Nelson County Board of Education Meeting March 18th, 2025

001[Music] keep [Music] for [Music] you [Music] I [Music] ready [Music] I [Music] you [Music] you [Music] keep [Music] I [Music] you fall face [Music] got [Music] face [Music] keep keep [Music] r [Music] you are [Music] r r [Music] you [Music] I keep [Music] just don't W it up like a paper w we are in school I'm so sorry need the countdown to the last 25 minutes here you guys good we call this meeting of the Nelson County Board of Education to order on March 20 sorry 18th 2025 at 5:30 please welcome cxus Creek student council as they help us recite the pledge 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 guys that was amazing welcome

002everyone tonight um first slide is we're going to make it a point to begin reading our mission for the um School District before our board meetings just so that we can remind ourselves that we're here for a purpose and the son County Schools we unite students with people place and purpose to thrive and work in life so going over the agenda for tonight we are celebrating coxis Creek we thank you guys for allowing us in your space to be here and um discuss the students of coxis Creek um we will be discussing student and staff benefits um and then we'll also be discussing Staffing benefits and priorities we're revisiting Nelson County Board governance rules we also have on there I just didn't write it uh we have some we have a conversation uh around graduation

003and extracurricular programming as well as a final con an update from our up Center uh and uh a timeline for our local planning committee to begin which is tomorrow all right we'll welcome Miss Haley victory so we'll be welcoming a number of team members from coxis Creek to the party if you haven't seen the creek never stops and they're here tonight um before we do that we're also going to celebrate our Nelson County team members for the month of March that were Pride Award winners we have uh again about 5% of team members across the district each year that win a pride award these team members stand out in their work in a variety of ways and this month we we have Miss Heather Hall a business leader at the Boston School Julie fry who's

004a works at the ATC is a part of our health science pathway teacher there Mr Ray Ruchi a maintenance team member and facility lead at Thomas Nelson Miss Tor Moy an English teacher and athletic leader at Oak Kentucky Home middle school as well as Megan D a social studies teacher at Bloomfield Middle School here to celebrating these team members that uh stood out as for their remarkable accomplishments in the month of March I want to say something just a little bit about Miss Hall if you've not been to Boston she's sort of the um she's the comedic act when you go inside she's also the Tik Tock Guru down there and she's the one that makes sure that there are Tik toks for Boston so if you haven't started following that please do they're freaking

005hilarious and if Miss Victor if you would just give a little background on your time here at cxus Creek just before you get started just so everyone is very familiar with you this is my eighth year here at Cox's Creek um so it's really cool to see students like brandy kums um and just um last year during grad walk getting to see some of those seniors um that were my first class and really taught me how to be a bulldog um so yeah it's my eighth year um I taught in Warren County for seven years before this and then I taught at Foster Heights and then somehow I ended up here as the principal um and I'm really glad that I did fantastic so one addition we've made based on conversations with the board around

006priorities as well as thinking about the time of year um is we are asking as we visit schools around the county to do a highlight of an Alum um and soon to be graduate I think it helps us connect the work that we see at coxis Creek with 7 8 n 10 11 year olds with our soon to be graduates so each school will be selecting a student to highlight and telling a little bit about their story and Brandy kums is our first um highlight for that Alum so take it away so I'm Andy prier I am the current dual credit coordinator with Nelson County schools and I got the privilege of hanging out with Brandy a couple of times this school year and she said I want to pursue my associate degree in science

007and so we had to talk about the large task that is that for an associate degree that's 20 classes so that's um a lot of work in addition to your working and um high school credits and so they're they're tasking themselves with a large goal and she said I want to do it no matter what it takes so she's currently taking four dual credit classes right now she's also working and when I say she's working she's not just working her supervisors at her place of employment at Sanders Ridge celebrate her significantly they say she has a servants heart she you know car takes for patients like no one else she's one of the most prepared CNAs that they've ever had in their place of employment so we know that dual credit um prepares students for

008experiences in high school but also After High School most importantly After High School school so that it celebrates their future story we have currently in our district 90 students that want to pursue their associate degree and that's that's huge when you think about again 20 classes Brandy took more than that she said I I'm not only just G to take 20 I'm gonna take 21 I want to really make sure I get that associate degree so I'm just going to let her share a little bit about her experience and whatever that experience is what would you share about getting your associate degree dual credit your the power of place and your your work experience what what would you like to share with any student or even cxus Creek families when you think about um your

009experience Brandy if you could move over to the microphone the the little stand there it moves but it's a good place marker in order for the camera to see who you are okay just you can just hold the mic we it doesn't really matter as long as you stand around that area so last year I didn't start Tak taking dual credits until my junior year and I think I only took one cuz I wanted to start off small I um I took a lot of dual credits through the health collab freshman through junior year but through ectc I just started last year so I crammed all of my associates classes through the summer and through all this year um my freshman year I joined the health collab and the first year it's really just medical

010terminology ology um getting to learn the principles of Health Science and then my sophomore year is when I was able to get my CPR certification and learn all about my emergency procedures that I would be able to do in the health field and then junior year I joined the m& certification class where I was able to get my photomy certification and my CNA certification um I'm getting my associates degree because in the fall I am starting a diagnostic medical stenography um program where I will be able to graduate with my registered diagnostic cardiac stenographer certification at 21 um the associates and science degree is all the prerequisites for that program so instead of doing four years of that I would just go ahead get it done and go straight into the program um dual credit

011it's been an amazing opportunity and I really push everybody that's what like all the incoming freshmen I always tell them start do credits as soon as you can because it'll help a lot it's really it so you graduated from cxus Creek in probably yeah we're just making this connection do you I think it's 2017 here she like it looks smaller yeah just I mean all the artw I mean I remember when they were painting these walls and that was like when I was about to leave but it really looks the same coxis C class of 2017 so impressive very [Applause] much that was almost impressive actually it was impressive cuz I caught myself all right so I just want to take a minute to celebrate some people who are putting forth a lot of effort

012to be the best in the classroom that they can be so just to take a minute to celebrate the people who are doing literacy micr credentialing and the CEO rank change here at coxis Creek we're so thankful that we have people in our district that are willing to put the time and effort in to being the best they can be to learn how to teach reading um backed by science and that's exciting to see the growth from that just real quick I was in a letters for admin training with people all across the state and really all across the southeastern United States and we were talking just today about about how do you get people on board to want to do the letters training and I talked about these programs that we're offering here in

013Nelson County and it was almost like wow that's not happening in our district we're just doing it we're asking teachers to do it without the backing without the support without the funding and so this has just been a great um in incentive for our teachers so we're thankful to have these two things going on for us because it's making us better and it's the best thing for our kids so congratulations to these people thank you for putting the time and effort into [Applause] this uh just real quick before I pass it over to Haley I just wanted to celebrate some growth that cxus Creek has had this year they are actually getting ready to take the I ready again in two weeks yes so we'll get brand new data but this was from the winter

014this is comparing their KSA score last year to I ready in the winter proficiency um grow so they're looking at a growth of four in reading 4% reading and 6% in math so that's exciting and I think even in the next week or so and we have new I ready data those numbers will be much higher they've been really focused and really working on Growing Kids and you're going to hear more about that um throughout the next few slides so I'm going to pass it over to Haley congratulations Haley to your team on this growth I don't usually get to use the clicker that's very exciting um I probably one of my favorite things to do is to celebrate our school um and we're really proud of our school story um so really two years

015ago we started telling the story of the creek that never stops um and that's really a story about spirit and energy um and determination and the story really started um because as a staff it was kind of like something crazy would happen but we didn't stop and it was always because we wanted to accomplish big things for our kids so really the first chapter of the story was about our staff and about just their hearts and how they were willing to do anything to make big things happen but then we started sharing the story with our students and with our families and it's really cool to stand in the gym and to have them shout the creek never stops and they know that when we grab our ore it means that sometimes we just need

016you to pitch in and to make our school fabulous um so we're really proud of that like Miss hope said this week we're doing I ready data conversations and when you go into those data chats with kids they know the creek doesn't stop so for a test like I ready um that is really pretty challenging it's long it's lengthy you're going to get faced with some problems that you maybe don't feel prepared for that mindset of I'm not going to stop I'm going to keep pushing um is really really powerful um so we're really proud that this is our story here at the creek um and then what's really cool and it blew our kids' Minds is there's a creek right back there um so often we celebrate at the creek like when we pursue

017Excellence on IR ready we're actually going to go and have a picnic at the creek um so the story is just kind of growing um but our kids have loved it we've loved it um and it's been really powerful in our work so these are two of our values the first one is pursue Excellence um and really what that means is if my name's on it it's going to be my very best work and our kids have really been trying to pursue Excellence when we think about just setting high expectations and the level of rigor of our work um so in just a moment Miss Janine mentor and Miss Bri gasal they are two literacy leaders in our intermediate grades they're going to talk about how we've really focused on that in writing um and

018then we also have the value of growth matters and really what that means is regardless of your starting point we are working with you to help you grow in whatever area it is that you might need to grow so miss Carol gasal is going to talk to you about differentiated and multi-tiered instruction and how we're very focused especially in our primary grades of making sure all those foundations are there so that every Bulldog is growing to their full potential so I'm going to welcome them on up and can't wait for them to share with you I love that you call it the creek by the way like it's pretty cool all right so I am Janine Minter I teach fifth grade here at coxas Creek um I'm going to start by explaining a little bit

019about our writing um program and systems that we've put in place recently so right here um this came about um a few months ago our third fourth and fifth grade ELA teachers um got together and talked about what do we feel like all good writers need to do what is um just a com what are the common expectations of good writing and we came up with three categories of clear connected and compelling and then we also added correctness at the bottom so we looked at our district rubrics and our writing standards and just picked out the most important you know big pieces that all writing needed to have and this is what the fifth grade one would look like and then we scaffolded it down to Fourth and third um so that each year they're

020getting a little bit more familiar and adding a little more rigor to their writing so the idea is that this poster is on all of our walls and they will hopefully just have this terminology in their minds that it kind of becomes second nature for them to know that my writing needs to have these pieces in it um and then up in the top right corner where it says painted essay oh I do want to add we do have specific rubrics for specific assignments that we still use specific writing rubrics but this is more of a all writing has this um and then our painted essay so our district brought in a new um Ela curriculum this year for us um eel curriculum and with it came this idea of a painted essay which is

021the way students would write a four to five paragraph essay it's a structure for that and we had a structure in the past but didn't always have super great success with it so this um honestly in fifth grade as soon as we started using it we just found kids really um embraced it it's easy to understand it's colorcoded if you see the green at the bottom in the conclusion matches the Green in the thesis statement on purpose because their conclusion should bring them back to the thesis statement um even yellow and blue together make green so that helps you know the two points kind of come together for the green conclusion and then their red introduction should be wow catching their attention and bringing them in um our fifth graders have already written four painted

022essays already this year um an opinion about rainforest um an informative writing about a historical figure um they wrote a literary essay about a book as brona rising and then just last week they wrote an opinion essay about the most important factors that contributed to the success of Jackie Robinson which was really um a lot of fun so this is third through fifth grade as well so um hopefully these posters just become more second nature like I said to students as they see them year after year after year and then Bri is going to share us or share with us how fourth grade uses them hi there I'm Bri gasal so I teach fourth grade ELA here at the creek um I really live in the world of elel um this school year so I

023just wanted to talk to you a little bit about what we do with the writing process in eel um elel is really cool in the fact that it starts out with in that first unit there's a topic so we just wrapped up the American re ution I learned so much about the founding of our country this school year um along with the kiddos but the first unit is really just focusing on those literature and informational standards learning and getting that background knowledge becoming experts the second unit is more okay now let's write about these standards and then the third unit is really the writing okay we're experts let's share our knowledge let's spread it so we wrote broadsides If you don't know what a broadside is it's like a political poster or an opinionated poster

024that they used to post back in the day I told the kids I was like they didn't have Tik Tok they didn't have Facebook this is what they did they they wrote these posters they gave their opinion and they posted them around the town so now we get to write our own posters um so we did this with a live write we started with El we wrote um a loyalist broadside in the classroom that was modeled and guided for the students so every day we came in here's your mini lesson on an introduction we're going to write it together we're going to sit down if you're struggling I'm going to pull you you so very modeled and guided and then what we want to do is we want to take that modeled and guided and

025turn it into an independent experience for them and also give them feedback to take and work on that um it's also cool for us because we get to track okay we know you can do this in the classroom alone you can do this in the classroom with us but what's going to happen when I set you on your own um so that's what our live right looks like we take the students and we put them in more of like a testing environment almost um get them out of the classroom we give them their things and we say you did this with us let's see you doing it on your own like you got this so that's what we just did with the American Revolution they wrote that loyalist broadside with us and then they got

026to go um we had Miss M and Miss Basher here in the library and then Mr I and myself in the lunchroom and we sat and they wrote on their own for like three hours they just wrote they did it no complaints um no complaint no complaints no groaning they locked in and they did Fabulous um and then we have adults from all over the building come in um and they'll had this rubric so we have a teacher rubric that has the okay we're not there yet we're doing it wow we're really exceeding for the students we kind of knock it down to this middle checklist where should I be what looks like success for me so those adults come in and they sit down with a group of four or five students and they

027get to read and sit down and say oh wow you're doing really great in this I think we could change this here and then they make those notes those students take that feedback and they go back and they make the corrections on their own um and then we final score it um so that's our goal there with modeling and then L lending that into the independence and feedback um we also want to connect and energize our writing with experience to make it fun and more lively for students um it's never super exciting when you look at a student okay now we're gonna write four paragraphs um so in order to do that we actually got to have a debate so they wrote Patriot and Loyalist broadsides they got to be on both sides um and

028then after that um the day after our live right they sat down and read both of them and then decided which one they were more passionate about what would I have been when I was a colonist and then they picked that side they were locked in with it and then they had a debate so we grouped them up with a couple of other students that were on opposite ends and they got to sit there and have conversation about well I think you should be a patriot because of this well no I'm a loyalist because of this um and that was also really cool to see that writing and knowledge put into those conversations um and then the next day we followed that up with we made a broadside um so whatever side they picked they

029made that broadside and we pulled out some feathers and some ink and we did that like true colonist um so it was just really awesome but Bri Gasco class of 2014 coxis Creek that's me is that right that's not right hi I'm Carol gasal the literacy specialist here at cxus Creek and I'm going to talk to you about our sore Intervention Program I'm going to step this way so I can see the slide our sore Intervention Program is an intentional um program that services our students that are 10% up to about 30% based on I data so what happens is in the fall we take a very intense look at our I ready data and we choose our students from about 10% up we choose students in first second and third grade um um that

030need support services once we choose the students in those grades we then take those students and we group them again based on Star assessments and based on fluency check assessments so what we're looking for is what's the exact need that they have that will help rise them up out of that 30 percentile and below so once we put them in those intentional groupings they then come into the literacy room for intense instruction in this highly INR structured environment those groupings are 15minute stations of Reading Writing and word work at the reading table they're going to have decodable text they're going to have decodable passages that are Orton Gillingham so they're going to be working to read those P those passages and text they're going to be working on vocabulary and of course comprehension at the

031word work table we use a mix of resources we use youly also Orton Gillingham and we also use recipe for reading students are working Hands-On in that station they're working with sand which is always fun they're working with magnetic letters they're working with whiteboards and they're manipulating the words with that skill that they're working on at the writing table they're working to encode and to decode the words with the skill that is their area of need while the students are working in all three of those stations the teachers are working to collect data so at my table the reading table I'm taking constant Running Records because I'm wanting to make sure to collect as much data as possible to see does that group of students need to continue on the path that we're on or

032do I need to adjust my instruction for that group of students same thing for my teacher that's working at the word workor table and at the writing table where do we need to go from here that's going to inform my instruction from there on as well as every two weeks we're collecting data with a star progress monitoring tool that star tool is telling me is my student progressing to the point that they need to go back into their classroom have they met their goals or do they need to stay in sore a little bit longer where do I need to go with this student at this point now at the winter point we're going to have an I ready assessment again and at that assessment point we're going to take another Deep dive into that

033assessment have some of my students row above the percentile do they need to go back into their classroom or do they need to stay if open spots come open now I can pull more students into my sore groups and service those students at that point um you'll notice that it says here that there it's very fluid groupings um I always tell students we never graduate and the students did I graduate miss high school did I graduate no one graduates we kind of come and go I might have a student that comes into sore in first grade I never see them again in second grade but then they pop back in third grade because there's a skill that they need so I give them that skill that they need in first grade and then they they

034soar they they don't need me even though it's called soar in second grade and then they might pop back in again in third grade and that's perfectly okay um I make sure to keep the parents informed your student is in sore we're working on these skills I sent home a sore report that's Star based um with report cards and then if parents want to reach out I'll send home more reports as needed and then I also stay in contact with the parents I mean with the teachers also and if they need more support I'll give the teachers more support also um if that's something that's needed and then also one more thing I'll try not to bore you to death um the 10 percentile and Below you're probably wondering what about those babies those are

035Senate n Senate N9 Senate Bill 9 friends and they are supported in a different way um after the sore groups ends at 11:00 they're pulled for more intentional Services um it's more they're in a smaller group and it's more intervention and it's also won Gillingham in the afternoons our sore groups run every day from 8:00 am to 11:00 a.m if you are interested in seeing those we would love to have you thank you so much that's a lot of information in that short little period of time I'm sorry I'm fast talking no it's good so you guys had a fantastic job of helping us see in real life some of the conversations we've been having around Staffing and academic outcomes um and the benefit of foundational academic skills any conversation from the board well I

036think you know understanding that data I think that's something that I would like to see what's the percentage of students that that enter the sore program and then I'm sure it's all different levels of how soon they are transitioned into the next level but just looking at that data and understanding that a little bit better and clearer so that we understand um how we can better support that well I think it's the reality that we live in everyone thinks that if you have 30 kids in a classroom or 2 or 20 or even 10 that all 10 of those students are learning at the same level they're able to to comprehend the information that you're giving them and everyone is just good and everybody just moves right along this is proof that every student learns

037in a different way and sometimes it just takes additional resources sometimes it just takes one person that sits with them and I think this is this is what we need to continue to um share with the public so that everyone understands classrooms are not just full of students that are on the same same grade level they're are full of individuals with individual needs and this is the kind of stuff we need to hear so I really do appreciate what you guys have invested in time and energy and we know you're here because the students um but we appreciate it greatly thank you [Applause] guys all right unless you got another slide in there I feel like you kind of keep surprising me we're moving on to guest comments um thank you for attending the Nelson

038County Board of Education meeting any person wishing to address the board may do so by following these rules individuals representing themselves are limited to three minutes individuals representing a group are limited to five please step forward state your name and um address and if you represent a group State the name of the group you are representing we have one individual tonight uh Justin Burton Justin Burton Cox's Creek Kentucky I'm speaking for myself Nelson County board members and superintendent Bradley I'm here to address what I believe to be a misguided decision made by both Kentucky Department of Education and the board four years ago I moved from Carter County Kentucky to pursue my passion for teaching social studies I was drawn to this District because of its forward-thinking vision and willingness to take healthy risks however

039once I began my journey here I quickly realized that this Vision was not universally supported rather than dismissing opposing perspectives I took the time to listen understand concerns and evaluate both sides of the discussion through this process I concluded that the best path forward is one that prioritizes student achievement both academically and personally throughout my time in this District I've dedicated myself to ensuring students feel supported and empowered I've done this by actively participating a in the summer Leadership Pathways for the past three years serving as assistant athletic director developing Title 9 meetings uh with coaches parents and students to Foster more inclusive in safe Sports environment collaborating with TS and Nelson County High School social sa departments as the tnhs department chair and expanding the tnhs golf team from four players to 12 players

040over the past three years my deep investment in this district and its students makes me confident that I'm the kind of individual who should contribute to an LPC and shaping District facilities plans yet despite this progress we have made the district's Vision remains just that a vision because of ongoing frivolous legal obstructions designed to solely delay progress what we are witnessing now is a repeat of the events from four years ago however unlike then there appears to be less determination to push back against the influence of a small group of community members who seek to dictate board decisions while it fully support the responsible allocation Financial Resources I believe even more strongly in upholding the Integrity of the electoral process it is my firm conviction that the election of the LPC members during the February

041meeting was conducted in a legitimate and lawful manner despite objections from individuals such as Jack C and two of our board members the removal of two duy nominated elected LPC members based on Jack C's concerns rais significant issues although KDE oversees nominations and approvals it appears Mr C has once again leveraged influence to sway KDE into overturning the decisions made by the educators of this District as history teacher I can tell you that appeasement will result in losing the power that you think you have what has transpired here is a clear example of how repeated complaints and Vil legal threats have been used as tools to override the Democratic will of our Educators I strongly urge this board and the community at large not to allow this obstruction to to continue undermining progress in our

042school district the will of the majority should not be repeatedly stalled or dismantled due to an unwillingness to stand firm against the tactics it is time to uphold the integrity and the decisions made and ensure that our district moves forward for the benefit of our students as a community we are tired of the dysfunction continually created by two of the board members and we are now more than ever committed to moving this District forward and holding anyone accountable who does not act in the best interest of students thank you thank you all right moving on to the consent agenda um the board had this information in advance um was there any areas of discussion this did include the um two policy revisions one was on Student Activity and the other was on guest comments um

043so these would have been our second reading any discussion all right we will need a motion to approve the consent agend it as presented I will make a motion all right thank you and a second I'll second thank you all in favor I any opposed motion passes 5 to zero all right Miss Shear horn U for Grant applications and acceptance how are you all today doing good good um so we intend to apply for the fiscal year 25 Kentucky new Mercy counts Grant um it will help us um to strengthen tier one um core instruction in K3 mathematics um by allowing us to purchase some um supplemental curriculum materials as well as to provide professional development um the award is for a year and it is for $70,000 any discussion all right I need a

044motion to recommend the to this is a approved the application process yes we're going to apply for this yes I will make the motion thank you I need a second second thank you all in favor I any opposed motion passes five to zero all right now moving on this so this is the fun stuff um um so we were recently awarded the reading Diagnostic and intervention Grant uh for $160,000 across four of our elementary schools to provide professional development and materials um to teachers for tier two and tier three instruction for for grades K through three all right so this going back to um a few working sessions ago this is where we talked about how grant funding really helps offset cost but more than anything it really gives us funding that is specifically designed

045for areas of the district where there's need um and I think again we can't thank you enough for continuing the work um because it is um it's good work so we appreciate that and before we um make a motion to accept this I would like to say that I was on the dist on the KDE website today and there's a sister Grant to this that districts often seek and it is a $1.5 million Grant and Nelson County was awarded that Grant today that's right yay so we'll be bringing that one next board meeting kind of short notice to get it she couldn't wait to celebrate it that was huge and we talk so much as a board about literacy in the port of this and um first I would commend Miss Newton and Miss doy

046for being able to work with the staff to it it requires that districtwide you select a curriculum that will be used from K through 12 and so that's a process and in of itself for our teachers to work together and then of course huge kudos to miss sheer horn to bring that together and be able to successfully write that application it is significant to be funded and it will do tremendous work to move our district forward because this provides a the whole literary C curriculum and training so it it is huge for Nelson County to get this that's awesome glad to hear that thank you absolutely all right I will need a motion to approve the grant acceptance as presented I'll make a motion thank you and we need a second a second all right

047thanks all in favor any opposed all right motion passes can I say one more yeah there was also some other good news I heard the um a few years ago we were awarded the adult ed program the GED Grant and I heard today that we were awarded that Grant again for about $425,000 this morning that's fantastic lots of good news today I wish every day was like this hey we'll take them when we get them good job Dr sh very very great news thank you all right moving on we we are um going to be hearing from Devin O'Brien from our transportation department so really I'm just coming before you today to ask permission to purchase a used school bus um slightly used it's a 2017 uh from Bath County $28,600 and we're just constantly

048evaluating the needs of our Fleet and this opportunity has presented itself we feel like it's a a great value especially at the cost of a new bu um to only have 60 somewhat Thousand Miles um the other good news is depreciation will transfer from Bath County to us so we'll continue receiving depreciation on that bus just a good example of our transportation team trying to invest smart money so thank you for being proactive this is an alternative to uh rebuilding and some of the methods that we can't always rely on just as a reference point you may see more of this in the future where we are purchasing you buses as opposed to rebuilding certain buses is that fair it is there's a a certain range of buses that had a uh engine that was

049discontinued um but we look at it we kind of look at what the mileage is on the bus um and figure out do we feel like it's a good investment to rebuild that bus or go ahead and send it on its way and look at other options all right so we will need a motion to approve the bus purchase request as presented I'll make a motion all right thank you second thank you all in favor I any opposed motion passes 5 to zero thank you all thanks Devin all right now we get on to graduation dates um superintendent Bradley this is the most important item on the agenda tonight for most people in our community um the graduation traditionally occurs on the last Friday evening of the school year each year we rotate start times

050for graduation between the high schools graduation ceremonies are typically around one hour we share that to say that's how this this design this is designed set graduation date the the current uh cycle would put Thomas Nelson High School graduating at 5:30 p.m. on May 23rd and Nelson County High School graduating at 7:30 p.m. on the same evening Friday May 23rd so I wanted to have a little bit of discussion around the graduation uh more around the ceremonies itself you know the board has played a significant role in graduations well for as long as I've been on the board and I'm sure years before that um it sort of has evolved over the last few years one where it went from board members handing diplomas to students to now where their care and connect leaders hand

051their diplomas which I think by far the best decision that we've made um really those people are spending um the years with these students they're watching them grow they're on that Journey with them and I think it's important that they get to celebrate that um I want the board to really think about what our role is moving forward that definitely we need to be there we need to be celebrating this um but I want the principles to really hear and really have a permission structure from the board to find out where our best placement is how our role is best utilized during those ceremonies so my request is just for the board to kind of look at consider that over the next few weeks as they start to plan and um look at that that

052they really sort of give us a role that's intentional and because yes we can sit on that stage and we can smile and wave and do all those things but I really want our roles to be there more to serve the students and to celebrate them so just again just something you guys can consider and think about and we'll we'll talk a little bit deeper as we get closer to it I would like to hear from both principles regarding how they would like to see us engaged in the process definitely so on to that there were oh we do need to Pro do need to set graduation dates so I need a motion to set the graduation for Friday May 23rd with Thomas Nelson School graduating at 5:30 p.m. and Nelson County High School graduating

053at 7:30 p.m. I'll make a motion thank you I need a second I'll second thank you all in favor I any oppos motion passes five to zero all right um again this Staffing benefits with um Miss Hogan and Mr Martin so we just because we won't see the board again in theory until April 15th um we wanted to make sure as we look towards the next four weeks we provided some contacts around Staffing knowing there's still some lingering conversations um and some of these are policies that will take place over the course of the next four months leading into the June policy revision some of these would take shape around April 15 um if it relates to the salary schedule so that's a part of our we just wanted to revisit some of the conversations

054we've had over the last six to eight weeks Mr Martin would tell you the first part here is by law we also have to approve the Staffing allocations by May so the first part of this is hopes well really this is just Staffing priorities when we think about what why when we have these Staffing conversations with even admin and teams like what are our priorities it's around in math program providing content experts support and being able to provide career and growth compensation like through the micro credentials and the rank changes so these these have really been the basis of all of our conversations so that's been um really helpful to have these priorities as we think through Staffing so really I'm just going do you have the I just wanted to go over um library

055media programming what we have currently I know this is something that's came up and I just wanted to kind of review that currently we have um across the district one certif certified library media specialist all five elementary schools have part-time classified or certified staff um 3 to 6 hours a day that's based on student enrollment so either 15 or 30 hours per week and then the mid on high schools have um four student media leaders one at each place that helps support that with that too um our certified library media specialist Jessica has been really helpful in supporting the classifi and certified staff in the other schools so she's been I think was she here this week I think supporting here at coxis Creek um with their person and so it's been really helpful we're

056learning a lot from this we have a lot of positive feedback from the elementary team on this model um so this is kind of where we're at and we're just really evaluating what that might look like in the future and how we can grow from this but we've had a lot of positivity from what they've been doing so far within the classrooms in the library is this something that's recently been implemented so they've had several of them had have had this since the fall it just depends on when the school found the person they wanted and so they have had the opportunity I think right after fall break they started looking into this and what that might look like so all of them when they found the person a lot of them have um retired

057Librarians in their building so I know um here at coxis Creek right B is a retired um librarian Boston I think maybe is a retired certified teacher so they've they've really taken some time to find the right people and not just oh we have a classified position let's hire someone so they've really been intentional about who that is and what that looks like in their school and so like I said we've had a lot of positive feedback from that um we're learning from it we have data that shows the like increase in the number of books being accessed or used is there anything that you can report I don't have those on hand but we can definitely get those through our book checkout system yes definitely I can report on those and are the hours

058such that or the policy so that the student can come down and access the library because you know with it three being a three-hour window student so the library is always open for everyone we have checkout systems that are pretty self-sufficient so even when they don't have this person teachers bring their kids down and they're able to check out the kids know how to work the checkout system so teachers are really working with kids on what types of books should they be checking out what what's your interest like all of those things are happening within the classroom so it's more of a fluid instead of I'm coming in and I'm meeting this one person and I don't you know when I was a teacher my kids would bring back like these sick books and they

059would never look at them and I'm like okay we need to have a conversation about what books are appropriate for you and so teachers are being able to do that and have their hands in what kids are getting of course they have choice too but they're really just getting something the kids are reading that's helping them become better readers instead of something that they're just picking off the shelf and they're not interested in so they can come anytime to all of our libraries they're open and every one of them has a self-sufficient checkout system this is more they're coming in here's an example they're reading they're thinking about some of them are really working with the E curriculum so if they're learning about birds in the classroom they're reading about birds in the library or

060they're doing something around the same topic so that's happening it really just kind of looks different at each building um based on need and what what the teachers are doing with that classified or certified person we we included this as a request from board members who are interested in this ongoing conversation we started this conversation I think last fall um so it has evolved over the last four or five months I think it's safe to say that we are going to have to continue to level up the structures um while miss Sparrow has reported some growth in this conversation I think she feels really positive about the students she was a part of that interview process yeah she was very Hands-On and picking her media leaders and she's had really positive things to say about

061them and they've been tremendous help to her in her system so that's been a very positive switch to to make something sustainable you we're going to have to continue to build a system that is integrated into this process so so I've been updating you all over the last few months on some work that we're doing related to benefits teaming um last month I shared with you all that these are the four things that came out of the benefits teaming groups we've had um over 20 some meetings now where we brought together staff from across the district these are four things that they were very interested in that they asked us to focus on first uh the bereavement leave policy we have drafted a policy and that's something that I'll be sharing with you all um

062at a board meeting um in the next month or two uh paid maternity leave that is something that we've started drafting a policy on as well um we're also looking at that for birth or adoption of a child and how what might we include a few days for paternity leave as well for gym memberships and other discounts um we've been working with local gyms um throughout Nelson County to uh offer discounts to staff we've also been talking about what it looks like to provide a central location in the county for staff to be able to go to to work out for free we've also started a page on weart in c.com that will allow staff to see uh businesses both locally and throughout the state that offer discounts for teachers and Nelson County staff so

063we're working on that it's a work in progress it doesn't look real great right now but we're getting there uh for staff Child Care um hope and I met on that this week um we've been working with the child care team to talk about what that might look like to provide uh child care for staff and grandchildren of staff and then as well as before and after school care so I reviewed this data at our last working session just a recap when we think about U benefits for Staffing obviously salar is a big conversation so it was asked to look at really our rankings as we compare to the state and the KD has this data on their website and again this is salary SCH scheduled data and again teachers are really paid based upon

064their rank so if I have a bachelor's degree I'd be considered a rank three and essentially my first step that's really my first year teaching that's that's how districts base their salary schedule and you'll see ours uh again in April um but this just kind of showcases different stages that a teacher may be in so if I'm at a rank three first year teacher we rank 16th in the state out of 171 districts as far as certified salary pay uh and then rank two would be your first Masters you can see uh starting pay and step 27 is is where most districts top out and then rank one would be your second Masters and you can see those so really uh very similar rankings across all those steps and uh teacher rank also at the

065top really just shows how many people this impacts so uh about a hundred or a little over a hundred people uh certified teachers in each one of these categories I'm glad to see that our salary is in a competitive place place in the state because I think that's very important for Teacher Recruitment and Retention and especially as we look across years um I'd love to see us go into the top 10 and I also would say that I think Nelson County could set itself apart if we looked at increases at years 28 29 and 30 because as teachers gain experience they're very valuable and we it's hard to replace people and sometimes it's a disincentive to not have a salary increase because retirement if you're not going to increase your retirement much by staying why

066not go and I I would like to see us look at doing some steps beyond your 27 to encourage people to stay and remain absolutely we can work on that so also just a few other uh salary graphs as you think about uh we've seen quite a bit of growth really when you stud our salary schedule over the past 5 to seven years for certified salary again depending upon your rank and step uh that percentage increase has increased anywhere from 15 to 20% since 2018 for certified roles and then classified roles really encompasses a number of things I've showed this chart before U but I've updated it a bit um but I've just kind of handpicked a few classified roles that we have throughout the district varying from bus driver secretary facility lead and uh

067and IIA and you can see their 2018 pay versus 2025 and that percent increase depending upon the role you're looking at anywhere from 25 to 75% increase for some of these roles again depending upon the step that that employee may be on uh so it's just good to to review these things it's also a great celebration I think the board is committed to putting people first and I think our salary definitely shows that I would like to discuss that just real quick because some of the most powerful people we have in the district if if you look at 2018 um it's kind of sad to think that some of the most powerful people that we have our bus drivers um our secretaries or business leads were not piing much more than minimum wage so I'm

068grateful that that we see that they're actually making a decent um salary that's good I think sometimes we also tend to overlook if if we don't work in schools that classified salary that's hourly but many of our employees are working just when school's in session that's 180 days a year and although this is a good hourly wage because they don't work 240 or 260 days it is not overall a living wage as it appears so to make if you are an instructional assistant making let's say $22 an hour you're not making working the same number of days as someone if you were working elsewhere making 22 so just point that out because the importance of having these wages that hourly is not a full indicator of what they're being earning across a year that's right

069so I'm gonna kick it back over to Kim here kick so I wanted to update you all on the Staffing strategic framework that we've been working on um Miss Arnold and I have been doing this I presented this to you all before um you may see on social media there's been some ads out there and we've been talking about your future is calling will you answer because we want people to understand how great Nelson County Schools is to work for some of the things that we've been doing and collaborating with principles on is there will be a level up event in Nelson County on March 27th and 28th we've invited um seniors who will be graduating from college to come here and learn about um what a great place place to live barstown Kentucky is

070and to learn all about what it looks like to work in the district we're also doing a level up career fair on April 17th that will be an opportunity for uh folks who um live around the county who have a degree who might have an interest in teaching to learn about what opportunities are available for them to become a certified teacher as I said we have the social media campaign and um we you will see us putting ads out there on Facebook and Instagram to promote what it's like to work in Nelson County schools to get people to join us for these events to come to work for us I talked a little bit about the benefits teaming a moment ago we also have a talent talent ambassador program that we're considering and um this

071is a recruiting tool for current staff members I'll be presenting something to you all um at the next board meeting about what this looks like as far as a dollar value but what we would like to do is have talent ambassadors across the district who would work with us to recruit people it's very similar to um the um hiring program that we have in transportation where someone can refer a bus driver to us and earn money for doing that we're currently looking at a $1,500 stien that would be paid to you for referring me and that would be paid over a series of time so you might get $500 after the first 30 days $500 after 6 months and $500 after a year for example so once those um folks are recruited into the district

072they would have a wingman or a mentor in the district to help them be successful over that first year uh so they would continue to stay and be retained in the district as part of this work for the town Ambassador is the mentor mentorship is embedded into this they really part of the stiping goes along with the mentorship program uh and it would be focused on instruction but also culture just being connect getting connected to the community and getting connected to people across Nelson County Schools so I share that to say the the referral process is just the beginning of the relationship with that person um I just wanted to end with a couple celebrations about some of the work across the district as Mr Martin shared with you earlier our salaries are much more

073uh competitive in the region now than what they were in the past and I want to celebrate that when you look at those percentages of increase that's something really big to celebrate as far as staff culture and engagement we have sent out surveys yesterday a staff quality of service survey that went out to staff across the district to look at some of the things that we do as a central office and dist District to provide services to them that came back with a roughly 90% positive rating which to me says a lot about the work we've been doing um we I also want to recognize our grow your own program as you all know we're a state leader in that program and um Miss Courtney Newton and Shelby kundu were invited by the Kentucky Department

074of Education to go around the state and present this work to to other districts who were looking at what they could do to grow their own leaders and they've been doing that over the last few weeks and I think that's something to really celebrate if you think about what we're doing we have student apprentices adult apprentices the uh education collab we have a lot of great opportunities out there for people to become certified teachers and then as far as the benefits teaming as you all seen um we uh have been doing a lot of work across the district with staff to focus on what we're doing to improve benefits to both recruit and retain staff coxis Creek's got two adult apprentices currently uh working within the building here which is more than anybody in the

075state because they're the first two um and uh they may or may not be awesome uh and uh so I think what we can say is if the current trajectory continues with adult apprentices we feel like our elementary schools will be self- sustained through that adult apprenticeship model over the next 3 to four years um so that's our that's our anticipation um middle schools then follow and really our level up for next year and then the key to getting to the high schools is the middle schools so that's something that U just to give some context you know we know that when you grow your own locally and they're embedded into the people and the places of that community their level of commitment is deeper and um the the value of that you can't put

076a price on so uh we're really excited about the energy in that program and the the growth we're seeing we've also started to work on those harder to find content areas like English Math and Science and bring in apprentices for those content areas as well awesome thanks guys great work so um moving on this is a brief discussion um superintendent Bradley and I were talking the other day just on how we can continue to um hone in on our board um governance skills and looking at how we can um better communicate and sort of build that relationship ship and the vision for the district I think it's important that U we have a vision as the board because then we can share that with the community one of the things that we talked about is

077um having a board retreat not sure what that looks like yet but I've sort of asked the superintendent to sort of look at having a facilitator for that so we can start kind of planning that um so just something that you guys can sort of look at on I we really don't have a date or time or anything like that at this point just mainly just start looking for someone that can start that conversation um so we can just be better at what we do I understand that to be a common practice among boards to come together and um do some priority setting and some some real discussions about processes in order to be a good and effective team and um serve the best of the community engage our community absolutely I would support that

078so um with that being said any further discussion I mean I think it would be a good thing definitely so I like the idea of finding somebody to facilitate it maybe we can even get some continuing educ you know something because this might organized but we could sort of be like cats too and Chase a butterfly so that's easy to do so we really want someone to kind of come in and sit with us and and really give us good direction so um we'll be continuing to look at that was there anything you wanted to add super no I think uh we can by April 15th probably have some ideas okay on the table sh's good all right moving on um we are going to have U Mr Mike LEF favors um he has been

079working across the district as a a consultant I would say um just looking at extracurriculars and how we're building those across the district so we have strong strength um programs for our schools and students so this is the position that we approved I believe in February January January January defined Mr Bradley could you address the purpose of that again just to refresh everyone I think we've got a slide here um that Mr the favors are going to be able to talk to really I think we've recognized a as a and Mr the favors are kind of going to detail about some of the complexity we have in Nelson County um but we wanted to be able to dive deeper into how we can strengthen extracurricular engagement for students and families across the Nelson County schools

080that was the primary goal and please introduce yourself give a little background of all your great experience thank you thank you Mike you're goingon have to said a little bit over that way this way because the camera is right there yeah we got used to that yes I see it I'm Mike Le favors 30 years in education 14 is superintendent in Bole County most of it two years in gared um what a great board meeting tonight and just the gr that you all pull in blows me away because I me I was superintendent 14 years and you all announced tonight more than we got in 14 years so quite impressive and I know that's just you had a a history of doing that so um and I want to first thank the board for the

081opportunity for this position I know you all created it Mr Bradley and his team as well um I've had 18 months off since I retired and getting back with people who are passionate about kids uh the folks here in Nelson County has been been great for me so I want to thank thank you for that opportunity um I've got a little PowerPoint to run through with you tonight and so I guess we'll just get clicker behind you should be all right so this is the job description and my focus has been the first two of these three around extracurriculars and what I'll say to you is I make recommendations tonight I don't make decisions you all make decisions the board Mr Bradley his team I make recommendations now I will make recommendations as is my

082personality with passion um I'll be very direct at times you may feel like well that feels like more than just a recommendation but it's just a recommendation that's all it is but again uh thanks for the opportunity and um and so we'll get we'll get to uh we'll get to it here I've gotten to meet with a lot of people over 30 meetings at this point talk to each of you talk to many people in the audience here um really great people in Nelson County that's been the the greatest part of getting to do this work and so this is an idea of who I've met with you've got some great strengths or or celebrations and one of them is your athletic facilities two new tur Fields your uh athletic training facilities are great um

083three gymnasiums youve got Flex spaces in your schools really your athletic spaces are as good as ours and boil um now there are people who have indoor training facilities and things like that that you all don't have we didn't have that in boil either your athletic facilities are not holding you back in any way shape or form another big celebration is your participation rate you have over 500 students participating in extra curriers and this is just the athletic part your clubs are down a little bit since the pandemic but still not bad but this again is just Athletics and over 500 students all the research says that students who participate in extracurriculars do better academically they do better uh social emotionally they do better when they transition from high school to the next steps in

084life so this is a something to celebrate and a real strength for you guys you do have however some challenges and the first one is the feeder pattern and when I interviewed people the word that kept coming up was chaos and all these lines point to where kids so the elementary schools at the bottom then the middles and the highs at the top and you see the lines and intersecting and uh um anyway so as people started describing that as chaos I thought to myself I need to see the data so the next few slides I'm going to show you the data this one is your feeder schools it's focused on your feeder schools and like the school we're in uh right now 44% of the students in this school will end up at Nelson

085County High and 53 Thomas Nelson now I can tell you that's really a unique situation I mean you won't find that across Kentucky in very many districts most districts are closer to 100% go to one high school right but you can see all your elementary schools have some kind of breakdown like that this one probably is the most extreme in that regard so when I started seeing this data it made me want to research what's the impact so you can see here to the left it talks about when students have some kind of disruption to their feeder pattern it creates a 10% reduction in performance academic or extracurricular and each time there's a disruption it compounds and you all have built into your feeder pattern many disruptions for kids so that so I guess when

086you think about the feeder patterns and the challenges that you all face there um the chaos is the way people have described it right and you saw the previous graph but this 10% reduction is really the powerful thing here's the data if you look at it from the high school perspective so this is Thomas Nelson this is where the kids are in elementary school that will end up there the Middle School you see o is out of district and then this is Nelson County High very similar I mean the the breakdowns are a little bit different but the point's the same they're getting kids from all five of the elementary schools uh both both of the middle schools they've got some out of District kids as well so that's a big challenge for you all

087that most districts in Kentucky do not face and something that I know you all been grappling with for some time any questions about that before we move on the o OD that's not out of the county that just is that of the county Alex got it so about 12 to 13% of both of our high schools that are not in the county all right let's move on this is the transportation impact from that feeder pattern situation you all transport 25 200 students each day and 875 of those students are negatively impacted by at least 20 minutes which is 35% of the students you transport have some kind of negative impact from the feeder pattern which when I saw that data it made me just think of the urgency behind doing something to rectify the feeder

088pattern problem and I know you all are working on it another challenge you all face is the size of your county it's a massive County landwise 424 square miles um I came from I was born in in in Casey County which is similar in size to Nelson County but when you go to the remote areas in Casey there are no people there's like very few houses you guys as you can see here you have people in every part of your county which speaks to the transportation burden that I'm sure Devon was in the audience before um that you all experienc now most of them are centrally located that's what that Circle represents but that doesn't uh take away from the fact that it's a large County and people are dispersed across the entire County and

089that's a factor when you talk about extracurricular success and really academic success as well it's not a bad thing it's just it's just a like a factor your youth programs is another one that's really unique most uh County systems you'll see they have the County government the city government will be involved in the youth athletic programs they're also be these 501 c3s that contribute and then the board's role and the district's role really is to they'll bring facility requests to you wanting to use your facilities the board will consider approve those facility requests and then the 501c3 the city government the County government carry out the youth athletic programs your El is different um you have to do it all yourselves which creates quite a burden for several reasons but one of the reasons is

090a lot of times the policies of the board of this board and the policies of those Youth Athletic program um groups they don't match and then your athletic directors and your administrators who were trying to figure out how to carry out both simultaneously get in a tough spot um it's not a natural fit for a school district to try to run youth athletic programs from within the district and that's why I say that it demands greater Clarity for governance which I'll get to a little bit later in my recommendations you also have two public school districts many parochial schools but yet each of them are trying to create the same thing on their own um there's really not much collaboration between these different entities it'd be good if the different school districts and schools would

091could work together because you're really working towards the same goal of getting more kids involved um but right now it doesn't seem like that's what's happening which adds to the burden so here are my recommendations the first one is develop clear governance values that drive policy and procedures and you know as we looked at the youth uh athletic programs and how they don't mesh really within your District that's an example but that's not the only example that I found and so I listed some reasons why that having policy as your foundation is really important and the first one is because it does provide a framework and a structure that everything else can be built on but the second one is that your P your policies the board's policies are really kid-centric they're all about what's

092best for kids they also uh direct leaders towards District leaders towards uh budget and human resource allocations which I'll talk about in just a little bit as well and then the last thing is it provides financial and legal security for the board and the school district and so it's really important that uh the decisions made like in the itic Department are all built around the policies that the board of education has and that's an area that I think can be improved second recommendation is is the feeder pattern so we talked about how uh people have described it as chaos and when you look at it the data suggests that you understand why they're saying that and so what I what I say here is I started looking at why is that why is the the

09310% loss in academics and also extracurriculars when there's a disruption why why is why does that happen and it happens for three reasons and you see it in that first bullet point there anytime you have a disruption to The Social Network so kids are in this school for example and they develop friends in their classrooms and those kids those friends end up going different paths different directions different schools that's the disruption to The Social Network I'm talking about the second one is students need an identity for where they will attend school not just in elementary school but it needs to be intuitive the middle school and then to the high school here there's some confusion around that and then the third one is there needs to be a continuity of learning because the strategies within

094a school within a system of schools often times one uh School leads to the next one uh in a very logical way when you lack the continuity of learning that's where the 10% comes from so as you all rethink your feeder patterns through your facility plan my suggestion is think about the social network think about the identity of what school do I attend think about the continuity of learning if you can achieve those three goals in your facility plan I think some of the disruptions will go away maybe all of them and the people will quit saying that it's chaos right they'll start saying it's logical which would be the goal the last thing I'll say is I think the board Mr beg Mr Mr uh Bradley adopted school choice grades K8 am I correct

095is that a board decision I we we've had open we just opened it up K12 K12 which I support that and I think that's most Educators would it's it's the way to do it but as I interviewed over 30 people it kept coming across that at some point right now because of the way things are there needs to be some uh you know uh guard rails around that some maybe even restrictions around that until the feeder patterns are tightened up and cleaned up like if you're in um OK Middle School you might see four or five different hoodies on in the hallway on just like I was in the school one day and saw all I saw um you see Thomas Nelson you'll see Nelson County you'll see OK you'll see maybe an old Boston

096shirt you might see New Haven um that's not what you typically see in a middle school right typically in a middle school you'll see that Middle School shirt and the high school that they're going to attend and that's pretty much it so it's hard to build a culture when you've got a feeder pattern situation like that and so what I've been hearing from people is that if there's some restrictions around starting at grade six the school choice until the feeder pattern is rectified that would be helpful uh at the middle school level and that makes sense to me I wouldn't want that as a long-term recommendation but it's probably a good short-term situation for you all my third recommendation is around your youth your youth programs as I said yours is very unique in that

097city government County government aren't really with you on it you have no 501 c3s the districts having to do it all themselves when I talk to people the two things that came up over and over and over were the feeder pattern youth programs like almost every one of the people that I talk to those are the two things so then I started really listening to what was the idea around youth programs that people wanted and they said these three things we want we want collaboration across the entire District we want a combining of resources and we want to get as many kids involved as possible those three things everyone just kept coming across so I started thinking how do you achieve that like if I were the superintendent how would I be trying to achieve

098that and I think what you all done in terms of your like athletic director positions it's what I call them I know you all call them something different athletic leadership positions maybe is what you all call them you all are doing the logical thing there you've got one on one side of the highway one on the other right one's Nelson County one's Thomas Nelson and that's what most districts do have and what that what that forces the two athletic directors to do is they do 50 things one of them does 50 things for this side of the highway one of them does 50 things over here they're doing the same things they're doing them for different schools I think right now with your all's unique situation uh particularly around the youth programs I would rethink

099that I would hunt rather than gather um and I would take those 50 things they do and try to have one of them be dynamic at one at some of of them and the other be dynamic at the others that's just a recommendation for me um so I would reimagine those positions and then the last thing that a lot of people mentioned to me was the parent role is there a place we can enhance the parent role can we strengthen the parent parent involvement and this is a great place to do it you don't have to do booster clubs to strengthen the parent role but I think that should be a task that Nelson County gets involved in how do you use parents to strengthen your youth programs so those would be my my recommendations

100around youth programs now I've got a few next steps for you it's a lot of the things we've already talked about the first one is the facility plan and I'm not going to take a position on what your facility plan should look like that's not my role but I can tell you that not having that resolved every year that passes by kids are on the bus longer than they should be there's disruptions to the continuity of learning social emotional implications all of that so I would say my recommendation would be sooner the better right the second uh next step for the district that I have is ensure a spirit of collaboration with youth programs through the aligned governance and Leadership structures and that gets to reimagining those athletic director positions at least in the short

101term until you get uh some of these things in place that you want uh in place the third one I haven't talked about just yet the one thing that I found um that I like is that you all have systems in place around empowering people which is great but sometimes that can create confusion for example only the board can create a position only the board can give that position a name assign it uh a salary schedule a job description um and an evaluation system only the board can do those five things but what's happening with human resources and the human resource people here are are phenomenally good but we're giving like blocked grant funding where they can take uh assistant their assistant positions so like the football teams get $14,000 they can decide how many

102positions uh what they want the titles of those positions to be how much money they make I would move that back to the board I think it clears up the communication about who's responsible for what a similar thing happens with Finance um some people think the board doesn't give any money to Athletics for fin the finance department doesn't give any money uh through the board to the schools and that's just simply not true you give them $30,000 now a few years ago you didn't give them anything that was true but now you give them $330,000 but the schools can decide where to put that money now the board in the conversations I've had clearly wanted it to go to funding student transportation two events but that's not exactly what's happening so my what I would

103say to you all is if you want to fund the transportation students to athletic events then just put in a budget diesel fuel and bus driver pay and just say we're paying for that and then everyone's clear parents are clear the schools are clear what the board is doing because you're doing you're you're actually giving a good amount of money but it's not clear um what the money is being used for so it's not being used inappropriately I'm confident of that but it's just not clear what's being used for so I would just clean that up in the budgeting process the last thing uh is to align and structure job descriptions districtwide around extra extracurricular goals and values and that would be in my opinion athletic directors at your high schools but also Middle School

104elementaries as well because you have them there and coaches I would um I would say here are our priorities uh we've heard from the people here are our priorities and we want to make sure that that plays out across the job descriptions um because then it should make its way to the evaluations so I know that's a lot of that's a lot of recommendations I mean is what that is but you know I got to spend a couple months here I really enjoyed it enjoyed the people a lot and um you know you've got a lot going for you you got a few things that could make you even better and I want to share all those with you today will you be sharing some of this data point with the local planning committee I

105certainly can okay question yeah I think especially the you know the percentages and because I think that's just helpful in that conversation yes they're making that I'll work with Mr Bradley and we'll get a we get a schedule figured out for that and I just want to clarify that the youth programs is what in my generation would have been called Little League programs is that correct Youth League yeah the youth league is that like there's all kinds of names for them right I mean well I mean because I'm not as familiar with how all of this plays out I I've heard things that that you know I think are concerning but um making sure that that we have those programs that our district because I think right now they used to all be held at

106like Dean Watts Park I guess is that is that where the most of those things were held yes okay okay because that's what that's the part that's confusing to me is Where Do We Begin and where do there is no County begin that's what you made clear tonight right we the district has been running those programs that's my understanding some some other programs basketball and U baseball well baseball is Little League of America americ but basketball more engaged than football for sure even though we play a part of a larger Regional League um and again it's a yeah it's a it's a unique web because of transitions over the last I would say probably two decades um that have occurred across Nelson County County city government and different nonprofit groups soccer for example has been

107completely external um so I think it's continuing to change too and I think the larger message is because of the rapid change we have to just be clear on what's ours and what that means for for the governance and values of those things and then how we allocate resources to these other programs that may be part of a larger League that isn't necessarily our league but we have major investment in the program when you referenced that we have school choice can you define that for me in this context I mean I can I don't know it as well as school choices means we we just pretty much allow students to go anywhere um in the district in any school at any time there are some Transportation constraints that we won't be able to to achieve

108in certain cases but those are few I think they make a request from middle school to the High School principles and my understanding is usually accepted um and I think a a lot of them are about Athletics and that can happen at any time not just from sixth seventh eth grade all through high school and I think Elementary as well okay yes not as much but it definitely happens and I think that's a great philosophy to have but right now when you look at you know I mean when you look at that you know then you need that that has to uh that has to make more sense and then and then also when you look at a like okay is the greatest example that school has two teams in the same uh grade in

109the same sport at the same time I've never seen that and so like until that's not a thing you know I think you got to maybe put some least guard rails up around it um and then when that when that goes away when you get when your facility plan facilitates something that um this looks much different then you can put those things back in place because they are good philosophically um good long-term places to be well and I I just appreciate what you're saying about the many roles that we put on our athletic directors because I'm telling you Matt Reynolds and Jo PE we're working them to death I mean to have to deal with all the funding issues and figuring out all of it um so I appreciate you bringing that up because those

110are probably two of the hardest working people in our district and kind of tasked with the impossible of trying to make it all work and uh so I appreciate that it is their jobs do look different than in boil like we didn't have the youth part right I mean our athletic directors didn't and they do here big time I mean it's a big part of the of their time and so um yeah it is there potential imbalance in that if there's although I do strongly believe in local decision making but are there instances where we may have PE two people doing similar jobs but at different pay or that there different numbers of those pie people I don't I don't think that's happening okay I think it's a massive resource undertaking that's the reality of

111it um and it's something that a county ouris with the number of schools we have with the complexity we have it's just exacerbated the the complexity and of their jobs so and it and I think it again I I don't want it to seem like this isn't something we've not been aware of we have been aware of this and as a matter of fact I think we sometimes think it's a big secret that our parents don't know about it our parents are very aware that the system is chaotic um I hear it every time I go somewhere and again I am not in the athletic world so I have no explanation so I appreciate that you have spent some time and energy in this looking at the processes and looking at how these feeder patterns

112are chaotic um because again that that's it's not a secret our parents are very much aware of it they may not know where their kid is supposed to go to high school or middle school but they know that there is conflict here um so I appreciate that well thank you yeah as I was talking to people and and you start seeing Trends and I ask Alex for the data and then he gives me this data and then U you know you're looking at it from this perspective and then Devon gives me this so then you start it starts you starts the picture starts to materialize right so this data just to clarify this data this says that 80 875 kids spend an additional 20 minutes or more on the bus is a byproduct of the

113way our District's organized this does also include some elementary students though not as many but there are some elementary students embedded into that data I do think it's if you look at the overall students transport at 875 is about it's 35% there what is the the word an additional 20 minutes 20 minut means they're going an additional 20 minutes exactly what it means other students no on the bus they're spending an additional 20 minutes or more some in some cases up to 40 to 50 because of the location of their school based on what we're passing up where we don't have access so is this also including because I know we're like busing students throughout the day between the schools also taking that into consider this is just the core this is the core bus

114ride to school to home Okay y that's right so the ride essentially becomes maybe 20 this means it's 20 minutes longer than it would be otherwise it's okay 20 plus well I mean my son for example if he rode the bus it passes our house to go to Boston and then comes back at the end like this would be the end of the day so I pick him up I pick him up at Boston at 3:30 he gets off at the bus when they do a transfer there the bus then comes by our house at a little after to four so he would spend about 40 more minutes on the bus just for the bus to have passed us once already and and I I haven't spent time with Devin um I know that your

115transportation department is like on top of it and they're like their systems are good so they're doing the most they can with what they have there's no question um this is not this is not a dig on you no you're I witnessed a couple weeks ago I came in and saw some of those planning meetings with those consultants and I mean that was I know youall put a lot of effort to try to streamline this comparative context we have about 30 to 35% more students than the city of Bargetown in our schools and we have about 150 to 200% more buses just as some context so that's something that we've just been dealing with for the last really 20 years and you know it's just the way we've lived so I'm assuming your job isn't

116done either because I think I know you made some recommendations but just to be clear I'm going to need like a big recommendation like for me to better understand how we work around these policies so yeah and just to put that out there you all may know what we need to do well so I think what would happen is if the if my recommendations were to be adopted if some of them were I mean of course the facility plan one that that one is beyond me right it comes from the LPC to you guys and you all make the decision there but you would see when you approve the budget which is in May um so that would be when you would see the budget changes if they adopt those right so the 30,000 instead

117of it being a blanket 30 you'd start seeing diesel fuel and bus driver listed um I don't know when you all do your human resource allocations but you would see in your extra service salary schedule instead of just seeing like the head coach you would also see listed all the assistant coaches um you would see if again if they if if some of mine are picked up job descriptions would start coming to you all probably April and May youd see job descriptions start flowing in um some of them might even have title changes on them I'm not going to get into the weeds personally to direct the the district but I'm just I gave them like you know the the uh the big overhead view of things and then they'll decide if they want to

118make those kind of changes but I think you would see those changes over April and May just in the uh the board agenda okay thank you Mr the favors thank you very much thank you very informative a little overwhelming but very all right moving on to facility and LPC update with the superintendent so miss barryman is going to talk a little bit about the upcenter Mostly because we have programs that are now going and and traveling across the county as well so if you guys just come on up to the mic there so that we can see you kelse is going to take it away all right so I'm just going to start here just some broad overview of uh construction progress particularly on our up Center uh we do intend hopefully within the next

119month or two to have a more thorough construction update on both of our current projects we have Mr Ward uh and representatives from codell as well to to kind of highlight they can speak to these things much better than I can obviously so they'll highlight the in-depth uh pieces of this hopefully soon um but just broadly obviously if you've uh been around this space there's been lots of progress on our upcenter uh clearly you can see the roof line and the structural steel in the front for our community area that's there um this is obviously the renderings of what it will look like also on uh the side closest to the current bus garage this is the backside of what would be the health science uh space so the masonry is coming in to that

120space uh and again this would be the the right side Health Science space Also another big undertaking that's that's about to occur is this particular area they're they're hoping to pour the concrete in that space pretty soon and that'll actually be the finished floor that you will see when the product is actually done uh so that's just a major construction item that I can speak to um but really they're at the point in the construction process to where uh we're hoping to vacate the building soon and Miss barryman is going to speak about that soon we do have a couple of student groups there currently uh and essentially the construction Crews have been very collaborative and just thinking through the challenges of um renovation um but basically they're working around us right and so for

121them to work more effectively and efficiently we really need to vacate that space and uh Miss barryman is going to talk about that process so if you haven't driven down Bloomfield Road toward the upcenter at night when the lights are kind of on kind of off it actually starts to look like this and it's the coolest thing like um it's like a dream come true so it's um pretty powerful in that work so um just a little bit about where we've been this year it's been a beautiful chaos um in that we've transitioned programs out of our building um and we've had wonderful partners sh across the county and making that happen so this past fall in December we had four programs basically the back half of our building leave us um we have welding

122and it are currently housed at Nelson County High School carpentry is at Thomas Nelson High School and then U Bardstown stepped up and they are hosting our Automotive program so that is um now through probably the beginning of next school year they'll be in those spaces some will be able to transition back over time some like welding are going to be there throughout the next school year and here we are phase two coming in U knowing that we're going to need to be moving out soon so we're lucky that again we have um the principes at Nelson County High School and Thomas Nelson having our backs and creating space for us so Health Science collab will be at Nelson County High School um they'll be moving toward the end um of this school year and

123then as we start up up get it okay as we start up our media arts program is just part of my natural ver vernacular announc pardon me um so our media arts program will be housed um at Thomas Nelson so we've U been very appreciative of that flexibility and making that happen um right now electrical and heavy equipment don't have a home for where they're going to be going um just the nature of those programs they demand a little bit more space um not anything tremendous but just a little bit more flexibility in that um and then you can see phase three is when we all move back in um through December member and then into May um so as Alex said right now the construction team is being very kind they're trying to work

124around us but part of pouring that concrete floor is they need to do it throughout the space and into the doorways that don't current well I guess they do Tech technically now currently exist because they were cutting them when I left today so through the doorways so that there's continuity with that flooring and there's not a crack U because of that they are now cutting um into our exterior walls that go into the office which is fine because we're moved out but also into that heavy equipment classroom which is currently hosting students still so the team the construction crew has been wonderful they've been kind um and working with us but we know that it's better that we get out of their hair sooner rather than later so that they're able to continue to move

125forward and be successful so we're still looking for homes for those so where are they going because I mean I appreciate that Bargetown City Schools is hosting um where are we going with those programs because we don't want to not have those programs going for a year what are the options we're looking at some short-term Solutions we've got uh the next eight weeks so are we utilizing all the space in the high schools currently it looks like so uh Mr kski and I actually walked through Nelson High School again she's walked through it multiple times with me but really thinking critically about spaces what could be possible and really they don't have available space you know every space is being utilized highly um same with Thomas Nelson poor Mr marfield gets a call from me

126about once a week now with a little bit of panic um but really they're busting at the seams as well and I think as we continue to move toward those end of Year celebrations it gets a little bit tighter as well do any have you are there any other campuses that we have any other spaces in the in the district that so um I called Sean a couple of weeks back Sean Smith at OK and asked about their space and you all know probably better than most they are very full and so they literally have nothing available so we have may have space it may not just be suitable for those particular programs correct correctly I think um there's one available space that mski and I talked about at Nelson County high school but it

127is set up like a science lab and so all the furniture is fixed to the floor um and because of certain conditions we can't rip those out shortterm um and then our simulators can't fit in that space is there space within the community do we is that something we can put out there a call that if the Community member are interested I'm sure liability to some extent could be issues I'm don't know an intricate amount about but um that would be so um this past summer we spent a lot of time a lot of hours on the phone with different employers and we thought we had really Creative Solutions for some of these programs here and um after talking after those Community Partners talking with our legal council they decided it was too much to

128have them liable on their property you're actively looking for space Oh actively looking as long as I just want to make sure that those programs are not just to make it clear like this was a little faster than you expected the corre right we didn't expect it to happen this soon right we expected May 28th is the hard date we're out of these programs um March 18th was a little sooner Miss Arnold did some uh she had some direct conversations with the construction people to get us back to spring break I gu how we got here I just again I just want to clarify that these programs continue no matter where we need to place them as long as it's safe for the students I I just want to make sure that they continue 100%

129okay they can go in my house if I have to at that room in my garage but not much we just wanted to provide this update just to know that there's a lot of movement you know if you hear about it that you know there naturally there is movement occurring and that movement will continue for the next year well obviously I mean you drive by that building and I'm with you I can already Envision it so it's gorgeous um I can't imagine that it would be safe for the students to be in all those spaces we um we do have a couple things on the LPC I also have this this is a map of Nelson County's campus um and this is the ATC area that's currently impacted um obviously this bus garage is transitioning

130but I think what's important to note and this is where there I think there's generally just a lack of awareness when you go under construction how it impacts the campus um this is a 18-month process we hope that's what our you know yeah that's what we we are planning for and Alex meets with them every Monday morning to ensure um but if you go into and I know you know the local planning committee the board hasn't made decisions about the the rest of this campus but if you touch Nelson County High high school and do um a phase one project like we discussed in Prior years where it does uh renovate or rebuild the high school part of this building that is currently here this is the part of the campus that impacts right so

131I think just context the when you go through construction campuses are impacted and uh these are multi-year events so I share that just as some reminder uh this is also just good context as we think about facility planning if anything uh does occur it's just it has a impact on the entire campus so thank you Miss barryman I know that's stressful to be in that space But it is oh I yes in the end yes with that said uh the LPC convenes tomorrow um and it says Wednesdays beginning March 10th the LPC does set their calendar that'll be part of the conversation uh tomorrow night at Nelson County High School um that process could take you know an unforeseen amount of time depending on the nature of the LPC uh last time it took approximately

1328 6 8 weeks to go through that conversation of course it's the goal of the LPC is to develop a draft facility plan for the board to review and engage with um one just one thing I want to make sure as a board we do have to have a quorum i' are you good for tomorrow no I will be in W okay I'll be out of town Mr Norman are you know I'm taking my phone along to doctor so I will be available Zoom wise so as long as KDE is good with that then I'll that way because I know we have to have a quorum so the open meetings act allows you to be on your screen okay and I'll make that happen so I guess Mr Norman if you just let uh you

133guys had like I just wanted presid okay Tracy no if uh we do need a quorum just for the first meeting after that we don't need a board Quorum so if it wasn't for the snow and all the wonderful things that I would have been all time um will all the LPC meetings be broadcast or recorded to YouTube for Public Access they will and they are open to the public to attend there y they'll all be live streamed thank you all right um upcoming meetings of course April 15th at Bloomfield Middle School May 13th at the airport June 10th at the up Center is that still yeah we're going to go into the heart of the storm I mean I'm fine with that I I mean hard hat and all I'm good with that so

134you you no you no really I mean I think it's important so the board would tour the up Center and you just have to wear a hard hat I'm fine with that I think that's I think it'd be great great to see it in for for real so um and then July 22nd at the ELC I am thinking that we will have a um working session probably in May um I just do not have a date on that yet and want to get with the board just to say if there's any additional items there's a few that I want to talk about um so just keep that in mind I'll make sure that I clarify that with everyone before I said it though um and since there's no changes there's no decision on that so

135we will now go into um convene this meeting and go into an executive session um pursuant to KRS 61. 8101 C for discussion of student discipline that [Music] off need a motion I make second all right thank you all in favor I I any opposed thanks guys thank you [Music] you [Music] you [Music] I [Music] you [Music] oh face [Music] keep [Music] you [Music] you [Music] you are [Music] got [Music] Beau [Music] we [Music] let's get her done get home all right I need a motion to reconvene the regular session of the Nelson County Board of Education I'll make a motion all right need a second second all right all in favor any opposed all right motion passes and we have um the board actions as a result of the executive session pursuant KRS 01c

136um the recommended motion would be to uphold the discussed expulsion recommendations made by the expulsion committee I need a motion motion need a second I'll second thank you all in favor I any opposed no um all in we're good on that so at this point motion passes um we need a motion to adjourn the regular session motion all right need a second second all right all in favor I I any opposed right motion passes sorry good oh yeah yeah yeah