they're working in that needs to be a

080regular part of their salary a supplement so that it wouldn't be seen as something extra or different but just the fact that if you're willing to accept this assignment then you automatically receive a and b and c that way we get away from worrying about the language you know with the georgia constitution and miss hall on friday at the retreat we will be discussing at one point the status of the compensation plan that this board put together that might be a very apt time to do that okay thank you dr howard holland ms hines as i recalled a few months ago when we surveyed the teachers 48 percent said that they were comfortable returning to work with the cti being low 23 percent said they were comfortable returning if the ctr was moderate which is

081a combination of 71 percent so we shouldn't be taken aback um just by the fact that we don't have a sufficient amount of teachers returning when they indicated earlier on the survey 71 combined said that they were not comfortable returning back if the cti was in the red they were fine with green and yellow so we should not be taken aback by that one question concerning the teachers that may be interested in going into the special needs area with the children do they have to be certified in these areas or can they just be a regular teacher and move over to that area we would we would certainly have them meet with our hr staff and we will talk about that okay all right and the other thing i've i've i concerned that i have

082here is that our numbers are down so in that our numbers are down this is what we've been working toward and if uh we're at a lower level then our teachers should be should come back on the job because i keep saying the children definitely need to be in the school setting so if our numbers are down and we continue to do as you you are do right get right on it if someone comes down with the virus then the teachers need to return to school that's that's high in speaking thank you miss hunts any other final questions on this report okay i'm going to ask dr bringman to read the two proposed motions that he will present on the board matters we do we have a we have reports from them is mr nesbit

083or yes our teacher of the year and instructional support persons of the year uh are here to do the report they actually are stacked up on the agenda let's wait a minute let's get those reports in very good we'll we'll get them in here we appreciate um as i always say that i appreciate the conversation i think it's really helpful that many of these topics are discussed in the public because we have individual conversations perhaps about many of them but i think it's helpful for those who are watching or refer back to them to know that you have not only received information about many of these topics but we've had an opportunity to discuss them in full welcome mrs dennis welcome teacher of the year and mr nesbitt our instructional support person of the year

084i'm sorry you're not both of you are able to be up here with us like we look forward to every year yes well hopefully hopefully that day will come very soon i hope so um yes i'm sherry dennis teacher of the year from hess and i'm here with mr melvin nesbitt who is the new ispy from from brock elementary and i'm going to be sharing with you today the monthly minutes from our latest superintendent's professional senate meeting which was held on october 22nd the first topic which we discussed was the coveted incentive and the implications and supplemental pay for identified staff mr ramon ray from human resources shared information with us about that he began by summarizing the matter explaining that in august and early september the superintendent had directed human resources to explore the

085plan for getting staff working with the least independent learners in the direct in the district and that the idea of incentives and supplements for those staff members arose because those staff members would not be able to protect themselves in the same way that everyone else would be able to with their students by the time the october board meeting happened the intention was to move forward with the supplemental plan that had been developed for those staff members and then dr mr ray explained to us that there was some confusion about incentives for other staff members he explained to us the legalities of the matter specifically related to incentive pay and that the district has contract has a contract with employees that includes a salary that we earn to do a given job and that under georgia

086law it would be a violation for the district to give any gratuities or additional amounts to employees when these compensations are under contract for the year and are already in place he also explained that all employees have job descriptions that indicate their duties and responsibilities and that although there were pre-employment um signing bonuses that are given to some for hires these are covered by georgia law unlike any kind of gratuity would be dr lavette did express her gratitude obviously for the work of teachers who meet the specialized needs of the least independent learners noting the difference between their responsibilities and duties and also the gratitude to teachers who have returned in person and also to the board for allowing teachers to have the flexibility on whether or not to return in person at the time

087at this time mr hedger also explained to us that the at the october 7th meeting it was not a motion motion to provide incentives because there had been some confusion about that but rather it was the motion to investigate that possibility and that after that investigation the the district legal team determined that it would not be legal for incentives for the for staff in general the second subject that we discussed at the superintendent's professional senate was an uh we had an update regarding incest regarding assessments from mr joseph austin had to do with the winter gmos and the state board of education actions about waiting he explained to us that the state board of education did not approve superintendent woods recommendation that the eoc percentage weight in a student's final grade be reduced from 20

088percent to 0.01 percent the state board of education has proposed reducing it to 10 percent and that is that open for public comment there is a survey on the district website that people can find if they would like to participate in that um but since that survey is still being fielded by the state then students who have to take an eoc in december it will still count as 20 percent of their grade in terms of advanced placement in international baccalaureate and dual enrollment literature american literature students they are not going to have to participate in the eoc until that requirement for taking the test is addressed at the november 19th state board of education meeting that's coming up they are already exempted from i'm sorry the um the american history students who are advanced placement

089international baccalaureate and dual enrollment are already exempted from their eoc high school students will no longer have to take the physical science eoc but any middle school student who is enrolled in high school physical science will take that eoc because they are seeking a high school carnegie unit middle school students enrolled in physical science or biology will take the eoc but they will not have to take the eog middle school students enrolled in american literature algebra and u.s history will will have to take the eoc and the eog which are changes versus last year in terms of georgia milestones the eoc and eogs effective in the winter 2020 there will be reduced reduced testing time which is good news for students in the ela section sections section one will be the same sections two and

090three the maximum time will be decreased by five minutes each the math sections both will be decreased by 20 minutes each science sections one and two by decreased by 30 minutes each and social studies sections one and two by 35 minutes each in math all constructed responses will be replaced by technology enhanced responses and i'll explain what those are in just one moment for ela some of the constructed responses will be replaced with technology enhanced responses in ela the section one which is reading and evidence-based writing and narrative prompt that will remain unchanged but in sections two and three the two-point constructed responses are replaced with technology-enhanced responses there's going to be a reduced number of items in science and social studies there will be no field tested items there will be no norm referenced

091items in all content areas in terms of the reporting that we get there will be enhanced reporting which will be helpful on the back end of testing to analyze the data it'll no longer just be broken into reading vocabulary or writing language the reading and vocabulary we've broken down further into reading literary text and informational text in terms of key ideas and details craft and structure or integration of knowledge and ideas and vocabulary acquisition and use so that teachers can identify more clearly where students are struggling the writing and language score will also be broken down further for us into writing and language there will be new tools in the drc that students will be able to use during testing there will be a filter on the review and end test page where they can

092flag their unanswered answer where they can find their flagged and unanswered questions there will be a masking tool that will help students cover prompts that they might not be working on and test coordinators will be training staff on these on these new features so that we can have students prepared to use them during testing some of the other questions that came up during this portion of the presentation was will there be enough devices back in the schools to allow for online testing for the winter eoc the answer is yes the state has provided districts with flexibility knowing that we need to do some social distancing so students will be able to be broken up into smaller groups for testing over a period of more than one day in the past all the testing had to

093happen at the same time and now there will be flexibility for that that will also be extended to the eogs in terms of technology enhanced item a a constructed response is when the student creates the response he or she doesn't select the response a technology enhanced item requires the student to interact with the technology so it's kind of the next generation selected response so not just abcd but they might have to click and drag something or drag and drop something or highlight something in the text to prove their knowledge for the answer a question regarding incoming first-year esl students whether they will be required to take the gmos it depends on the student's date of entry there's some confusion about that and you have to look at the state test window not the district testing

094window the student must test if they've been here for more than a year and if they've been here more than a year and the state testing window is still going on they must test so it was stressed that careful collaboration needed to happen between the testing office and school test coordinator school counselor and building leadership to determine whether or not some of our esl students need to take testing chromebooks can be utilized for testing and there will be readiness checks to ensure that more practice questions for students on gmos will be available through are available through its learning and teachers were encouraged to reach out to school test coordinators for guidance on those practice resources the question arose whether students are going to be in the building to take eocs and the answer is yes

095even the students that are virtual in december will have to come back into the buildings to take their testing they will not be able to do that from home the last thing that we did at our meeting was we held breakout groups to discuss the issues of to discuss its learning and then also to get teacher feedback on phase two hybrid in learning um on how that went and as we were going into phase three the more specifically topic one was at the beginning of the 2021 school year the district introduced the its learning online platform now that staff has used it for a full nine week quarter please provide feedback on what works or glows and what could be better what needs to grow about the platform and each breakout group captured their top

096five the breakout groups were broken up by elementary k-8 middle school and high school figuring that they would find commonalities in in their groups the glows for elementary voice recording embedded links um students can log into one platform to find everything you can rearrange the pages to make it more friendly and use creativity of resource page pages that are interesting the immersive reader is helpful for our ell students you can link directly to assignments college preparedness it was felt like it was a good platform for college preparedness and also it supports shared planning across grade levels the communication with students and parents was positive and it had a clear layout for lesson plans in middle school i mean i'm sorry for k-8 a lot of the training videos that were provided for by many teachers

097across the district were very helpful people appreciated how it housed materials parents found it user friendly the consistency across the schools and the district was appreciated and the fact that it houses all the applications that we commonly use was also appreciated for middle school teachers liked how they could send out whole class messages with attachments very easily that resources were in one place and that assessments um you could see the alignment between assessments and standards for high school voice feedback messaging embedded links and that automatic access was really positively received in terms of the glows for elementary it was difficult to copy lesson plans and um and and across courses um also one of the big issues across all grade levels was compatibility with the google form with with the google platform and with powerschool

098another inconsistency is where assignments are posted by different teachers post assignments in different places so sometimes people you know if you've got at home you've got children in three different grade levels and they're being posted in different places sometimes that can provide difficult there can be difficulty with of finding assignments of course connectivity issues going offline and um and glitches in that respect um in terms of the the second topic phase two hybrid in-person learning um kind of what has happened as we're preparing to go into phase three to begin on october 22nd again teachers were asked to provide feedback on what worked well um during and since the launch of phase two and any suggestions for um phase three on the glow's side from elementary people appreciated the scheduling for in-person and virtual students

099at the same time so those classes could continue to work together the learning pods were greatly appreciated by staff the obviously the students the opportunity for students interact and um with each other in person and and participate in their social skills and communi and contribute to their social emotional well-being was positive small group instruction behaviors are at a minimum in schools because of all the protocols that are in place the hands-on instruction is well received um students are proving to be very resilient with technology and the exit entrance and exit protocols are going really well in the schools with sites being having the ability to make their own plans the non-negotiable safety expectations of the district are very highly appreciated and the students who want to be there they really want to be there in

100terms of the grows there was a mention still of teacher incentives even though that subject had been previously addressed sometimes there were inconsistencies with some rosters for for teacher assignments it happened very abruptly which which was challenging for teachers the transportation issues also language barriers for some of our esl families in terms of re receiving the communication so that their families could make informed decisions under staffing in buildings to cover all of the needs lunch car riders and other classes that don't have teachers there in person is a concern and then also the recommendation to listen to the experts about the number of covid cases when decisions are being made and then of course our final our final um topic of discussion was the introduction of mr melvin nesbit as our espy for the year

101um joining us from brock elementary and so we are obviously very excited to have him join us as our sb of the year and those are the minutes thank you very much ms dennison and mr nesbit we appreciate you both look forward to very shortly having you up here in your spots at the behind the counter with us look forward to it thank you yeah i just want to say this is probably the most helpful uh professional senate report i've ever seen and now more than ever is this body important because we hear all sorts of rumors and we hear and so the fact that you're able to convene with 50 other teachers the voice of their school and report to us is very very valuable so thank you keep it up and i look

102forward to next month thank you very much i think they appreciate having their voice thank you dr hoskins brown thank you i just wanted to say the very same thing and the fact that your report included oh it's fine that your report included the results of the breakout groups and that brainstorming on this topic having a written copy of that to refer to as we're looking at our phasing is really really helpful so thank you for the for the time and effort that you put into that report to make it such a complimentary document to the other reports that we're getting thank you so much we're glad it was helpful for you thank you very much any other comments justin i'm really delighted to have mrs dennis and mr nesbit lead this group we met

103with them this week as well as we were planning for a second semester and they'll talk a little bit about that next month but i'm really happy that we can reach out to them and they are willing to meet with us and there's no travel involved and we can all log on and hear from each other and thank mr uh feliciano and mr eller for being available to make sure that everything goes well and it's it's been a pleasure so thank you so much and that is my report sir thank you thank you so much thank you miss dennis and mr nesbitt we appreciate you um moving on now i would ask dr bringman if he will read the three most uh two motions he will propose in just a second after he reads those

104motions we will hear from our speakers who have signed up from the public for those who will be speaking today and for those of you in our audience you will notice that we have two mics which speak today a parent who watches us frequently suggested that to me because we were losing about five minutes while we cleaned between speakers so ms linda will be cleaning the one that somebody's not at and we'll move our speakers right on through so i appreciate the parent i forgot to get her name but i appreciate her very much because it was a good suggestion okay dr bringman uh thank you dr buck i'd like to give a little context before i read these um both of these motions are coming before the board um being generated first by myself

105in collaboration with a few a small few board members but also the district please public understand that these are in collaboration with the district and are not trying to overstep the boundaries of operations i try to make this motion or a similar motion last meeting but that uh did not happen but um moving forward we need to to do some things to make sure we meet the needs of all of our students so the first motion will be trying to meet the needs of some of our students and the second motion is going to be speaking to the fact that currently we have no data metrics to drive any of our decisions moving forward so i'm going to start to try to have those discussions today and we'll see how they play out please also

106understand that i've been working on these for a couple weeks um i know that they are added to the agenda at the last moment that was not my intent i do not believe that was the district's intent as well um we literally were working on them until the evening last night and i think mr hedger was sending uh emails around at 9 00 pm so um no no intent of trying to just spring them on on the public um the first motion and we will not be voting on these now we will be voting on these after public comment the hybrids plan success is directly linked to having enough teachers and staff in buildings to meet the needs of students selecting in-person learning therefore i will be moving that teachers and staff in general except

107those who qualify for an exemption under board policy will be required to return to work at their assigned building worksite when chatham county cti is at or below 100 or as of december 31 2020 when the cares act expires whichever occurs first motion two the district's implementation and continuation of in-person learning should be driven by data and if the time comes that chatham county's spread of covid increases rapidly the district must be prepared to take appropriate actions up to and including a district-wide transition back to fully virtual learning therefore i will be moving that if chatham county's transmission of covid increases to the point that our area's cti percentage of positive tests and daily case rate per 100 000 are all in the red transmission level as reported by the coastal dph a district-wide transition

108back to virtual learning will be implemented for all students with teachers delivering virtual instruction from their assigned work site returning to hybrid in-person learning will occur when one of these three metrics remains lower than a red transmission level for at least 14 calendar days you've heard the proposed motions that will be discussed after we've heard from the public i have according to the last list i believe i got i have eight people who are signed up to speak the first one is is ms amanda barnes a parent and after her will come for the public safety officers reverend seals is the second one to come in welcome miss barnes good afternoon good afternoon it's your mic on can you hear me okay am i good to start yes ma'am welcome all right thank you good

109afternoon um i want to start by saying that i have deep respect for your positions and i know that over the past few months all of you have had to make decisions that you never thought you would have to make and i understand that that hasn't been easy however we have to do better for our children i come to you today not only as a mother of three elementary kids but as someone deeply concerned about all of the students that call sccpss home my stance has always been that children need to be in school full time face to face we must get them back in the classrooms if not five days a week at least four while i realize that virtual learning is working really well for some it's completely failing others virtual learning is

110not a long-term solution for the tens of thousands of children that call sccps home not only are our children being left behind and outpaced by their private school peers but they're not receiving simply they're not simply receiving the learning that they should both in quality of education and quantity of information being presented our children are entitled to an equal education and currently they're not receiving that the general sped kids are a big group that have been left behind in all of this those kids who are sitting in inclusion classrooms who are on ieps they're not receiving the same services right now because it's not the same over a video in fact some of their ieps aren't even being met because parents can't meet that iep at home i'm all for giving parents a choice in

111their child's education and in fact parents have always had a choice in their child's education we've always been able to choose in-person private in-person public or homeschooling that's nothing new what is new is giving teachers the choice to show up to in-person learning in my opinion this was a big misstep on our school system this year the fact that we have entire classes and schools that cannot meet the educational needs and wants of their parents and teachers by being able to offer that in-person learning is embarrassing when you have children and parents that want to go back to in person and they're told that they're wait-listed until they have more teachers what does that say about the importance of that child's education our teachers are essential workers we need them in the classrooms to be

112able to effectively teach our children phase two and three were a great start to getting kids back in the classroom and those were certainly celebrated in my house because my kids have been asking since august to go back full time but it's just that it's a start we have to keep moving forward not only for the educational needs of our children but for the sake of our local economy most of our households are two working parents two days of in-person learning is very difficult for two working parents to manage the reality of today's society is that most families need both parents working outside the home to survive please don't get me wrong schools are not daycares but they do provide the infrastructure needed for two working parents outside the home women especially have been hit

113hardest by kids virtual learning at the end of 2019 for the second time in history women made up over half of the working population as of october 2020 women are now 49 of the working population some mothers are having to make the choice to step down from jobs that they love in order to stay home to meet the educational needs of their children a lot of us were called back to work after the quarantine lifted and our choice was to return to our positions or to step down some employers don't want to give an option and some jobs can't be done remote we are asking a generation of parents to give up their jobs and their positions or place their kids in an e-learning camp which leads me to my last point these e-learning camps

114that are popping up all over one how are they safe for our kids to sit in all day but their classrooms are not and two they're not educating our kids these aren't schools that we should fight to keep open these are simply overpriced daycares where our children are sitting in front of a monitor all day long and haven't we been told from the beginning that too much screen time is bad for kids i'm asking you to take your upcoming retreat to have an in-depth conversation on the future of chatham county and the future of those tens of thousands of children that call this place home they are expecting the school system to take care of them an entire generation's future hangs in the balance here we cannot fail these students any longer we have to

115get them back in school if not five days a week then four thank you very much for your time today thank you very much ms barnes we appreciate your continued interest and i know you've emailed us before but we appreciate you taking time to be here thank you so much does that say 10 minutes there we go dr seals yes sir welcome again we're glad to have you here thank you god good afternoon to everyone dr buck dr levitt an entire school board thank you again for your time and i pray you're listening here in heartfelt consideration i'm here is the last time i was here asking the school board to return our schools back to 100 virtual learning a few months ago a few privileged parents came and pleaded their case that only represented

116the minority of students and and parents and cried and asked that you open up the school most of this board ignored the science and the protocol that you all established for safe re-entry and opened the schools up for phase two learning after you reopened it you didn't even wait for the data from phase two and while we were here the last time quickly voted to reopen to phase three you know as well as i know since doing that we had positive cases of teachers about 14 or 42 of them quarantining seven positive cases around of students with 62 quarantining when it really did not have to come down to this we can say that our numbers are going down but we all can also truly see that positive cases are happening in our school i

117believe that the handwriting is on the wall and i believe it's loud and clear that now is not the time for us to continue to send our students back to school i believe from this point forward that we must be proactive and not reactive the majority has already spoken teachers are afraid to go back to school because of the positive cases and the number of teachers who call us and email us individually is alarming and concerning majority of our parents have not even sent our children back to school the right thing is to educate our children but to educate them in safety and at this point i feel we feel that that is by 100 virtual learning i speak not just as a pastor but i speak as a father of a sixth grade student

118who's enrolled at west china middle school as a grandfather with a grandson enrolled in hess elementary school both schools having positive cases of covert 19. i speak as a son whose mother is a bus monitor on a special needs bus who was just informed me of the double-digit amount of kids they're putting on their bus this board can do something about it and that is to take us back to 100 percent virtual learning i feel it's not making us think that we're considering the science when apparently we're not doing that in this country in 14 days we had a million new cases which took us months before to get to a million new cases i just strongly believe that a student at home is better than a student in the hospital or even in the

119grave same thing as a teacher same thing as a supporter staff school bus driver and monitors they're better at home than in the hospital or grave i'm asking i'm pleading i'm begging consider the lives of everyone as a father as a grandfather as a son but most of all as a pastor who's a part of an alliance of pastors who represents thousands of parishioners follow the science follow your own protocol of re-entry and shut it back down take us back to a safe learning environment by doing 100 virtual learning each and every day you all are responsible to teach our kids science i'm asking let's apply the science that we teach thank you for your time thank you reverend bishop i'm sorry next is ms uh reverend claire merrick after that would be maria cannon

120apparent welcome thank you it's good to see all of you here today thank you where's my clock can somebody tell me that's what's new i didn't hear what she said oh i'm sorry where's the clock there okay thank you dr lavette president buck and the board i'm reverend claire marich minister at asbury memorial on the east side and member of the savannah alliance of pastors last time we met with an apparent lack of regard to our superintendent's work putting together a plan in september to public health conditions to safety to public input and a lack of regard for your own plan adopted with community support just one month prior you voted to rush to open schools in phase three there was no time or care taken to learn anything from phase two of the plan

121in place and what have we learned the parents are overwhelmingly not interested in putting their kids in school until the virus is in check but we knew that all along the community has not yet done its part to make the condition safe for all and that has been consistent throughout this process at least three schools have been closed due to their agency in spreading the virus leaving students and staff sick and resulting in at least one current hospitalization according to dr davis's most recent update there is a slight uptick in cases that runs parallel to the week we open schools in phase two the week of october sixth and we know that statewide covid positivity in children is up from 2 percent in the state to 11 percent we can provide better leadership for this

122community we must acknowledge what we have learned and pivot accordingly last month's hasty scrapping of a reason plan makes me wonder what changed between september when you were meeting via zoom to october where we're here today with plexiglas that teachers will not have in the classroom separating you from one another i wonder what changed the teacher's desire was not quantified as having a change families don't have any greater interest in sending their children to school the community does not want it and the public health conditions have not significantly improved this decision has racial impacts of job security and health outcomes falling most mightily on the children families and staff members who are black and latinx economically it is unsound running a hybrid system is expensive and exhausting to our teachers i would like to know

123and i haven't seen these figures i've been outside so maybe they were presented but i would like to know what it's costing each week to open schools for such a minority of students scientifically it's unwise what kind of an education system ignores the science related to public health that it has the very responsibility for teaching to me that is one that's dangerous to people in and out of the classroom it is willful ignorance this is socially foolish you have set the schools up to be transmission centers for the virus affecting the entire community this is a public health crisis first and foremost that affects the way that we offer education to students the current plan has it backwards making the focus on the desires of a few in the school system a danger to the

124general public health of the community this is not about what we want we want to be done with this virus but this virus is not done with us and this is my area of expertise is spiritual symptoms the spiritual symptoms manifested in the community fear grief depression anxiety shame and guilt to name a few this lack of a cohesive vision and execution of a plan that is reasoned and consistent has caused parents teachers students staff and all the community to be react with increased anxiety due to an inability to plan and an overall fear that your representation and leadership is needlessly putting lives at risk with all the division and uncertainty in our nation this very day we must decide how we are going to contribute we can and must do better than this i

125urge you to choose to lead with the greater good and safety of all people in mind leadership requires unity to combat chaos we must agree that losing or disabling one life is too many on the watch in the heads of the school district we demand that this school board return to a clear and focused plan that protects lives so that we can all live to teach and learn freely another day you have changed course in the past and you can and must do it again this is not about what we want to do but what is right to do given what we know thank you for your attention thank you very much ms merritt marvin next is ms maria cannon apparent next after her would be miss molly lieberman welcome hello first i'd like to

126say thank you for allowing me to speak today my name's maria cannon and i am a mother of three that attends savannah classical academy however mainly i am here as a concerned community mental health clinician i work primarily with children um in the foster care system and also part of well the majority of them frankly are part of our underserved uh part of the community and children that are in dire need of a quality education some of the consequences that that we're seeing out there is are terrible quite frankly um so i'm here today to talk about transportation for the charter schools as you know they have requested transportation and it's been provided or the option has been provided but at an exorbitant cost to the school charter schools and at least one of them

127here is a title 1 school as well typically serve the population that i see with that being said they are also part of the district they're held accountable to the same standards as all schools in the community or in the district they have to achieve the same level of basically the standard they have to show that they can produce a quality education and help these students out for future successes if they're held to that same standard but they don't have access to transportation then how can they be held accountable for that right now there's only 2 800 a little over 2 800 students uh being transported currently the price i'm sorry not the price the cost the transportation was quoted by the school district with and without charter schools being added was no different they

128essentially had for example savannah classical writing a school with garrison riding a bus to with garrison the cost was no different however they are asking that the charters pay three times over three times the amount that was previously quoted they charters have a place in our community that offer an opportunity for families to have a choice and more importantly an opportunity for the underserved population and quite frankly some of the children and families living in poverty right now an opportunity to receive the dire education that they need transportation is not a privilege it's a right there are at this point there are fewer students riding the buses and less days in the school year so why the exceedingly high cost some of the costs for some of those lost funds were used to purchase buses

129for our district so why then were not all of our children able to utilize those school buses that we all pay for i don't think i need to share i think it's probably been shared enough and overly stated the mental health consequences but just know that the long-term effects on our community from those mental health consequences on our children who will replace us essentially at some point is it's not good what's going on out there domestic violence is increasing abuse their lack of being able to get to school they can't report anything to anyone i do understand the fears and frustrations but i would just like to say that knowledge is power i checked the department of georgia department of public health daily they have a status report which will show you that yes there

130are cases some of them are increasing in some areas however confirmed cases doesn't necessarily mean death illness admissions to hospitals it just means that someone tested positive that day someone at their office was positive and they had to go get tested themselves and they were positive too that doesn't mean that they were sick all it means is a positive case i feel that that word confirmed cases or those words confirm cases puts an exceeding amount of fear into our community that's unnecessary essentially what i'm here to ask and here to share is that you all have a huge privilege and it's an honor to be able to serve our students in this community but with that privilege becomes uh there's a huge responsibility to make sure that every child is allowed the opportunity to succeed

131in life let's not make it harder for them to get to school the parents would like their children to go back to school at these charter schools but the majority of them don't have don't have transportation thank you ma'am thank you next mrs lieberman and then uh lee ali and then beck and caldwell good afternoon everybody uh wonderful to see everybody in real life today for those that may not know me my name is molly lieberman and i'm the executive director of the youth arts and enrichment nonprofit called loop it up savannah we serve over 10 000 savannah chatham county students each school year and since we work with more than a quarter of our district students it's very important for me and for people like me to speak up about the critical issues which

132affect our students families teachers and staff and our schools as a whole in a moment such as this one where families and teachers alike are forced to operate and make important decisions in a climate filled with so many unknowns i find comfort and assurance in numbers in patterns and in science this is a time when all of our lives have been turned upside down we find ourselves having to rebuild how we live how we move how we run our businesses and go to work how we take care of our families and our community in order to stay safe and to be diligent in doing our part to flatten the curve and ultimately to conquer the coven 19 pandemic we have been very fortunate in this community to have local leaders who have been proactive in

133their decision making which has kept this community relatively safe over the past eight or nine months however at this moment there is serious cause for concern about where we are pertaining to public health much of the nation is beginning to experience a second wave or a spike of cases we have also entered flu season and with the weather cooling down we all know that it's easier to get sick as i have shared with the board in both september and october in multiple letters which came from myself as well as concerned citizens teachers parents and partners we were very concerned about the school district's decision to move into phase two and then phase three making it possible for students and staff to return to face-to-face learning in spite of what the national public health guidelines would

134suggest was advisable or safe at the time that these decisions were made i trust that we can all agree upon and acknowledge that virtual learning is very difficult that our students will benefit greatly from returning to face-to-face learning as soon as safely will be possible however safely should be the prioritized word when we talk about this it's deeply troubling to see decisions being made in this room about when students and staff will return to school buildings which almost completely contradict what local kova 19 data indicates is safe as well as the recommendations of our superintendent and her professional team of staff as well as the previous commitment of the school board to make data and science informed decisions in order to keep our community safe that was a commitment that i and many others appreciated

135and were disappointed to see shift additionally it's very troubling to see such critical decisions being made in this room without full discussion or acknowledgement of the national data which is available to us about racial health equity inequity and disparities that exist within the coven 19 pandemic per a recent study from the cdc 78 percent of youth who have contracted cova 19 are minorities while minority youth only make up 40 percent of our nation's youth population there are painfully similar statistics that we can see if we look at covert 19 cases among minority adults across this country as you know our school district serves many minority students and families and has many minority teachers administrators and staff members as leaders and as community members we cannot say that we are making decisions with respect to the

136needs of our entire community when we are not intentionally discussing factors which affect huge numbers of these community members i respect that there are many factors which go into your decision-making process and all of them are important and all of them are valid i wanted to come speak to you today to publicly support you in making decisions which are based in science and data as you as you make decisions about face-to-face learning in the coming hours weeks and months i just i'm going to cut this short because i saw the little car go up thank you so much for this opportunity to speak to you today i hope that the information that i have shared is helpful to you in your continued decision making process which is very challenging as we work together through this

137moment and unprecedented season and as you know i along with loop it up savannah and countless other partners and community advocates are just a call away if there's anything that we can do to support you thank you thank you ms lieberman very much we appreciate your continued interest it's four o'clock ms hall not me i hadn't been talking i know um mr lee yes sir good afternoon good afternoon welcome can you move your mic a little closer somehow that mic doesn't seem to be that's better thank you thank you all for allowing me to speak my name is ida ali and i come to you all as an advocate for our teachers i correlate with many within our community i am also speaking as a mother of a student currently enrolled i'd like to state

138that as a parent it's quite disappointing that we see often local activists that attend our school board meetings these citizens who are well known to be predominantly political some even represent the churches that some of our elected officials attend come to speak on behalf of our teachers students and parents within the community when in fact some of them do not even have children or any children at all within our school system i understand that they have the right to speak up however i'd like to state for the record that those who have spoken out against our children returning to school do not represent my son they do not speak on behalf of our local families and they surely most certainly do not represent those families who are struggling with our current school situation i can

139they cannot possibly understand the hardships and tribulations that many in the community are facing the parents do want their kids in school although you know they speak and narrate otherwise allow me to discuss one of my topics that i would like to address in regards to our educators i am involved with an alliance that supports a large number of chatham county school school teachers many of whom have voiced their concerns regarding different aspects our teachers within the county feel as though their voices are suppressed many cannot speak up to their supervisors or superiors out of fear of retaliation often they are threatened and intimidated some even told that they would possibly lose their jobs this has been stated on multiple accounts by various teachers throughout this county pressure is placed on school administrators and it

140comes down negatively onto them it is shameful that there is no freedom for them to speak freely or have opinions pertaining to certain matters it is the duty of the school board members and the superintendent to uphold our educators on a higher level than this to seek out ways to support them and to work diligently to the best of their abilities to appease your employees especially our educators the question is why is there a large number of our teachers throughout this county that are in fear of speaking out why can't they voice their concerns why aren't they allowed to disclose any wrongdoing with particular situations this needs to be further addressed and i hope we can come to a resolution among other concerns with our teachers i'd like to share a few quotes that were

141shared with me today earlier with some of our local teachers quote a teachers teaching students in person while simultaneously being expected to teach students online is exceptionally challenging and essentially unrealistic and quick and i hope you can all agree and understand why that teacher feels that way quote b it is very frustrating that the teachers who are choosing to remain at home are being offered rewards and incentives to return while some of us have been here working all along end quote and of course this has left hundreds of our teachers within the county feeling undervalued unappreciated among other things this is the result of the supplement that our superintendent felt was necessary there's also animosity among the teachers towards those who are not at school i'd like for you members to consider this large numbers

142of our students are switching over to private school many are moving to other counties where their public schools are fully open within our county we have 60 percent of our chatham county students that are living in poverty some of these children are food insecure and their only meals are served at school although lunches are delivered many of these children are left home alone leaving those students unable to receive these meals consider the students who come from broken homes those who do not have any assistance or guidance while virtually learning as their parents or guardians are at work note that many of those guardians are elderly family members most who cannot adequately or feasibly assist the students yet alone the younger grade levels so many of our children are currently failing and have lost interest in

143schooling while we continue to shut down sports and after school extracurricular activities we have managed to devalue our teachers by allowing them to feel unappreciated by distributing supplements to hand selected teachers we've managed to fail our students we've allowed our students to commit crimes on the street during school hours we have lost students to senseless gun violence we've managed to praise educators through social media and certain news outlets within our community for not returning while crediting them for doing a good job virtually teaching the non-verbal students now think about that we have neglected our vulnerable and independent students our least independent students by not providing the proper settings lessons and therapy that they receive at their school perfect example is coastal comprehension they are the only school that is not open explain to me how

144a nonverbal 13 year old child child virtually learning twirling away in a desk chair while staring at a computer screen is capable of learning anything nothing beneficial comes from this and i hear about these strains and frustrations that is affecting the parents on a daily basis as they all communicate with me we need to have consideration for our teachers of course but as well the families the students the taxpayers and the community as a whole give us a choice to full return and accommodate the families and teachers who wish to remain virtual every single private school is open except for chatham county every single county's public surrounding us is open thank you for your time thank you very much ma'am next is um we have ms dr beck and carwell a student dr beck welcome

145virtual face today hi dr buck dr lavette board members board officers thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak to you today my name is angela beck i am a retired surgeon also past valedictorian of the jenkins class of 89 but most importantly i'm a mom of three school-aged girls my oldest daughter is a sophomore at savannah arts and she was thrilled to go back in phase three so i'd like to thank you who were instrumental in making that happen sooner rather than later with phase 3 hybrid learning underway as was presented earlier some schools were able to accommodate all the students while others were not due to the shortage of teachers willing to come back to the classroom this is a calamity and needs to be addressed promptly and i appreciate your motion

146dr bringman in the past several board members have said that they would not support requiring teachers to come back until our chatham county community transmission index or cti is in the green zone i relayed to each of the board members an email with the communication i had with the risk coordinator at the coastal health district where i asked her when chatham county could realistically expect to see a cti in the green her response was that it's not something we can hope to see until a vaccine is widely available and not and not sorry and not a metric we'll obtain any time in the foreseeable future i provided various links explaining why the cti should not be used as a standalone metric and i'm glad now that we are going to consider some other metrics as

147well other indicators that the cdc suggests should be taken into consideration are the percent positive test in the community as well as the percentage of hospital and icu beds occupied by covid patients as of yesterday as presented earlier our cti the daily case rate per 100 000 and then our percent positive tests were some of the lowest numbers we have seen since june these metrics meet or exceed what the actual cdc standards are for face-to-face learning as long as mitigation strategies are in place given that the virus will remain with us for years to come a maximum of two days face to face per week of instruction for the remainder of the school year and thereafter is simply unacceptable our students continue to fall farther and farther behind their private school counterparts with reduced hours

148of daily instruction and the diminished quality of lessons since march a significant number of students have left the public school system many students who are still enrolled aren't bothering to log on or to do the work an alarming number of students had at least one failing grade at the end of the first quarter virtual learning among those students who have returned for phase two among the teachers who returned for phases two and three resentment grows as some are made to spend their planning periods babysitting students in classrooms without teachers while the teachers working from home are not required to cover additional duties teachers need to return to the classrooms now many parents and the board have been very supportive of teachers having a choice as to return or to remain virtual now we are witnessing

149an abuse of our compassion and empathy the educators who originally declared a legitimate reason for remaining virtual should be allowed to continue to teach virtually we support you many teachers who are teaching virtually are doing a fantastic job but those teachers who have chosen to remain virtual without a documented health issue need to report to the classrooms and stop using the pandemic as an excuse perhaps i would buy that they are worried about contracting covid if it were not for their social media post the dinners out at crowded restaurants with large groups of friends and no masks the birthday party celebrations the backyard barbecues we are aware that their children are back to school and their spouses have been long back to work within the community we see them teaching exercise classes at the y

150or work out beside them at orange theory this is inexcusable behavior because on the flip side we also see the dedicated teachers hard-working selfless who have returned to the classroom we appreciate you these are the teachers that value education these are the teachers that love their job and champion their students these are the teachers who should keep their jobs when the contracts expire and teaching positions are cut due to the low enrollment numbers please find a way to bring these teachers back to the classroom and offer five days a week in-person instruction there is the good base of evidence now that shows school children are not driving transmission rates in communities where schools have reopened while cases are being identified in schools as is to be expected the transmission is not originating in the school

151setting but at adult parties and informal social gatherings in the community france germany england belgium scotland ireland are all going into lockdown again and looking at some rather severe restrictions however all of these countries are allowing schools to remain open for face-to-face instruction because they believe the education of their youth is just too important to sacrifice denying five days a week of in-person instruction here is not going to make the community transmission go away i think it's time our community and school board work together to prioritize education in these children bring back the teachers so more students can return to the buildings with phase three and let's make a plan for phase four to happen when classes resume in january thank you for your time thank you dr beck last speaker is a student madison

152caldwell welcome miss caldwell hi hi how are you good how are you super duper hi my name is madison caldwell and i am a junior at islands high school i am here to speak to you all regarding item number 5.01 listed on the board's agenda i recently created a petition with the help of my peers stating that we needed our education back to see how many peers and adults concur as of right now 930 people have signed this petition reads chatham county public schoolers need their education back there are many ways we can work around this worldwide pandemic all of our surrounding districts and private schools have been allowed to fully attend they have not had one bad outbreak students are willing to take precaution and follow all health requirements if students believe they shouldn't

153go back then they can have the option to stay home we need our teachers back at school to help us unless they or someone in their home has a serious health condition it is not fair to us the students that we cannot go to school and get an actual education a teacher's job is essential if they can go to the grocery store and be around all those people they can go to their jobs to help their students achieve success students have to sit at home alone all day trying to figure out how to do their schoolwork we have to try and gain the motivation to get out of bed to stare at a computer screen for six hours a day how to use this new platform and how to manage our time with all the

154busy work being given to us the stress from online school is high in some students anxiety causing breakdowns we don't have the same opportunities to get help from teachers like we would if we were in school many of our teachers have told us you all have access to the internet use it while you can that should not even be an option this is not how you learn it is very hard for us to get the education that we deserve it is not even about learning anymore it's about trying to meet deadlines some students gpas are dropping significantly putting their futures at risk not only is our learning an issue but technical difficulties happen almost every day computer glitches wi-fi connection is lost platform overloads and etc some teachers do not know how to use the

155it's the name platform and it is causing stress and frustration upon the student body students have been discredited for the work they did because they either do not know how to find it cannot access it or have not been thoroughly taught on the subject you all gave us the opportunity to come back to school to sit in the lunchroom auditorium or gymnasium to do online school because less than 40 percent of our teachers came back we greatly appreciate those that came back only 10 to 20 students per grade get to go back and the others are on a waiting list there are about 200 students in each grade this situation will put our futures at risk and has hindered us from sharing our full potential it is unfair and puts the students that really care

156about their grades at a huge disadvantage while i spearheaded this petition it wasn't without a lot of hope and support from my peers in addition while online school is an excellent alternative it is just enough for a full education some students are struggling and retaining the information that is being given to them and keeping their grades up last year we would do anything not to go to school to just get one day off but we took that for granted we are the future in order for us to succeed we need proper education for example i'm a straight a student and have been all through middle and high school my lowest grade currently is a 94. however that doesn't mean that i have learned much to school year my current grades are not reflected of retained

157information but more so my ability to complete busy work and to use the internet the internet has become a crutch during this virtual learning period one that does not have the proper credentials to ensure a proper education i hope that we can continue to empower our teachers to recognize their importance and how they are essential to us as students and how we are desperate that they return to in-person learning home is not the ideal working environment distractions pop up left and right and you lose focus on everything that's going on i'm thankful for the teachers that are trying as hard as they can and extremely thankful for the ones that went back in person personally i did not choose to go back to school because only two of my eight teachers went back and i

158had been doing the same thing at school that i would do from home i wanted to give other students that had their teachers back a chance to receive an opportunity to return to their normal classroom setting however i do believe that students should have the option to stay home and do online school if that is what they feel they are most comfortable with i understand that our surrounding districts are much smaller but i believe that we have the strength in our school district to be just as successful in going back some may think that we are doing this so that we can have a quote unquote social life socialization is very important and there are many students that are suffering from depression i fear for their mental health i would like to point out that

159there is plenty of socialization occurring outside of school hours if we can social distance in ware mask in public areas as recommended by the cdc we can definitely do so in the classroom i want to conclude by saying as a result of this petition i've received i have received several hurtful comments from peers and adults saying that i have white privilege that i'm ignorant and that i don't care about the safety of others and that if i were smarter i wouldn't be struggling or having a problem with virtual learning i would like to say that i mean absolutely no harm by doing this my only desire for this outcome is to be able to get our education back so that we can have a chance at a successful future we all have one goal and

160that is to end this pandemic but in the meantime we cannot give up on the things that are important thank you for allowing me this time it truly means a lot ms caldwell i appreciate your the petition i appreciate your concern i appreciate your remarks i think i can speak for the board in saying that perhaps your remarks mean more to us than most of what we've heard in weeks so thank you very much okay that's our last speaker um do y'all want to take just about a real quick five minute break or keep going keep going um okay we're moving on to board matters now um we've got two motions to put in um before we read proclamations um we don't have a motion on the floor yet okay yeah okay thank you dr

161bringman you've got the floor reading again but as a motion now the hybrids plan the hybrid plan success is directly linked to having enough teachers and staff in buildings to meet the needs of students selecting in-person learning therefore i move that teachers and staff in general except those who qualify for an exemption under board policy will be required to return to work at their assigned building or work site when chatham county cti is at or below 100 or as of december 31 2020 when the care when the cares act expires whichever occurs first you've heard the motion miss hall seconds the motion so we have a motion on the floor uh discussion from you dr bringman just again want to iterate that this it was in collaboration with fellow board members and um with the

162district's help thank you thank you miss hall anything miss wade yeah thank you as i said i did want to make some comments and i did not have the opportunity to speak with mr um or dr bringman about this so i am in support of this but i do want to address some of what we've heard and explain why i am in support of this um i ran out during the break to get a phone charger and ended up talking with a lot of the group that was out there who generally opposes us opening school and i'll tell you it was really nice to talk about it i have reached out multiple times to multiple people that have spoken that have signed the letter asking us to close and no one will actually speak with

163me about it and so it was really nice to have a back and forth dialogue with people who disagree but at least we could talk about it and so i just really appreciated that opportunity to kind of not have them sitting there and us up here and having dialogue and i would encourage everyone who has strong opinions about that to reach out and have conversations with us about it so that we can each understand better one another's perspective as opposed to this more formal setting so i was really grateful for that opportunity i do want to address kind of head on this accusation that we are ignoring science and i don't mean to be flippant about it but i don't know what science people are talking about because all the science i look at says

164that we need to get kids back to school in a safe way so we've all read the cdc everyone's familiar with this we've all looked at it dr lavette's probably read it a million times but i want to highlight what the cdc has to say about returning to school and while the head of the cdc may be a political figure the bulk of the cdc staff are lifetime epidemiologists and infectious disease doctors they have more degrees than we have people in this room and they study and they kind of live for this and here's what the cdc has to say about returning to school they say schools help mitigate health disparities by providing critical services which we've known all along before the pandemic we've known that our schools provide all sorts of social services well

165beyond reading writing and arithmetic including mental health physical health meals all sorts of things that schools are charged with providing that were unable to provide regarding corona they talk about all they go through all the indicators i think one of the speakers reference the cdc indicators they talk about that the indicators should not be viewed as hard cut offs but as broad guide pose so they really encourage you not to use these these factors as a on this day or this data point do this they say if after applying the core indicators a school is at a medium higher or highest risk and it says in bold it does not mean that the school cannot reopen for in-person learning but rather that you should consider alternative learning models like the hybrid learning or exactly the

166stuff that we're doing it also talks about the multiple mitigation strategies which we are doing at nazim and so the cdc the scientists talk about how to safely go back to school and there's no doubt anyone who's been in our school buildings will be restrict severely access but that we are doing everything in our school buildings that we can to keep these children safe and i know dr lavette and her team has these cdc mitigation strategies memorized and if you don't like the cdc you can turn to the american academy of pediatrics which also is a group of scientists who say that the return you should return to school with appropriate mitigation strategies if you want to go outside of america you can turn to the world health organization which also says you should return

167to school with certain mitigation strategies we've had numerous scientists come before us doctors nurses mental health providers every single scientist that has come before the board to speak to us has told us we need to get back to school in fact we have not heard from a single scientist who has told us that it's on our community or our children's best interest to keep the schools closed so when people say follow the science to them i say we are we are following the science probably a lot of people in this room have learned more about epidemiology and germ transmission and anything that they ever thought they would ever need to do i know this group is very well versed on all of this but i just take real offense when people say we're ignoring the

168science because i think maybe they have not read the science because we are doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing according to the experts who have spent their life frankly preparing for this very moment so i appreciate all the work that everyone has done to keep us safe all the countless hours people have spent studying this i've got the i've learned more about science and epidemiology in the past six months i check it every day and so i just think we need to claim that and say we are following the science and we are doing what is right um i also want to acknowledge that we are giving everyone a choice so if you have a sick person in your family or a compromised person or a vulnerable person or you just have a

169fear you don't have to come to school as a student no one is forcing anyone to come to school so every parent is charged with making these incredibly difficult decisions i also understand frankly as much as a white privileged woman can understand that coven 19 has a disproportionate impact on black and brown people i see the data i understand the data i see it anecdotally and local reports and i understand that i see it as highlighting and perpetuating continued disparities between rich and poor white and black regarding unequal access to health care widening education gaps and other harms of systemic racism in our systems and i can't solve all of that but what we can do is create choices and allow families to balance this difficult decision regarding their health and the also difficult decision

170of this increasing education gap that already existed and has been perpetuated by continued online learning i'm also aware that low-income jobs are much less susceptible to at-home work making parents who are already making below a living wage choose between paying rent and supervising online learning we can't solve all of this but we can offer choices for families to make these choices i get it that in some cases it's a lesser of two evils it's an impossible choice but we can't make that choice for them we can follow the science we can do all the mitigation strategies if we need to close a school as a rolling club we'll do that but we have got to create choices and right now many families do not have choices because they want to go back to school and

171they cannot so i support this motion there is no way in the world the cti is going to be below red by the time december 31st comes around if you follow the science but i do support it um to get the teachers back in school for january 1 after the cares act expires i do think we need to be prepared that with i mean i'm also i'm tracking my covet data and i'm tracking my election data that we may have a change in government that may push down additional care support and so we may be right back you know if new litigation legislation is passed but i do support this and i support the continued safe smart responsible scientific opening of schools and i appreciate uh dr lavette and her team for following the science

172and making sure that our students are safe thank you miss hall mr catch more johnson some of you may be remember the pastor who was here from asbury memorial church reverend claire marish a few minutes ago i had a hour-long talk with her she had called me and i returned the call and i also talked with one of our various themed pastors the henry thurman and they're on two sides of this argument as you heard from the pastor from asbury she feels we're not following the science and if we did we would keep all the schools closed um and actually that's what dr thurman is also advocating but what i said to both of them was what responsibility are we putting on this entire community to help us bring this covert level down now the

173mayor has put out a mask band-aid months ago and yet you go around town and they have i see hundreds of people with no masks on and um dr fauci has said wearing a mask is one of the easiest and the best things you can do so what's hard about that and yet if you look around except those places that actually enforce your not being able to come in if you don't have a mask on it's like stores let people come in it'll say please put on a mask we suggest a mask that's not helping to just suggest it but they're not going to give that sales up so if you come in without the mass they're going to let you stay so i just think that we're being forced as the educational entity in

174this county to take on the brunt of a lot that the rest of the community does not have to take responsibility for and that's why i'm going to support dr bringman's motion because i think it tries to bring a compromise between the two sides so thank you dr bringman for bringing this to the floor thank you miss hall i have mr catch more mr johnson dr howard hall thank you dr buck um so i think it would be um irresponsible to try to force teachers to come back before 12 31 we already had a second first day of school when we went to in person with a lot of up people upheaval and discord so i think it's prudent to ask teachers to come back when the new semester starts i'm going to support this

175motion as well but my understanding is we're setting cti below 100 or december 31 2020 whichever is first regardless of the cares act right now the karzak expires 12 30 120. if it gets renewed my understanding is we're going by the date not the status of the cares act is that everybody else's understanding okay and then i wanted to also kind of piggyback on miss wade's comments about science because i've been thinking a lot about it as well and she actually quoted some of the things i had brought but i'm going to read a little bit from the section on deciding how to reopen this is on the cdc's website school officials should make decisions about school reopening based on available data including levels of community transmission and their capacity to implement appropriate mitigation measures

176in schools to protect students teachers administrators and other staff schools should also consider other aspects of students risk and well-being that arise when schools do not reopen for in-person classes this includes the potential adverse impacts on students social emotional behavioral and mental health as well as the critical services provided to students to help mitigate health disparities and serve children in need some of which miss wade mentioned and then if you scroll further down the cdc provides a five level continuum of risk to that that administrators and communities should look at when determining reopening the the lowest level is lowest risk and the highest level is highest risk and if you look at that risk continuum the second lowest level is some risk and that's what we've implemented the sum risk level includes a hybrid learning

177model some students participate in virtual learning and other students participate in in-person learning small in-person activities cohorting minimal mixing or no mixing of groups of students and teachers throughout the school day not sharing objects etc so i i wanted to reiterate what miss wade said which is anybody can find science just like you can find statistics to support the position that you want to take and i'll be the first to admit that the board's consideration of these issues over the last two or three months has been less than linear it's been a little chaotic at some points it's been a little reflexive at some points but at the end of the day if you look at what we're actually doing we are following science we're following the the second lowest risk level and we're following

178best practices articulated by the cdc so this is a hard hard thing there are bad choices all around i've said that every month since we've been talking about this i also agree that the fact that we're offering choices matters we heard one charter school today say they stop virtual and they're going in person only we are continuing virtual while offering in person and it's not because that's easier it's harder but we're doing it because we want people to have the options that's best for their family thank you mr kashmar i have mr johnson dr howard hall and dr hoskins brown and mrs thank you dr buck i'm going to start off by saying that i will also be supporting this motion i think it's good to have some sort of timeline far enough out to

179set those expectations for everybody to be ready for returning for the second semester i also kind of take offense over the past month um i've been told everything that i'm a science denier i'm a flat earther um that i'm crazy i've had people actually tell me that they hope i get covered and die i've had other people say that they don't want me to have cover they want my entire family and all my friends to have cove and i watch them suffer there is a lot of pent up misunderstanding out there a lot of people think that what we were trying to do was getting everybody back in person face to face with no other options that was not what we were trying to do what we were trying to do is give those people

180who did not have an option at the beginning of the year to have an option to be in person to be to have that teacher in front of them to be able to teach them in a traditional way we've all been told as parents and with and educators have been telling parents and children that screen time especially for those younger ages is a bad thing until this year my son's school told us that they wanted to limit screen time to maybe 10 minutes a day ten minutes a day try telling that to us six five six seven eight nine ten year old doesn't really work out that well we need to be able to give those families the options the ones that are wait listed to have the staff in the school to properly be

181able to put education and yes i've been one of those people who said that teachers should have a choice i've said that for many many months and a lot of it was due to because i was worried that they would have to use personal time if they had to do be quarantined more than once because i've done that i've had fellow board members as well as lawyers within the community send me in information saying that they don't have to do that because there are some federal programs that can be able to help with that so they can have some paid leave so that is why i am supporting this is why we need to make sure that for the second semester that hopefully we'll be able to get get into phase four that hopefully that

182this board will have um the fortitude to be able to do that so that is why i'm supporting this um and i also want to i thank dr bringman for putting the work into this um i know me myself and him we've we've had many conversations about this over email so i do want to i appreciate all the hard work and with you collaborating with this um superintendent and the district attorney's with us thank you mr johnson dr howard hold dr hoskins brown miss hans then we should be able to get to a vote as far as following the science we see that the trend data is downward that's good but we're still in the red zone just as safely as we open a school we are safely closing schools we've already had to close

183three schools hadn't been in school for a month and already closed three schools so what's going to happen when the floodgates open i'll tell you what's going to happen we're going to end up closing schools again because there's going to be a spike in the community there's going to be an increase of positive cases within the schools and if we're not careful we're going to be back at the drawing board with 100 virtual learning and for that reason i will not be in support of this motion thank you dr howard hall mr hoskins brown ms hines thank you um it's my opinion and see it's i understand it's not supported by everyone but to me i find opening and reclose closing reopening closing reopening to be highly disruptive but i understand that there are families

184who find that more appealing than being exclusively in a virtual environment i'm going to support this motion because my support for our teacher choice has been completely connected to the cares act afforded to every american employee and i think that this is aligned with that i would like to see i i will be concerned if there is an extension of the cares act in some form and this board does not support it so i do have concerns about mr kashmar's comments about a deadline that's associated with the act if the act is extended that the board would move forward without without having that connection to the deadline but i don't think that that's something that has to be dealt with right now there are two things that i would like to see happen for families

185who do not want to be in an in-person face-to-face environment and that is as we move forward in this direction i would like to see choice still available for families past december 31st through the expansion of the e-learning academy i would like to see that if teachers who don't meet the requirement for an extension if they are for an exemption if they do not want to go face to face that they can apply not necessarily just be transferred but they can apply for consideration for the early learning academy and families can choose to transfer and leave their home institution so i would like very much for the superintendent to look at the feasibility of the expansion of that choice and to let the board know what opportunities are available there and what limitations that academy

186has thank you ms hans thank you dr buck well i'm going to support this reservation this um motion with reservations and i've been one of the ones speaking for the longest concerning uh how we should present ourselves within the community if we want this um covet virus to go down and as ms hall has indicated yes we still see many people walking around and not wearing their masks but i do know on the other hand some parents don't have a choice as far as having someone to tutor their children or come in and watch over their children and they must work and the only reason i'm supporting this is that i know people some folk have to go to work and they since uh we don't have proper babysitting and uh places set up for

187the for others to keep their children then their only option left is to come to work but i'm also concerned about the children coming to the schools picking up the virus and carried it home to their parents now many of us may just live in a uh one two three four family member home but some folk have multiple members in their families living in the home because this is all they can afford at this time so therefore this is why we we are trying to help everyone we're trying to do what we can but uh and we're not going to be able to satisfy everyone i try to read most of those emails that i get and we can sit here until the sun comes down in this building we will not be able to

188satisfy everyone with their thoughts and as far as the science goes listen people i don't thank everybody uh the scientists that that are real scientists that are speaking to us is going to tell us something that is wrong now you may have people that may be in a branch area of science and they're misleading others but this virus is real and whether you believe it or not talk to the nurses and the doctors that are in these hospitals working with these patients and it's a sad scene to see people dying from covenant they can't breathe they're having all kind of problems so if we reopen these schools and if there are problems yes we have to close down close them close them back down but i like i see both sides of the story some

189folk just don't have a choice and this is what i'm concerned about our numbers seem to be trending down but we have a holiday coming up people don't want to follow uh protocols so these numbers spy rock it up and yes we'll close back down again but in the meantime these folk that that are called essential workers cannot stay home to keep their children many parents are not equipped to teach their children at home as the emails indicate so we are trying to work things out hopefully we will be able to get beyond this virus and in the year in the days to come the months to come but anyway i'm going to support this motion today with reservations there's no other way out thank you ms hines i'll be very brief uh i will

190support this this motion um i am constantly being told by the public that we have wavered that we have changed our stance that we've done this done that uh honestly you know when you think of what you knew january the 1st 2020 about covid and what you know now it's like learning a foreign language as ms wade said even in march when we closed down we didn't know very much about covid i do not believe that we have wavered i feel like we have transitioned our own thought in line with trying to best serve our students and really to i won't rehash what everybody else has said i believe kids need to be in school and need to be face to face uh i have a good friend who teaches in a kindergarten program in

191one of the private schools in this community she says it is amazing the and they've been in face-to-face since september she said it's amazing what kindergarten kids have lost since march of being out of until they got back because things like learning to sit in their chairs because they're not made to do that at home my own grandchildren and you know i get accused if i don't care about whether i kill somebody else's kids my own grandchildren are down in one of the rural counties of south georgia they have been face to face in school since september the first face to face much smaller district but a good size school they've had one case student one case of teacher they wear masks they do all the other things they've made it work in that setting

192that says to me that indeed if we do the protocols that the superintendent and our staff have put in place that if we have a role in closure we have a role in closure but i cannot in good conscience and i i i can understand how my my email's going to be tonight i cannot in good conscience tell families that if they want to send their kids to school right now that we cannot provide the school for them because we don't have the teachers to teach them i will be supporting this motion any other comments do you need to read it again or do you know what it says okay all in favor of the motion raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight all opposed one no abstention so the

193motion passes eight one zero dr bringman your second motion please thank you board members thank you dr buck the district's implementation and continuation of in-person learning should be driven by data and if the time comes that chatham county's spread of covid increases rapidly the district must be prepared to take appropriate actions up to and including a district-wide transition back to fully virtual learning therefore i move that if chatham county's transmission of covid increases to the point that our area's cti percentage of positive test and daily case rate per 100 000 are all in the red transmission level as reported by the coastal dph a district-wide transition back to virtual learning will be implemented for all students with teachers delivering virtual instruction from their assigned work site returning to hybrid in-person learning will occur when one

194of these three metrics remains lower than a red transmission level for at least 14 calendar days you've heard the resolution is is their second mr johnson seconds uh dr bringman any discussion um just to state where we are today i know that in uh the superintendent's operational update um mr hedger talked about the case per 100k being at eight that is in the yellow he spoke on the cti which is 135 which is red and then our percent of positive tests currently is at 6.5 percent and that is in the yellow so two of these three metrics are in the yellow which is actually low not even medium thank you mr johnson um once again i just want to say that if we have to close up we would be following the science in order

195to close up and then following the science to open them back up thank you mr johnson ms wade thank you i appreciate the effort and the spirit of this motion um i am not going to be supporting it for a couple reasons um first the cdc says not to use data as hard cutoffs but to use it as a piece of information i also worry about like hitting it one day and then having to sit out for two weeks while it blips up i trust the process that the superintendent has implemented with the rolling closures i also think even in high transmission levels school can be safe with all the mitigation things so i just worry that this kind of automatic trigger could uh be disruptive and not necessarily uh representative of a whole thing

196as i've talked for a while and we can see very evidently some of these data points are not really comparable cti is a much higher data point than some of these others and so um anyway i appreciate the effort and the spirit um but i will not be supporting it thank you dr bringman uh thank you for your comments um it's lovely that we get to talk here today i've asked for weeks for comments from board members with very little input so thank you for finally stating something to me the sentence that says must be prepared to take appropriate actions up to and including a district-wide transition i believe gives operational authority back to the district to decide if there is that one day of blip they can decide if they need to fully transition

197back or not that's why that language was added thank you dr i think i can make comments about my position on the motion without being attacked for calling dr bringman i i'm i just oppose it it's okay it's okay i can vote against it thank you any other comments from anyone no other comments all in favor of the motion raise your hands please one two three four five six one two three four five six all opposed one two three motion passes six three zero so the second motion also passes i'm moving on in board matters i'm gonna use the prerogative of the chair since it's almost my bedtime i'm going to ask for we have the two proclamations which we normally read in public we have copies of those that will be in the record

198i'm going to ask for a single motion for both proclamations and we'll not read them and move on dr greenman makes that motion for the approval of both of them ms hines seconds it all in favor of these two proclamations raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine those two motions pass moving on to legislative priorities for the 2021 legislative session in charge of that yeah happy to certainly initiate kick it off this is an opportunity for the board to provide some discussion and briefly noted uh i will say that the part of the spirit of this particular legislative priority in this session uh briefly is a a good terminology for that because you will see that there's a primary priority that has been presented in front of the board

199and then behind that there are standing priorities the focus on this approach would be that the board would determine that if so it believes that the hold harmless approach of a legislative priority being that one major mission critical component that the board would get behind and recognizing that this is a legislative priority that can have significant impact on the district's operating conditions in the next few fiscal years due to the impacts that we're seeing in losses of enrollment currently due to the pandemic so with that spirit there would simply really be one primary legislative priority of the board the others behind it would be standing priorities that are certainly there for discussion and recognizing that the board sees them as a continued focus area as well comments uh mr johnson and ms wade um i

200do like to hold harmless um because of the pandemic um and you know the staining matters every single time we always talk about increased qb funding formula um i think increased qb funding formula has kind of been um overused over the past i don't know how many years since 37. um i would like to instead of saying increase um the qbe funding formula what about modernize um 1984 this was the cell phones were science fiction cars didn't have seat belts in the back seat there were ashtrays in the back seat of cars um we didn't have um cell phones period uh it was all landline they were if you had an answer machine at home uh you're you're like top of the line and you're on your block and um al gore hadn't invented the

201internet yet so um i i think that it's um about time that we just talk about modernization of the qbe not just increasing the qbe funding formula thank you thank you sir gosh i didn't know where you were going with that any other comments ms wade i'm sorry yeah i of course support this is this something that is being promoted by gsba and we're working with our partners because i think this is a real opportunity so where is this coming from um it is definitely supported by the superintendents across the state not not all but certainly the majority we have requested support from gsba and we believe they'll support it good i think this is a real opportunity for all the districts to work together and i just want to flag an issue y'all know

202i can't stand that tax credit voucher program that we have that's a million dollar a 10 100 million dollar tax credit we have lost a lot of kids to private school most of those or many of those are going to private school on that tax credit voucher um because you have to come from public to private and there aren't income thresholds so a lot of people are using that you can stay on it so just be on the lookout there's going to be a huge push to increase that as you see the decrease in enrollment has a direct economic impact on us but if we don't get those kids back in not only we'll have a long-term economic impact but i've always said public school works best if everyone's participating so put that on your

203mind that tax credit voucher and the decline in enrollment are going hand in hand right now and it's like a double whammy to our system so we really need to all keep an eye on that a lot of it will depend on uh what the legislative vote is that comes out of this election well yeah and also no it will i mean yes it will but i didn't reflection of the legislature changes you make a very good point yeah but it may very well change the need to be changing but the statute is already on the books right and they're already there right it cost us already 100 million right um dr howard hall i'm sorry yes this is actually this is good news um the qb formula that was my first year teaching i'm

204retired now and it only and right now it only benefits the smaller districts it's a very disadvantage to large school systems such as ourselves so this is good news and hopefully we can do something about it it's far overdue any other comments at this point please uh when you're driving home when you're at home seriously consider things that we could we could consider for the legislative priorities because um we made the determination as we started working on this not to give you just the standard list that we've gotten every year in in instead to say yes sir well the other maintenance or the other one we talk about all the time is lose the other one we talk about all the time is loosening east boss spending restrictions right so we can resurrect that one

205as well right thank you and put maintenance in there too any other items on the agenda for the legislative session we'll talk about this briefly on friday so can we move on now we have a regulation to and regulations we don't have to vote on this has been reviewed it has to do with employee leaves and absences it was pretty much a simple adding about bereavement in there most everything else is pretty close to the same i think but any concerns from anyone we can say that's approved then we had the request to remove the deletion of jdda assignment to alternative programs from the um is that what we removed yes yes uh and any discussion on that ms wade yeah i just want to this is something that i've been hot on for 10

206years and so with two board meetings left i am thrilled to see this be eliminated and i just want to give some background to the public we have basically had two parallel tracking discipline procedures one that has all this procedure and process and rights and i don't think that's a perfect system but it's a a good system but if you did certain offenses if you were charged with certain offenses we brought the hammer down on you there was no due process rights you were immediately kicked to the alternative program for a year you were scarlet lettered as a designated felon and if those charges ended up being dismissed it didn't matter you're already um in the system and so um it's bothered me for years we've challenged it i've tried it's gone up to the

207board of ed they've they've sent back revisions and so i'm just really really happy i think i would have liked to have seen it done earlier i think the timing is particularly right now when we talk about um social justice and i mean this definitely disproportionately impacted um students of color so i'm just pleased as can be to see this gone i think it's a great step forward for us and i appreciate the superintendent and the legal team working with me to get to this point i guess we end up have yes i'm sorry dr bringman i just want to say thank you to ms wade for her efforts because since i've been on the board i've become more aware of these legal things and i will just say that i guess come january all

208of the legal expertise when policies come through are now on district 4. miss johnson i'm sorry i'm trying to do three things i kind of want to want to echo what uh dr bringman said because um since i've been on the board uh miss wade has been very much the the two different tracks and she's opening up my eyes about it and i really do appreciate that and i think that voice is going to be missed um so uh mr bowser you got some big shoes to fill over there and my big and i'm glad to see this gone as well just because we do live in a society that you are innocent until you're proven guilty so the fact that there was one of these um in here that they're just charged they go

209down this track so i'm glad to see this being deleted thank you sir we do need a motion on this because we pulled it out of um the consent agenda we are approving that yes we are now we pulled the audit out of the agenda this is here i think we have to do two readings even though it's uh so the jdda is the first reader i'm sorry oh yes thank you yes we did clarify the document for a board action second this is the first reader the action will come in december get it done by december when you reached your last board meeting okay and then we have the last consideration of what was pulled out of consent about the audit that you wanted to discuss i'd be happy to move that to the

210next meeting okay that's great [Laughter] that's me i do think it's i just i asked this morning that it be pulled as i didn't give a lot of notice and so um it may be better to so someone can actually speak to it and i need an approval motion on the consent agenda uh do we have any changes other than what we pulled out we've okay so ms hall has moved the approval of the consent agenda uh is their second to that second by dr bringman before we vote on that i wanted to point out to people that the approval uh in the spirit of transparency uh the superintendent's contract is in there the board had approved her contract months ago and by virtue of covet somehow i neglected to get it into the consent

211agenda but i did not want the public to think we had changed her contract and were hiding things from the public this was actually approved about last june may march april of june so my fault and it is in the consent agenda i have a motion and a second all in favor of the consent agenda passing raise your hands one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes nine zero zero and now miss hale would you come up here and stand with me please it's my pleasure now to um introduce the new assistant secretary to the board [Applause] many of you know it's been a long uh time coming because ms davis brown has been the sole secretary for quite a while and miss hale has a world of experience in the building

212working for mr jackson and she just got approved in the consent agenda so we are pleased to have you join us [Applause] moving on to business system replacements good evening i stand before you with larry jackson chief financial officer in spirit ramon ray chief human resource officer and in the back kim road executive director of the business information system we're super excited to report that in nine days we will be reaching a major milestone the shutdown of the mainframe financial system november 13th there's only one concern that i have with all the wisdom and collective knowledge that we have together somehow we selected friday the 13th [Music] brings tears to our eyes as this system has maintained the district financials for nearly three decades this presentation will provide a status on where we are with

213the seer with the bsr project and i'll be providing the cliff notes version of it moving to slide six the bsr project is a multi-year project consisting of two major phases the first phase is the financial scheduled from august 2019 to december 2020. the second phase is the replacement of the human resource management system tentatively scheduled to start on april 20 21st to april 2022 the first payroll run the first payroll run on the new system is scheduled to occur april 15 2022. the gap between december and april will be used to provide intensive support to ensure all processes and reports on functioning as expected next slide would be slide 8 that i want to discuss listed on the slide are the major events that occur or will occur under phase one we are on

214schedule to launch a new financial system in 27 days that'll be december 1st 2020 the last ap vendor checks will run on the old system november 18th all future vendor checks will be processed on the new system moving forward the next slide would be when do we get the green screen training the next slide will be slide 10 that i'd like to cover the following is a five-year breakdown of expenses and projected expenses for the bsr project with nine days left before launching the full financials we are well within our budget and expense projections currently we are paying to maintain both the mainframe system and a new tyler munis system we don't expect to see savings until the full system is implemented which will be at the start of fiscal year 2023. [Music] this concludes

215my presentation and i'll be there resign any questions mr feliciano miss howell i just want to ask if training is up to your standards that everyone who's going to be involved with this has had the opportunity to be well trained in this new system thank you for asking that question i know that with the covet 19 it was very difficult in trying to accommodate the training it was very important that the training was held as close to as possible to the go live date we also know that if there's a huge gap between the time we do training and the time we go go live that there is going to be training loss that that can occur so we will able to manage two sides to cover all essential training within a three-week window and

216the second part of that if personnel who's here now who's very much involved happens to go on to bigger and better things is there a succession of persons who know what to do to make sure everything continues to run smoothly yes so it is it was very important that we had backups to backups especially in the environment we're in today we don't know who will be here the next day so we do have people that co-share or participate in the same type of training or the same type of discussions when it comes to system design and process design so that if one leaves or suddenly has to work from home that we can still continue with meeting those timelines and deadlines that are set so yes any other comments or questions we look forward to

217it mr feliciano and we really appreciate your work and the other staff members because just choosing and moving forward with this is not easy i mean i understand that and i appreciate what you all have done thank you 10.02 budget amendment east plus 2 revenue adjustments budget amendment ace plus 2 fund 311 the division of operations requests board approval for the proposed adjustments to e-splash 2 revenues and expenditures the increase is needed to correct the budget for revenues and expenditures for interest recognized this addition would allow monies to be applied to facility repair projects being completed at this time below is a summary of the proposed adjustment thus being resolved upon the recommendat recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the amendment of the east bloss ii fund multi-year budget budgeted revenues and expenditures

218by one million ninety seven thousand and thirty dollars as summarized in the tables above heard the resolutions mr johnson makes the motion is their second like howard hall's seconds ms johnson anything dr howard hall anything any other comments from board members hearing none all in favor of the motion raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes nine zero zero budget amendment 10.03 budget amendment title one sig the georgia department of education has awarded chatham county one million two hundred thirty six thousand four hundred dollars for fisc fisc fiscal year 2020 title one school improvement grant digital learning grant the grant year is october 2019 through september 2020 the division of finance requests board approval for the expenditures and revenues for the remaining fiscal year 2020 to be recorded

219in fiscal year 2021 for the september quarter as seen below thus be it resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the expenditures and revenues remaining for the title one sig digital learning grant for the september quarter miss heinz moves is their second second by mr johnson ms huns anything the times any i mean mr johnson anything uh any board member comments questions hearing none all in favor raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes nine zero zero moving on to 10.04 another budget amendment the georgia department of education has awarded chatham county 2 million 240 thousand dollars for fiscal years 2020 title 1 school improvement grant georgia systems of continuous improvement covers october 2019 through september 2020. the remaining balance for fiscal year 2020

220needs to be moved into fiscal year 2021 for the september quarter expenditures the division of finance requests board approval for the expenditures and revenues remaining for the september quarter expenditures as seen below thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the expenditures and revenues remaining for the september quarter of the title one sig gsci grant heard the resolution mr johnson moves and is high in seconds uh miss johnson anything miss hunt yeah i have a one a short question here yes ma'am uh other books are these chromebooks uh the amount uh down here for other books this is chromebooks this i'm not sure if anyone from academic affairs can answer this particular grant is within the department but i'm not sure of the actual expenditures we can get that information

221for you i'll be happy to answer the question about the school improvement grant on the school improvement grant as well as the digital grant all of those are for the identified schools that have been on the identified school list so it involves the four middle schools mercer meyers hubert as well as duran and it also involves um savannah high and the two elementary schools schuman and lo any other comment wave over the motion raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes synovia 10.05 the division of operations desires to enter into an agreement with synovial solutions for its fleet management equipment and software under this agreement synovia solutions will install the equipment and provide software licensure that will enable the transportation department to verify our routes and track student

222ridership in both real-time and by historical data time and attendance of bus drivers and monitors will be managed by installed mobile data terminals that will also provide a vehicle inspection system and two-way messaging with managers parents will be able to view real-time bus locations and movements online via a computer tablet or smart phone by using the here comes the bus application this software will integrate with current software cert with current routing software transfounder and will replace our current gps software zonar the amounts of the software for each year is listed in the table along with the funding source thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the use of the source well formerly jnjpa cooperative contract zero two two two one seven dash ssl for fleet management equipment and software

223implementation in the district's transportation department total cost to be billed to the district is 500 484 over a two-year period uh promotion by mr johnson and second about dr bringman miss johnson anything i just have one question for um miss miller kegler are you excited about this i am because it gives us an opportunity to consolidate okay that's all i need to know we are this will help us out a lot tremendously good i'm excited because i ran on this and i i wanted some type of software that a parent could have an app and yes so this is i mean yeah it was definitely an idea thank you for making it come true and uh yeah is there is there a way on the app so that parents don't have to call in to

224transportation to say there are issues they can check here and we'll be able to interface with the system and one of the reasons we wanted to move to this when we could no longer use you know cell phones on buses and while we're operating vehicles we can download route so if any route changes can now go to a system that will be stationary in the bus dr howard hall yes have you had a chance to provide a pallet for this or sample it with other buses see how well it went operating other districts will continue to run parallel because when you see the credit we'll still be using um our zona system but we'll be testing we'll have it in certain we've actually had it on some of our buses for a while any other

225comments on this hearing none all in favor raise your hands please one two three four five six seven eight nine motion passes nine zero zero yes ma'am dr buck i apologize i did not answer miss heinz's question i don't want to leave without answering her question about the um other books on the last on the on the last um question so um other books means other instructional resources it also means digital materials it also means professional learning and a plethora of coaching as well as leadership coaching thank you i apologize thank you appreciate you goodness as we uh as we close up today uh it's been a long day there's some days that make me prouder than other days to be a part of this group you've made good decisions you've made well thought out

226decisions uh i continue to be amazed at the work that our superintendent and our staff do every day and especially through this pandemic and just it's a real pleasure to be a part of this group and i appreciate you very much is there a motion to adjourn dr bringman dr greenman second all in favor say aye thank you very much oh