001e e e good evening everyone call the meeting order first item the agenda is the presentation of the TR by the G High NJ RC if everybody would please rise March Mar March present colors Ready Cut Mark Time March forward March More Time March order colors [Music] all right cadetes if you would please tell us your name which grade you're in and what your plans are for After High School me I am Lieutenant Commander minor VZ I am a senior at Gainesville High School my admissions after graduation are to attend the University of North Georgia and study criminal justice good evening I'm Lieutenant Commander I'm in the 11th grade at G high school and my ambitions After High School are to study architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology good evening I'm master chief M wber
002gville high school I'm a junior my ambition is at the high SCH Works to pursue a degree in Business good evening P off of third class Mark I'm currently grade in G bu go to United States Marine Board all right let's give these men and next item on the agenda dist recog turn over glad to have everybody here as we start some recognitions back at the end of the school year uh what's also wonderful about this time of year we get to recognize different winners in different areas so I'd like to ask Dr Lee Sears to come up as well as Miss go for Dr Sears is actually this is her official meeting with Gainesville City Schools she gets to retire on April the 14th not a day two soon not a day later that's
003right U and she's been overseeing this program for the last few years as well as a lot of other directorial responsibilities G cities if we could just give herss coin Nam recogniz our young we are so excited to recognize our students who were chosen as the winners of our Young author competition this year in kindgarten we have money Mill gy Fernandez if you will come forward when your name is called please in first grade our winner is from not and the winner is faen kiml and second grade from we have Caroline grade from Centennial we have Serena H in fourth grade from we have bety and we have Jimmy mil and in eth grade from g Middle School East we have Tyler so all right parents if y'all want to slide in the middle or
004administrator anybody else want get some pictures congratulations boys and girls great to honor the work of our students and one of the things we have talk about as a district and we would like to do with this grouth is actually put all of our womers into a published book and that way we can be able to give it not only to you as recipients but also kind of start a volume of collections of our Young author G from City Schools possibly working with the art departments and putting some art work to go along with the wonderful writing of Tonight Young Georgia at this time I'd like to invite superintendent Collins up to call out our teachers of the year one of the great things about Kansas City schools and Hall County Schools if we have
005Doug ier and k ier i Foundation who give all of our teachers of the year for each School $500 a year and then the district when receives $10,000 and so what a great opportunity that it is for not only people outside of our community to recognize the efforts and the impact that our teachers make but also we get to do just a little bit of that here tonight so miss cins I'll turn it over to you good afternoon everyone we are thrilled to recognize our 2025 teachers of the year when I call your name U please come forward from Centennial Arts Academy we are pleased to recognize paral and National Academy we are pleased to recognize lias expiration AC recogniz Madison mat from new Lear Academy to recognize Al recogn Mr Bailey [Music] J from
006school we pleas to recognize Miss Diana and finally and certainly not least from intelligence Academy we are pleased to recognize their teacher of the year as well as the district Teacher of the Year this is Amanda y want to slide this one congratulations another elephant to our heart we coule weeks congratulations this time of the year last week was actually School appreciation week and we were able to the year kind of get a couple gifts for our board members and so they're they're up there but I want to read a poem to you that talks about school board's heart and I've had the pleasure of working with this board um you go back a couple years ago we had board members that served over 30 about a dozen years and this board have all been
007hired been elected in the last seven years seven and a half years and it's been a pleasure to work alongside them in that capacity and while you see them once a month or maybe twice a month in this type of set we text often there's a lot of FY eyes there's a lot of hate have you heard about this Dr Williams and um I can assure you that they get the call often times any of you here the call but it's always great to know that we have we live in a community that people really want to see our our students and Community Thrive and it all starts with having a board that supports our teachers and our students in the community so read this in Halls of learning where future Bloom the counsil sit
008to spelling Loom my voice is strong and mind so Keen they shap the world vibr scene these are the Guardians Brave and true of every of every child and dreams a new they list in close to every plea for brighter days for all to see with careful hands they guide the way to build a path come up may they allocate resources fair and just to nurture minds and plant the trust they advocate for students needs planting seeds that knowledge breeds they Ure that every voice is heard and every child about word so let us honor with heart so bright the school Bo M Shining Light for in their hands the future lies a world of learning reaching Skies please Jo me as we thank our board members for their service to G do we have
009any members of leadership call in theow if you don't mind s of tell us your name which organization [Music] you right welcome everyone um that does conclude our recognition session but if you want to hang around for a formal business you more than welcome to otherwise now is a good time to leave thank you I here smiley than uh than all right like to entertain the motion to adopt the agenda there will be a modification I would like make a motion that we adopt Roman numeral five and six and add a Roman numeral C I guess the number eight for the purchase of furniture for horizon horizon motion by second by Dr all those in favor motion carries all right Dr Williams we had a first reading of policy BB ah those of you been
010on the board for all know that every year we go through the process of electing chair Vice chair and the treasurer uh in the last seven to eight years there has been little to no change uh in those from one year to the next it also means sometimes it's difficult I Mr Stewart you've been a chair now for what probably four years or five years um and you can imagine doing this every year if there's a lot of turnover does create some challenges that the person having to learn that position knew and so this is the first reading of policy BB AA which allows us to move to a 2-year term starting next January um typical removal of an officer can still happen by majority of the board so that's always been an an option
011that ever is needed but this is changes the verbage that said beginning in January 2026 at the first meeting Year we will select a chairperson vice chairperson treasure for a twoyear time all right any questions all right thanks Dr uh next up is Dr shears and Mr J good evening I first started teaching eled in 1999 and this has been my pride and joy here great and GI when I call your name if you will please stand Miss Alison rber or new Mullen she is one of our gifted co-coordinators Miss Joy h from beer Street Miss Melinda H Paul from Mill Kimberly ning from Gainesville exploration Amy Ray from anod and Leslie Williams from Centennial and last but not least Miss Aon Durkin who is also from manoda and she's our gifted C for D
012this J have going to turn it over to you um as you said I serve as one of your gifted Co co-coordinators for elementary um go to the next slide these are all members of my elementary gifted team we serve as impact teachers impact is our elementary gifted program it stands for motivating and preparing the academically and creatively talented many of you have children who who have been served in our IMPACT program or get to program at some point in their Elementary career um but I get to work with this incredibly talented group of Educators um we serve a very unique population of victed students who keep us on our to every single day um they are a very unique group of kids and a great group of Educators um we are Specialists who identify
013and nurture these kids the needs of our students their exceptional abilities and their own they come their own sp town do as well um I luy one to present you today about some of the services that we have provided and the growth that we've made in our program over the last couple of years let's take a look at the next slide first um this is a quick snapshot of what our current gift program looks like in off the district and how our elementary GI population is distributed across our state elementary schools we currently serve 331 Elementary dist students across the district and you can see how those numbers vary from school to school now element gifted education um look very different from a classic classroom go on to the next slide here we're constantly providing
014choice to our students um opportunities for them to question the world around them gied teachers collabora collaboratively plan um content that's related to current issues we encourage our kids to question anything and everything which means that we're constantly thinking on our to on our toes excuse me um we are integrating multiple subjects into every activity that we plan so you're not going to come into a classroom and see necessarily just math or Ela or reading or writing all of these subjects are integrated into the activities that we plan we encourage our students to use higher order thinking skills um we move past with the basic remembering or um the memorization parts we want our kids to evaluate create analyze to show a deeper knowledge of the content that they're learning um we use student Choice
015open-ended tasks who allow for multiple Solutions multiple answers we're not looking for just one right answer we want our kids to move Beyond Beyond this this encourages the creativity critical thinking um that we really want our kids to explore rather than just looking to that single predetermined answer or outcome on to the next one um now thank to the vision and support of Dr Williams and Dr Sears gainville City schools has um had several gifted initiatives over the past really two to three years um that have been implemented to help grow and improve our gifting program um we've expanded our gifted resource Elementary team over the past two years we more than doubled our elementary team we now have one gifted resource teacher in each of our six elementary schools with two being at a
016DOA um we've expanded our talent development program and this reaches our students who show high potential for qualified for gifted Services um we try to build on those ance that you may their homework teachers see or that we as gifted Educators see um we have as coordinators worked to build a resource repository and kind of streamline those Talent Development resources across the district to provide consistency among all of our schools um geted endorsements there's really been a big push for our home room teachers and our staff to earn their gifted endorsements last year 61 staff and Educators across G City Schools earned those gifted endorsements those were paid for by Ether funds this year we currently have 27 additional gille City Schools Employees earning their endorsements that's being paid for by Consolidated funds at the
017individual School levels and this is this these um gifted endorsements have led to better services for our gifted students we've been able to to expand our gifted cluster model which means the students are placed in smaller clusters of gifted students in their home room classrooms and we're able to serve them not just on those gifted resource days when they're in an impact program but they're plac where they GI endoor teacher and they can receive Enrichment Services on every day of the week in all subject areas we know that gifted kids aren't just gifted on an impact day they're gifted every day so we're able to expand those services and really serve them all days next one does a gifted endorsement last um it's indefinite so once the teacher earns it it's added to their certificate
018and it really it it helps the teachers as well makes them in my opinion a gift endorsement is one of the greatest endorsement that you can have it is the most applicable as a teacher um for all groups of students it's it's really best practices for any kid that you can teach um good question now um this next slide shows you a fiveyear comparison of gifted students that we've served in gville city schools and you can really see where these GI initiatives started to take place when we added our gifted our gifted resource teachers where we started to expand our talent development um these teachers were hired at the end of 2022 23 um and you can see how many is we really started to add the program these last two years we have just
019really started to grow and so it's exciting to see what's happening in our elementary program next now in Bas City Schools our major gifted testing window happens at the end of October this is when we test first through fifth grade students um and for elementary or really in the state of Georgia students are assessed in each of the these four areas Mentor ability achievement creativity and motivation most students qualify for get to students through a multiple criteria model which means that they qualify in three of these four areas um kindergarten students are assessed in early May um we do that because they're not ready to be tested in October obviously we give them most of the year and then we test them later on um but we have multiple assessments that were able to to
020check and to test for through this window usually two to three weeks my who is in October of 2024 we tested 246 first through fifth grade students in gville City Schools across all six Elementary um 141 of these students did not qualify for giting students gifted services so that's the red area that you see in this pie chart that takes about 7% however 85 students did qualify to receive GI Services that's almost 35% of the kids that we tested in addition to that 35% 20 students currently have two qualifying areas other than the um achievement category which means that if they qualify um if they take the already assessment which you know we get three times a year they get a 90% or above in the middle or end of year they can AO automatically
021qualified to receive gied services so that's an additional 20 kits that's another 8% typically when you test for GI students you expect to see about 20% of the kids that you test qualify for GI services so this is two years in a row now that we have exceeded that 20% kind of goal that you shoot for go to the next slide Eddie um you can see this is a fiveyear look at um kind of our testing snapshot um and you can really see we have increased the number of kids that we're testing as well as the number of kids that were qualified the dark gray bar shows the number of students tested light gray is the number of students qualified the red shows the number of Elementry students serve from year to year what's really
022exciting to me is to see um you know looking year to year that number of students that were serving um you know last year at this time of year we were serving 68 get the kids this time of year 331 that's a huge jump um you know in just a year so I'm really proud of that I'm happy to see it um one of the most beautiful things about being SCH C these schools that the parent as an educator as a person who lives here is the diversity of the population that we get to serve um GI the leaders across the state and locally have really been having conversations about in GI services and get program so of course we're taking a look at that here as well um this slide takes a look at
023the gifted Services here in nille City it Compares de Rapids in 2021 to this current year 24 24 to 2025 um as you can see there have definitely been some improvements made as far as equity and services now we still have a long way to go um but we are increasing the number of gift and kids that we're testing and we're serving as far as all of our subgroups and gel City Schools go um traditionally and historically there have been way less um I guess black Hispanic kids that have been identified and that for a number of reasons gifted traits can look very different in some of these subgroups than they can traditionally present in um in a white upper class middle upper class child and so we've done a lot to really educate our
024teachers our staff to be able to recognize what these traits look like um as well as we've done some research on different types of Assessments that have more Equitable research behind them um to be able to identify more kids from different subgroups um to be able to to make this look more like the students that are in our school system so we're excited to see this trending the way we want it to one of these assessments that we have been doing some research and that we are actually piloting next year is this assessment it's called the Nary nonverbal uh I'm sorry the Nary gen General ability test and um this will be piloted next year with some of our English language Learners this is a test test um that was designed to remove cultural references
025um it's a pretty cool test because it really takes language out of it there are no verbal directions um the the the directions we been given with a short video kind of showing the students what to do um but it's really as fair and Equitable a t measure as can possibly be given so I thought i' clst here by giving you all a chance to kind of try your hand at some of these test questions and and see kind to get a look at what our kids are going to be taking a look at but what I love about this assessment is research has really found minimal difference in the scores of students regardless of gender race ethnicity parental education um there are three sub tests there's verbal nonverbal and quantitative measures um you might
026be wondering you have a verbal test without words um pictures are used to kind of convey verbal relationships so this is all about testing how a student thinks not so much what they already know go ahead to the next slide this is an example of a verbal question this is a a first grade easy question um the student task is to identify which of these six pictures is not represent the verbal concept shared here by the other five pictures last so all they all contain certain things right um I was going to ask the answer I'm going to say either five okay so just like any multiple choice test or question you know there's there's there there's one could be answers and then there's another so number five is the could be because there's a
027lid to it the correct answer is actually two these are all containers however number two has something in it and all the rest are empty containers I did not the answer she all right the next one first grade easy question not alive all the rest of them are green and growing and are alive okay this is an example of a nonverbal question nonverbal question these all involve shapes um and I actually just got to sit in on a session with the creator of this test and he would went so far as to explain that even the colors that were used in this test are were used specifically for students who may be color blind um so I mean when they considered everything it's taken them 30 years to create this assessment so this nonverbal test
028uses Shades and the student has to decide the logic behind the relationship with these these shapes could be sequences could be different types of orientations patterns other types of characteristics can you figure out what the relationship here is you are correct number one is the correct is a rotation happening here all right I got one more nonverbal for you now this mes to sixth grade and this is a hard sixth grade hard question better rotation type question is number four you're right number four because it's rotating all right and the last section this is quantitative now quantitative is more of a numberous symol type of test and again this a first gr easy question again this is not a trick um must the logic behind the numbers um there are no words no word problems
029Behind these these questions um students have to look at quantities analyze the Matrix of numbers um or symbols to solve these problems so this one you see six seven8 n what would come next it would be 10 and you notice that the answers they go from being numbered answers to letter answers here to not confuse the student all right I've got one more for you this is the first grade hard question this one this one is kind of fun actually how long kids um so the kids have 30 minutes to complete one sub test so 30 minutes for the verbal 30 minutes for um I believe it's about 30 40 questions on each test 40 questions on each subject those three yeah a little less than a minute four block are the same as all
030right so this one would actually be e and the reason for that if you look at the one on the left side there is so you got two shapes that cancel each other out Eve you right so you got the two pentagons plus the this is a first gr hard question this is not a this is what I have for you pressure that either you or the people that work you get to my kids got cre an impact his or her career academic career can be way behind probably a lot more than you um you know I think the parents feel more pressure than the kids do because kids really really enjoy Talent Development you know we always have kids in Talent Development before they test um to get them used to these these types
031of questions and the types of Assessments because they're diff any other types of test than that they take or that they're used to in the fion and they really enjoy Talent Development if they don't qualify fored then we keep them in Talent Development if that's a good place for them I think the parents really feel it more than the kids do and we really make sure that the kids know if you qualify or don't qualify that does not make break you and you you have another chance to test you know it Now isn't the time that's okay um I think the parents really feel it more than than anybody else and so we do we do sometimes have to have conversations with parents and have that help them off the ledge too um but you
032know it and I think part of the perception of that is maybe sometimes impact a club and you know I can get my kid into it but once we explain the assessments and maybe we show some of these types of questions and that you know your kid have does need to pass these kinds of things to get in it's service that's provided it's not a club that you get into um helps kind of clarify the expectations and you know when you show some of these types of questions and sometimes you have a parent come in saying oh my kid is absolutely gifted they the smartest kid I've ever met and you show something like this a first grade hard question and they're like okay then they want to go study and I think the good
033part over the last has been everybody wanted their kid to have that gifted label because you were part of a club I what people have seen is as kids start to progress through Middle School and High School the effort that you put towards anything really is going to make the difference for us the label that gifted helps us with funding and allows us to pull of resource on the Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday and the cluster pce but the kids that are in those cluster classes that are not gifted are still receiving the same opportunity as everybody else you all know when you get you got upper level honors classes when you get to high school you want to take AP we have open RO with that so there's I think that message has grown a
034good bit over the last five to 10 years where the label everybody not everybody most people believe their their child is the smartest person they've ever met we also get to meet the parents and know that that's probably not the case but the reality is yeah then everything goes out the window in middle school but the reality is there's been this been we've used four criteria for how long salary for sale in Hall County when she work part of education for Hall County NA centr brought it in because it used to be kind of P now they realize the GI this looks different so if you get the mental abilities and the achievement side that's great but if you don't you got a couple other options to match with one of those and motivation and
035creativity are just as important as the other two it's taken it's going to take a generation really because a lot of the families that we have in school now still have the same mentality that gifted means this no it doesn't gifted really just means the funding part for us and it does have a resource tool out but you still have gifted and talented you still have honors class you still have AP you still have do still have all these things available to you don't get as a parent don't get caught up on the laor one question I have you mentioned the middle school and the high school I know we talk a little bit as a board that you know a high school the football team basketball and all these programs do camps with Elementary
036School to get kids excited about one day being a red elephant you know which is great but we talked a little bit about are we doing that academically where the elementary school and middle school and high school working together to give these elementary school kids a vision for a classes one day like how does that work with the great work you guys guys doing with impact and what we're doing with the a program absolutely so we we've actually started to work much more closely with um Nick shean um who has come in and is working a little more with enrichment at the secondary level um because at elementary you know impact days are our kids favorite days of the week and now that we've added the cluster service you know they're getting so much when
037it comes to geted services and to make sure that that continues you know at middle school and at High School level and that they are so excited so we've got a lot of things you know working a little more closely to keep that excitement up and even if the kid doesn't qualify for inite knowing you know that they can take those honors courses they can take AP that you know they don't just have to qualify to take those courses and and to continue to push themselves and to achieve at a high level so we're we're definitely it's it's on our radar and we're working to see how we can continue to improve on that because we don't want it to fall off you know after they grade and then you know I will say I
038think there's the opportunity with National Honor Society and Beta Club they do have to get service hours but why not's start to look at ways to get those service hours with Middle School even middle school with National Junior arm Society invaded how do we get those down maybe Elementary so we've also started a mind teams at the elementary level and we're trying to get those implemented in middle school too so that's something that can continue on as well that's been a great thing in our elementary schools our kids have just really taken off with it it's been great but thank you for giving me your time today um I hope I didn't me too mind Al but thank you to Dr William drar so much what I spoke on today has been their vision and
039their brain child and without their support and their advocacy for our kids um we wouldn't be where we are today and with it growth and SC with you leaving I can't tell you the whole that she is leaving and just my team is so going to miss and we love and appreciate you so much but thank you thank you thank [Music] first I'll call for Mr n if he's trying to do double duty right now if you remember the last meeting we did give an overview of eorts and this is to kind of get the computer and structure Mr Nim talked about to to go got get that purchase going so we can get it moving to Gainesville High School it perfect this was the stuff we talked about we have any follow up the
040question the only missing out of this are the Swit PS make a motion that we approve all in faor car thank you next up is February Financial stus good evening february2 February 81.7% of ourd this time last year8 run pretty close ex 723 this time last year were a little bit higher 68.7 our feary is 341 mil this time last year at 33.7 our receipts receips were keeping that mil8 8631 things like to add Miss and I last week received the midterm lot Sheets if you remember the budget that you approved back in the summer it did uh have our re going us into our reserves about 1.8 million we're going to be getting a little more than that from the midterm Amo sheet because our enrollment went up and with some other budgetary additions
041that were made like school safety for school and things like that so we are hoping it will be significantly on the positive side to being able to add and Reserve versus going in 1.8 million so we're getting additional Revenue because we had more students is that additional Revenue all any additional expenses that have been driven by that we added about 25 positions last school year and this year we were flat next year we have to absorb some so we're having to look strategically at what those class does look like uh really where that chunk comes in uh is more at the high school level uh where we had we had about 2450 is what we kind of considered overall between gville high school and Horizon Academy up around 2600 kids but when you think about
042Bill enrollment workbase learning and those opportunities you have a larger case load basically in those classes versus versus others most of the other grades were fair and steady and what we saw the the Esau numbers did go up slightly in the in that in that number um but we're looking at getting over $2 million from the state in that midterm lot which we don't budget until Kathy brings forward the final budget amendments at the end of the F Year and no we won't be spending that $2 million on anything over the next few months other than things like eorts and maybe just some some one off type any other questions I have a motion to accept the financial says motion by dry second M all in favor thank you m there I'm [Music] C sorry
043these items came in from a little bit later on Friday as far as final numbers concerned when we open the Rison Academy on the second and third floor we pulled desks chairs and tables from all over the district to make that happen uh some of those need to go back to some schools because of some student growth and the Consolidated funds budget that Miss Roland received this year there's more excess there than we anticipated un that's the federal funds that come through and so she's bringing forward an action item that allows us to get flexible seity where she and her team work withies uh to to get this procing together and is this you might have just said this but is this I know in the past when we had bought furniture at the state
044contract make motion we approve questions all in favor um we AE motion to our anual training leadership he need something sign we'll be glad to do that just come on up front