001e e e I mean you can always do audio at the last second make sure it's on the right one hang I'm get she [Music] see that can Stacey and I came in together [Music] ever changing this Friday this morning suay evening everyone i' like call tonight's meeting order um have C comments comments have weip call L so if you would please stand up tell us your name and which organization I'm car Baker the director Paul Daws I'm questiony souland I'm the sales director for the N agency all right welcome ladies so we promise to make this short I'd like to entertain a motion to adopt the agenda make motion that we adopt ran numerals three and four motion by Mr second by Dr Randy all in favor motion carries all right uh Dr Williams
002for annually I send you an email that has two different survey links one of them is for the Board of Education self assessment that becomes part of our Exemplar status application Georgia School Board Association then also one regarding my upcoming evaluation you'll get an email approximately 7:30 tonight that we'll have both of those links on it and if you if you don't mind just try to have both of those completed by the end of next week which is March the 14th so giving you a couple weeks complete those um you need more time definitely let me know so that takes care of both those first two BS the third one as well that is fine Mr Lindsay yeah so uh coach Lindsay our athletic director and Eddie nimic going to come forward and talk about
003some of the offerings that we're looking to add next school year we're kind of in that window window now spring in GHSA and getting that stuff submitted Gainesville we have about 2100 kids Gainesville High School and always looking for more ways to get our students involved those W good evening members of the Board of Education I stand before you tonight with immense excitement to introduce two Dynamic and Forward Thinking additions to our gamesville athletic department girls flag football and Esports both slated to launch in the fall of 2025 we live in world where athletic opportunities are constantly evolving and it's our responsibility to ensure that our students have access to programs and not only Foster physical fitness but also cultivate crucial life skills tonight we're bringing forth two initiatives that do just that first let's
004talk about girls flag football this is not just a passing Trend it's a movement across the state and the nation girls flag football is experiencing explosive growth and for good reason it offers our female athletes a chance to shine to develop their skills and to build the kind of teamwork and Leadership that will serve them well beyond the playing field the GHSA has recognized the value of this sport providing the structure and competitive framework for our students to excel in Gainesville we believe in empowering our young women and girls flag football is a powerful way to do just that secondly we will introduce an Esports program while it may seem unconventional to some Esports is a rapidly uh becoming a mainstream competitive activity it's a space where strategic thinking problem solving and collaboration repairment in
005an increasingly Digital World Esports provides our students with an opportunity to develop skills that are highly relevant to their future success this program will also provide a sense of community and a belonging for students who may not traditionally participate in athletics these programs are not just about winning games they're about building character fostering inclusivity and preparing our students for the challenges of the opportunities of the 21st century we understand that introducing new programs requires careful planning and resources that's why we set to launch for the fall of 2025 allowing us ample time to recruit coaches secure equipment and ensure that these programs are set up for Success we are committed to working closely with our community to make these these initiatives a reality these programs represent the Gainesville athle Department's commitment to provide diverse enriching
006opportunities for all of our students they reflect our dedication to Innovation and our belief in the power that Athletics transforms lives thank you for your time and continue support go be ready any question yeah Adam on uh for both of these I guess in terms of the season so flag football will be a fall sport well it's kind of a tweener yes it's considered a fall sport it it starts like October and then goes into to mid December okay and then Esports is that like a finite we're going play these three months or does it go all year it's kind of an all year thing there's actually six different uh state championships involved in these Sports in the six different games that they play okay so that's a fit like these are the six games
007yeah I have no doubt that's continually evolve they continue adding things over years so they actually have some games that are just in the fall and others that are in the spring some that are in both like Mario Cart yeah is in both kids locked into a portal and this portal is controlled where it's only high school kids competing against others so you kind of train throughout the year You' got a four person team in some areas it's a Sixers team in others and so it's it's very structured it's been around these for about five six years yeah 2018 2018 so we we went and visited the three of us and a few others Mr a winds technology as well went visit for County's program within the last month to really look at theirs and
008how it's set up and and what we would need to do to take the Esports program at Le implemented games with City school and then in terms of like who will be competing against with with either of these for the teams that are in our region that we compete against and football and baseball like are they doing these things or is it going to be a completely different group of people competing everybody in our region does compete in both well not any sports F county is not fully orts um but the but most everybody else does when it does and and everybody else I believe the way GHSA hasn't set up is because there aren't that many schools across the state doing it that it's not your traditional 5A program and 6A program it's more
009Geographic well and it depends once you get to as state championships it depends on how many teams each year are competing in Mario Kart or NBA 2K whichever it is depends on whether that's one bracket across the state or three brackets based on classification it just depends and that's pretty typical for like a newer sport rightly people adopted different correct yeah girls like football is the same way it's they combine classifications depend on how many are are competing and only at the high school just starting program at high school yes' we asked uh for S they do have a middle school league but it's more internal you can still have the kids a part of the same play versus play BS of the name of the portal where kids can go in nothing's just organized
010at the middle school level like it is at the high school level for E sports for sports it's like a Feer program and for ESP Sports is it a classroom and G it all after school like the other sports since it's a game good question so some ofools actually have it as a third pathway within computer science because it is approved by the state as a third level course but then everybody has an after school program um the gentleman we spoke with for a while they issue them usernames that are through the school and so they get flagged if that username is used outside of their practice together so if they try to go and do it on a Saturday and and doing that it lets the the coach know also the opposite you can
011restrict it to where you can't use your personal username school mechan so it's it's keeping those two separate was vital and it's up to the coach to monitor that and make sure that the school based experiences are not making get over into people personal and so will we have a structure to be offered during high or are we going to since the high school will be teaching six out of seven next year we are looking at adding possibly if it fits in the schedule um that computer science pathway that third one um and so it would be whether or not it would include kids as part of the team it wouldn't be a requirement but right now we're still kind of early in the schedu part of we may not know this yet but like
012with the Esports will they just particip classroom or we going to have competition in the gym definitely not in the gym Le said this one I think in dark speak more but I think we've identified a classroom that we're established as our Esports lab because the the what I was talking about earlier the machines uh and consoles that the hardwire connect to the network so you're going to have a dedicated space for that equipment so having it in the classroom is ideal because you can have the drops run for it so they have connection network the power is in there the whole room can be set up where we tore that toite that was s because you you could clearly tell you were in an orts room the decor in the room is orts lighting
013the lighting everything in there yeah the old school posters of all the games you know you walk in the you know I'm coming into a game and what was need is like so so take Mario par for example they had four Nintendo switches six PlayStations so like Mario Kart 10 so they work together throughout the year and they and then they also had been PCS which is your your Xbox and some of their other gaming uh competition and so they had basically three different sections within that classroom where you think of it as really kids specialize in a game it's not I I'm a part of the team and I'm going to do all six no you're not we want you to be really good at one or two of them and so uh it
014was really interesting to see how many kids really being a part of this and some were just what you call them some not all them were competitors right particip some were participants just practice players players that you know just like you kind of got varsity and the JB or you got scout team you got the same thing with these SPS but the cool thing about e Sports is you can actually have multiple varsity teams competing in the same competition um so it's not you're just not concluded to one inter in one team per game you could have games yeah it's interesting you as I go through doing some other things I have to deal with some of the brackets and stuff and they all make up their own like a team gets to make up
015their own name but they use their School logo so like trying to figure out what they are sometimes kind of interesting because they they all can make up their their but they they compete in that room um they set up you know we're playing Denmark we we're going to play Denmark at 4:00 today or whatever so they're competing in that room then Mar's competing in their room online how expectators view this don't think they yeah yeah it's not it's not really a spectator sport but they did talk about having um it's one of the things the guys mentioned is they were they were still trying to figure out how to make it so like if you wanted to watch that you could but there's it's obviously when you're talking about school networks and those kind
016difficult we do c think so reason Eddie is on here as well is you can imagine especially on the esport side there's a lot of questions about the network and how to keep it separate but yet still part of the school system uh what is needed within that classroom and everything else talk if you so from the hardware side of speaking to it it was good going to that visit because we kind of got my eyes were open up because in my mind before we went that visit I was like we need a super powerful computer that's maxed out in all the different components after going there and visiting them and seeing the games they play I got the realization that's really not the case so what we did is kind of came back to
017the table looked at what they had in their e Sports lab and kind of built it up a little bit stronger so that there's some future proing so we made sure we had a pretty powerful CPU so games that are kind of CPU intensive uh you can handle that um one thing that was actually shocking to me the heart of in the monitor that was kind of a big takeway it's a 27 in monitor in my mind I'm thinking huge Monitor 40 in 34 in monitor you know Ultra wide high resolution and that's not the case uh they actually want a 27 in monitor because there's a lot of science behind their eye movement and looking at the screen and how fast they can recognize something on the screen when they're competing uh the other
018thing to is lower resolution because they want as many frames on that screen as fast as possible so if you're not familiar with video gaming and frame rates the more frame rates you can have on the screen the more fluid and Advantage you get so for example like your eye can recognize around 79 or 76 frame per second but there are monitors that can go up to 300 frames per and so you need the hardware in the machine to drive and that's kind of what we went after so you'll notice in there I talk about graphics cards uh RAM and the processor all that will drive the games that they're going to play at a really high rate so that they can do that the uh Nintendo switches and the ps5s are all going to
019Connected the same kind of monitor that's 27 in monitor um the other thing too is kind of the peripherals that they're going to use in that room is kind of unique you want to have a a gaming mouse uh you want to have a gaming keyboard and a headset so those all things give you kind of that Advantage you want a mouse that has no latency the other thing too in here is this SLB you want as low input laty as possible so meaning when you move that M get that keystroke and you're game you not want to lie between those those inputs because then that gets you at a disadvantage so from the network side too Bruce and the team we're all working on configuring it so that uh they can without any lag
020whatsoever input lag and also configuring the fire wall and all the fun stuff because it is a completely separate n yes correct and what they do we learned from them as well as U school system is they kind of segment it they put it on it own own network and then they're able to control that traffic on that Network so it's secure and it's not being held back by any of our other rules because honestly if you were to go search camping right now and try to look on the network you're not really going to get there so that's kind of the challenges that we're working on right now so getting the room set up getting the hardware set up uh getting the network configured um and then the devices in so all those regulations
021set standards so everyone's playing seem like the hardware should be standard to make I don't know if there are any rules about the monitor sign I know that if you li so I was call it with B learning more about it trying to figure out what the standers are what we go Monitor and so of course they told me 27 in is the standard orts Monitor and go visit the school but behold 27 in is and 1080p is the resolution um so again that's a lower resolution monitor that's exactly what they have in that school system too I think if you I think the hard part for me because I play video games my whole life my whole time I play video games is turn up all the details to make it look great right
022but every time you do that that game that framewor I talk about goes way down so from from an Esports perspective they want it to be as fast as possible and and at 1080p that's achievable with Modern Hardware so and do we have a coach person already identified definitely not U I'll put out an interest email tomorrow and we did some that expressed interest but we'll open it up to everybody and kind of see where we're at we did take ell Vivant with us County because he currently has a gaming Club uh Gainesville High School and teaches computer but he's also our psych coach so we' really like to have the two person team where you have somebody that could be more in the fall somebody else in the spring so that way you're not
023taking up an ENT an entire year with some of that stuff so it's going to be interesting to get some of that moving um I will say that that the next board meeting Edd's got some of the numbers together about what it would cost to outfit that space uh the new Nintendo switch version two I think it is is coming out later this year so we can wait and buy the newer one uh and then we'll be pricing out some ps5s to be able to put as a part of of the overall setup but the part that's going to be odd PS5 Nintendo switch are the least costly yes items in this entire Sy yeah yeah the the computers are going to be pricey but um happy to say they're not outrageously so again we
024insect them out we try to go you know right at what we needed a little bit above so that we weren't going in asking for a $2,000 graphics card we put in the PC so that's not Happ how many total unit you have 12 there 12 PCS in about 40,000 yes about 43,000 and that's including in that would be the PCS the monitors the mice the headset the keyboards the game chairs so something that's ergonomic comfortable for them that's another thing we got to take away and visit it school system is the chair had to be ideal uh for them um and I think that covers it in the headsets so that their headphones are as well one thing we try to do too was give them flexibility is CRA but when you play a
025video games some players play differently how they hold the M the mouse or how they hold the keyboard so we got um devices that can be either Wireless hardwired and there's actually two wir smokes to so that gives them more flexibility so we're trying find an ideal mix Bo them so they're comfortable all right there any other questions are the headsets just for team communication that's interesting I thought that too but no it's more of the hearing so when you play video games again Go Geek so when you have the headphones on so you you get a sense of really the better you hear and get spatial awareness right but they're playing rocket League predominantly on the PC and so I'm not so certain how much that facial rars come to play but it does
026give you a good audible you know hearing what's happening at the game that was something else too from the takeway games learning what they play those are more E10 games they're not what I thought it was going to be when I showed up you know rocket league if you're familiar L are it's a car in an arena with a with a ball like soccer and uh League of Legends is kind of a a strategy game 2D strategy game where they're competing around in on a map to try to take over in that area m spatoon is a Nintendo game Mario Kart is a Nintendo game Smash Brothers is a Nintendo game no Call of Duty which I thought I was like okay this is GNA get no the only two other games I think were
027mad NBA those are your PlayStation games so I mean I kind of that was a good takeway left is when not going back to the hardware what I found will support any game basically right and it's pretty good in the future to help us I'm trying to get a superintendent board League started with that I notic some of y'all's interest in this I don't think you have the trouble you know building a theater program kids football team down the headsets like with the m stuff like that I me you people get real intense over this stuff right as you are well aware so they I guess I was one making sure or curious are they going to be able to talk to the person they're playing so from what I took from our visit and
028learn about it because it seems like no would be correct I think they turn off game CH yeah talk because that was my perception when we walked Ino I thought oh you're going have a team coordinate talk to each other that wasn't the case team communication would be great but corre I just foree a lot of not nice things said correct you're talking to and a lot of the matches are private hostly GHSA matches so the teams you're not um you're not you're not going playing like an open game offline with a bunch of random people yeah that makes sense you're actually coordinating a game in a private venue against them through this company and organization and so therefore that's why you're not get be faced that's a really question any other questions any flag
029football questions I just I do want to mention um just on the startup cost of that I have completed a grant today through the Arthur Blank Foundation that should cover all of our start of course black football for girls Esports would be I am really excited about black football I'm push my daughter to get involved in that when she gets there there there will be a ton of ton of excitement about girls like football and I and I haven't told my daughter yet because she's been begging me to start up and she's of course graduating so be and the good news is for our girls that do play some false Sports their season is rapping up wrapped up by the time it starts so that's that in between time with for basketball season there an
030opportunity for some of our student athletes all right thank you thank you all right do we have any discussion it if not do I have a motion to adjourn into executive session second secondy all those in favor thank you everyone for coming