001Good evening. It gives me a great pleasure to welcome our in-person guests and as well as our online community. Uh at this time, uh the Tweets County Board of Education meeting is called to order. The time is uh today is June the 10th. The time is 6 uh p.m. Ask everybody to stand for the pledge of allegiance and we'll pause for a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. At this time I uh can I get a motion for the approval of the agenda tonight's agenda? So move. Okay. Okay. A motion to approve the agenda uh has been properly made by Miss Blackshere and second by
002Miss King. Are there any discussions? Okay. All in favor, raise your hand. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. Okay. We've all had an opportunity to review the the minutes from May 13th regular board meeting as well as the call session on May 20th. Are there any corrections? If there no corrections then we the minutes stand approved as uh written. Miss uh Blackshere ethics statement. Thank you. In accordance with regulations set forth by the Georgia Ethics Commission, it is the duty of every board member to avoid both conflict of interest of interest of conflict. Is there any conflict of interest scheduled before us or appearing on our proposed agenda? Seeing none, Madam Chair, we will proceed with our agenda. That was quick. Thank you, Miss Black. You're welcome. At this at this time, does any do any
003of the board members have any comments or remarks? If not, Mr. Superintendent. Good evening, Mr. Chair, vice chair, board members, all of those who are with us in person, and those who are joining us virtually. I do have several announcements I'd like to just make the community aware of. U of our last day for our summer opportunities summer school experience is coming up. It's going to be on Wednesday, June the 18th because that Thursday is Junth. So the district will be closed on Thursday, June the 19th. So, our last official day for the summer school program for the elementary, middle, and high school will be on Wednesday, June the 18th. I also want to take this opportunity to remind our families and our students that our retest are also going on currently for the Georgia
004milestones for our students who are in the end of course courses who are participating in our summer school program. So the schedule is there u on the screen for you. Our American literature in the course retest actually started today. Section one and section two will be tomorrow on June the 11th. For those students who scored uh at that beginning level that was identified for American literature have an opportunity to improve their score. The algebra 1 students who have an opportunity to retest will be able to retest this Thursday on June the 12th. and the biology and US history in the course retest will all be conducted on next week, Tuesday, June the 17th. So, make sure that if your children are a part of that retest for the end of course for high school that
005they get a good night's rest. Uh, get to summer school on time so we can get them situated in our testing environment so they'll have the most opt opportun best opportunity to do their very best. And lastly, I just want to make sure the community knows that LiveWell Twigs is sponsoring a health fair, the Health Fair 2025. It will be conducted on this Thursday, June the 12th from 11:00 a.m. to 100 p.m. And that's going to be in the gym at Jeffersonville Elementary School. So, I know there will be lots of vendors, health related vendors out. So, if you would like to come and take part uh in that health fair, please come to Jeffersonville Elementary School this coming Thursday, June the 12th, from 11 a.m. to 100 p.m. Mr. Chair, that concludes my announcements.
006Thank you, Dr. Bullet. question with the retests. Have the kids already um have you got good feedback that they are coming to? Yes, we we have. We first of all board members, we're excited about the preliminary results that we got for our end of course. We can't wait to share it. Um, I'm eager to share it with you and we've have great participation with students that we've invited to our summer school program to retest. So, we are expecting a good turnout for the retest. We had had started today. We'll do American Lit tomorrow and then algebra 1 will conclude this week on Thursday and then next week we have one day of testing, but we have two different groups of students testing that day. our biology student test and our retest and our US history
007of retest but we have had good participation. Thank you Dr. Bullet. Okay, at this time we want to move to our business agenda and uh Dr. bullet. You have some district requests. Uh yes, sir. Uh board members, we want we do have a few field trips that we'd like to thank you for your support and request your approval on. Uh on the last week of school, our high schoolers had their senior week and participated in the senior outing at Rickby's on the 20th. And our FFA did travel to Fort Valley on the 2nd of June for the FFA leadership camp. Upcoming on the 26th of June, the Beta Club is preparing to go to the national competition in Kissmi, Florida. And there they'll participate in the national exhibits and our drum line and dancers will
008also compete in the large group performing arts category. So, we're very excited about that. uh you see the list of advisors that'll be accompanying them to the national competition in Kissame, Florida. And we certainly are looking forward uh to uh that winning tradition to continue with the JES Beta Club. The Lady Cobras request your permission to travel to Tallahassee, Florida on the 27th of June for a summer basketball camp. And on the 27th also, there will be about 11 to 15 students that will travel with Mr. Sheepard and myself to Atlanta to Georgia Tech. Our partnership with Georgia Tech, those students will be going through and touring the Agra Tech Department. And Georgia Tech wants those students and Twigs County to participate in an agricultural project. They're actually providing purchasing all of the equipment. The
009students in the computer science program will code that equipment and it will be a part of the agricultural tech experience that they're having at Georgia Tech, but it'll actually be happening here on Twigs Countyy's campus. So, we'll make that trip with your approval on Friday the 27th of June. That concludes our district request for this month. Thank you, Dr. Bullet. Um, you've heard the district request. Can I get a motion to approve the uh district request? I move that motion to second. Second. Okay. The motion has been properly made by Miss uh Black Shear and second by Mr. Butler to approve the superintendent's district request. Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor raise your hand. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. Mr. and thank you. We are a district with a vision generating excellence, one
010team, one goal and a mission to inspire, challenge and prepare all students to compete globally. And we cannot prepare these students if they are not in attendance at school. Um our strategic goals, it aligns with our strategic goal one, learning and wellness for all. Two, excellence ahead, academics, facilities, and opportunities. And three, doing things the Twig's way. I reviewed with you the new attendance dashboard that the Georgia Department of Education has a couple of a couple of times already where Twigs County has 33.2 students who are percent of our students are considered chronically absent. I also reviewed with you previously our surrounding districts in their chronically absent percentage rate and we already discussed where we stood with those and the fact that we wanted to improve this. I did uh in the past explain to
011you that we had goals that we put into our district improvement plan and our school improvement plans to improve our attendance rates. I am pleased to say that this year, Jeffersonville Elementary School had 15.8% of their students missing 10% or more of school, which amounts to 18 days. Twigs County Middle School had 22.3% of their students and Twigs County High School had 30.7. All of this equates to our district now having a rate of 21.5% of our students missing more than 10% which is an improvement of 11.7 percentage points over last year. However, we [Applause] Yes, that's good news. However, we still have 136 students K through 12 who missed more than 18 days of school. And we need to improve on that. Not only are we struggling with this, it is a statewide problem.
012So much so that there was a focus on attendance during this last legislative session. The Senate Bill 123, which is the compulsory attendance law, passed. It goes into effect in another week or two on July the 1st. This legislation updates Georgia's compulsory attendance laws to better address chronic absenteeism and student engagement. Its key provisions include defining what chronically absent means, requiring school districts to reinstitute school climate committees with the chief superior court judges leading these committees, and they must meet twice yearly. There must be committees who update attendance protocols for each district by June the 1st, 2026. That's a year from now. Each district must annually submit a report on absenteeism to the legislature and schools within the district with absenteeism rates of 15% or more must have their own attendance review teams. Also in
013this law, it requires counties to convene student student attendance and school climate committees by November the 1st, 2025 and at least twice meet at least twice yearly after that. It mandates written attendance protocols that I discussed by June the 1st, 2026, including procedures to address tardiness and chronic absenteeism. It also updates the language of to military related absences and beginning in 2026, the Department of Education must submit by annual reports on attendance and discipline trends. There was additional legislation, House Bill 268. If a student misses 30 or more consecutive days and their parent fails to notify the school of their withdrawal or intent to homeschool, the school will report the matter to the student affairs officer of their local RISA and to defects. There was a Senate resolution SR27 which creates the Senate study committee
014on combating chronic absenteeism in schools. There was a House resolution 711 creating the House Study Committee on Student Attendance in PreK through 12 education. So there's a lot of focus on attendance. In order to comply with this new law, we had already put things in place before the law even existed. We had already begun to um create a attendance protocol. You were given the protocol and the parent letter electronically prior to this meeting and I put a copy of a hard copy of it on your desk tonight. The district attendance protocol development began with Dr. Bullard and I working with attorney Andrew Davidson of Jones Cork LLC. We had district teams that came together to discuss what we needed to have in our protocol. We had school level teams during the leadership retreat reviewing what
015we had in our protocol. The senior cabinet has reviewed it more than once. We also had the juvenile court judge Penny Snipes. Uh she worked with us in the development of this as well. This protocol aligns with our own board policy. JB Attorney Andrew Davidson. He used protocols from other surrounding districts. those districts who had those uh better attendance rates than us to see what it was that they were doing uh that we weren't doing or maybe that we wanted to include. This protocol that's before you also align with the Georgia attendance laws that we just reviewed. It includes clearly defined expectations around excused and unexcused absences, tardies, early dismissals, parent communication, and reporting responsibilities. It includes a parent version that you also have in front of you for the parent or guardian to acknowledge.
016This, if approved, will be in the handbook. It will be explained during town hall type meetings. There will be videos posted on websites and social media. There will be parent meetings through family engagement. We will be working with communities and schools as well. Tonight, this is before you as an information item for you to review in depth. At the next board meeting, I will not be here. However, my better half, Dr. Griffin Stewart, will be bringing it before you as an action item. Are there any questions? or as attendance. Is it incentive that we're trying to give the kids to kind of motivate them to come to school? Is there an incentive? Anything that we can give the kids or you know to motivate them to come to school? the schools have been that's been
017part of what has improved it up to this point that the schools Miss Jenkins and her staff they through PBIS they have that's part of their rewards that they get uh rewarded depending on you know if you had perfect attendance in a certain time frame um at both schools they do at all three schools um Miss Jenkins has two schools under her charge but all three schools um they do that yes already okay I was just Wasn't anything extra, right? There's both on the positive side to reward and then there's also on the punitive side punishment if things don't occur like they're supposed to. Yes, ma'am. My question is this. I saw it said Wilkersonson County was at 5.1. Uh so what did we learn from the other counties? What were they doing different that
018we're not that we can do? Um much of that's in that protocol that you see. um it mirrored what the protocol is. We some of the things that they put into place is that punitive action. That's why we had Judge Penny Snipes on this as well because she she would be the one our parents would stand before. She's not the one that Wilkinson County's parents stand before, but she works in conjunction with their, you know, juven with the juvenile court system as well. That the parents have their part of their responsibility. That would be their Consequence is a better word than a punishment. All right. Thank you. I have a question for you. Um this is Reen. Um if we approve this protocol that we have before us, um when will you enforce it? The
019protocol pieces of it will go into force immediately. Um there are things that will be put into place as far as procedures, expectations. Um, there are some parts of it that are in there such as holding parents accountable coming before a board if you've already missed 10 days on the previous year. Well, this year we wouldn't hold them accountable for this past year because this wasn't in place, but that following year then they would be held accountable for that. that they would be part of that review committee that you see in that protocol um at that time because they're already if you've had a pattern of missing that many days of school, we want to put things in place to support them to stop that from happening in the next school year. But this would
020go into the handbook for next school year if it's approved. And the parent letter would also go in the handbook if approved. And then those meetings with the parents and the informational sessions would begin right away during open house. There would be some meetings with that and some information with that as well. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Thank you, Miss Re. Thank you. At this time, um, we're going to move into executive session. Um, can I get a motion for us to move into executive session? I make the motion to move into executive session. Second. Okay. Motion to move into executive session has been properly made by Mr. uh Butler and second by Miss King. Uh is there any discussion? All in favor raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. [Music]
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022Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, [Music] hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Okay. At this time, I need a motion to return from executive session. I make the motion to return from executive session. Second. Okay. The motion has been properly made by Mr. uh Butler and second by Miss King. Uh is there any discussion? Okay. Uh all in favor raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Um we have several uh things we want
023to look at here. We have the uh new hires. The superintendent's recommend recommendation for the new hires. The first one is uh CI has a CD number of 5198. Can I get a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation for CD number 5198 new hire? I make a motion to approve superintendent's recommendation for C19. Can I get a second? Second. All right. The motion to approve uh C number as a new hire, excuse me, 5198 has been properly made by Miss Black Shear and second by Miss King. Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor raise your hand. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. Next, we have new hire C number 5223. Uh, can I get a motion to accept the superintendent's recommendation for uh CI number 5223? I move to table number 5223. I second it.
024Okay. A motion has been made to table the uh recommendation for the new hire 5223. Is there any discussion? All right. If there's no discussion, all in favor raise your hand. Okay. The motion passes. Uh three uh all uh nays. That motion is the table, right? Yes, the table. Right. Right. Right. The motion is the table. Okay. How many table three? And I I I'm abstaining. Yeah. Okay. So So the motion passes. Uh Right. Exactly. All right. Next, we have uh superintendent's recommendations for retirement. Uh the CI num or the EID number is uh 21101.