June 15, 2023, EBR School Board Regular Meeting

001[Music] thank you [Music] thank you good evening this is Thursday June 15 2023 we are starting with a public hearing and bird looks bird workshop for the 2023-2024 budgets this meeting is called to order okay and we will have our invocation will be led by School Board member Nathan Russ and Pledge of Allegiance led by Cadet command sergeant major Adonis Frazier McKinley High School accompanied by Army instructor Sergeant First Class retired Travis B Stewart let us stand feel about your heads Father in heaven we come before you we offer our thanks for bringing us together today and uh recognize it it's easy to forget um our safe passage and departure as a Grace from you as we prepare for this meeting we ask that you would be with us may our thoughts be led by

002you and our conversations inspired by you help us to put our own agendas to the side and seek your will and outcome for this meeting please grant us wisdom in times of uncertainty and Clarity in times of confusion lead us to Solutions and help us strengthen as a group in your name we pray amen good afternoon my name is Sergeant First Class Travis B Stewart with McKinley Senior High School I'm the Army instructor and leading Us in the Pledge of Allegiance is Cadet sergeant major Adonis Frazier he's a junior I'm sorry he's an upcoming senior at McKinley High School and serves as the Battalion sergeant major his duties include being senior enlisted advisor to the commander and having responsibility of over of over 75 enlisted Cadets while at McKinney Senior High School he has held

003multiple leadership positions in JROTC from class leader to squad leader to multi uh to company first sergeant and finally Battalion command sergeant major um dedicated to his duties of in self-improvement while attending McKinney McKinley Cadet Frazier continues to seek personal and academic Improvement where he maintains a grade point average of 3.35 this summer Adonis attended JROTC Cadet leadership camp where he learned Advanced methods of management team building and motivation techniques Cadet Frazier will attend the Mississippi State University stem Camp a week-long event that challenges Cadets with real world STEM related experiments Cadet Frazier is the captain of the Raider team member of the JROTC leadership and academic quiz Bowl and and a member of the panther Battalion archery team he's a model Cadet who has taken on the challenge of living up to the JROTC

004creed and the panther pledge filing graduation Cadet Frazier plans to enlist in the United States Army as a helicopter crew chief Cadet Frazier's qualities include his High character integrity emotional governance responsibility ambition immaturity without further Ado I have the honor of introducing Cadet Adonis Frazier [Applause] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America into the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you prior to Mr Martin thank you yes Mr Martin thank you [Applause] foreign [Applause] thank you once again before we start with our uh budget hearing I do have a statement or an announcement here from our president in his absence from president School Board member Darius Lena's to our families students and employees watching tonight's meeting let me first

005start by saying I wish I could have been here tonight to discuss all matters related to the budget but unfortunately I had a work related conference to attend with several of our EBR students however I am currently watching tonight's meeting attentively again I want to be very clear the budget is still a work in progress and what you are seeing tonight or mere suggestions put forth by superintendent Dr narcis and our district leadership team nothing has been written in stone as we will continue to chip away at the budget until we get to a place that satisfies the concerns of both our community and our board we will continue to host budget town halls in coming weeks in an attempt to further discussions surrounding the budget that allows for a healthy Community feedback throughout this

006process again nothing about the budget is final and we will continue to be transparent and open to all changes thank you again VP Powell for agreeing to fill in tonight in my absence you're very welcome and thank you to our board for your continuous dedication to our district board president Darius Lanes thank you we will now proceed with our with our budget hearing and we are now at Item B one oh roll call I'm sorry too excited roll call District 2 president Atlantis District 3 vice president Powell present district one Mr Blue District Four Ms Stewart president District Five Mr Lewis present District Six Mr Russ president District Seven Mr goday District eight Miss Kennison here District nine Mr Martin here all right we will now proceed forward thank you we are to item one

007presentation of the proposed 2023-2024 general fund budget uh this uh conversation will be led by Dr narcisse virtually yes we can we can hear you good thank you so much hello board in the public um uh as many of you know I've been in Broward County Florida having been invited to participate in the superintendent application process for their school system uh the board decided on their new leader today and I'm happy to be speaking to you here in EBR Parish where my commitment remains I'll be issuing a statement officially uh but I was determined to be here for this important budget discussion regardless of my location so there's no doubt that we have a lot of work to do on behalf of the students and families of East Baton Rouge so with that being said

008I'd like to call up and invite our CFO uh Kelly Lopez and director of federal programs Dr Sandra Bentley to the podium uh to present our proposed budget and I also would like to say just know that this is our proposal as we continue to work through with the board on a final proposal as we make modifications uh Kelly okay good evening board members and superintendent tonight I will present a second version of our 2023 2024 budget along the way I will point out variances between the two the proposed 2023-2024 general fund budget includes staff recommendations for revenues and expenditures the revenue Productions are based upon the 2223 revised budget that was approved last month and per budget law we are required a one public Hearing in order to proceed with approving the budget the

009financial summary for the general fund includes total revenues of 544.3 million total expenditures of 544.2 million a final balance of 69 thousand dollars and an ending balance of 111.4 million dollars overall the three areas affected by version 2 are highlighted on the screen right now they include instructional staff support staff and the use of other funds chart shows the change in the traditional students in Staffing over the past 10 years this does not include any charter school students or any Pre-K students the staff count is based upon February accounts of each of the particular years included as you can see the district traditional population has decreased approximately 20 percent or 7 600 students over the decade this chart includes our fund balance history since 2018. as you can see there has been a steady increase

010in our fund balance as we know the Esser funds are beginning to Sunset and we're preparing for an increase in expenditures for the general fund projected fund balance inclusive of assigned and unassigned balances as of June 2024 is 111.4 million dollars the projected unassigned at the end of the fiscal year will be 91.4 million unassigned fund balance is those funds the district can use at its discretion projected to sign fund balance at the end of the fiscal year will be 20.1 million dollars inclusive of any inventory cost assign fund balance is the funding that must be used for the particular purpose it was assigned as a percentage of general fund revenues it is projected to be 20 percent as you all know the ldoe has a requirement of seven and a half percent and our

011board policy is 15 with that we are well within range of all now I'm going to go through the general funds again the general fund Revenue again as I did last month or two weeks ago however there haven't been any changes so I will go through little quicker I won't go on each and every item revenue is projected to decrease by 5.3 million dollars our ad valorem tax is projected to increase by one percent or 1.1 million dollars sales taxes are expected to remain flat as we are going with Dr Lauren Scott with the LSU with LSU that the sales tax will continue on as the district and the parish continues to grow grow wealth with the opening of Amazon and other projects other local revenues remain mostly unchanged with a slight increase in Charter

012School Revenue mfp is projected to decrease by 2.2 million dollars the vast majority of this is due to the wealth factor and the increase in sales tax collections Federal revenues will decrease by 4.6 million with the sun setting of Esser and Title 1 funding decreasing due to a lower student population so the next slides will provide you information regarding our projected expenditures Whenever there is a change from the previous versions expenditures I'll point that out for you the position counts for proposed 2223 revised 22-23 and proposed 23-24 are also included on each of the slides a reduction of 1.7 million in Prior year encumbrances is also included regular education will decrease by 8 million inclusive of streamlining Staffing by using student enrollment projections textbooks and educational platforms will continue to be funded through Esser magnet

013education will increase by 1.7 million through the ending of the msap Grant and the opening of two Focus choice schools at both JK Haynes and Capitol High School special education will increase 1.2 million in version 1 and 1.7 million in version 2. a staffing is being appropriate lined with the student needs other instructional programs would decrease by 1.1 million this is inclusive of the fine arts department funding athletic department programs and ROTC throughout the district alternative school positions will be funded through Esser and proposition 2. special programs will decrease by 1.1 million as our 30th ESL teachers will continue to be provided through the Esser funding for an additional year vocational programs would increase by 0.7 million as the continuation of the pathways to Bright Futures continues to grow through our district to our 9th

014grade cohorts as well as the growth of our ctec and internship program people support services will decrease by 0.8 million version 1. are 0.7 million version 2 as the district realigns both Staffing and student services to align with the Strategic plan instructional staff services will increase by 1.7 million continued Contract Services for therapists and increase in Librarians are included in that total General Administration will decrease by 0.4 million a total of seven positions have been removed School administration will decrease by 0.4 million in version 1 and there will be no change with version 2. as the Staffing model aligns to student needs Business Services will increase 0.7 million in version 1 and 1 million in version 2 for the additional Financial software and printing equipment for the graphic arts department operations and Plant Services will

015remain flat the reduction of funding from the revised budget for the reopening of the three new schools will offset the cost of the increased architecture fees and utilities Security will increase by 2 million the district will add an additional director of security and increase the daytime part-time security at each of the schools Transportation will increase by 0.1 million version 1 and 1 million in version 2. the Dira funding for our buses has ended further additional positions are needed for the removal of the elementary transfer point and the growth of the internships throughout the district Central Services will increase by 2.4 million this includes accountability Department Public Information human resources and information technology the majority of this increase is the return of the information technology equipment to the general fund from Esser funding other use of

016funds will increase by 18.3 million version 1 and 16.1 million version 2. for the continued growth of charters in the district the difference lies with the change in population estimate for the Great Hearts at harveston administration's assumption is that they will not meet their maximum population count in Year One special Revenue budgets I will touch on briefly we do the special Revenue as well as the general fund at the same time so the board can seamlessly approve all the budgets at once and we begin the fiscal year each of the slides has a compilation of Grant types including the count of Staff as of February over the past three years the actual 2122 revised 2223 and proposed 23-24 Proposition 1 is the capital project account it provides funding for the building of new schools and

017the technology needs of the district the staff included our technology team members that work throughout the district for fiscal year 2324 the total revenues are projected at 53.9 and the total expenditures are projected at 42.6 proposition 2 provides funding for the alternative school needs of the district for fiscal year 2324 the total revenues are projected at 8.2 million and total expenditures are at 6 million proposition three provides funding for a percentage portion of every non-grant funded employee's salary for fiscal year 2324 the total revenue is projected at 41.3 and total expenditures is 62.9 for the 23-24 fiscal year and eight percent raise to all staff paid on the teacher's salary schedule has been recommended by Administration and proposition 3 will fund it the additional changes throughout the general fund are inclusive of the support staff

018area receiving the 8 raise being funded through general fund special education grants inclusive of idea provide funding staff and supplies for students that have IEPs and require additional assistance on their educational Journey for fiscal year 2324 the total revenues and expenditures are projected at 11 million as with many grants we expect to spend all the revenues received if you do not we have to return them to either state or federal grantor that gave them to us so as good stewards of taxpayer funding and to provide excellent service for all of our students we tend to spend all that we are given title grants provide additional funding staff and supplies for students that are economically disadvantaged or English learners for fiscal year 2324 the total revenues and experiences are projected at 23.5 Pre-K funds provide funding

019staff and supplies for pre-kindergarten children the mfp does not provide for any of the Pre-K counts they only provide for kindergarten through 12th grade therefore all of these Services must be provided to our Pre-K students through grants for fiscal year 2324 the total revenues and expenditures are projected at 8.1 million literacy funds are provided to staff and supplies to increase the literacy skills of all of our students throughout the district full fiscal year 2324 the total revenues and expenditures are projected at 9.2 million Esser funds are provided to assist districts with student needs post covid for fiscal year 2324 we have a remaining 59.5 million dollars and the grant will close at the end of June of 23-24 in June of 2024 and we will complete the grant with the 59.5 million dollars so there

020are many opportunities with the district that we continue to work with our board through um as you know in 2024 is the reassessment of the property in the district therefore we have the opportunity to roll for our milk roll forward our millages I can evaluation of all schools whether reduced or closed based upon student enrollment and performance is always an option the pathways for Bright Futures programs is allowing the streamlining of instructional programs for all of our high schools and during the budget process all departments were reviewed for savings our chief academic and chief literacy officers keep looking for opportunities within our programs and the comprehensive Staffing program allowed us to budget for teachers for the specific needs of students at each of their individual schools any questions are there any questions at this time

021okay and no public comment cards at this time as well okay all right good evening just a moment Dr bethley okay Dr Philly thank you um I'll uh concentrate on things that Miss Lopez mentioned in her presentation hoping there will be a later opportunity to comment on things that she didn't mention proposition one was included in her Powerpoint but it's not included in the special funds book that's a problem because the administration is going to assume that they have the blessing of the board for an annual budget for proposition one which besides Capital Improvements includes at least 30 salaries and if you're not asked to approve it then you wouldn't have approved it the proposition 3 Surplus which is gradually built up over a couple decades should not all be spent in one year particularly

022on raises unless there is a plan for sustaining that funding increase also miss Lopez said that all Pre-K funding must come from Grants so I think if you look carefully you would find that um four-year-old programs for magnet students are paid for from the general fund so perhaps she can clarify whether she misspoke thank you Matthews remember that any cut contracted positions are still paid at contracted salaries so to cut a chief Ed or a director they can still make the 130 000 or current salary up to two years before accepting a lower payment or salary are these Cuts being shuffled around within the system or are they actually being let go do they truly signify saving money will positions be eliminated or can someone fill it within without board approval 10 years down the

023road mfp enrollment projections please give this back to the principals they know what they are doing and they see the patterns they know how many kids they lose and game the choice um the past couple of years the budgeted numbers has been drastically lower than what it normally is and what it will be in August so they cut their admin they cut their teachers and they disrupt communities and growth just describe and try to find new people in August to fill these slots when the principles in their head obviously just say I told you so I told you I was going to need these people currently Capital middle should not be losing a principle especially when you've got kids jumping on the teachers Glasgow needs to keep their AP because they're going to be over

024600 Park Forest needs a math teacher um our highest high school with growth which would be an a if we didn't have all of these the Phantom students uh they need a social studies teacher and we're cutting their growth down again too Bel Air has is being budgeted at 100 fewer students than what they really have these principals know what they are doing let's give them the power to be in charge of their Staffing that is why we hired them and let's let them do what they do please thank you thank you Miss Matthews Miss Carmichael okay good evening Kathy Carmichael District Seven I just want to thank Mr goday he's not here I've been exchanging some emails with him about the charter school allocation and just to remind the public that one of the

025biggest increases of the budget in version one was from charter schools of 17 million dollars so for every dollar that goes to a charter school that means it doesn't go to the traditional Public Schools uh inversion the next version that Miss Lopez uh just reviewed did decrease the enrollment for um the Great Hearts and I noticed that but I attended the IDEA Public School charter meeting on Tuesday on the 21st floor I was the only representative from the general public at that meeting and um in upon evaluating their numbers their allocation is also high and I did send this to Mr goday their predicted enrollment for 2023 2024 is um 26.89 EBR schools had bud has budgeted for 29.81 and that's nearly 300 more students than idea expects uh and when I was at that

026meeting on Tuesday there was only about eight people there and then there's 10 people on Zoom that don't live in Baton Rouge that run that school so I just wanted to make sure that when we're reviewing the budget and we're reviewing the allocations for the charter schools that we actually find out how many students are enrolled because it's dramatic as you notice it changed by three million dollars by making a change so for all the administrators we need for our schools in the traditional public schools in EBR we can find money by making sure that we're not giving it to the Charter Schools thank you thank you Miss Carmichael you all we have a very very special guest here today who would also like to speak on this item and this is our former vice

027president Don Collins you all please give her a hand [Applause] I just want to say uh a good afternoon and thank you for the warm welcome uh good to see new faces and a few old faces uh to my School Board District rep shashoni Stewart thank you um I want to say uh thank you to the board members who are asking questions and pushing for Solutions it is very important it is very vital I want to say that I'm pleasantly surprised um after I'll just say that I'm pleasantly surprised okay I had to catch myself as y'all know I have to do sometimes um and so and I thank you on behalf of my grandson eating Stefan Collins who goes to Belfair Montessori and my granddaughter who's six months and will also be a public

028school student I thank you on behalf of all the Gigi's and the parents the moms and dads uh the Momos who take care of their kids their grandkids because low income and middle class families need democratically controlled public institutions like the one that you are here to represent and so it's imperative to do unlike at least one of my former colleagues who publicly see it with no shame that is not his job despite it being the law that it is your job to care about the budget because these children and these families need us to fight for them to have the best education possible because as we all know education is the ultimate leveling uh feel for families to get ahead I also want to say that uh this year's deficit I want to make

029sure that you cognizant of this year's deficit being only the beginning okay uh increase or a higher deficit is sure to come next fiscal year primarily driven by two things one the expiration of the remaining covet dollars okay and then the return of recurring expenses that will put on those covert dollars back to your general fund and then the second thing is which has been a long uh history of our increased enrollment in charter schools automatically it causes a deficit you need to do an independent audit under the direction of your staff attorney he's not the superintendent's attorney he is your attorney and you need an independent audit because your staff's hands are tied because their job or their contract depends upon the superintendent I you need to be able to get all the information

030that you need thank you for uh Miss Collins thank you see no further comment cards from the public comments or questions from the board I know that I have entered the queue and I just had a few questions uh yes Miss Lopez if you'll come come forward again I know in your presentation that you mentioned um the literacy Revenue uh on that particular slide I think that there were three years worth of comparisons and I saw that um La this past School Year's literacy Revenue was uh somewhat less than the previous year and somewhat less than what we are anticipating for this upcoming year and I just wanted to know if you could speak to that and then I have a series of questions as well I cannot those are based on clsd grants Dr

031Bethany may be able to speak much more clearly on those than I can but those are the clsd grants okay and then also I remember you mentioning uh just a few minutes ago that all departments were responsible for reviewing their department for savings could you speak to that for us for a moment so um Ms Smith our chief of staff worked with every one of the Chiefs to go through their budgets and determine any savings which were then submitted to me to prepare the budget with and that information is available for review I mean it's my work papers it's multiple spreadsheets of okay yeah okay I got you and then also just to speak to some of the comments that have been provided by the public so uh Pre-K programs being funded by our general

032fund could you speak so the magnet when you're talking about Montessori students when they are in in Belfair for example they have Pre-K kindergarten and first all together and the way the Montessori program works is that the younger ones learn from the older ones which is why they all require a pair because you have multiple grades together so I'm not getting mfp funding for those but I'm not getting Pre-K funding because the teachers being paid with general fund money that's coming from the count of the kindergarten the first grade students that are in that classroom because they all share the same because they all share the same teachers yes okay so it's a different model okay and then um the next question was in regards to position elimination I know that Miss Matthews mentioned position

033elimination possibly salary cuts and if uh the position is not eliminated uh how does that reflect in our budget or you know so any of the items that were directed that that were projected as eliminations for next year they're an attachment age those positions are being removed from the budget now what happens to those individuals would have to be a human resources question I can't answer that I can only tell you that when the administration was going through the budget these were the positions that were decided that would be removed so they will not be funded by general fund again I can't speak to the people that are currently in them so what does this I don't know if this means that you'd be able to speak to whether or not would they keep their

034current salary or that's that's one of those issues you cannot that is going to be a Mr shamlin Question if they have a contract okay ask that question one more time so is so if a a staff member is uh in a position and their position is cut or eliminated where they still keep their same salary amount so each individual receives a contract um each certified employee receives a contract and the terms those contracts are specific to employees we do have a template but some of those vary as a general rule if a position is eliminated in the budget then the salary goes away if the position is eliminated in the budget thank you and then um lastly I wanted to ask about the charter school allocation procedure so what is the procedure for how

035we determine our Charter School allocation so knowing this question was coming um I reviewed back from 1819. um and so I included all of the charters type ones type twos type fives okay so in 1819 I was brand new to this job I walked in the door did an estimate worked accountability worked with HR doing my best I was over five million dollars so while it was 86 but my proposed was 86 million we only spent 81 million so I was off 5 million dollars so the next year 1920 got a little bit better so we started at 90 million we actually spent 92 because type 2's come in higher because I can only get the information from the state twice a year I don't get to track them every month or as often as

036I want to through J campus 2021 same thing I proposed 99 million it came in at 101 million because of my type twos now 2122 was an odd year type twos didn't grow which was very odd so I was off 5 million I started 124 I only spent 119 so I saved 5 million dollars for 2223 I'm off 700 000 I started at 136.1 and I'm paying out 136.8 so while I appreciate the thought I do and if I can save any money for this District I absolutely will and I will put it in there and I will do as Administration guides me however in the past three of the five years while type 1 may not be a perfect projection they tend to go to type twos not to our district schools so my

037numbers aren't that far off just because they don't go to a type 1 does not guarantee they will come to us um so that is my concern because regardless of what I estimate wherever the children go is where the money must go because that's what we do we educate children regardless of what school they are at wherever their parents or Guardians have decided deems best for their child they have that right and that choice so that is how my estimates are done it's an algorithm I track them attract the children as best I can I determine an estimate based upon revenue from the prior year which is how the state does it and then the state basically gives me the final tally and I I tie it back and that's my end of the year

038journal entry so that is how I've done them in the past now again if it is the board's pleasure y'all would like to reduce additional numbers we can absolutely do that let me know I'm happy to work with any board member any number I'll calculate them out for you it's not a problem but that is how that is my concern with keeping adjusting the charter schools thank you you're welcome Miss Stewart hi hi okay so can you elaborate a little or uh speak on to what Miss Collins was saying about the budget and those funds that we will be losing in the creation of a more uh increased deficit sure so like we were talking about with Esser okay so Esser has 59 and a half million dollars left that we are going to absolutely

039spend this year um with Esser money Esser was was an odd thing because we had never received that much money at one time and we had never received that level of indirect cost so as many of you know indirect cost basically is the money that the grants pay the general fund to run the Grant to receive the reimbursements typically it is about eight percent that is your run-of-the-mill indirect cost rate it's your restricted cost rate that has provided to me by the state I don't get to choose indirect cost rates I'd make them much higher but um with Esser we were at 26 percent that is unheard of for every dollar you spent I got 26 Cents and it was great I my fund balance grew significantly because of that so that is her first

040comment and I agree with her that is going to happen the indirect cost is going to leave and you will be back down to about three million dollars in indirect cost a year which is about right um the second one is is the 59 and a half million dollars where do the things go now albeit that 59 and a half is inclusive you're in deck indirect costs you're really looking at about 40 million dollars that you're spending but again where does that 40 million dollars grow as I spoke in my presentation my ESL teachers are in there my textbooks are in there my library books are in there my educational platforms are in there these things have to go somewhere and so when the Esser money goes decisions will have to be made by Administration

041and board as to what are your priorities what do we really need what do you really want and at that point we will make those decisions so that is Miss Collins fear and I mean I absolutely understand it but that's what she's speaking of thank you you're welcome thank you Mr Lewis I understand Miss Collins fears as well the last thing we want to do is take this District and drive it to a financial cliff and that's going to take some tough decisions that we're going to have to make because we I was sitting somewhere over here uh one night and Miss Collins was sitting in her usual seat and she made the comment that we were going to be facing a 50 million dollar deficit if we did not get our arms wrapped around

042it and it's almost pathetic what she said that night because we could very well end up there if we don't make the hard choices and curtail our spending now I just wanted to put that in but here's and we didn't talk about security today was it five hundred thousand dollars at the state yes sir uh with the security somewhere in the budget and I tried to find it I couldn't uh because it just came in today you should talk about numbers that we already have oh oh yes sir yes sir excuse me we were projected three million dollars for security uh yes sir what's the highest that it's ever been it's never been that High um so why I mean why such a so about top 1.2 to 1.5 is your sweet spots usually where

043your daytime security guards are because they're kind of hard to find um the three million is um we are going to work closely with the sheriff's department and with City police so that we can get increase the police presence at all of our schools during the school year to make them safer for our students and we're estimating that work to come so come in somewhere around three million dollars we would like more of them yes that's the goal is more of them most of Europe your threats come from within the school I still believe that single points of Entry uh metal detectors I still think there's a lot of ways we can secure our schools without making them look like a police state on the outside so I really hope that as a board we

044can get our minds wrapped around let's do some things that you know I don't I don't want our kids to feel like they're going to school in a jail you know and if if EBR could find that many deputies then they would be hiring them they can't even hire enough deputies or police so but and thank you for your one more question what's the projected Charter School enrollment was it 156 million payout for Charter Schools like 156 million and that's type ones or two it's inclusive of all of them I include all of the um all of my Charter Schools together yes 154.2 million yes and what and what was it uh three years ago Dude I don't know if you had those that was in front of you I don't have that number in

045front of it has it been well yes I do yes I do it's right in front of me um 101 in 2122 we are ended out at 101 million and in 1819 I was at 81 million now 1819 was a jump of a year because we opened multiple multiple the idea's came in bases came in so it was it was a a big jump year but yes from 1819 we were at 81 now you know we're 22 23 to 136 and then at 154 because we're opening a brand new school okay all right thank you you're welcome okay Mr rust and then Miss Stewart and then after that we will hear from you Dr bethley yes um I have many many questions but I'm not going to ask them all today it's okay because you'd

046be up here all night but um one important question I wanted to hear an answer for is how the Staffing model proposed in this budget impacts classroom size you speak to that um HR would be a better spokesperson but let me start let me give it a shot and I'm sure miss Hall will correct me um so we did we did not increase it all the way to the state level which is where it is the maximum I think it's 33 for a 6 through 12 and 28. we did increase the cry size slightly to be closer to the state average but along with increasing class size they also included additional supports like instructional stabilization and for those schools that have additional problems they added additional to they offered them an additional teacher which they

047could use as a teacher or as a Dean to help with the students okay could you give me some hard numbers on what those classroom sizes would be and what they are today that would be Miss Hall hello everyone Hi um so the CSM we could send you guys a copy of the CSM but I don't have that information with me right now okay who would I would I could go to my office right now and send it to you that would be great okay thank you that's all I've got thanks thank you and miss Mr did you want to share your comment uh yes I had a question uh Kelly and I'm pretty sure you can help answer it um have we added in the 518 000 debt uh Department of Education the best

048people to prove for the security measures recently we have not um it's not going to be added in the general fund because it has to be used for specific items it's going to be a grant right and so we hadn't added that along with us okay no we just got it in fact Dr bethley hasn't even gotten the non-public portion that we have to that percentage hasn't even been taken we haven't even gotten any of the information I just wanted to make sure that we can account for that for the next excuse the money has dropped all right thanks okay okay thank you and uh just to add on to Ms Stewart's statements of course that was published uh maybe what today today yeah yeah so June 15th all right so miss Kennison or your

049comments in regards to miss Lopez or Dr bethley company okay so and now I will say this as well if my colleagues agree may we extend our uh public hearing by 15 minutes to make sure that we accomplish our goals today okay all right okay so uh Miss Kennison and then Dr Bethany um I want to ask you to speculate and feel free to not but if you can okay um in a broad sense of what we're looking at with the budget sure and what it's going to look like this time next year um to be in the black next year to be not sure I've looked at all of the different budgets and and the numbers but you've been doing it for a long time so probably have a better idea what um what

050amount roughly dollar amount would we need to cut in general like across the board to be okay inclusive of the eight percent inclusive of the eight percent okay so the eight percent is going to run you about 30 million dollars so you have to find 30 million dollars to keep on trucking um then you're gonna have to have the Esser money now I'm not saying we're keeping all those things that is at the discretion of administration and the board however y'all want to do we will do um but she can't get rid of everything Esther let's let's think of Esser in terms of uh people like the salaries benefits um so I would have to look at Dr bethley's slide again to see how many she hasn't benefits next year 19. Dr Bethany will you

051come to the mic please all right so that's thank you 50 million and then is there another any large other large numbers to consider we're gonna have to keep the text box and we're going to need to keep the library books sure so just a few about 40 million so so 70 million 19 million for personnel if you keep everything ladies we appreciate you speaking but when you speak could you please step to the mic so we can hear you I'm sorry okay 19 million for personnel 6.6 million for contracts and nine almost 10 million for materials and supplies okay so roughly 70 million dollars if we didn't make some huge changes we need to find 70 million dollars and the indirect cost goes away uh which was 26. okay it was 26 it's like

05213 million this year 85s but you don't have to keep everything that I know I'm trying to get a starting off point just so everyone has an understanding what we're talking about like we're talking about different buckets and and different amounts and you know we need 30 million for this and then we forget that we need I just want to have it all like sure so we have a clear picture of what we're talking about okay up upgrades so roughly just a bunch of money okay thank you we can do it I have faith all right thanks that's it thank you okay Dr bethley the turn [Music] business to me okay so I'm basically just going to give you a review of the Esser funds this first slide again is just a basic definition of

053all the Esser terms and so this is the slide that is of interest to you uh where you can see across the board how much indirect costs that uh Esser has allowed us so we have received three big buckets of funding from sr1 which we have spent um our balance is zero for s or one and we received 4.1 million in indirect costs but with that 19 million that included a portion that we had to give to the non-public schools but when we received the sr2 and sr3 funds we did not have to allocate funds for the non-public that came directly from ldoe so with sr2 we receive different buckets as well we received a sr2 school choice was basically for our charter schools and it's because the money is given to our district but

054and we manage the funds for the charter schools so with sr2 our total was 76 million and our indirect cost is 15 million and hopefully by June 30th we would have we will receive the whole 15 million uh in indirect costs and as you can see it's 26.7433 percent um the next bucket is esser3 which came in two actions as well and small grants and that was our largest Grant 165 million so we have until September 30th 2024 to spin sr3 but again we will spend those funds by June 30th of 2024 and then the district will receive the total of 34 um million in indirect costs so the next slides are basically line items of what we have spent what we've allocated and expended with Esser funds so as you can see the first

055Slide the balance is zero which focused on early childhood and curriculum core materials the second slide you can see the balance mostly is zero we have a slight balance um and for our charter schools and our total balance that we have left is two hundred and eleven thousand dollars and you can see the indirect cost is listed as well so with Esser two action two we've all we have spent expended all most of those funds as you can see on the next slide we have a balance of 724 dollars for a student supports and then we also have a balance with our charter schools and also with uh professional development so our total as of today is 1.5 million in sr2 action 2. well all of these spins funding has been expended except for our

056charter school this was a different Grant where we had to allocate funds for evidence-based activities summer learning we curriculum materials social emotional health and of course you see the balance uh is 000 which is for um our Charter School so sr3 action 2 is where we have money that we're going to allocate for the 23-24 school year this slide captures a line items what we spend in 2122 uh 22-23 and you can see that next slide captures all of the contracts and the core subject curricular that we allocated in sr3 action 2. the next slide uh you can see at the top where we allocated funding for ESL instructional Specialists next year we will be paying for the ESL teacher so it is captured in this slide so we also are going to spend money

057on technology and like Miss Lopez has said earlier our balance as of today is 59 million but that does include indirect costs and administrative costs so with sr2 Ms Kennison to answer your question you can see this slide captures the Personnel that we pay for in sr2 the literacy coaches paraprofessionals social workers and medical assistants so for the 23rd 24th school year the general fund will pay for some employees most of these positions will go to a Federal Grant and then we are eliminating the curriculum content trainers two of the social workers and five of the medical assistants with sr3 action 2 this is a list of all the personnel that we funded for this school year and you can see the total is 24.4 million so for the 23rd 23 24 school year we

058are projecting to fund uh 14 math coaches art teachers 122 classroom teachers that is going to be the majority of our positions that we will fund and you can see the lists um on the slide so that is going to be a total of 19.2 million the next slide captures our contracts that we are proposing to pay for for 23.24 achieve 3 000 DreamBox you can see uh the other contracts listed and that's going to be 6.6 million then we're going to pay for materials and supplies this will be our third year where we will give all of our teachers a supply card to go to school AIDS and each teacher will receive 200 uh dollars on that particular card and then the other items you can see are textbooks um and Technology so the

059balance for sr3 Action 2 is 59 million estimate so this includes indirect costs and administrative costs so our direct cost for the 23-24 school year will be 46 million the direct balance amount will fund the following initiatives expanded learning Early Childhood curriculum support English learner support professional development social and mental health and Technology support this lie captures our Title 1 allocations as you can see we receive most money in Title One title one we receive money based on the economically disadvantaged children that are enrolled in our district on October 1. these balances as you see across the board for Title II title III and title IV is our allocation but with this allocation we have to deduct the non-public portion and normally the state will have that information to me but we have not received

060it yet but I will have to deduct the non-public portion and the at the bottom of the slide you can see the number of positions that we're paying in Title One title two title three and title four thank you Dr bethley we will now turn to uh questions and comments from the public we have roughly uh 17 minutes can I ask that if the public asks I'm not sure it's who it's directed to but if the public asks a question can we can someone respond Mr shamlin is that appropriate for our public hearing that's at the Leisure of the chair that would be your choice so yes depending on the the time frame yes I'm in agreement with that that will keep me keep us from going back and asking the same questions again Dr

061Fannie you are required and advertised that you're having a public hearing on many special Revenue funds you haven't touched on probably half of the special Revenue funds for which you are legally required to have a public hearing and I don't think in 17 minutes you're going to rectify that that's a problem state law is very specific about the Public's right to participate in the budget process this organization has a very complicated set of funding streams and you're not satisfying the requirements for public participation with two 75-minute hearings um with regard to Esser money the 40 million should be spent on one-time purchases not a dime of that should be spent on salaries furthermore the board should demand a 24-25 tentative budget and probably even projections farther out before you even think about scheduling a vote

062on 23-24 budgets it would be completely irresponsible for you to vote for a budget in two weeks for one thing the legal notice says the adoption here the adoption vote is tonight and it's not on tonight's agenda some of us are sticklers for thinking that what you advertise in the paper should mean something and so I think you have to re-advertise these hearings and actually hold hearings and that doesn't mean a token hour before you get to what you really want to talk about it means an actual hearing for each of the special Revenue funds and for the general fund where you can talk about specific institutionalities um a couple other questions some of them rhetorical you can decide whether you want to have anybody answer them do more cops make a school safer maybe

063maybe not um you should as board members look carefully with respect to the general fund at how outrageously generously the Staffing is set up for new schools at the expense of existing schools look and see how many people are set aside for Capital and JK Haynes and see if it makes sense that that be done at the expense of the schools that already have students the general fund budget book is very specific on where people will work no such information is provided in the three pages on each of the special Revenue books is the alternative Middle School really being closed and do you expect ever to have input on that as board members is a new instructional site being created at Rosenwald I'm almost done and will the two former principals just switch to APS

064On Assignment central office be included in the budget and one last question are are the administration's Chief positions really being reduced by half thank you thank you Dr Philly Miss Espinoza good evening bored um I think it's interesting that Miss Collins is here tonight because this is conversations that we had prior to this board joining us these Esser dollars were under a lot of discussion because we knew when we got them it was a temporary solution to covid when the superintendent came on at that time he had wanted to hire I believe it was 16 positions and said some of that was going to come from Esther money and I could be mistaken and I'm sure the administration will correct me but I could be mistaken but it was to hire a lot of positions

065from Esser funding now we are absorbing exactly what Ms Collins said was going to happen we are absorbing those back in the general fund and as a result poor little old Mrs Espinoza is about to lose her assistant principal job because I'm one of those people that just comprehensive Staffing model says my school don't need me it's not right we brought people in from all over but we're not going to take care of the people that was here when the flood happened you're not going to take care of the people that was here with the rift that went with Mr Drake that is long before some of your tenure you're not going to take care of the people that was holding y'all down you say ah we gonna cut your contract cause guess what it's

066in there you lose your job you just go back to where you were again that's easy for people to say but it's hard when you have to look in the faces of the people you're doing it to so I said Alco was going to come and I was going to be my big old round high yellow face to this meeting because I want y'all to look at me when y'all make those decisions because you are impacting my children my family my property value my home you want me to help pay my own salary because I own and live here but I don't have a say in what happens here I got a problem with that and I hope that you take it very seriously because some of the positions that he promised if we're working

067on promises was not going to impact the general fund are now impacting general fund because he said oh no no no these Ester dollars we knew it wasn't gonna last forever now I don't know about y'all but I grew up with 12 brothers and sisters my mama came up with a budget every day if we didn't have the money my mom will say you go in this store don't ask for nothing don't look at nothing don't touch nothing why are we saying not the same thing to our superintendent I wish she was here baby you ain't got no money don't ask for nothing don't look for nothing and don't touch nothing thank you ma'am Miss Bland hello good evening I'm here as an employee and a parent and a citizen of this place I relocated

068here from out of state um because a friend of mine who works in this District told me that they were struggling and they needed people I came highly qualified Masters educated and ready to serve this community I've been here for three years and I come from the Maryland area where I will make way more money what you guys pay your Vice principals I made as a teacher but I took the cut to come here so when I get hired as a APC and I'm asking in April will I have a job come June I don't know we don't know anything May will I have a job come June we don't know we don't know anything the assignments are still there Miss Flynn I do apologize but I have to ask what is an APC an

069academic program coordinator also known as a pathway coordinator okay thank you and here I am a single mother of two growing girls who are achieving in this District and we are at June 16th 15th my contract ends June 30th and I'm still being told I don't know but you can go back down to being a teacher if this goes away as if that's okay that's not okay doing business properly I've never been two weeks before a contract ended to know whether I was continuing or do I pack my stuff up go to a higher performing district and make more money or do I stay and continue to do the impact that I'm doing I don't know who sets the budget I don't follow y'all's meetings I'm too busy trying to impact students lives to be

070honest but whoever does it needs to call these meetings way before June 15th when people like me and the other 13 of us are trying to figure out will we have a job should we start applying we have master's degrees we have administrative certifications do we leave do we jump ship like some people we're trying to do or do we stay planted and continue to pour in our students lives I need you all to make a decision because I need to be able to feed my children pay my mortgage put gas in my car and properly impact the lives of students that I service every day thank you thank you Miss Bland and thank you for your service Miss Matthews good to hear those teachers voices as we look forward in saving money I really

071enjoyed y'all's plan just wanted to let y'all know that and as we look forward in how to make those things go as we're cutting and savings I had a conversation uh with councilman Lamont Cole about early childhood and oddly enough they have reached out to this District to partner and take on the cost Sito said no so we done spent eight million dollars the first year eight million dollars the second year I think we're projected at eight million dollars I had to ask Dr Defender because I tell y'all all the time I'm not a math teacher but apparently eight times three is still 24 and 24 million dollars would have been our raise but there's nothing we can do about it this year but over the course of this next year we need to have

072some serious conversations with Metro Council and with a head start because they are very interested in partnering with us and let them use those spaces that we are going to be voting on later tonight I have no qualms with that let us partner with that but if they want to take on costs why are we paying for it when we are legally responsible for K-12 and we can't afford well we are legally responsible legally liable for so over the course of this next year please those of you open up those conversations with the people that are willing to take that on and are financially more responsible for that than we are and look to that especially when they've been trying and we're told no um also safety EBR Readiness again after the fight those teachers

073those parents those officers were promised that the students would be separated will be diluted that there would be fewer per teacher but instead we find out that in the cover of Night and the cover of a budget really snuck into a whole bunch of millions of pages hoping that you guys would never ever see it hoping the storm wouldn't go find it and blasted on the news they slip in that no they are packed they have started those long forms those long forms were done three days ago y'all have y'all voted on that no every single one of you should be insulted by that their building is packed and ready to go now they ain't moved none yet but it's packed you should be insulted by that that's a vote there's also a new principle

074for Rosenwald that's in the darn it there's a new principle it's in your personnel changes that's a vote for y'all too yeah I got Authority make them use it thank you Miss Matthews seeing no other comment cards and due to the sake of time we will continue moving Mr Martin thank you vice president Powell a couple of points one I want to express deep appreciation to the teachers and support staff who I understand Miss Bland's point about the uncertainty of this all and that's that's that's not at all fair uh I'm appalled by it frankly the fact is I think we all know we were we weren't presented basic budget information until just a few weeks ago all of the issues that we're discussing tonight have been obvious and should have been obvious team by

075looking at the numbers for for many many many months now this we should have been asked to be a part of the conversation and and look some of it's on us we should have demanded answers sooner than we did right we are where we are now um uh I don't think it's realistic to expect that we're going to vote on a budget on June 29th um I think we need to continue the discussions I think we need to have many more public hearings both formal like this one and informal like the public meeting that we had uh that President Landis organized a couple weeks ago I think one of the challenges that we have and and whether we should have a whole full-scale budget projection for 20 uh 425 to look at us but look

076at before we decide the budget I don't I don't know but I do think that it's in incumbent upon us to ask for um kind of what what's what's our Esser withdrawal treatment plan right what what you know what is going to come out of the Esser funding right because that's going away and while we may get some other sources of one-time funds here and there the magnitude particularly that sr3 funding that's not coming again and and it was intended you know should positions have been included some of the goal of Esser was to provide support with people in the classroom and so I think probably appropriate to fund some positions for that but we're going to have to to coach Lewis point we're gonna have to make a lot of tough decisions to be

077fiscally responsible and treat our employees the way they deserve to be treated and compensate them the way they deserve to be compensated so I think we do need to look uh look very concretely at which Esser funded programs and positions we're going to eliminate you know because we will not have money to pay for them right and and we need to understand because of the consequences of voting for you know 30 to 32 million dollars for for an eight percent raise for teachers and support staff um you know we you know on top of this Miss kinison's question to Luke you know um Illustrated another 50 million dollars of shortfalls from as a result of s are going away we need to understand what what all of the you know even without the pay raise

078issue what are the consequences of this budget for the next year right and maybe we spend some knowing that it's going away and we don't want to you know get rid of that free money a year early there's no point doing that but we need to know what the plan is and give everybody uh In fairness time to prepare and plan and and organize their lives around that particularly both our our teachers and support staff who whose livelihood has impacted this um as well as our families uh and who's who's the educational services to their kids will be affected by this so I think we need to and I would ask the the superintendent and staff to start working as part of our current budget process on on what the plan is that we should

079consider for when Esser goes away thank you considering our time factor is it within our uh rights to to extend for maybe 15 minutes 15 more minutes as our final answer thank you so much Mr Martin I've entered the queue as well I do have a question I think this question might be for Miss Hall but I'm not sure so I know that Dr bethley gave us one of her slides here I think this says slide 16 with the uh Personnel that's affected by sr3 action 2 and I calculated that this is about 222 individuals and of course I'm sure that at least six of those may not be considered as teachers or may not have a type of teacher or School counseling type of certificate certification or what have you but when the answer

080funds run out is there a place for these 216 individuals or will they be stuck looking for a job yes hi so just a note I'm sorry so just something to note that every any employee that is hired through Federal programs they receive the notification letting them know the status of their employment and then from my office I send out a quarterly reminder because sometimes we get so busy we tend to forget even myself from where I sit with that being said we do offer we have vacancies throughout the districts we do offer other Alternatives yes thank you so much so that means still they've been notified but it's possible that they could end up having to look for a job okay we are in the business of retaining so I just want to make

081sure that we're saying that and Mr Ross I did send you that email thank you thank you um I had two other questions this may be for Dr Narcissa I don't know if he's if he's still listening in or if someone else can respond or reply but I did hear the comments from um from Miss Matthews as well as some other constituents have reached out to me as well in regards to I would love to know the facts that surround EBR Readiness and they're moving out of their Beechwood site and into another site and should that have come before us those are my questions in regards to that and then also the idea of an agreement with the city Parish in regards to early learning education and Head Start and things of that nature okay

082so Mr Brickhouse should come in to speak thank you so the uh a plan was developed for the alternative education what is happening is that the plan actually is scheduled to be presented to the board next month um in terms of the um we had to of course at the end of the year open another site so the Roosevelt site is a site that was open last year as part of the situation in terms of trying to address some of the concerns that was happening in alternate event but at full um review of the plan will be presented to the board at the July meeting okay but they've already started moving out of the site is that correct no they haven't moved out as of yet okay and then can you speak to the comment

083in regards to any partnership possibilities between City Parish Head Start system and our Early Learning Program for the sake of I guess assisting financially and possibly even academically I think that's a miss Warren question okay good afternoon with regards to the Head Start we have been partnering with the mayor's office actually we went to Harvard last summer and we had a great collaboration with them so we are in the process of still working through just some legal issues and just a partnership that we want to really work in a couple I guess in a couple of months or year to kind of really see how we can reorganize and make a Head Start in our pre-k program work thank you Mr Lewis Dr Bethany quick questions on uh SO2 I'm sorry SO3 action two yes

084sir uh the alternative teachers so are we are we only going to have 26 I mean for the 20s like it says there's 39 that basically have gone away right well they are moving to general fund okay so in all we only have 57 how many teachers do we have in our alternative sites is the question does anybody know I mean I we we spend less money in our alternative schools than any place else and we probably need more money more Personnel than almost any place else I agree with you but I think some of we paid for some of the alternative teachers out of Esser some of the new teachers but general fund paid for the others but I think there they are you do have more alternative teachers I'm sorry thank you it's

085multiple uh rosters because they're scattered across the district so the alternative Ed like EDR Readiness EBR Readiness elementary high school so it's hard to say we have 400 teachers at alternative Ed I have to scan the rosters and I'll get that information to you too and one concern I have there's a plan I understand that we're going to have over aged middle school kids on a campus with elementary school kids I can't answer that question but um I'm just saying that is a bad idea period because you're going to get some some some some young people are going to get themselves in trouble and it's going to follow them for the rest of their lives because we were negligent in how we handle them understand okay and I'm not gonna get to I think you

086know what I'm talking about I understand the young ladies who came to the principals thank you so much I grew up in a single parent home my mother got her first teaching job in so she didn't have to look at us and tell us she didn't have to tell us not to touch anything she just looked at us and we knew to keep our hands in our pocket and our mouths shut okay so mommy the mommy thing is still alive and well I'm glad to know that yes Lord it is coach Mr Russ thank you vice president Powell um I just want to speak to some of the public that came up and and gave their comments and concerns today a lot of which are top of mind today and are frankly every single day

087and every single night as we go through this process I can speak personally to that my biggest concerns in our budget is the future of our school system and our employees both this year and every year to come I can tell you that I I have personal friends employed by this District who do not know yet if they will have a job next year I have spoken to them about that but as a board member I have to remove myself from that and know that I have to do my due diligence um frankly you know the very first opportunity that this board had to look at a budget was 30 days ago 30 days ago on May 15th I sat down for my first budget overview meeting with our Administration um this is not the

088administration's first rodeo of the budget this is not their first year um I sat and I can give you the dates and the times in many meetings and specifically asked when will I see a budget when this is as far back as February in May was when I saw it so if you're wondering why you're not going to have a past budget June 15th or whenever was expected to happen that's a great place to start um I'm not going to get into the where why and how I'm going to say that I expect more I expect better and regardless of how this process has gone between the board and the administration I am going to do my job I'm going to make sure that we plan well that we go through this budget as a

089board and approve something that we know will secure the future of this District secure the future of my kids being educated in this District your kids being educated in this District that people are going to have jobs next year and that we don't make the mistake of feeling great about ourselves when we've got a lot of money in the bank so that's my two cents thank you to our staff for presenting to us today this will be a continuing process I by no means expect that we will have a budget to vote on in two weeks but we are hard at work I can tell you that thank you Mr Russ I completely agree with his sentiments saying that there are no other comments or no other board members in the queue we will adjourn

090this meeting and let us take a five minute break and then we will return for our full board meeting after that five minute time frame okay you all we ended our budget hearing at 6 26 is now 6 33 so we're over that five minute Mark Let Us return to our meeting okay this meeting is now called to order and we will entertain a roll call District 2 president Atlantis District 3 vice president Powell present district one Mr Blue here District Four Miss Stewart president District Five Mr Lewis president District Six Mr Russ present District Seven Mr goday District eight Miss Kennison here District 9 Mr Martin here we have a forum thank you alphabet B minutes meeting minutes approval of the school board minutes of the May 18 2023 regular board meeting and the

091May 4 2023 and June 1st 2023 Committee of the whole meetings as published in the official Journal um is there a motion it has been moved by Mr Russ and seconded by Mr Martin um comments from the board okay seeing no comments from the board we will now turn to comments from the public seeing none we return back to comments from the board seeing none we will entertain a vote please vote are you not getting anything you're refreshed can you refresh and see if it'll the motion carries thank you item C these documents are in it for information only number one monthly financial report number two Personnel changes number three public records requests monthly report so that it's just simply okay are there any questions or comments from our board okay seeing none we will

092proceed forward to item D receive this information update from our superintendent and uh in Dr narcis's absence tonight Mr Brickhouse is making the presentation good evening [Music] on behalf of our superintendent Dr narcisa I'm happy to give you the superintendent updates for this evening as we prepare our student athletes for the up-and-coming school year we've partnered with Health Care Centers and schools to offer lhsaa sports physicals throughout the remainder of the month these services will be offered from 9 A.M to noon on June 22nd at Park Forest Middle and June 29th at Woodlawn Middle you can find more details on our District's social media accounts we also like to extend a special congratulations to Peyton and Paris Turner who are students at EBR Virtual Academy Peyton recently appeared on the Emmy award-winning television series Avid

093Elementary and her sister Paris is currently featured in the Grammy award-winning singer Dozier Katz Vegas music video continue to let your light shine bright as we continue as we wish you continued success congratulations that concludes our report for this evening thank you now moving to alphabet e reports from board appointees to committees and agencies are there any reports from our committees and or agencies okay Mr Russ I'll just report real quick as our appointee to our BREC commission um our commission did move last meeting at the end of May to renew Mr Corey Wilson's contract as the superintendent of that organization we went into executive committee discussed his uh his performance so far if you don't know they just earned the a gold medal award for our Park system which is a nationwide award meaning

094we and Breck is the top uh Parks and Recreation system in the country as of this year so we we sought to retain him uh coming up at our meeting for this month in June we will see his contract and be working on that to hopefully keep him as superintendent of that organization thank you vice president update as well yes I'm our designee on the uh East Baton Rouge school system foundation and the the board has been working on a the Strategic vision and strategic plan on how to assuming we can increase its ability to fundraise for the benefit of our students and and I anticipate that once we get through the budget process that we're going to ask the board uh chair and the and the foundations um top executive Kathleen sarsfield to give

095a presentation on where we are and what the goals are as part of the ongoing collaborative work between the foundation and the school system to raise money to help our kids so I just want to give you a heads up that that's going to be coming I've asked them to they're really ready to give it just about any time but I thought it'd be better if we got through the budget before we took time to hear that thank you Okay so we've had a report from Mr Russ with the brunt commission and Mr Martin with the EBR foundation with any other reports for my board seeing none we will continue to move forward alphabet elf unfinished business item one policy jgba recess consideration of a request for the approval of policy jgba recess is there

096a motion a move to adopt the policy okay it has been moved by Mr Martin is there a second okay it has been seconded by Mr Russ okay comments from the board Mr Martin thank you vice president Powell very briefly um you know we've talked about recess a lot I think we all heard from the incredible students middle school students that came and testified in favor of recess I think we went over at that time all of the significant academic research from the CDC the American Academy of Pediatrics and others about the the extraordinary value of necessity there is for uh mental breaks throughout the day for children at middle school age right now for some kids they are you know with a four blocks scheduled throughout the day of 97 minutes each some kids

097are going for three straight blocks four hours and 51 minutes without a break other than to change classes um and and that's just too much I can't work that way every every member of this board I've had individual conversations with can't wait that long between bathroom breaks between just mental health breaks to unwind just a little bit and stop focusing and so I think it's very important that we uh that this board said as a matter of policy that we expect our kids to have a recess break our middle school kids to have a recess break we postpone discussion at the uh Committee of the whole meeting because the administration expressed some concern that the unique needs of the alternative schools because of the disciplinary behavioral challenges that they face might have a particularly difficult

098time or challenging time implementing the the policy in the same way that other other schools do I don't 100 agree with that but in the interest of moving the policy forward for most students we adapted the resolution to provide authority to the superintendent to waive the policy as it applies to alternative schools and Mr samlin has updated his memos I understand the board docs we have a clear definition of what all what counts as an alternative school and that's applicable to this resolution there's also a process just in case there's some reason for a particular school that they can't make this work right that that they can come through the superintendent to the board to ask for an exception or a waiver I don't anticipate that that's going to happen but I didn't want to

099have anybody be able to accuse a micromanaging or ignoring some practical reality that might exist so I wanted to have a mechanism by which we could revisit on a case-by-case basis if there was a problem in a particular school I don't know that I would support any of those but I just wanted to have a vehicle to do that so with that said I'm happy to answer any questions I have my understanding from from my conversation with the superintendent two weeks ago is that the administration would support this resolution with the revision to to accept out the alternative schools and provide the other mechanism and so I would ask that everybody support this resolution thank you thank you okay I have entered the queue as well Miss Silas maybe you can help me with this

100I have a quick question Just For a Moment of clarity was there recently some State legislation that has been adopted in regards to recess policies so the legislation that was passed recently was in regards to kindergarten through fifth grade and it required I think what was it a 15 minute yes ma'am okay thank you so much Mr Russ yeah thank you vice president Powell I just want to First say thank you to uh board member Martin for producing this item if you hadn't I would have um just a comment on some of the changes and revisions I'm not I want to go on record by saying I'm not particularly keen on exceptions to this but um Mr Martin has through his very Deft legal and lawyering skills convinced me that there could be uh righteous

101reasons why that could happen uh I I will again as well go on record that if uh if you're an administrator over a school and and you expect to be Exempted from this uh policy you're going to have a high burden of proof to get that past me but thank you for producing this and I do support this thank you seeing no further comments in the queue we will now turn to the public Dr Finney thank you um I trust you all vote for this rather than let the perfect interfere with the good but I'm incredibly disturbed by the idea that people in the alternative school should just get used to the conditions of a prison they probably need a recess worse than anybody and if the folks that run it alternative schools can't handle

102it find somebody that can run the alternative schools correctly when you decided to kick the middle school students out of brookstown so you could have a bigger better alternative school over there one of the promises was wraparound services it's time to start um fulfilling promises thank you thank you Dr Finney seeing no further comment cards we will now return to comments from the board Mr Martin thank you just on on Dr Finney's point the ev even for the alternative schools they they the principles of each alternative school have to request a waiver that waiver is within the authority of the superintendent to Grant I frankly would urge that it not be granted um uh but I you know shook hands with him that that's what the policy I propose would have in it um and

103so that's what it does but I would I would hope that nobody would um actually Grant those because I agree that that that sometimes the the sometimes the kids that are get in trouble get in trouble because they're expected to sit still too long and longer than human nature will allow um and human nature is different for each one of us so I would I would certainly encourage that everybody have recess thank you Mr Russ thank you I just want to mention one more item as this came in discussion before the board it kind of opened a bigger discussion about how we manage our our schools their time in our children's education and so Mr godi who's not present has made a very I believe excellent suggestion that that we have to take a look

104at the bigger picture of what that means um so you know in that light I I want to mention the board that there will be an item brought by someone in the near future that is going to ask um that we look at how our school day is run at different types of schools because I think that the pressure that over time of different expectations from our kids both in curriculum types of schools that they're in the time of day that they're going to school has ultimately led us to have to force to make a policy like this um and so I think we have to take another big picture look at you know when do our kids show up to school how long is their day what are they doing at school and so

105this is just a small part of that conversation and I just want you know the board and the public know that we're going to be asking more and to even delving deeper into that issue thank you thank you seeing no further comments in the queue we will now call for a vote please vote the motion carries thank you item two well before we enter into item two I would like to make this announcement as well that we're about to start reviewing some of the uh unfinished uh contracts and presentations that were requested from the committee of the whole and just a reminder to those who will be presenting which will be our district administrative staff that your presentations should be about three to five minutes and it's generally a summation of the extended presentation that

106has been placed in board docs so I did want to share that with you all considering that we have quite a few presentations to be made tonight so once again this is item two Professional Services contract achieved three achieve three thousand consideration of a request for the approval of the Professional Services contracts between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and Achieve 3000 in the amount of one million three hundred ninety one thousand ninety dollars to provide a literacy web-based supplemental program and professional development strategic alignment student achievement funding source Esther 3 action 2 and if the presenters will make their way forward all right miss Warren Dr bethley Miss Smith and I see Dr Robinson evening vice president Powell Mr leninson his absence Dr nor sees in his absence into all board members achieve

1073 000 is one of the programs that is being used for literacy support not just is it being used in um for literacy and Ela but it is also being used in science social studies where there even there's even some adaptability for it to be used in math but we're focused in math around DreamBox so achieve is is the tool that we're using which is supplemental support to the regular curriculum um and that's taught for tier one um in our in all of our schools so let me talk about some of the benefits so um I'm gonna talk about more of the upper level usage and miss Warren is going to talk a little bit about the Pre-K lore um so students we really encourage for teachers to have students using Achieve daily if possible

108but at least two to three times per week there are various lessons that the students will have this question came up a little bit earlier I think at the Cow we're going to be working with our teachers during teacher development week which we call TDW to support them in the implementation of how to use it in the classroom without having to stop the class and everybody does achieve three thousand and then we pick it back up so we're going to be working with them to implement this so that it can be done kids can actually do it independently within the class so um when the lessons are done what we do with the with the um articles that come with it is we are working on the lesson plans for the teachers these articles are

109actually implemented in the lesson plan so that the teachers are not having to go and look them up if it's a science article or if it's social studies or even for ELA we're actually placing those in the lesson plans for the teachers to ensure that they can use them know what to do and so the PD that we did last summer supported that we'll be doing that again this summer during teacher development week as well um we had a 99 um 99 of the students who completed the art the the um the lessons if it is done with fidelity if they do the lessons and reach the um 75 or higher the first time so we really don't want the kids to have to do it over and over and over again right we want

110that same lesson we but we want them to really concentrate on it the first time they take it achieve 75 percent or better or higher the first time if they continue to do that it will show vast Improvement and it's going to increase the levels of our students the readability levels of our students and it will result in them achieving higher on the leap crap nine four hour pre-k through second grade students it actually gives a diagnostic assessment for our younger student and it provides an individualized program for them to either use with the teacher in a classroom or the software does go through some individualized lessons for those younger children it actually looks at the funding make awareness Continuum so it can prepare them to begin to read by the end of pre-K or

111first and second grade and so when we look at some of the data at kindergarten from last year to this year we had um a hundred and one one thousand six hundred and Seventeen students to two thousand and 201 students on our at our beloved above level which was really good at first grade we had 273 students to 1 509 students on or at above grade level and then 273 to 1509 on um at or above grade level because remember when some of the students are entering into our system at pre-k they have no exposure to An Early Learning environment that is high quality so moving them at that rate is really good foreign so when we again when we talk about the performance of our students and how they actually are achieving we're talking

112about those Lexile scores and for example if we have a student let's say in third grade all right um the we want to make sure that they are staying on track which means we want them to enter third grade being able to read at or above grade level so that would be where they would be at a 520 Lexile score that's what we want them to have is a minimum threshold but many of our Scholars do not enter third grade reading at or above grade level so these types of support resources is just one data source that is used amongst many to help support the teachers with developing small groups and developing what happens in those small groups this data from achieve again is One Source there other sources that teachers are going to use

113but it really will show the deficit areas where children are struggling so that as teachers are preparing lessons they will be able to prepare lessons utilizing this data looking at those deficits and the strengths of the students okay try to keep three minutes thank you all right um now that we've heard the presentation if we could um entertain a motion for this particular item that's been moved by Mr Blue is there a second okay it has been seconded by Mr Russ uh comments from the board Mr Lewis you know literacy has been a problem okay um I know Miss Warren I know you and your your team you do an excellent job the problem I have or the concern that I have with um achieve three thousand is the fact when you go into the

114um slides the presentation on the uh McGraw-Hill achieve three thousand yes sir okay this um slide um but what what impact has what impact has three thousand had on students is that on the leap 20 25. no it's uh slide four maybe okay what impact has achieved 3 000 had on students yes sir are these numbers are are these our numbers are these EBR numbers um these yes these are our numbers okay so uh where do they come from I mean is it District wide or was it selected schools now this is district-wide data district-wide every school in the district as long as they're doing it okay so it's not so if if everyone's not doing it then it's not every school what schools in particular that this data come from did it come from

115Capitol middle did it come from Westdale did it come from where did it come from that's the population of all of our schools that participated in it okay what's participated is my question high performance schools are there low performance schools no what schools to get it for me go ahead okay um so to your point Mr Lewis all of the schools are expected to do achieve three thousand do they use it do all the schools use it there is a report there's report on the report it's a yes or no question do all the schools use it okay well the answer would be yes that the schools you do at least have a student in every school that is that has signed in and is and has used it a student I said at least

116a student at least a student yes okay so it's not every school to me that's not every school we can get you the information and the specific we have we have the data already done that we can provide to you in terms of each school you can see the usage you can see how many students participated we are we provided what we were asked to do for this presentation and we can have that for you tomorrow this this contract costs us 1.379 million dollars right you're asking for 157 PD hours days at 454 000 10.60 it's only 180 days in school year so you have you're gonna do 157 PDS at that cost where are you seeing 157 PDS um as soon as I can get to it I will find it for you that's

117what's in the pre that's what's in the uh the numbers we have here let me go down I'm sure you have it you can find it before I can memo that's the vendors contract now I know that professional development is done on a monthly basis you're asking for 157 that's what the contract calls for 157. at 454 thousand dollars with 180 day school year you're going to provide 157 opportunities for professional development and 180 day school year [Music] I honestly am not sure where you're reading that or what you have but I can but I am born okay um now I know PD is provided to school leaders um okay here I'm coming up on it right here there we go it's under the slide that says McGraw Hall I'm sorry now I think the

118smarty the Smarty Ants and you know all that stuff is cool but under literacy professional learning Services 156 okay maybe something new 156. at a cost of 2910 a pop for a grand total of 454 063.60 and of course they discounted it four hundred and twelve thousand nine hundred fifty dollars and seventy four cents Mr Lewis can you tell me what page you're using considering that we're now about one minute over I know that I'm next in the queue can I continue please continue and the question I want you to ask vice president file is this contract sustainable we bought it last year we're trying to buy it again this year so the the purpose of professional development is to build capacity with teachers so if they had the same professional development last year why

119we're going to turn around and buy it again this year okay thank you yes and and I'll let me ask this as well I'm wondering is the 156 is that 156 teachers that will receive professional development in regards to achieve three thousand so you have a professional development that's being done multiple times during the year for teachers multiple times during the year for school leaders and um also our EDS are a part of that even um our coaches are a part of that so it's not necessarily just for the teachers that they are receiving this PD the yes sir they did receive PD last year but the PD is based upon the data and the performance of the students in the current school year so as the the make as as students are taking the

120various assessments the data is going into this into the data bank right but when achieved now does the professional development is based upon the current data and usage and performance of the students not from last year okay let me back off a little bit okay I'm I'm being a little too aggressive thank you coach because I have another question I'm being a little too aggressive matter of fact my wife just texted me and she's like why are you being so aggressive okay thank you coach she knows that's my nature but I'm I'm sorry I'm not trying to attack you I'm just going go ahead thank you okay so my question and Dr Robinson and miss Warren thank you for sharing your presentation uh I'm not sure if my question applies to you or if it

121would be Miss uh Dr bethley and is the funding for this program included already just for the for the sake of of making sure that we all have Clarity is the funding for this particular program already included in your in the sr3 action 2 projection for this upcoming year yes ma'am we allocated the amount for the 23 24 school year okay and is there a and I think I asked this before but just want to make sure that I've asked again for the sake of everyone listening um what is the expiration I guess of our current licensing and subscription and and you know are we in a time crunch to make sure that we go ahead and get the licenses purchased for this upcoming year uh it's already okay so yes and thank you so

122much so we are time is of the essence okay so those were my two questions thank you and and then coaches five so all right Miss Kennison thank you uh I think it's important that we ask ourselves what the return on investment is for all of these things like it's hard to measure because it's what it's investment in knowledge for a kid but if we're looking at just this presentation uh so if we look at 99 of students who completed 40 or more multiple choice activities and Achieve 3 000 scoring 75 or higher on their first try scored score achieved basic or above on leap 2025. it's that is fun with numbers and it doesn't say that doesn't even indicate any sort of growth all it says to me is that if you're a smart

123kid and you did this you're gonna remain smart and do good on this other test so where's the where's the Improvement data this is just says a kid who knows how to read does well and Achieve 3000 and as well on leap like this this screen shouldn't even be here let where's the real information like I've talked to a bunch of tiny constituents no one none of them claimed that they've learned anything on achieve3000. that's a lot of money um and like uh Miss Espinosa I think was her name um said you know if we don't have money we don't need to spend it and this is a good chunk that we could just start we could start chipping away just just start and it's not I mean we had a couple weeks to come

124up with a presentation and this is the data we get this is this is this is nothing like it's not it's not saying anything um we vote it down thank you so we did see in leap last year under Ela we did see approximately 1.5 once somewhere in that market of increase right so when we came into the district um some of the schools were using um and I call the name of it multiple times today success maker but it was not being implemented in every school it was being implemented in some schools that needed those supports and within those schools there were certain students that were using it being it was being used for for their interventions so it wasn't for every student at that time um what I will say um Miss Kennison

125is that in order for us to really move the data across the district literacy I'm a prime example is of a student who struggled with reading because reading is comprehension being able to really dissect what is on the written page and it was not until later in my academic career high school that I really learned how to read and apply those skills to other content areas and went on to become a teacher who taught English ironically but we need to have if it's not going to be achieved 3 000 you're going to need to have some means of being able to measure systemically the performance of students across the board in terms of how students are progressing if we really are going to be focused around improving literary skills um let me ask you this

126did you improve your literary skills on a computer or uh with books and people and teachers well have you ever tried to learn how to read on a have any of us prove our literacy on a computer so all these measuring we have to measure we have to like measure the data to move the data find the data to well we have leap testing answer but if we add so many different things to prepare let's take this test to prepare the kid to take this test prepare the kid to take this test so they can do good on this test like what then yes I think I think to Mr Lewis's point and to yours and I guess to all of our board members um what you're really asking in terms of the data um

127we can provide that to you in it'll be a lengthy um that's what we format but we we can provide that information is done we can just have that why isn't it here like why isn't it here like that's we don't want this we want the actual data no so let's not bring any more these numbers let's like with human resources and things like that let's come if we asked for something two weeks ago we want we want all of it yeah I'm stuck you in there too I'm done thank you very much and I can't say with a correlation for the Upper Grade we have not received our leap scores yet so yeah for this year for this year and so what this program does is uses that information that they collect in their

128system to compare with the leap because there is a correlation there but if you look on a slides you will see the Smarty Ants data from 2021 22 to 22-23 but yes we we can um I think we'll do a better job once the leap scores come out to get that correlation thank you thank you Mr Martin thank you vice president Powell I you know I won't belabor the point that's been made but the the statistic provided for achieve 3000 is the equivalent of saying well you know 90 of the kids who do their homework you know pass the class that but if only five kids in the class do their homework we haven't done our job right so this statistic is really not providing us I think you know the slide that that discusses

129the impact of the Smarty Ants you know starts looking at a little more of the kind of of data that we need um and we might need to look at separating out this contract between the two but my question is fundamentally and I I think I asked this last time is how was achieved selected was there a comprehensive selection process that compared achieve and Smarty Ants with others I know you know my daughters use Lexi I know there's a lot of products on the market some are open source and no cost for you know individual usage may have to pay to get the data out of them and so forth um and and so can you tell me uh what the selection process was to settle on this particular product well um absolutely we when

130we came in we lit we looked at various sources of data um and then um it was achieve and I'm forget the other company that um Dr Nancy's was looking at but she ended up being the company a resource that we went with to really address the deficits of reading across the system we did look at um discounted success maker we did price it in comparison to because that was a concern that came up to achieve and it would have been a little bit more expensive even than achieve if had we gone systemically right because remember when they were doing it before it was based upon school by school selection but this was a focus around the literacy plan for the district um that we were looking at all schools being engaged in this so

131that we could have meaningful conversations around data and looking at accountability I will say to Mr Lewis's Point um yes you will find that the vast majority of the schools have significant High numbers of students that are using it as opposed to some others that is an issue that we do need to and will be addressing I've already addressed that with Mr Brickhouse in terms of our school leaders really doing these things with Fidelity and that's something that we do need to work more on and have a plan for implementation of success for that for next year um as a former principal you know I may not have liked everything the superintendent had to tell me or I may not have liked every program or initiative that I had to do and I had achieved

1323 000 in a whole about 50 more programs in my turnaround transformational school um but I had to get it done because I was being held accountable for that data and so when we do our data reviews um with principals this is information that we will be we've already started working with Mr brickhouse's division for next year when we do our data reviews with schools our data roundtables with schools to make sure that we are spending a little bit more time uh looking at the accountability measures because you're right you're spending an enormous amount of money and what is the return on investment if every student is not doing it but um I only have so much control over certain things so we try to make sure that what we're doing but we are going

133to work even closer next year around accountability um I know you guys don't really know but when it comes to accountability um I emphasize that a lot and so he gets tired of me saying it but I continue to say it we have to ensure that schools are whatever we use whether it's success make or achieve whatever it is it has to be done with Fidelity and it has to be done by every school with every child participating and engaging in it so I think there's there's two concerns I have at the end at the end of the day um and I certainly I understand the the premise of and and the potential for software like this because kids really do need the human touch to to to learn but uh software that you can

134use at home to supplement that learning that also measures how you're doing along the way I can see the tremendous value in that I've I've made my own child sit there and do her Lexia um to to get that boost and it's helped even though she doesn't like it and she grumbles um that that said um as we all know a lot of our students come from school from from homes that are not the best environments yes um and and this may have limited benefit for that maybe for some it's going to have a lot of benefit right because they have a little Escape tool that they can use to go do their thing for others it's not so I think as we you know and for any software like this some of it's more

135attractive to kids and more likely to be used and some of it's not so I think as we measure performance that's got to be you know kind of part of what we measure my uh my my hesitation to to vote for this contract right now then stems though from the selection process because what I'm hearing is that we did not go out and say hey all the software Publishers out there who are competing in this space and there are a bunch of them it's not just two right um that that come come show us your data come show us your adoption rates come show us your success let's evaluate that let's make sure that all the teachers who are ultimately going to be man mandated and ordered under pain of getting discipline that you have

136to use this and you have to use it with Fidelity because if you're not going to use it with Fidelity I agree with you there's no point doing it all right that that that that that we've had a a a comprehensive selection process that doesn't need to take like two years right I'm not saying that but that we have a real process that's fairly and openly looking at all the available options from both the budget and a success Roi standpoint so that's that's that's my concern and hesitation over over supporting this right now thank you Mr rust almost forgot I was in the queue um so some of what I was going to ask and say was already covered so thank you I think um so I want to say I'm I'm in support of

137continuing using this tool um one because I do believe that we need tools like this to support our teachers and students if you just sit down and do the math the cost of this contract the amount of teachers you could hire wouldn't scratch the surface of the amount of students this is touching right we know data shows that the most the best thing you can do for a student is one-on-one instruction it's very difficult for us to do that with the resources that we have there's certainly additional support that students receive and that can be very effective but I think we need to be able to attack this from every angle and I think that is why we have this service correct me if I'm wrong um I do agree that at least the the

138amplify excuse me not amplify getting off on a different side the achieve product the data that we're showing is is really hard to extrapolate what that means but I'll point out that at the very least this this Smarty Ants product they're showing like that this impacted 2 000 students this year that is a very significant number of kids that went from essentially not at grade level to grade level that is that is the magic data point that we are all seeking in education how do we get kids to read at grade level I agree that this is a big number for a piece of software to miss kennison's comment my child is at home right now using technology to help her reading comprehension we're using m-class which is a amplify product that was given by

139the school if she likes it I'm not a teacher I don't know how to teach my kid how to read I'm taking every resource I can I want her to have every resource she can at school if that means they get to sit her down at a table and say here do this fun thing and they practice phonetics and it helps use essentially what seems like you know early AI to determine where is a child's weakness in their phonetic learning and then tell a teacher hey this is where you have to focus with this student that's very difficult to do with Fidelity as a teacher and without tools we need to give our teachers tools to do that moving on from that point we've heard and you're going to hear teachers that say this tool

140sucks I will tell you that there are going to be people that have a problem with every tool whether that's curriculum whether that's technology whether that's HR like there's always going to be a problem with something nothing that we bring to the table is perfect what I think that we need to do is see the forest for the trees here this is I believe the going to be if we kept this product the third year right so we have this second year is this this school year is the second year right current school year have we had is it was was this school year it would be the second um okay so 2223 was the first year we had this product no no I'm sorry this would be the third year okay so 23 24

141would make three 23 24. yeah um I I think we need to keep in mind that it takes it does take time to get you know something like I don't know 70 different schools that we're all doing their own thing um to use this stuff obviously as you've said we we have room for improvement there and we can't get data that we don't have that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bath water that's my only point so um I think we need to move forward I think we need to support this my only concern with this is next school year next budget cycle because this is an Esser funding um are we going to continue using this product is it sustainable are we going to do a proper RFP and look at

142other Solutions um are we going to have to roll this back and take away support that we've offered so thank you sir thank you and before we continue with comments in the queue we will now turn to comments from the public Miss Matthews um Cuts need to start now like Mrs Espinoza said earlier ain't nobody getting nothing uh programs do not teach children teachers do programs are supplementary I like I ready it showed great growth but guess what I'm not going to ask you for it because that costs money I can teach my students without asking for something that cost over a million dollars um news Ela is free and I can do the same thing with news Ela on the classroom level as a chief so let's start saving by cutting one million three

143hundred ninety one thousand and ninety dollars I mean I would be fine if you did use a portion of that to buy out Dr narcis's contract thank you thank you Dr Franny first correlation does not prove a cause and effect relationship as Miss Kennison pointed out you can get a data point or a couple of them to support anything what's missing here from the really well-paid folks who are up here defending this expenditure use anything that resembles a convincing case that you should buy this product again not every child is alike and I'm sure all of you have gone on record at least claiming that you value the participation of the human resource capital of this District either you respect teachers or you don't I am incredibly Disturbed here in Dr Robinson say that the

144reason this isn't even better is because some teachers are resisting it but we're going to fix that by pding them in the submission so they'll do what they're supposed to they'll all act alike and will take their individual ability to run their classrooms in the way that works best for them and their kids away from them I hope you're disturbed by that too four words you should never ever accept from the visitor from Maryland or from any of these other people making 130 000 the work for him are we can get you followed by whatever you know earlier Mr Russ asked for something it should have been answered in public it should be available in board docs it shouldn't be an email sent to one board member you are very specific with the first contract

145that was on the agenda two weeks ago about what you wanted really well paid people to be able to come back and answer in two weeks they get an F they should not be retained so um Mr rust is right you will have people complaining about any product what I have not heard about this product and maybe I'll be surprised when there will be enthusiastic people speaking behind me about how Achieve 3000 is the greatest thing for them and their kids and it was great for them and so maybe it's great for another 40 000 students I'll be waiting I'll try not to hold my breath though because I like to remain alive um but most important you don't have an S or three action 2 budget you're nowhere close to it you don't have

146school open in July at the very least the furthest but I don't think you have evidence that supports spending another million point three as Miss Matthews points out there are other ways to spend this money and I do have a suggestion for how you can spend some of the user money you can move Dr narcissus contract since he's a temporary employee looking for other work entirely from the general fund over to Esser thank you [Music] thank you Miss Carmichael good evening Kathy Carmichael District Seven I just wanted to quote Mr Robinson when he was speaking about Chief 2000 that the teachers are really encouraged or required to use the product so teachers are mandated to use it so when we make our teachers use a system that means they don't get to do the lesson

147that they have planned or the teach the poem that they want to teach or the book or the novel because they are required to stop and teach this particular program that come down come down from the top so we're undermining them as professionals telling them to do that so I understand that Achieve3000 is great for some kids and some kids might need more minutes than others but all of you like to talk about equity and Equity is not the same for every kid it's what every kid needs so if one kid at school a needs 32 minutes of achieve three thousand well and we figured that out and the teacher thinks it'll work then let's do that but if another kid at school B doesn't need that and they're going to read a novel then

148let's let them read the novel and not look at the screen and maybe they don't need to do all those minutes at home because they're going to be working on something else so when we mandate it for every single student we're really not serving every single student every single day in the way they need to be served and it's really expensive and so we can figure out other ways to make that work because I've had kids in this district for many years many I could name off all the programs Think Through Math Lexi I mean all the different ones that the teachers discovered that they need what was the spelling one there was another spelling one so there's tons of programs out there but let's not make make the teachers do it that stresses them

149out and doesn't let them teach thank you thank you Miss Espinoza brief my name is tomorrow Espinoza I will be very brief um I heard when Dr Robinson was talking and I just thought about what he had said and it was kind of glanced over but you want 1.3 million dollars to use a program that you've had for two years and you've only seen 1.5 percent growth in a for achieve 3000 which is for 3 through 12. well let's go ahead and do that let's go ahead and give the numbers that we Let's Pretend East Baton Rouge Parish has 41 000 third through twelfth graders that's only 410 kids that are benefiting and it's true but I also want you to think about yes we do need interventions yes there are things that need to

150be done kids cannot read but we're putting them on this program that we're requiring you to sit down and do this but when are they going to get the intervention that they actually need with a teacher if we can put an interventionist back into school they could get the lli programs that are collecting dust in the dibble's rooms we could use the reading 180 programs that we have that have been collecting dust and the only people enjoying the only thing enjoying them are the bugs that like to eat paper there's so much resources in this District that no one's ever sat down and looked at what programs do we actually have is there a way we can use some of those but no we're just gonna go and buy the next shiny car every year

151because it's pretty it's got leather seats it's nice and warm in the winter but I don't know because I've been driving the same car for about six years so I get used to it I drove my other car to the flood took it out after I made the last payment so like I say I mean I just I just think about that and I'll get the smarty smart ants for the K2 but for three through twelve if they don't make the 75 or better I can't read in the first place you know I can't read but you want me to get on the program that make me read I need somebody to help me blend make sounds give me CVC I need that and it may work for some children who are ready just like

152she said but it's not one size fits all if that was the case we would be a a district because everything we do would be perfect if everybody could benefit from everything we do they don't every child is different thank you Miss Espinoza not seeing any other public comment cards we will now return to comments from the board Mr Lewis five minutes Mr Lewis I'm not even gonna need I'm not gonna need five but I like to say this first of all miss Warren and her team Mr Robinson you guys work extremely hard and there's no doubt in my mind that you have the the best interest of our kids at heart Miss Espinoza made comments about the programs and there's there's tons of programs out there but I had a very wise educator make

153a point to me just a few days ago that all of the programming and all these things that we have at our disposal one thing makes a difference in a child learning and that is a great teacher a great teacher makes the difference before programming and all these things became so in Vogue you had great teachers teaching children how to be great a lot of it was done without equity a lot of it was done in schools that were underfunded but you had great teachers so if we and if you've got a good teacher you do what you have to do to make that teacher a great teacher kids are wired differently I've got grandkids that could operate a computer at four years old all I had to do was turn it on and put

154the password in in 1997 I had a computer in my office I turned it on twice I was scared to death of it kids are wired differently what's needed are great teachers and what are what's needed is Ways and Means to support them to help them go from good to great or from great to Greater that's how we're going to solve our issues in this District we're going to have to streamline we're going to have to operate this District like a district that only has 30 some odd thousand students and we're going to have to put great teachers in front of them and allow them to teach we're going to have to allow principles a autonomy in their schools to run their schools the way that they know how best to run their schools without

155being micromanaged a few years ago I was at a school that was a failing school and there was all these programs the principal and I hope she's not watching because she swore me the secrecy about 15 years ago she went into her pocket and she went out and purchased Hooked on Phonics the year before the year she did that we barely missed coming out of corrective action when she put the hooks in phonics on place in place guess what happened the next year we came out of corrective action in flying colors and then the state superintendent moved the goal post and we went right back in but she had great teachers and your mother this was one of them we had great teachers in that school educating kids that were free and reduced lunch from

156single parent homes no parent homes we had students who came to school because they had a great teacher standing in front of them every day who went to battle for them every day that's what's going to make the difference programming is one thing it's all good it's all great because that's how our kids learn nowadays they wired differently but it's still going to take a great teacher vice president apology 29 seconds yes thank you I've entered the queue as well and um I just I know that uh some of you may have seen some of the the at least a portion of the statement that myself and my colleague Mr Lewis actually presented to the public within the last 24 hours and within that one of the comments was whether or not we're taking a

157look at the recommended programs that are available through our state that could possibly be at a free cost or a more of a reduced cost and so that's one of my my rhetorical questions I'm not asking anyone to answer it tonight but just simply are we looking at comparable State recommended programs that might be at a cheaper cost than 1.3 million dollars then also um you know we we have seen the data from Smarty Ants we have seen the data that we have from EVR and just as coach mentioned as well I wonder if if we allow principals to use part of their Title One funding or what have you to support these programs and for schools that may not need achieve 3 000 that they would be given the opportunity to choose a program

158that is fitting for their school and so I just hope that this is something that we think about moving forward that we you know assess what is available to us and then at the same time that we give our principal some autonomy behind what they use and what their students and their families need as well you know Achieve 3000 may not be it but I already might be it you know so with that in mind I think that that's just something that we need to consider moving forward thank you Mr Martin thank you vice president Powell I I really want to agree with my colleague Mr rust that you know there's always going to be disagreement you can't let the perfect be the enemy the good you've got to move forward with something but I

159think as several other members have pointed out one of the questions we have here is a centralized versus distributed nature of the system right and the Mandate the centralized mandate that all schools use this one single program is one that speaks to centralized management of fundamental educational decisions and and in some cases that might be necessary certainly centralized accountability measures are important to to ensure that we have high quality but centralized control and mandates of specific um uh pedagogical techniques or pedagogical tools may not be the most appropriate maybe we should be looking instead to say look well we'll have contracts for you know with two or three different of these providers and each school can choose which one they want to use you know that's most appropriate for their particular environment and their teachers

160and their principal maybe we need to understand that we have to be very frugal fiscally right now right we are not a wealthy school system we we need to make sure that if there are free resources that we can use individual teachers can use like Newsela that Miss Matthews talked about that we take advantage of those where we can and so we need to we're going to spend a large sum of money which you know per student is not a large sum of money but collectively it's a large sum of money um um and it's it's not that you know Mr Russell certain correct to 1.3 million dollars is not going to you know magically allow us to to fund a a huge teacher pay raise or or or you know keep all the Esser

161programs but a million here a million there to paraphrase Russell long pretty soon you're talking about real money and so we've got to have that mindset and everything that we do um and so I think with that in mind I'm I'm not going to be able to support this contract combined with my concern that we haven't actually ever from the beginning done a real comprehensive review of what the best tool would be even if we were going to decide appropriately decentralize this function we should be you know should have from the beginning been very much more open and looking at all of the different options and I just don't fundamentally believe we were so thank you thank you Mr Russ better vice president I'd like to move to table this item until the next regular

162board meeting it has been moved by Mr rust to table item two until the next board meeting is there a second okay it has been seconded by Mr Lewis was uh Mr rust one of the second on the original motion oh yes yep yes I'd be willing if somebody offers that up as a friendly I'd be willing to accept it I'll offer that as a friendly Amendment thank you so uh considering that we will now entertain a vote since that was a friendly amendment that we would table this item until the next board meeting that's tabled until the next regular meeting of the board correct so the next regular meeting would be um July's regular meeting yes please vote are we voting to table it or are we voting on it we're building the table

163because it doesn't it doesn't say that does it it says oh just kidding the motion carries thank you item three of Unfinished Business Professional Services contract amplify consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and amplify in the amount of 22 200 to support the implementation of doubles assessments and related services for 2023 2024 school year strategic alignment academic achievement funding source general fund okay uh Miss okoski thank you Miss Powell and good evening everyone thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak on this item a little bit of background in context we're familiar with Dibbles we had to do the add-on last school year to add on grade four for the literacy assessment this this is the professional development contract that's

164the companion piece Mr rust you spoke to my heart a minute ago so this is what trains our teachers on how to administer the the version of Dibbles that we use as well as the m-class intervention that comes in between the assessment Cycles so the product the return on the investment I hope you're seeing in your house right now through your through your own child we're following a train the trainer model in the next 40 30 to 45 days every principal will turn in a name to accountability of who their Dibbles coordinator is who their Elite person is who their act person is and so forth what we're going to do with the amplify team is we're going to bring in our leads at each school as well as our district leads we'll train them

165that's our first initial training we'll do the assessment the first 30 days of school then we'll bring those leads back before the 45th day for that m-class training how do you do the interventions in between I have six days to play with after that that we will keep in our pocket to use as we need after each assessment cycle do we need to go into the data analysis is there a particular area where folks are struggling with please know that this contract is the minimal package that you can purchase from amplify because we're in year two but I appreciated your comments earlier Mr Russ that even in year two the first year you're learning to fly the plane now it's like oh what is this button what does this do there are things that we

166need to get better at so we're doing a gradual release model where we're scaling back and so if we don't need the days we don't use them we don't get charged for them and so we pay as we go and so this is asking you to allow us up to twenty two thousand dollars to do that job embedded professional learning so that we can support our teachers with product implementation our double scores that become public they're part of our kpis that really speaks to the return on this investment as well as amplify does a good job of qualitatively gathering data from teachers after each professional development session how did it go what do you need next time as a matter of fact one of those last sessions for this school year will take place next

167Tuesday with District staff well we'll evaluate what worked well what didn't work well we'll go through our data at the district level but they're also going to bring in National comparisons for us so that we can use that data to plan forward for next year so I'll pause there because I try to be brief Miss Powell to see if there are any questions or any areas I didn't touch on thank you Miss okanski okay so we will now entertain a motion for item three it has been moved by Mr Martin and seconded by Mr Lewis and are there any comments from the board okay seeing none we will now turn to comments from the public Dr Finney thank you two observations 22 000 is a lot less than 1.3 million and it says general fund

168you have a three or four hundred page general fund book it would be nice if the administration would have added three or four more words so you could tell where in the general fund this will come from and made that a standard practice thank you seeing no other comments comment cards we will now return to comments from the board and um seeing none we will now entertain a vote please vote the motion fails thank you okay item four Professional Services contracts work for I apologize it passes okay sorry can't count okay so once again item three uh Professional Services contract Amplified did pass for the record okay item four Professional Services contract Workforce Development consideration of a request for the approval of Professional Services contract between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and the

169following a defined careers in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand six hundred fifty dollars to provide a digital work based learning platform that supports student career exploration lessons activities and experience Reflections in grades four through twelve strategic alignment student achievement funding source Career Development Fund CDF B use science seamless wbl in the amount of twenty four thousand seven hundred thirty four dollars and twenty cents to provide a digital Workforce experience platform to document student work-based experience and coordinate business Partnerships strategic alignment student achievement funding source Career Development funds CDF Miss Scott Spaulding thank you vice president Powell good evening board members for divine careers obviously it's a career exploration opportunity in the selection process was managed with a chamber and a community effort over five months there were principals teachers parents business owners many

170people from career and Tech education that participated in the process to be able to select the programming this is the only K-12 platform for career exploration once the programming was selected we brought it to the board the board approved it and we began in February of this year so we're bringing it back because our contract is actually through December but that means we would be in the middle of the school year right and so the goal was to bring it and um have a year and a half approved so that we can get through the remainder of not only 23 24 but 24 25. obviously we can make amendments to that per the board's Direction so whatever your pleasure is we can make that happen I'll tell you the career progression um through defined learning

171is a career awareness again it's a platform for K through 12. currently EBR is using it four through twelve there's been over 80 000 uses 80 000 students have gone in to look at the platform for career awareness or building out their portfolio to understand the types of careers or the types of Pathways that they're interested in most of our use has been from the high school but again every school has been able to use it the first month there were over ten thousand opportunities for students to go into the platform for use with the 6th through 12th grade experiences there's a list of 16 clusters of career Industries and that equates to over 75 jobs that are truly available now within this community for students to explore and become aware and familiar with and

172to understand there's Hands-On career experiences and the students prepare with soft skill utilization and there's a full assessment not only of their values but their skills and their interests we literally had a meeting at the chamber earlier this week and business and industry was asking we're supporting the internship program how do we know the students are placed in a career that they have interests and aptitude for and so defined careers does that I guess I won't belabor much of this but I'll say that some of the return on investment is obviously students understanding what career offerings are understanding even five to six layers deep into careers if you're looking at liberal arts and management and you're interested in architecture you can go down through construction management and what have you and so it's multiple layers

173that the students will be able to explore there's guided Exploration with the teachers and then the students are able to explore on their own at any time they have a login and they can explore on their own the um scope and sequence are aligned with our five career industries that the chamber has worked with and investigated in the community to be able to support the other opportunity force is the skills inventory and you can see the slide on the board the Hands-On project you know it's related to project-based learning the teachers have an opportunity to participate in a monthly meeting if they need any support from the company the company offers that free of charge and then there's actually curriculums that are listed even aligned with activities books that would be age-appropriate for the kids

174to learn the soft skills and what have you um we have students creating the student portfolio and so our summer interns were able to begin just this week this was literally their first week working in businesses and they were able to provide not only a cover letter and a resume but they were also able to provide their student portfolios showing their interest in the career Industries where they worked and then the last thing is the The Graduate will be able to go back and look at it obviously our seniors this was their first time working with it our rosin Juniors as well but over the years students will be able to go back teachers said career and tech ed teachers our internship teachers will be able to go back to see if there were more

175interests in a particular field maybe more interest in technology as opposed to construction and Manufacturing then there's Guidance with coursework that can happen and opportunities for selecting Pathways to determine which High School the students would want to participate in so I'll stop there are there any questions okay let us entertain a motion on this item okay that's been moved by Mr Martin is there a second okay and it has been seconded by Mr Blue we will now enter into uh comments from the board Miss Kennison let's be really quick I don't have any questions for you but um we don't have a budget and we don't have we have a money problem uh so we need to stop saying yes to more money um if we don't we're just part of the problem we're part

176of the problem thanks thank you Mr Martin you mentioned sort of how many students had accessed this like one time but can you how many kids are are actually like really using this to explore the things that it's intended to help them explore do we know that so we do have that I don't have that data with me but I can have the team send it we can pull it from the software and it shows each school it shows each student so we can pull the data from the software like that and and we'll figure out how to make it public for Dr Finney to see any others to see the answers as well um and just this is not in any way to like pigeonhole kids into a particular path this is helping them

177explore their interests and aptitudes and that's it exactly that's it well said okay thank you thank you Mr Lewis I like what what you've bought to us I mean it really sounds good um you know there's been times when I've asked High School seniors what are you going to do next year and lots of times they didn't have a clue they really didn't I think this is something that's that's really needed but the thing that most of all that impresses me about it is two words you mentioned soft skills soft skills um especially if if you read you do your research and your data post pandemic employers are more interested or they find themselves becoming more interested in people who possess soft skills who can work in groups who can problem solve who can think

178critically think creatively um I I like this I like the fact that it ties into pathways in different things like that that are desperately needed and we all have heard the horror stories about Workforce in this city you know why we lose industry while we lose companies why people don't come to our city to set up their businesses I think this type of program puts us on the right track um just thank you for all the effort that you guys have put into this thank you okay I have entered into the queue as well I have I guess two questions the one one of them is I know that you mentioned uh the students that are in internships right now that they are creating their portfolios is this uh pretty much the the platform that

179we are requiring internship programs to use within our district and also with attached to that are there additional career-based platforms that we're using as well or is this our Central Main platform that we use to guide uh career interest so you hear a little bit about seamless my colleague Chad O'Quinn will present on that but Define careers is different because it's exploration it's understanding you know what this business is what kind of employees are needed you know what does this career look like what are the opportunities to navigate in the career because not everybody's path is the same and so the other programs are different but I will mention that Divine careers is the only K-12 platform that we've been able to research and find with our you know broad team that meets career exploration

180thank you Mr Russ yes can you speak to the funding source for this the career development funds and how that works sure I'm going to invite Kelly Lopez to come up and give some more details but I'll start while she makes her way forward and so as part of mfp there's a percentage that's of that funding is that's allocated to career and tech ed Career Development and so there's special guidelines that the state requires you to manage those dollars and how you use those funds anything that we submit has to go through a committee and then we submit it through to miss Lopez to be able to move forward and she manages those guidelines but she can speak to more detail so I don't really manage the guidelines I just keep track of the money

181so the CDF money is much like your SCA money it is a it's in level four of your mfp it's extra money you get about six dollars per every child that takes a career and development class is how much you get and it's and you get 75 up front and then they they kind of um give you the other 25 at the end of the fiscal year now I know there are significant guidelines on how you can use these funds um Mr niecase handled all of that he would call and he's like yeah I can do this this and this great we'll do this this and this but I know her staff handles what you but that's how you get the money it's it's been through the mfp yeah I just wanted to get clarification

182on you know you know how and why we're using this tool in underneath that funding source obviously there's strictures on how we can do that and what qualifies for what we can do with that money we can't say take you know 250 000 and say we're going to use that in the general fund for whatever else we want to do so I just wanted that to be on the record thanks thank you all right we will now turn to comments from the public Dr Fanny thank you three quick points there's more to education than training for a job I'm puzzled as to why the chief of operations has anything at all to do with something that sounds academic and until I heard Miss Lopez speak I had no idea where I would look in the

183budgets not that you've approved any budgets for career development funds it sounds like it's coming from mfp so it's in the general fund well why doesn't the agenda items say general fund and then more specifically say which part of the general fund this would be spent under and since you don't have a general fund budget you should not approve this contract either of these contracts yet thank you seeing no further comments from the public we will now return to comments from the board seeing none we will entertain a vote on item four please vote the motion carries thank you item G consent agenda Mr Ballou thank you madam vice president okay are they put on a difference you just voted yes you can have both of them great thank you we appreciate it that's awesome

184thank you yes thank you hey Mr balloon consent agenda the following items are to be approved as part of the consent agenda and are considered to be routine and will be enacted with one motion there will be no separate discussion of items unless a board members so request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and consider it as an item on the regular agenda for a separate vote preceding the last item on the regular agenda item number two advertising of bids 2023-2024 consideration of a request to authorized staff to advertise receive and award bids for materials equipment supplies and services through June 30th 2024 to the lowest responsible bidder slash proposer meeting specifications and all state and federal requirements for quotes and formal invitations to bid item number three advertising

185an official Journal 2023-2024 consideration of a request to for the approval to select the advocate as the official Journal newspaper advertising of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System for the fiscal year 2023-2024. item number four 2023-2024 risk management program consideration of a request to approve the following risk management program recommendations a to authorize the administration to approve the most cost-effective Property and Casualty Insurance program policy renewal package for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System for the 2023-2024 fiscal year and to provide for related matters B to approve a resolution authorizing the board president and the superintendent to execute and sign all documents to project uninsured motorist coverage in connection with the East Baton Rouge Parish school systems automobile liability coverage and itself insured retention program for the 2023-2024 fiscal year C to authorize

186The District staff to issue an RFQ for an independent third party review of our entire risk management program to be completed by December 31st 2023 strategic alignment operational excellence item five early childhood grade expansion consideration of a request for the approval of the following a crestworth and Westminster Micro Center expansion to serve infants to two-year-olds B open Micro Center at Northeast Elementary School to serve infant to three-year-old students in partnership with high performing licensed child care providers in the EBR Early Childhood Community Network item number six grants early childhood consideration of a request for the approval of the following 2023-2024 Pre-K grants a Cecil J Picard early childhood la4 and the amount of seven thousand two hundred excuse me 7 million 248 420 dollars B non-public schools early childhood development nsecd and the amount of

187eight hundred fourteen thousand six hundred eighty dollars strategic alignment student achievement item number seven RFP selection Blended learning software consideration of a request to accept the recommendation from the RFP committee and authorize the superintendent and staff to execute the contract with Imagine Learning Edgenuity strategic alignment student achievement funding source general fund item a Professional Services contract eight avid consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and Avid Center in the amount of seventy six thousand five hundred ninety one dollars to provide individual graduation planning support and professional learning opportunities strategic alignment is student achievement and deploy employee development funding source redesign item 9 Professional Services contract DreamBox consider consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract in the amount

188of 544 thousand to provide a digital mathematics program strategic alignment student achievement funding source Esser 3 action 2. item 10 Professional Services contract National Institute for excellence in teaching in IET consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and niet in the amount of 427 500 dollars to provide professional development on school Improvement best practices strategic alignment student achievement funding source redesign item 11 contract renewal unemployment compensation controls LLC consideration of a request for the approval of the contract renewal between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and unemployment compensation Control Systems LLC UCCS and the amount of 144 000 per year for a period of three years beginning July 1st 2023 through June 30th 2026. strategic alignment operational excellence funding sources disbursement

189clearing fund item 12 contract agreement be able con consideration of a request for the approval of a two-year contract renewal between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and be at be able education Incorporated in the amount of 652 dollars for the career-based literacy platform for the following msap schools Philadelphia Ray Elementary Park Forest Elementary Park Forest Middle and Bellaire High Schools strategic alignment fund funding sourced msap Grant item 13 policy DJ Ed bid and quotations consideration of a request for the approval of policy DJ Ed bid and quotations item 14 semi-annual Financial tax Plan update consideration of a request for the approval of the actual December 2022. 2022 semi-annual Financial tax Plan update and the 2022-2023 revised budget for propositions one two and three strategic alignment operational excellence item 15 bid Woodlawn High classroom

190Edition consideration of a request for the authorization for staff to design advertise accept the low bid meeting the contract documents and to make the award of a contract for construction of the Woodlawn High School classroom Edition and renovation project as specified in the a plan to improve facilities slash technology discipline and compensation and the East Baton Rouge Parish School System known as the plan as revised through February 22nd or reject any and all bids for Just Cause in accordance with the Louisiana public bid law Louisiana revised Statute title 38 chapter 10. item 16 litigation consideration of a request for the approval of the recommendation from Gwen chamblin general counsel East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and the amount of drain Bowie individual and on behalf of the minor child versus East Baton Rouge Parish School

191Board at Al docket number 705 665 section 29 19th jdc that concludes the consent agenda items ISO move thank you so much um is it within a protocol for me to call for the items that need to be pulled okay so are there any items that need to be pulled from yes okay uh Madam vice president I'd like to pull items number seven eight and nine from the consent agenda to be discussed separately okay all right thank you thank you so it has been moved by Mr Ballou and then Mr Martin has pulled item seven eight and nine and it has been seconded by uh Miss Stewart okay we will now entertain comments from the board on all items except seven eight and nine okay seeing none we will now turn to comments from the

192public Dr Fanning I have a comment on item number five the Micro Center expansion the only previous time a related topic came to the board that I could find was in April 2021 when the board voted down creation of micro centers at Westminster and crestworth and somehow they came into existence anyway you haven't had a serious discussion about whether it makes sense to be privatizing Pre-K services in our school buildings I think you should I think this is a very bad step down a slippery slope number six The Early Child Grant be sure that the administration doesn't take an inch and assume you gave them a mile because you're not approving the allocation of the grant just accepting the grant with respect to number 13 I think it's a dangerous and bad idea for you

193to double the superintendent's um authority to spend money without board approval with respect to number 14 I'm just reminded that the proposition one annual budget is not in the special fund book and that's a problem and with respect to number 15 the construction manager doesn't know how many build how many rooms that you will be buying for the Woodlawn expansion so I guess the tax plan says spend money so you spend money I think all of those could have stood um it would have been reasonable to pull those and maybe if seven eight and nine weren't so outrageous and you weren't already exhausted from trying to look at a budget that hasn't been actually prepared by the administration yet maybe you could look at some of these other things a little more carefully it was

194a nice thought thank you thank you Miss Matthews to speak to item G5 yes ma'am um I hope that somebody pulls if it's not too late 13 we need to be watching every single penny that we are spending and I agree with Dr Finney that changing the amount that can be spent without it coming before the board at this point is um not wise physically but not physically physically I'm tired yeah money-wise there we go thank you seeing no further comments from the public we will now return to comments from the board on the consent agenda with the exceptions of item 7 8 and 9. okay seeing none we will now entertain a vote the motion carries thank you now back to item seven RFP selection Blended learning software consideration of a request to accept

195the recommendation from the RFP committee and authorize the superintendent and staff to execute the contract with Imagine Learning Ingenuity strategic alignment student achievement funding source General fine is uh there is a presentation uh in regards to this item Mr James Mr Brickhouse Mr Clements Sylvie if you can come forward please you all I have to put our own blast Miss Sylvie is one of my mentees I was her supervising teacher when she did her student teaching and now she's just a part of my family foreign good evening board my name is James Smith and I work in the office of graduation excellence and speaking of the edge annuity which is Imagine Learning um just to kind of give you an update as far as what we're getting as far as our bang for our buck

196um there were 1 219 students enrolled in 1 715 career recovery courses initial credit covery courses I mean initial Credit Recovery courses and also using those means for our back on track students as well as our summer school students and so we're looking at how we are actually making these things happen for our students um one we looked at a report that said that I have almost 2 000 students that graduated this past May 1053 of those students had some form of credit recovery during the four years that they were or the eight semesters that they were in high school and so that's more than half of our students that use that platform in order to use those credits to or recruit those credits to graduate on time we're also looking at um there are

197instances where we are Charlotte we have shortages in schools whether it's not a teacher there or that subject is not being taught in that system and so we use this platform to also have those kids still be able to be on track for their Carnegie Eunice tour graduation without having to um transport them to other schools or just not have those credits there so Edgenuity has actually served our district we are now up as far as the average completion we went from uh 22 completion last year we're up to 65 completion as far as our students really using the program to make sure that they are recouping those credits and that comes from a lot of the different things that we've put in places for us at the office about graduation Excellence but that's been

198an excellent monitoring of what's happening within our schools to make sure that the facilitators are amongst where the kids are actually doing it doing in those classes it was actually put on their schedules so they're not kind of taking several classes at one time and they're kind of nearly willing just kind of taking all the courses at one time and really not getting through what they're supposed to um we're actually helping those students to really attain those credits um to make sure that they are working toward graduation any questions thank you okay may we entertain a motion on item seven okay it has been moved by Miss Stewart and seconded by Mr Lewis okay and comments from the board Mr Lewis I supported this I mean I support this this item because I've seen firsthand

199what Edgenuity can do for a high school student who's fallen behind a lot of kids especially they come to high school ninth graders is such a weird great year form kind of academics kind of falls off because they're they're involved in you know who do I want to hang out with socially who who's the new crowd I want to be around and they they fall behind the they they fail some classes so Edge annuity in my experience has been really good at helping kids get back on track once they get off a little bit so I think Edgenuity is a a great tool to have in our schools thank you and I've entered the queue as well I just wanted to share as a parent um I want to say maybe around the time of

200covet I was working in Port Allen and I actually decided to move my son to Port Allen temporarily and he was an eighth grader who was taking geometry at scotlandville middle and then I moved him to Port Allen to be closer to me and there was no geometry teacher at the middle school and so they assigned him ingenuity and from there not only did he pass the class but he passed the leap by having Ingenuity there yes so and I'll say this he didn't get support from his mama because I don't know geometry that was my worst subject so you know I always tell him that he was smarter than me because he's able to take that class with that platform and actually have the data to support that it assisted him in his learning

201so thank you Mr Martin thank you very briefly I just wanted to support the the program I wanted to compliment you on your Roi statistics that you provided y'all been listening to what we've been asking everybody um y'all y'all have the Good Fortune to have a more discreet isolated platform that you can get see see the changes come much more quickly than the changes in literacy and others so you've got a little Advantage there a little little uh Head Start but I appreciate you uh framing it in that way thank you thank you thank you seeing no further comments from the board Mr Russ yeah I just want to ask a question not about the program but about the item it does not as other items typically do list the amount of the contract on

202the item on the agenda is that typical is that a problem generally we will list the price I mean we can if you want we can I would suggest amending the motion as an RFP or it's an actual is this the art piece to accept the recommendation from the committee and authorized yeah so the board secretary just indicated um to me that this is an RFP so there's not a specific price point um the authorization is for us the superintendents have to execute a contract so you're authorizing US based on the RF RFP specifications to authorize that contract and I think this is the item that questions doing the cow about what the how the price point worked with the per student and whether that was a cap so maybe you guys could provide details

203on that um so there's one flat fee users and teachers and that fee is 362 thousand dollars uh 362 524.40 okay so that one flat fee okay so it's not listed in the item because it's an RFP but it when we negotiate the contract that's the amount we'll be working with okay thank you could you repeat that amount again for me 362 524.40 thank you seeing no further comments uh in the queue we will now turn to comments from the public Miss Matthews when you have a budget there are some things you have to have and Edgenuity is one of those things that we have to have that's like your utilities um but for the contract I'm going to say it again because we have to repeat things to make sure that that we hear

204it that when it's used for a situation for a teacher shortage can the contract Please spell out that a live teacher be on the other side of that camera for the majority of the time for the children not choosing their situation so we use it for summer school those kids are choosing that situation we use it for initial credit when they're trying to get ahead or do something those children are choosing that situation if they learn they know that they can learn in that platform then that is great it works there's wonderful like I said this is something that we actually do need and I do hope that you actually approve this item but for kids that this is not a choice for for kids that just don't have a teacher and need that biology

205teacher or need this and and we have failed to staff that position and they're being placed in this position until we get them a teacher and they don't learn like that they need a real human body on the other side of that camera since we are replacing proximity with this um we can outline that in the contract and I do hope that as we are doing the contract that that we do that um because those kids aren't making that choice and that will be in the best interest of all of our students thank you thank you Dr Fanning to make sure I understood what the staff member just said it's 362 524.40 if 20 000 students use it and it's 362 524.40 if nobody uses it that doesn't sound like a very good negotiation but

206whatever um you know as Ms Matthews said the HR department hasn't successfully staffed the classrooms with the students we need so perhaps something like this is needed but please insist that the administration bring the contract back for your approval I would suggest that you amend this well better yet put it off until you actually have a general fund budget but if you approve this in the hopes that there might be 362 thousand 524.40 in some category of the general fund then I think you should insist on taking out the word execute the contract let them negotiate something and then let the community see it none of this we can get you that um you know I've tried that there's a law that says I should be able to get records I shouldn't have to sue

207for them anyway insist on some accountability from the visitor from Maryland and his colleagues please thank you seeing no further comments uh comment cards from the public we will now return to comments from the board foreign seeing none we will entertain a vote please vote the motion carries thank you item eight Professional Services contract Avid consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract between the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and Avid Center in the amount of seventy six thousand five hundred ninety one dollars to provide individual graduation planning support and professional learning opportunities strategic alignment student achievement and employee development funding source redesign presentation by Dr Robinson thank you thank you Miss Powell so Avid is a part of the um igp Pro that the state requires but Avid is

208one of the vendors on that particular list so you did receive the presentation and Avid is advancement via individual determination 13 of our schools are currently using Abbott high schools right now the CRI and the URI schools are using it because it is required by the state and that's paid for through the um redesign Grant but Avid started um several years ago by a English teacher in San Diego California who really was beginning to look at the fact that students were coming to school they were not successful they were not able to read and you're talking about high school students they were not graduating and so her name was Mary Catherine Swanson from Claremont High School in San Diego California and having had the experience of being an avid principal myself it was very transformational

209for me and for my Scholars at the time because the type of school that I was the principal of Adam as a middle school principal was not something that most people would want to send their children to and it became a game changer for my Scholars and for our culture and the climate of our school it totally transformed what academics look like in the school um but here we are using it um in a little bit of a different way in the state of Louisiana it is initially it came to this this system before we got here and principals were able to look at at those principles at that time were able to look at the various uh programs that were on the approved list and they selected avid some of the principles when we

210got here were using Avid some schools were using Avid and one goal one goal is still on the list however they they are no longer in our district and so we just had Avid and so when the schools that needed it needed to have another partner we chose Avid because it was consistent with everything that was already being done and to build the capacity of the principles um last last year the schools went to various places where they were having the Avid training this year I did not want to spend the money on all the traveling I wanted to be able to save as much as we could and so we brought Avid here which was a lot cheaper than everybody flying and going different places and we had the institute on last week very

211eye-opening experience for some of our school leaders and teams that came but it brought about a sense of awareness Avid helps build critical and analytical thinking skills for those students our Scholars that engage with Avid it is a part of the igp the individual graduation plan that every student is required to have before they graduate and usually those plans begin around the eighth grade great and they every year the counselors will chart the things that for that particular year on their igp until they get to 12th grade and graduate so it is um a part of the approved list of vendors that we can use but whether or not a CRI or a URI those are schools high schools that are struggling academically whether or not those schools are able to not have an igp

212partner that is non-negotiable that's by the state requirement so we're using Avid as the vehicle to support the igps for those students in those schools and that's 13 of our high schools so we have two that are not using that because they don't have they don't have to due to the academic status of those schools thank you we will entertain a motion for item eight thank you okay it has been moved by Mr Russ is there a second okay it has been seconded by Mr Martin and we will now turn to comments from the board and I have entered into the queue I just have um if you are willing to yield to just a series of questions here so as I think about uh avid I was wondering how does this compare to what

213Miss um Scott Spalding mentioned to us earlier with the Workforce Development programs Divine career defined careers I'm sorry and you science seamless and then I was also wondering about like quest for success how or do all these programs work together or are these isolated and completely different platforms and and do we use all of that within our schools um that the answer would be now in terms of what Ms Scott Spalding presented um that is a part of Workforce Development so that's sort of detached from what we we're doing okay um but however um when it comes to Quest for success is a course that the state um has for high schools you could do it in middle school but typically they it is done around the ninth grade um could do it in middle

214school as well but typically usually it's going to fall around the 9th grade maybe eighth group but definitely ninth grade it is a year-long class that does support [Music] um College and Career Readiness support and Avid um is a little different from that course in that quest for success is not a part of the igp process right but Ave it is and so um it's the course Avid can be a course that can be isolated to just an avid teacher or it can be integrated into all of the content areas and so many of the schools that's what they've had to do so that they're able to meet the requirements around the master scheduling and all those other requirements that they have in their schedules so but in terms of now there is a component

215of avid called tallow that does allow for some very limited exposure to where it will look at various Industries in our community in our local community as well as nationally but specifically around and then kids can really um do like resumes applications within Tallow for various businesses to teach them how to do an application and how to look for career choices and that would be isolated to students in a high school because Avid is a program that an initiative that can be placed in elementary as well as middle schools but we do it here in state of Louisiana typically it's on the list for high schools that's now we could do it in other other levels but the funding for it is specifically for high school okay and I remember you mentioned that there's a

216grant that supports this correct yes the redesign Grant okay and then also so it's not on the general fund it's coming out of the redesigned Grant okay also or is there any data that supports whether or not the teachers have been implementing this uh you know on a regular basis within their classes I know you said that it's it's kind of I guess an additional um activity that's added to core classes or what have you those are strata teaching strategies methodology strategies that are added to support like note taking it you can do college trips um to support College and Career Readiness kids can research careers they can do surveys and interviews um so it's it's the strategies can be abroad right now when it comes to um the implementation of it um we we

217were struggling even when we got here we were struggling with um the success of the implementation we've gotten better last year um yeah last year but um I mean the year before but there is still great room for implementation support so we we that's why we brought everybody together this summer to have one Institute and it really from the feedback that we were provided it really and truly did make a difference in terms of the understanding for implementation we've already begun to start working with schools around their plans because there is a required plan that each school has to do we wanted them to bring their school Improvement plans because Avid is a part of school Improvement and so instead of them having to do a whole separate plan they were able to extract things

218from their school Improvement plans to put into their Avid plans but when it comes to implementation again to Mr Lewis's Point previously there is great room for improvement that we really need to do um when it comes to the implementation of all of these initiatives thank you that's that was one of what my final statement would have been as well that I think that we just across the board need to work on what our accountability and our implementation standards are possibly have Frameworks and models that are put in place as well but thank you Mr Lewis thank you um you know almost from the beginning Dr norsees and and his staff have talked about trying to align everything we do so our kids from you know Pre-K kindergarten Elementary Middle High School can have an

219idea of of where they're going and I'll pivot back to something I said earlier about asking High School seniors what are you going to do next year and kind of getting that blank look um I think Abbott is a great tool when you layer it with everything else that we're doing I'm very familiar with the imagine you know uh Grant I took part in that at my last school I can support this primarily because it's coming from the Grant and secondary because we we need it we we really do our kids really need to have some type of idea of of where they're heading once they walk across that stage you know and and for so many years that was not the that was not the case um I applaud y'all for the way you've

220you know you're integrating Avid into what we do but let's not let's not overwork our teachers with it you know what I'm saying if we're if they're going to make it part of their school Improvement plan let's not make it so that you know the kids are getting to read and writing arithmetic and all those other things that they need but I I think it's really good for our kids and I think it's going to help our district in the long run and that's why we're here so if Avid is successfully implemented it it focuses very heavily on around literacy um and the the critical and analytical thinking skills that are needed in mathematics that are needed in this in science that are needed in social studies um I even with the new rollout that's

221coming with social studies um which is really going to be a mind blower for the state because there are going to be some critical skills that students will have to be exposed to even as early as kindergarten which was why we were focusing so heavily around the implementation of teaching science and social studies in in the earlier grades but Avid if it is done correctly focuses a lot around literacy reading um critical to the other core content areas Avid can be implemented the strategies can be implemented in any content area regardless to what it is and again I'll go back to something I said earlier great teachers so if we're going to use this let's make sure that our teachers are prepared and and they can implement it and they can weave it into what

222they do every day in their classrooms because it's it's a program like so many other things that we've talked about tonight and it's going to come down to that person standing in front of those kids absolutely great teachers will Harvest great results yes sir thank you thank you Miss Kennison you said this was a requirement by the state the igp igp individual graduation plan okay and Avid is one of is the vehicle by which we're using to implement those igps and there's no other programs of the many many programs that we're talking about it's not and otherwise that could be you it sounds like it's similar to a lot of other ones is it just in what way like just individual graduation planning is a requirement by the state that part is that part is

223required and Avid is just one of those that's on the approved list it's not very many and when was when did that become a requirement um it's been for a few years now um um and since before I think I returned back to the state of Louisiana you said it's already being used in 13 schools do we currently have a contract we're currently in a contract with them yes yeah well we for this previous year we vote on that yes this contract I think it expires June 30th June 30. so we're looking to re-up for the new fiscal year so the board voted on it yes ma'am okay okay um um I'm I'm done thanks thank you seeing no other board comments we will now turn to comments from the public Dr Finney I'll be

224brief believe it or not one of my pet peeves is acronyms that aren't explained I hope you all know what cir and uir stand for because I haven't the foggiest idea and the other point is that you had a special fund budget hearing nowhere in that hour and a half or whatever did I hear this particular Grant or special fund mentioned so it's only two million dollars presumably there's room for 76 000 but you don't have a budget you won't have a budget for two weeks I don't think anybody is going to be doing a lot of work on their individualized graduation plans in July Maybe I'm Wrong but I think you should really put off this purchase until you at least have a budget for the fund from which the money is going to

225come just a thought thank you thank you there are no other uh comment cards um and we will now return to comments from the board seeing none we will entertain a vote please vote the motion carries thank you is there a motion on the floor to extend our time we see that it is now 8 50 p.m we do have a couple of more items uh to well about three I no two items that we need to cover 10 minutes yeah it's actually one item okay it's one okay yeah you think we can do it in 10 minutes we can cover it if not we'll need to extend okay all right well let us continue okay so item nine Professional Services contract DreamBox consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract

226in the amount of 544 thousand dollars to provide a digital mathematics program strategic alignment student achievement funding source sr3 action 2. um Dr Robinson yes ma'am thank you so remember they said you only have nine minutes now so we got to get through the hole and I try to do it in three so when we came to um EBR same process as was before with achieve was done with DreamBox as well and we looked at data to assess where we were again schools there was not a consistent program for every school like we're doing with DreamBox schools were kind of using different programs but we brought this here and I think we had at that time in that meeting I think there were a couple of um other additional staff members that came in to

227the meeting as well but DreamBox is a supplemental support to our tier one curriculum which is eureka and um it is both an intervention as well as an enrichment opportunity for for students we the the company actually um their ask would be the Five Lessons per week we're somewhere around 3.5 we're getting to four lessons per week um again we our teachers have been really um Noble in working to ensure that the students are on DreamBox the kids I've gone into schools same with achieved but I've gone into schools with DreamBox to sit really talk with kids they love the little caricatures that come with it and when they finish their work then they the teachers will assign them to it the data from DreamBox can be used to help create amongst other data sources

228to create small group instruction uh small groups so that teachers are able to do small group um every school Mr Lewis is in fact using DreamBox sir um even if we have one student in the school using it which we probably would see in some of our schools that are dedicated magnet Highs but our students are using and 96 of the students K to eight are using DreamBox we did see an increase in our math data this previous leap we have not gotten the data back from this year but we did see approximately three little over three percent almost 3.5 percent gains in our now we can we attribute the success of that to our teachers who have been really pushing these initiatives within their classrooms DreamBox simply wasn't was a venue to help us

229getting there with our leap we are excited to see what the leap does look like for this upcoming school year um we do have a a lot of one of the things that with achieve as well as um with DreamBox there is a lot of professional development we've had to do a lot of it virtually because of covid and returning back um from the from covet but we do have a professional development I apologize Dr Robert two seconds okay okay we do have a professional development um scheduled for um 175 of our teachers this year so it's two day cohort yes thank you is there a motion from the floor for to accept this item okay thank you it has been moved by Mr Russ and seconded by Mr Lewis and we will now take

230comments from the board Mr Martin very quick question can you confirm are we are we using Eureka curriculum are we moving to using Eureka curriculum in in all of our schools universally we use correct uh Eureka and all of our schools except for um two of our high schools and um Eva Lagarde they're using it we piloted illustrative and Eva Lagarde this year and the principals at Baton Rouge high and Liberty were able to select and they selected illustrative for their schools we're inheriting Capital who was already using illustratives so those schools will be using that but everybody else is using Eureka thank you okay thank you all right seeing no other comments uh from the board we will now turn to comments from the public Miss Matthews so all of the programs that the

231teachers and students said that they work because of buy-in are listed as moderate in the presentation um you can have the absolute best lesson in the world but if you don't have a hook and you don't get the kids to buy into it you have nothing at least this one's only 544 000 but that is money all the same um and the one million somebody asked earlier how do we gauge growth throughout the year if we don't have this program and achieve the 1 million a net and illuminate test that we take all year long do gauge that growth throughout the year thank you Dr Finney thank you again not every child is alike you should treat teachers like professionals and the reason I suspect that there was 96 participation is because students were forced

232to do DreamBox whether it was to their educational benefit or not kids are unique if you want to have this resource available that's one thing although half a million dollars is a lot of money but what I heard was even more concerning about DreamBox is the fact that it was done to the students not available for the students and let me repeat the anecdote from a parent on the last day of school or at least in the last week her child had an opportunity to engage in an interesting lab experience and was instead forced to sit in the front of computer and do busy work so that the school would not get in trouble for not having compliance with DreamBox that should never happen and if you don't fund this it's less likely to happen

233and another reason you shouldn't fund this and you should defer this for um at least a few weeks is that the funding source is identified as sr3 action 2 not the gates Grant by the way and you don't have a budget for sr3 sr3 is one-time money if the expectation is that you're going to use this program year after year after year you need to have a sustainable funding source and you have to have a way of actually Gathering useful data because I don't think there is a line of people behind me with positive qualitative anecdotes about how great this program is in fact the anecdotes I've heard have been quite critical of it so I think it would be prudent of you to not approve this contract tonight possibly consider it once you have

234a budget and then voted down thank you for your time thank you so quick question do we just simply continue considering that it is 8 59. okay it has been moved by Mr Martin and seconded by Mr Russ that we extend our time to fulfill this particular item as well and with that in mind I do have a question okay seconded by Mr Russ and what was that last part you said uh and we'll have to take uh comments from the board audience and back to the board okay comments from the board um my name is in the queue for this particular item okay well this comment is on extending the meeting okay yes okay seeing none all right comments from the public Dr Fanny thank you you wouldn't have to go through this if

235you rescinded that ridiculous policy which you should at your earliest possible opportunity this is not the way to run a governmental body thank you comments from the board see none we can enter into a vote this this is to extend the time for this particular item roll call please vote motion carries thank you okay returning to a conversation about item nine in regards to the Professional Services contract and of DreamBox and I have entered into the queue my question was about just as what Dr Finney has mentioned about the funding source for DreamBox is there a grant that supports this yes so um there this particular year of DreamBox would be coming from Esser um which it was already designated last year to come from Esser this year this is a part of it um

236we've we entered into a grant with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as LSU and um they are supporting us in this effort around the professional development and we do have two of our representatives from our dream box so you could always meet with them after if you would like to but this is a part of that process we we've also spoken with DreamBox in terms of trying to negotiate for this year to kind of bring the price down a little bit more on on DreamBox as well and so we're in that process of of doing that okay all right I do have another question then so what is do you know happen to know the cause for the professional development I think that was a hundred and seventy eight thousand if I'm not

237mistaken but that cost is being absorbed by billimen on the Gates Foundation um through the grant okay and one last question so beyond this year would we be able to continue DreamBox possibly with that particular Grant or would this be the the final year that we have secured funding so the grant does not pay for DreamBox so so that we would then have to look at how we will fund for the last two years of the grant DreamBox so there are multiple things that could be done but we would have to look at that so that means we we have to pretty much eat the cost of 544 000. yes I got you thank you Mr Russ yeah I noticed on the last slide of the presentation that there was a revised or realigned original

238quote yes we that um was an ERA Mr Russ but that is what we're looking at trying to reduce the price so they're correct is this 544. okay so the price is 544. so the slide is not accurate okay that's all thanks yes sir thank you Mr Martin I I have a hard time separating out my position on this from my position on the achieve thing we decided would achieve that the best thing to do was to table this for uh until the next meeting and so I'd like to either offer a friendly Amendment or a substitute motion to table this until the next meeting okay uh Mr Russ and Mr Lewis do you accept the friendly amendment of being able to table this until the July meeting yes ma'am thank you all right considering

239there are no other comments uh in the queue we will entertain a vote and the motion is motion is to defer to defer the meeting of July yes please vote thank you the motion carries thank you okay so we're now to item H new business student expulsion Mr shamlin yes ma'am um as the superintendent was able to resolve this matter with the parent and because of the because the item was placed by motion and second of the board we can simply remove it if there's no objection from any of the board members who are currently here any objection no objection to the matter will be removed from the agenda okay thank you so item H uh one hat it will be removed from the agenda and we're now to organizational items Mr Martin thank you

240announcement of meetings special meeting to be held on June 29 2023 at 5 PM in the central office boardroom Committee of the hold to be held on July 6 2023 at 5 PM in the central office boardroom regular meeting to be held on July 20th 23 at 5 PM in the central office boardroom with that can I move to adjourn tonight yes thank you I moved to adjourn have a great night everyone foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]