June 9, 2022, EBR School Board Special Meeting

001so [Music] i'd like to call to order this special meeting of the east baton rouge parish school board for thursday june 9th we will start with a invocation uh by board member ballou and i will lead the audience in the pledge of allegiance mr blue heavenly father we thank you for blessing us with this beautiful day and bringing us together in service of others we ask that you guide our decisions and actions as we work to ensure our students acquire the knowledge and skills that will help them reach their full potential and maximize the opportunities in their lives all this we ask in jesus name amen amen please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation

002under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll move now to roll call madam secretary please call the roll district nine presidents happen present district four vice president collins district one mr blue here district two mr lannis district three mr howard district five miss where jackson present district six miss dyson district seven mr goday here district eight miss bernard present we have a quorum um before we go before we uh move along i uh would like to just kind of explain where we are obviously uh the meeting last week uh the committee of the whole ran um long and we have a long agenda of action items uh and um we were not sure we could call another committee of the whole based on my conversations with council but i do have the authority

003to call a special meeting what i am encouraging my colleagues to do is that when we make a motion that we use it as if it were a committee of the whole by making a motion to refer to either the consent agenda or the regular board meeting or uh to report it to the agenda without action so the differentiation is if you put it on the consent agenda then it would be on the consent agenda for the regular meeting if you move it forward without recommendation or just move it forward to the regular agenda it would be a separate agenda item so just wanted to kind of explain that so that everybody was on board and on the same page any questions from board members on that no okay so we'll jump right in items

004for consideration be one consideration of a request for the approval of a job description for a school resource officer or school safety officer um do i have a motion moved by mr goday seconded by mr baloo mr chapman let me be clear i moved to refer to the cons to the consent agenda at the june meeting okay thank you so i want to clarify i believe that there are two descriptions for the sro um if i'm not if i'm right mistaken are you specifying you want to send them both yes okay or right says to prove one of the two i just saw that okay i i would like to propose that we refer to the consent agenda this uh job description for the school safety officer unarmed and mr blew you that you you're

005good um since the the um memo asked us to approve one or the other it's probably i would think uh more appropriate to send it without action that's fine okay okay so amended motion is to send it without action which we put it on the regular agenda as an as a standalone item it's totally fine okay and mr blue that's your suggestion so um okay see no uh yeah i do miss bernard i would like to bifurcate the two items and send them both as separate items so that we could have a week to consider both are either position so it would be one or the other or both at the full board meeting i'm okay you want to you want you're willing to do that as a friendly okay great thank you so explain

006to me what we're doing my understanding is uh it's my understanding that miss bernard has suggested a friendly amendment to mr golday and consume in his second will take that amendment to send both job descriptions to the concentrand of the regular meeting um without recommendation correct is that correct yes okay as long as we all understand um miss dyson i think that's been handled i i just wanted to make sure that they were both going through thank you see no other questions from the board we'll go to the audience any comments from the audience on item b1 fifty five thousand dollars is the starting salary is more than a starting salary for a police officer who lists her life on the line it is more than i as a 16-year teaching veteran make i just

007broke 50. the school safety officer is absolutely ridiculous i was hoping you were going to shut that completely down tonight also the job descriptions and responsibilities are the exact same for the school safety officer which is the unarmed person as for the sros who already serve in our schools it also says that they are to investigate and look at crime as trained by the baton rouge police department but they have no training from the baton rouge police department these are people with the only thing that they have is a high school diploma or ged it is like this district finds more and more ways to insult us as teachers and to insult now the baton rouge police department and the sheriff's office who has been working in our system i do agree with the bifurcation

008um but if we do add the 26 additional sros i would like to see the 47 deans and counselors who have been cut from our system added back to those elementary schools because if we touch children's needs prior to in criminal history we won't need as many sros in our system any other comments from the audience on item b1 seeing none back to the board the board is clear madame mark mr blue sorry thank god i wanted to see do do we have uh anybody from our uh our security department here uh mr chester or mr mcgardner is here good to have uh and dionne thank you i um my question uh is regarding the armed uh security officer position um which if we have one or the other that's what i would uh favor

009uh is that we have a professional uh certified security uh guard uh position uh that would justify you know pain at that level um are we uh confident that uh if we approve 26 positions that uh we can have you know uh somebody professionally trained and certified uh be able to be able to fill those positions the next scheduled training is not due it's not scheduled until august of this coming year so it wouldn't happen before school begin as far as the training that's going to be required for it because we were pushed for to get this approved and getting the positions um approved about approved by the board so um it won't happen before the school year as far as the training but we could have them trained professionally yes sir and i know

010what a lot of our newer schools uh were designed with security in mind and but some of the older schools may have more vulnerabilities as far as access points um do we believe that the uh the armed security officer position uh is is needed to help uh protect our students uh in some of these schools board number blue our our position is that we would not um recommend armed security guards um and some of the uh security measures that we need to look at which we are looking at which is egress and ingress um are really more of the critical issues that we need to focus on which is what we're doing so uh if i could just uh ask a clarifying question i think what i hear you asking mr if we if we

011hired uh if the board decided to go with armed officers and that's what they voted for and in our hiring process we hired former police officers or anyone that had those certificate or training already would they be automatically qualified for that or would they still have to go through a brand new training they would still need to go through our training okay and uh even the the unarmed school safety officer would go through training the same same training yes they would go through the training because i think the what we have looked at is is when you think about the um active shooter they are not coming in with a gun on their hip they're coming in with with uh automatic weapons and that changes the whole complexion as to what an armed guard that

012we would have would be able to even be able to do at this point because unless we're going to um equip them as um tacticians fully engaged in all of the protective gear um they don't stand a chance with a weapon on your on your side versus an ak-47 or one of the other uh automatic weapons and that's just reality okay so um if that's the case i would think considering we have you know if we were to hire an unarmed security guard um even going through training i'm not sure it would justify the level the pay grade level uh if it wasn't an armed guard um do you would you be able to convince me otherwise or no we will definitely uh reevaluate the uh the cost of that all right i think uh

013that's all the questions i have for now go ahead i was gonna say one of the purposes of the officers whether they're armed or unarmed is to add an additional security level a layer to the schools um they would act as a additional resource to check for exterior doors being locked at our time so they would make rounds in that um manner to ensure our doors are locked at all times make sure class room doors are locked if the school have an incident going on at that site they would be able to contact mr mcgunner myself directly and get guidance where that school would have a trained person at their school site to assist with school safety or security issues that's occurring at that time so it would just add another level of security um

014at this moment the superintendent has reached out to ground force and they're adding with some layers of security with the doors with the older buildings to be able to secure those doors in the event of an active shooter it won't happen at every site but it will happen at some of the sites that's more vulnerable or that had higher incidence of activity related to either a weapon on campus or fights are just more prone to have something to occur at a higher level so we are looking at other things other than the armed officers at the site but we would like this as additional layout to the school resource officers that we already have there to provide safety to the schools in light of all the recent events that's occurred thank you mr blue miss

015diason um i have some additional language that i'd just like to make sure gets included in the job descriptions um and it may some already be intertwined but i just want to make sure we capture uh some of this but also um i think that you know that might be a good use of ezra funds all schools not just a few but for some or some that you think is most vulnerable you never know where this is going to happen you cannot predict what kind of weapon they're going to have on them you cannot predict anything it's unpredictable and it's from person to person that what they decide to do to this school or student body so i'm i'm not uh receptive to somebody just hand picking some schools it's got to be across the

016board for all of our schools and this is our safety imperatives that we have set for every school in our district and i just want to make sure that we're um we are um including information language into the job description um i too am supporting the armed because at the last minute they have to be able to protect our our students and our um staff to the best of their ability and um but sro training to include mental health crisis intervention de-escalation skills to ensure student and officer safety and de-escalate incidents emergency drills for pro no for active assailant and hostage situations including bomb threats and natural disasters so um you know if we want to work through some of this but i'd like to make sure that those kinds of things are included in

017our job descriptions and that we have someone that now has a job description with us that we can hold accountable that they are doing these things okay throughout the day okay thank you what's going on what is the starting salary of a baton rouge police department graduate of the police academy i don't have the exact amount for that i think that would be very helpful and appropriate under the circumstances okay for you i'm also looking at their training they undergo 790 hours of training including some things like legal aspects 66 hours investigations domestic and family matters officer survival becoming a peace officer use of force active shooter training and a number of electives 218 hours of electives i would think that a lot of the training that they undergo some of it is applicable to

018our students and some of it is not but my point here is that they have extensive training in um how to handle a situation and if our goal here is to keep our students safe and their goal is to keep our communities safe aren't we aligned and don't we have a lot in common ours is juveniles but there are also adults on the campus many times who need redirection sometimes um it happens you know it does and um and so i i would think you know some of the things that miss dyson mentioned the ds collection i don't want to spend any more time on this but i do think it's important that we have some collaboration with chief murphy i don't want to undermine the public safety in this community by saying well you

019can come on the campus and you don't even have to carry a gun and go through this little training here i'm going to pay you 10 000 more than what being putting yourself at risk every day on the streets pays considerably less than what we're offering here i i believe it is 45 or 50 thousand dollars that to me is a lot um it's over twenty we're going i would like some collaboration with the mayor and the city the the parish council and chief murphy as well i just think that before we take steps like this that we need to be in conversations with them i would very much appreciate it thank you very much thank you ms bernard mr gooday yes just very quickly a lot of talk has been done about salary i

020can't quickly pick out where the sound where they are in the salary schedule in the budget do you happen to know a fan they're paid they're four-time workers and they paid at the rate of 35 dollars per hour the on the on the new budget or on the budget because the job description talks about being on the salary curve that's a that's a new um job description i see ms lopez standing up we're throwing out numbers and i just want to make sure we're throwing out the right numbers the numbers lady yes they are in the new proposed budget for 2223 under security there are 26 people um it is not specifically spelled out in the budget but it wasn't a board member request that i responded to stating that the beginning salary average seller

021was 55 000 before benefits okay so but the total amount plus all the benefits are in the budget but it's not spelled out on an individual basis but that was an abortion so there's not a salary curve and so that's an average salary if it's a retired police officer with 20 years in baton rouge city police we might pay them more if it's a person a human resources question no but i'm just saying we're throwing out the number like that's the number but that's an average number yes and that people could be paid somewhere within that average yes sir that's the only point i wanted to make thank you and i think the other thing is we uh talking with um mrs mcgarner you know we're looking at the million dollar grant which will provide

022us with some of the things that um we talk about in a way of training that we could actually get paid for and also some of the uh the requirements and some of the needs that we have around mental health also falls under that so we're looking at all aspects of that and i also know that mr mcgarner has been in conversations with uh the chief um in the city and looking at what it would take for us to be able to staff those sros whether we went with armed or unarmed and i know he's had those conversations thank you the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote oh you can motion to consent to send the consideration of a request for the approval of a job description for the school resource officer

023or school safety officer to the full board without recommendation please vote promotion carries thank you we move now to item b2 consideration of a request for the approval of the following updated revised job descriptions a accounting specialist b army military property specialist c budget specialist 2 d e s s data specialist e leap specialists f operation specialist g systems analysts h network specialist i marketing and media specialist j eye care prevention specialist k budget specialist l grant specialist m coordinator of retention and employee accountability and career and technical education program coordinator o work based learning coordinator p supervisor of employee benefits q coordinator of homeless our human resource supervisor s supervisor of payroll t supervisor of health programs and athletics you director of risk management the administration administrative director of federal programs w director of

024fine arts ex administrative director of transportation y director of pure curb procurement and warehouse services z cnp manager we ran out of the alphabet a a cnp assistant manager a b finance specialist three retirement ac benefits specialist 1 a d payroll specialist 2 ae finance specialist 3 grants a f student data registration specialist a g finance specialist payroll benefits a h electric electrical technician ai executive director of early childhood programs a j human resource specialist a k school-wide program monitor al director of assessment and accountability am cnp assistant director a n director of human resources a ocnp assistant cook a pcnp cook a q cnp regional supervisor ar cnp data specialist a s cnp warehouse supervisor at cnp computer specialist a u e s esl instructional specialist a v truancy officer strategic alignment operational excellence

025do i have a motion moved by miss bernard seconded by mr blue dub i'm sorry ms tabman is the motion to send the item to the consent agenda of the regular meeting of the board yep okay we have a motion any questions from the board on the job descriptions miss ware jackson thank you president chapman i was wondering i was looking to see what the cnp stands for child nutrition program okay thank you sure i would have spelled it out we would have been here all night i'm just kidding um seeing no other questions from the board at this time are there any comments from the audience good evening my name is james spinney you would be irresponsible reckless and malfeasant for you to approve these 48 or 194 job descriptions would actually whatever it

026is that the administration is hoping that you just pass through without blinking this is an educational institution if the administration can't have a consistent set of job descriptions worded spelled capitalized and punctuated uniformly and put in the same order in three different locations you need a new administration here's an example you have on this list that you are proposing to send forward to the meeting a week electrical technician there is no job description attached in the 400 and some pages for an electrical technician there is a job description for an electronic technician those are not the same thing at some point you either have to decide you're going to quit tolerating sloppiness from this administration or the voters are going to quit tolerating sloppiness from this board i guess it's up to you what you

027want to do what's completely unacceptable in addition about these job descriptions is they give in fact they intentionally avoid any indication as to what the chain of command would be every single one of these job descriptions none of which shows the comparison of the job description they allegedly replace has reports to immediate supervisor i mean why waste the ink most people report to their immediate supervisor that's asinine it's intentionally obfuscating it's disrespectful to you it's disrespectful to the public furthermore it says find these salaries on the salary schedule well that's great i challenge you to all open the salary schedule and find how much truancy officer is going to be paid good luck with that i i didn't look at the old salary schedule i looked at the proposed new one that you're supposedly going

028to ram through without blinking in a week if you can find truancy officer i will come back and apologize because it's not on there and if one of these 25 jobs 20 i'm sorry 48 job descriptions is screwed up you shouldn't be passing this whole package you should honestly set aside a separate meeting and have this bifurcated into 48 separate items because i suspect if you spend enough time on this you would find that there is a whole chunk of paragraph that belongs in one job description and it got dropped into another one and i'm willing to bet none of you read all 494 pages thank you for your time any other comments from the audience seeing no other comments from the audience we come back to the board the board is clear madam secretary

029please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we moved to item b3 eliminated job descriptions consideration of a request for the approval to eliminate the following obsolete job descriptions a assistant to the administrative director of facilities b assistant to the director of transportation c chief officer of student support services dess hotline specialist e adolescent literacy coordinator strategic alignment operational excellence do i have a motion move by miss bernard seconded by mr goday yes to the consent okay thank you mr good day keeping me straight it's a hard job um miss dyson yes um thank you i um was hoping to get some information on um why these are being eliminated each one is that possible ms hall is she here oh there you are shorter than i am okay uh so when

030we submitted the memo there was a link that brings you to a google doc and it's broken down by title and the reasons or the rationales were given i'm sorry i've been having trouble getting to my links so the assistant to the administrative director facilities this was a with this person it's not about the person it's about the job description there's no board approved job description on the book and it's an antiquated it's almost like an administrative [Music] assistant so it doesn't exist and the assistant to the director no job no board approved job description is also available for that either it's also antiquated and the chief officer of student services it was conflicted with the title of the chief officers support and special projects so it was repeated services in both chief positions so

031you combined them right so the other chief position was already in effect when that came on board okay and i looked at both both individuals are in it's pretty much reflective of the same roles and responsibilities so now it's being handled with one person instead of two job fillings correct correct great and then the ess hotline specialists i don't ever think that we've ever used that um before even though there is a job description that is available board approved job description we've just never you utilized in the last maybe 10 years or so and the the last one is also antiquated and in addition to that we're moving towards literacy coaches now so we don't need that anymore so um i guess i have a question to make sure that so when i when i

032read adolescent i know that is a different um challenge than early literacy coaching and teaching and to get you know books that aren't at the elementary level as far as content um but also down the level but with middle school things that they would like and things so i just wanted to make sure that our literacy program is specific to the age group we're addressing so if we're going to take adolescent out do we have some specifically for the upper grades middle and and high so i let me also share that that position was never in effect it was just never an event so instead of having it on the books we just moved ahead away from the from that position and move towards the literacy coaches district-wide but i'm getting a head shake that

033yes we have them trained for their specific grade configuration that is correct okay thank you very much miss ware jackson just to be clear let me ask it this way you may have already answered this but um in these eliminated positions are the people are there people in these job descriptions right now and and have any um employees moved moved along so to speak yes so and i know this is a lot to digest it is a lot this just didn't happen overnight it happened it took a while for us to get here and this is just the first step so the positions that you're seeing in front of you there were people who are within those positions that there's the positions just are no longer functioning meaning it's antiquated i'll give you a perfect

034example if you are a administrative assistant to the administrative director and i ask you to go out and do a site review or something you the first thing you're going to look at is your job description and said oh that's not within my job description however as the director for that department i'm asking requesting you as my assistant to go out and do some additional roles and responsibilities but because it's not defined within that this is where the struggle comes when it comes to personnel issues not saying that this is true to any of these positions i'm using as an example that the job descriptions are antiquated or either they're not board approved and for me nicola hall as the chief of hr i don't do gray i do black and white and i do

035not want to be here to be held accountable for folks until jobs that are not board approved and that is a policy by sent forth by the board so i want to make sure that i'm in alignment policy so there there may be people that are in these positions right now correct right but it's just that their titles are changing correct and once we get the um job descriptions approved by the board then we start realigning people to the correct job approved job description and the approved salary scale so it's three tears have any are any of these um descriptions have any of them already been eliminated or you know someone who was in one of those positions the positions have not been eliminated officially until you guys until the board gives the approval to

036do so but we've notified individuals if we've found uh positions that are comparable to their roles and responsibility that's already board approved then we start going ahead and move them with that within those job descriptions those approved job descriptions and their salaries are not affected by that change okay thank you you're welcome thank you miss square jackson um and thank you for the link it was very helpful on the email you could go right to the description of it um the board is clear we'll take public comment now any members of the public wish to comment on item b3 i'm a little puzzled as to why you're eliminating job descriptions that don't exist but just for the record the assistant to the administrative director of facilities has a salary of one hundred one thousand five

037hundred eighty one dollars and that position was still occupied as of may 31st if you ask me after the meeting i'd be happy to tell you the name of that person but it's apparently a former principal who has been i guess in the facilities office for some time the chief officer of student support services i would challenge you in the next week to study the backup for that very very carefully because it looks as though you are eliminating a second-tier sub-cabinet position in order to eliminate the incumbent person in that position and replacing it with another job description by a different name which you then will intend to fill i'm not an employment lawyer but i don't think that's very cool if you need to fire somebody fire them don't eliminate their position and then

038create another position to do the same thing if the problem is only what their position is called change the name so if the gentleman from maryland would like to fire john mccann he should fire john mccann if he wants to reclassify his position and give him the option to continue or not he should do that he should not eliminate the position as though it's no longer necessary and then suddenly immediately the next day have a need to fill that position with someone else and the former newspaper editor in me can't help but notice that on the job description list that mr taven read into the record there is an adolescent literacy coordinator that's not the title on the backup get it right thank you any other comments from the audience greetings i would like to

039tell y'all to not vote for this and the reason being is simple we're trying to eliminate positions for people that are supposedly not qualified and that was the reason that they gave for why they gave impact letters they said that they gave the impact letters because the individuals in those positions were not qualified which we have now learned that that was not true so i question the reason for why we're trying to get rid of or eliminate positions that are occupied by individuals that are highly qualified we're not impacting or affecting the people that are not qualified people that should have received impact letters were some of the people that were in a senior cabinet because they're not qualified to actually be in that role if you actually go by the job description the roles

040and the responsibilities that's what i'm asking for that we actually be honest with each other and be very transparent right now our lines of transparency are extremely cloudy blurry and it looked like a hurricane or tornado is actually about to hit it it's not honest we're not being fair and we're not being honest and fair to the children in which we're going to serve so i do ask that we not eliminate those job descriptions i do ask that we go back to those job descriptions that we actually have and that we see who occupy those positions see how qualified they are and see what what rubrics has been used because i'm sure that everybody's going to have questions about the rubrics that we're going to use uh next month for the superintendent as it relates

041to him getting his bonus so i do think that we should really look at that because that's not being looked at also the assessments and the evaluations of how we're coming to the tune of eliminating job descriptions last but definitely not least we have changed a lot of titles for individuals that work for our school system that actually the board did not approve and i'm gonna give you an example monique spaulding's title changed from chief of facilities to now administrative uh facilities that wasn't a position that was approved by our board but that is her new title if you look at when she signs any of the emails that's what it reflects so i'm not telling you something that i just pulled up how the rabbits had are made up i'm telling you something that

042you can actually see that's in black and white and so i do think that we need to look at how much stuff is actually coming and getting the board's approval before it's actually done because this elimination of job descriptions mr mccann already been let go by our school system y'all just now are getting ready to be able to finalize it and make it official but go and see when he got that letter thank you any other comments from the audience seeing no other comments from the audience back to the board mr shamblin you were on the board do you have a comment yes sir i'm going to caution members of the public about referring to personnel matters whether they be actual or assumed um and that's all the respect for the people who work the

043employees who work for the system uh i've noticed a person's names have been stated it might not be a clear violation of law but it is a respect thing and we need to be cautious of that thank you thank you mr chairman miss ware jackson thank you um we had a small meeting where we we looked at this with the consultant and i know that some of the reasons well i'm thinking the the main reason for this is these changes are because of the new software that's coming online and having to clean things up and reinsert things and and i was wondering if if there would be someone who would comment on that and i would also ask that that whatever typos or inconsistencies that are in in the back up that the board members

044may or may not have seen be cleaned up before this is looked at again next week thank you mr jackson um that the board is clear madam secretary will you conduct the vote please sorry please vote the motion carries thank you um we move now to item b4 new job descriptions consideration of a request for the approval of the following new job descriptions a esl bilingual community ambassador b community ambassador c homeless ambassador d mental health professional e academic program coordinators fada compliance officer g school resource officer h director of mental health services i director of labor relations j the youth development specialists k chief of plant operations l digital press operator m large format production operator and screen printing press operator oh production finishing assistant p assistant director of facilities q assistant director of

045transportation our regional chef s coordinator for student activities t academic program supervisor strategic alignment operational excellence do i have a motion move move by mr blue and your motion is to move it since this is the uh these are new job descriptions i'd like to move move it to the um board meeting without action any uh do i have a second on that seconded by mr goday mr bernard i just wanted to ask we we really have a regional chef is it for child nutrition services how nice i'm i'm sorry taller than the rest um uh so we don't have one yet it is the goal that if it's approved by the board we would like to have regional chefs because we would like to improve the nutrition of our kids and i think it

046would be super awesome um to showcase all the good things that are happening does the does this position report to in is in the childhood child nutrition correct okay so they report to dr mann that is director or chief whatever her position is okay so oh wonderful thank you so much you're welcome thank you miss bernard um yeah the motion is by mr blue and seconded by mr goday um mr blue thank you president tatman there's three positions i want i'd like a little bit of an overview and some background on that's the homeless ambassador the community ambassador and the director of labor relations so the director of labor relations um most large uh school districts normally have a labor relations department to manage and handle a lot of staff conflicts um and we are

047a union environment even though i have a really good relationship working relationship with the different unions it helps to have someone who has expertise in employee law labor relations matters so that was the request for that type of work to be able to manage a lot of the conflicts that we do have that i have to manage within hr which is you know it's becoming um uh i don't do grades once again it helps to have someone who is a part of that world and understand have the experience and expertise to manage employee conflicts et cetera et cetera if i could add to yes with 6 000 employees we manage a lot of conflict and as chief hall says most large districts similar to our sizes as we work with the council have a labor

048relations department although we may not have any you know strong unions those things here but there is conflict that we have in a lot of ways and currently right now uh how that is handled through our human resource department we need to add additional capacity for that uh v thank you superintendent narcisse the homeless ambassador this was a request that came from federal programs and there's no chief of federal programs let's make sure we're on the same page with that that was a type of talk we'll take care of that but this was to expand our services for a homeless community i'm not sure if you guys have been there yet but they are they need some additional support and services and that was reason to expand additional services to them through a homeless ambassador

049um and then which one else did you say oh community and that was also came from the chief of academics office and it's to once again expand the services we want more community engagement i know this was part of a lot of the passionate outcry of we need to be out and you know partner in collaboration with community members et cetera who are our client base so that was the need to be able to have uh those two positions to help to facilitate those types of relationships and expand our services and i don't know um if we it wasn't part of the job description but do we see uh that the ambassador positions as being helpful in and tracking students that we lose track of for graduation purposes if we can't locate them things like

050that yes one of the cool things about our team our leadership team is that we do work together and we do identify areas where we need a lot of support and when we have to look at the items that we have like job descriptions that we have or whoever is in that position to assist and sometimes we don't have the expertise there um as you can see there's also a mental health profession that's also part of that conversation so we look at everything holistically and then we try to find the best sustainable solution that we could use to expand the services beyond ebr and we do have um when it comes to uh graduation excellence as part of that conversation and this will help to facilitate that growth and expansion all right well thank you

051you're welcome thank you mr blue miss diason yes i um i wanted to find out about since we already have staff in our communications team uh and now gonna be at all of the schools the parent liaisons and community engagement liaisons or i don't know what all the titles are but we have additional staff that has come on board recently right um and you know my vision was that they were going to be going to community events out in the community where their people are there the church fairs the um all of the you know back to school giveaways a lot of what i've done in the past is community engagement and you go where the people are and you set up a table and you know it's all about information sharing and you know

052a lot of these have uh you can't get your free things at the end unless you've got a stamp from each of the tables so they have to go to your table and get your information and i just don't know that our parent and community engagement people have enough of that in their job descriptions and i'd like to see that come uh to us i'm confused about you know why we need the ambassador if we um we have a full team under the communications department you know do they need to be moved over into this and take one of them as an ambassador and i don't see us enough in the communities that we serve i can't let me answer that yeah thank you so much board member dyson for that comment so let me

053just make sure we clarify two things because we did not have a community engagement position ever in the district so we started that when i came on board uh there are two large gaps when you identify that we are not in the community at all so um the community and community ambassador his job is to work with the schools around various community partners and those community things are happening within those neighborhoods to make sure those become a part of the school that's very different than just a parent liaison person apparently his own person is helping to work with parents to make sure that we're building ptas at every single school in our school system which we do not have that in a very robust way across the school system and also to be a liaison

054liaison to help parents communicate better with uh navigating within the school whether it's with teachers with school leaders and those things and so those are very two different types of work that they're doing to do that and so in the communications office uh we have a position where there's a community engagement person working there and there's also someone who helps to work with uh parent connection as well to help build out um those those components whether it's like with pta and those things and we've been trying to develop that connection in our school system uh what has been challenging is that we have not focused on both some communities have had certain designs of things better than others and that's where we're trying to work to close that gap so they can work in schools

055um i know from past experience that there can be three and four events all happening on one saturday and we were trying to you know get to them all so how many so we only have one employee that is community engagement yes employed um yes and currently that community engagement person that works in the com's office helps to work with our connection with all of our programs uh faith base is a part underneath that work those are all community engagements within various neighborhoods and communities into uh each of our school system so we're trying to expand that and then there's also the work that we want to build with parents to be connected into our schools around ptas and various things around parent connections so um in that communications team do we have like how

056many people are in there now top of my head i don't know the chief is here i know in the past we've had one to two no you've actually had and so now you had one person in the comms office which was a a very challenging space because we weren't communicating well with our our families yes good evening so that the question is how many in total is in the communications office so between the two branches between community and family engagement and also coms so in a community and family engagement there are currently two main people and then they have the parent liaisons what's the new title for that i'm sorry facilitators under under that half of it and then in the comms department we have a total of nine so i don't know if

057you want us to count all of the facilitators as well and that number are who are just in central office well i would very much like to see the job descriptions of all of these people and i would like to see more of that number more of the nine concentrating on community engagement really getting to events that are already scheduled by other people and not necessarily trying to hold our own to make that people have to come to but going where they already are wednesday night at church and you know getting involved in those communities information sharing and and that is the way to penetrate neighborhoods and be a part of is to actually go and present ourselves with tables on saturdays so we might have to look at some you know when you do

058that then you might not work on a weekday or something absolutely and that's currently happening so even though the community engagement in central office is you know small we say two people but there's an example this weekend we have personnel going out to kidzone's juneteenth celebration in scotlandville in scotlandville area to pass out information on our district to let them know what all initiatives we have going on so those weekend initiatives that you're talking about that is currently happening in our department it's just you know there is a smaller amount technically as compared to who literally does traditional communications and marketing can we start getting on the uh weekly can we start getting a uh area their area included and show us which events that that week have happened that we have been a part

059of participated in uh are you asking for activities that are within each board members area oh just across the district it each wherever you know yeah yes what we're doing now we actually provide that we actually do provide that um that that they went to church and they had a table so you want to report where staff members are going so yeah i wanted to see where we're penetrating the community and you know working towards um informing and educating the community about the services and opportunities that we provide and and hearing from them what we you know may need to hear as to why they're not choosing us or you you just have to get into the communities where they already are and have actual tables participating sure and we provide those info that information

060weekly in the superintendent's updates that go out to let you know what community involvement and engagement events are taking place but we'll be sure to this event elevate it as well okay thank you you're welcome seeing no other questions from the board we now go to the id the audience on item b4 good afternoon everyone you know i had a few comments i wanted to make just because of some observations i saw from the exchange i think miss dyerson which he said about being in the community is essential and i think the way that you get in the community is you get people from the community i think that if you bring somebody from the outside in the community might not be as open and willing to be as engaging because at the end of

061the day like you have somebody from outside coming in it's like i don't know should i talk to you should i not talk to you right so if you tap in with people that are from the community i think you'd have a much better go at getting into the community thank you any other comments from the audience on item b4 even though i'm short i can talk loud of these items these last few job description items are anywhere close to being ready for adoption they are not very good drafts yet they certainly aren't final um the gentleman from maryland is sadly mistaken when he said there was never a community engagement person ever there was a if i remember the title correctly executive assistant to the superintendent for parent and community engagement when bernard taylor

062was superintendent there were apparently liaisons so the fact that you hadn't done enough research to discover that doesn't mean it never happened these job descriptions are useless if they don't list the supervisory chain of command and if they aren't widely available every single person to the public it would be irresponsible of you to allow any changes until you spend several hours with plenty of public involvement and address the entirety of the administrative structure the chain of command the organizational chart and every single job description for full-time employees in this system and you shouldn't even think about doing that until you do a reasonable professional complete thorough sensible consideration of all of the budgets including the asser budget would have which hasn't yet been presented to the public i see lots of job descriptions for people

063that aren't in the classroom i'm worried that some at some point will be to the situation where a teacher has 50 students and 10 administrators breathing down his or her neck telling them how to do their job better remember what i said about proofreading earlier there are 20 the motion you're considering lists explicitly 20 job descriptions there are 20 job descriptions in the backup like i said none of them have the chain of command none of them have the salary and they don't happen to be the same 20. i'm not going to do the administration's homework i will tell you that the coordinator of student activities has two or three different names depending on where you're looking probably even within the job description there is one of the 20 on this list for which there

064is no job description listed and there is one job description listed that the administration clearly wanted you to approve but it didn't make the motion oops thank you okay the new job descriptions is extremely hilarious i would laugh right now if i didn't want to go ahead and laugh and then start crying because it's hilarious to think that we're going to create new job descriptions and we don't know what the funding source is going to be to actually um employ all these individuals that you're talking about and then it's sad because i have to think about what dr finnegan is closed with how many ess students would actually be in one classroom right now currently we house kindergarten through fifth grade in one classroom that have ess we have one we have six through eighth

065grade in one classroom if they have if they're a child with a disability we have all the kids ninth through twelve in one classroom with one teacher if they have a disability that is a very very very bad violation of idea this board roman i talked about many times before it's not in ada compliance i still don't see where we've gotten an ada coordinator that would actually deal with the employees that need ada accommodations we don't have an ada coordinator that deal with the children of with disabilities that need accommodations and yet we're talking about creating a job description for sros unarmed individuals that will not be housed at an elementary school in this whole entire school system and yet we said that the revelation we had was evolving texas that was a elementary school

066that had a massacre of staff and children and we are not addressing that we're not thinking logically you just had the lady come up here and tell a bold face a lot talking about the stuff that's in seattle's address to the to everybody in the school system that is not reaching community people that's not reaching anybody miss dyson i agree with you we have a pastor right now in the audience reverend flowers ask him how many times they come to his church none we could contact pastor perry wright we can contact pastor fred uh smith and then let's go on and on we are not doing outreach we stripped mr kuzan from that from all that and we hired 53 parent liaisons that did not even know what their role was i have that on

067record if just in case you want it that was in court and it was stated we have a problem with constantly creating stuff and there is no monitoring implement implementation by our board i'm sorry i have to get frustrated about it because my child constantly get put at risk and you wonder why i continue to take our school system to court is because we're not creating the right positions and we made ourselves so top heavy that we can't we have to look at how we trim the fat and starting to trim the fat is by taking part of the senior cabinet thank you thank you mr t any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board miss where jackson thank you president tatman uh of the new job job descriptions how many

068of these are presently filled uh with people in old job descriptions and how many require new hires ada compliance officer that position there is a project manager ada compliance coordinator that was never board approved so that's one the mental health profession is the help to expand can you guys hear me okay the mental health professionals just to help to expand mental health services throughout the district including the director in addition to it's marketable it's easier um to gain more attention to those positions versus social work i guess social workers kind of a little antiquated but mental health professionals do assist with that academic program coordinator we do have one person in that position right now that was not board approved uh so right now you're naming the ones that are filled right that are failed

069correct okay i apologize to be clear okay the digital press operator the large format production operator screen printing press operator and the production finishing assistant are positions people are in those positions we're just updating the functionality because a lot of the functionality within the old job description are pretty much antiquated and i could have the chief expand on those types of languages the equipment that used to be in the old job description are no longer being used currently in this century per se the assistant to the director would you mind name in the letter as you go so oh i'm sorry i was reading because we're looking up got this little screen and trying to see what that is catch him follow along with you so we talked about the uh f letter f we

070talked about e f we spoke about or at least i spoke they're filled yeah yes uh-huh the it's i that l m n o those positions are currently in comms office but they're just antiquated meaning the functionalities of those positions if i can make a suggestion um i know they're we're getting into a lot of these questions that the board are asking uh is maybe a possibility uh since we're working to move this item to the um to the board meaning we can respond to any uh questions that you may have remember jackson these specific detail questions we can put that in the board um log in yeah but if you could just simply give me a number you can just count them off and let me know that was pretty much it yeah so

071these are the ones that are already filled the rest of them would be new hires right or they're going to be realigned to some to a person who's currently in a position that was not board approved but these the ones that i listed are people who are in positions that don't have a job description board approved job description but i could send that in a board request detail okay thank you i would also like to know what the fiscal note would be on these the new ones as well we can provide that to you thank you mr jackson the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we move now to item b5 consideration of requests for approval for the following grade configurations a the new elementary

072school in the south as a pre-k 8th grade b the new high school in the south as a sixth through twelfth grade strategic alignment student achievement do we have a motion i would like to move that we send it without recommendation um i just would like some more time to consider the grade configurations for these schools mr chapman the schools will be in your district um those two and i'll speak to that so thank you thank you i have a motion by ms bernard and the second is by ms diason were you in there to make the motion miss bernard okay mr baloo i just wanted to uh request a a technical change to the way it's worded just to be consistent with the way the tax plan it's written um in place of south

073it would be southern part of the district that's the way it's worded in the tax plan i'd just like to see it consistent with that thank you that's a friendly amendment to the motion yes thank you thank you miss blue um miss ware jackson i know we're going to look at this more but i'm wondering uh since i see there both of them include middle school age children i'm wondering if we've looked at any research in the demographics recently that would show an increase in the need for middle school seats and i'm wondering also if we're considering doing um this kind of model across the district when we look at configurations later um i think that's questions to you know yes we we can provide that data um to you we have done research on

074it i'll uh i can have our team provide with that data and as far as the configuration is concerned we are looking at a few configurations around 612 and also pre-k8 as it matches up to what our data says so on the surface can you tell me i mean i'm i'm guessing since since we'll have if if this goes the way that it's written we would basically have two sites where we would have middle school kids yeah when you look at the southern part of the um parish it is our uh then we've had a demographic shift as we've shared we have plenty of students but not enough schools and so um we're hopeful that uh this also will highlight kind of the work we're doing our master master's facilities plan as well and so

075we believe that this will these schools will be very filled yeah i'm particularly interested in that middle school uh at the middle school level thank you miss where jackson and um i'm using mrs collins's computer so it uh i like the two computer setups so that's why i was a little tickled when i when she showed up i was like whoa um i have uh uh i'm excited about both of these schools and just to give everybody an update on the elementary school which is what i'm going to call it um we have a purchase agreement of chris has to come back to the board but we were able to work with breck and put together a purchase agreement if everything goes well it will come back to the board for approval i'm particularly excited

076because i think it's a great collaboration with breck but i'm even more excited because it is in an area where we serve a lot of children so that's the the real positive part of this i do i will tell you though it is my understanding that we don't have the money in the tax plan to go pre-k 8. um and i think that's going to be a further discussion that i'd like to get a little more data on next week i'm all for uh extended grade configurations i like k i like pre-k 12 because i it creates uh an accountability uh from the third grade math teacher to the seventh grade math teacher right i like that but and so i like the larger configurations because you don't go through that part where you have

077to leave in elementary school and go to a middle or leave a middle and go to a high i just don't think we have the money in the tax plan it is my understanding from the conversations that i've had in order to do that it would be somewhere between five and 10 million more and you know we we're going to get the land within the configuration of the dollars because of the help with brac unless you've got a magic trick to come up with some extra money i think i think we have to be very cautious about it proving a great configuration we can't afford and that's all i want to say i like the grade configurations i wish we had the money for it we're going to fill that school it is right we

078have a lot of kids who attend uh our district in that area so that's my that's my ask to kind of talk we need to talk about whether or not there's money in that for that so thank you um didn't mean to go on like that ms dyson i too um like the idea of these grade configurations but what i'm going to need to see is um how many students are they going to uh what what is the capacity going to be billed for each of these sites and is it going to limit the numbers of elementary because we put middle in with it um i need to see are we i need to see the the size of these schools that we're talking about and um you know how many existing students would logically

079move there and from where and i'd like us to be very mindful of the schools that don't need to lose kids and the kids are the schools that do and so we're not just moving kids around and then leaving schools like we've done previously then we leave the school with too few um so we have to be mindful of how we do this and so i would like more information before this comes back thank you thank you miss tyson uh mr godaddy yes i was just curious i assume part of this is to get started on some preliminary architectural work so when you when we come back with this information could you also give us a timeline for that so that we understand exactly when we need to make a decision uh on what because

080there's lots of pros and cons to any of the positions here and there will not be a perfect answer uh to this but i would like to know when we need to have an answer thank you thank you mr goday ms bernard i would like to know what we originally have budgeted for these two schools in terms of so i really want to hear this information about the grade configurations from the tax plan manager miss anderson i know she's probably not here tonight but she'll be here next week okay great thank you so much i think she'll be here next week and i'll i have miss anderson put that report together before the next meeting to get it to the members of the board thank you ms bernard thank you mr shamlin um we now

081go to the audience i go on record every time we talk about blending grades so just to point it out when you talk about putting middle school with elementary and middle school with high school having done blended summer school for a decade i would like to remind you that when you have children who are curious and children who are experienced when it comes to sexuality and they do things in bathrooms if you have children you understand this you have to make sure said children are not in the bathroom at the same time it becomes very difficult when you're doing a 6-12 model otherwise you end up with lawsuits and statutory has to do with how old children are not consent because you're not able to give consent if you're under a certain age so 6

082through 12 can become a very dangerous situation if you are not vigilant about keeping them apart it works at northeast because of how they have done it for years but it does not work in every area i've heard a really disturbing trend over the last couple items where in order to shut down questioning the gentleman from maryland suggested he would slip a little bit of information on the side to board members rather than have a public discussion if the administration is not ready to present any of the 22 items on this agenda mr godda i would invite you to move for adjournment give them a week a month six months to get their act together and then maybe there will be something that you can give proper consideration to and mr shamlin if you have

083miss anderson put a report together i would hope it hits board docs the second it hits board members mailboxes because that is not privileged information it absolutely belongs to the public and there's no reason that we should have to abuse your office with record requests all the time for stuff that we shouldn't have to ask for so this item is not ready for you to think about much less approve anything next week if you want to just have a discussion item that's great if you've got plenty of time to burn next week after the budget hearing and before whatever appears on the agenda at the last minute that's an emergency that couldn't go through the committee at all um it's not ready i mean there's what one page of backup 1500 students in an elementary

084school are you kidding is that a serious proposal if that's a serious proposal fire the gentleman from maryland today that's asinine you should not be considering that with a straight face but that's what the backup says now i happen to be with mr tamman in liking the idea of kind of blurring middle schools out of existence but as ms matthews pointed out and many of my colleagues who work with middle school kids have pointed out that is not a discussion to be just kind of eased into without serious consideration and involvement of the public you keep doing it you've never had the full public discussion on whether we want to extend elementary schools to eighth grade you didn't get public input you didn't act as a board to combine crestworth elementary and middle you just

085let gentlemen from maryland get away with whatever he wanted to do and god forbid you challenge him on anything or fire him for cause so be very careful about going to what i think is a perfectly reasonable model without gaining community buy-in and advice from professionals i mean if there's data to be had there is no reason for it to be marked for board eyes only and go through email chain and screw over the public by not giving them full access to what all you have apparently been talking about amongst yourselves for days or weeks thank you for your time um again good evening board i wanted to make a point to what uh president tapman said i want to applaud you for your vision for your district i think that's a great um concept

086that you have there but i did also hear you talk about brac um i think brac is a great organization i think they are a very important integral part to our city growing um i'd like to also say that uh miss bernard i like what you also said about looking at the original budget or the tax plan for doing anything going forward i think that's really important as well um but i also want to say that based on my numerical statistics uh about 25 students would be like set up totally between the schools in the south and kenworth and what i keep hearing throughout the gist of the meeting is we're gonna have more employees and more schools okay so we're adding on we're we're expanding we're growing we've got some aggressive expansion going on

087right now okay now here's the deal mckinley high school for 115 years we have been marginalized at best and mckinley has been able to take children from coals to diamonds with little to no resources now we got approved for 36 million to rebuild our school as you know gas today is almost running five to six dollars a gallon inflation is happening it's happening you can't stop it so the 36 million we got four years ago was probably about 28 million now 27 but as we keep expanding we keep growing all of these different entities are being spoken and we are still being second classed that just will not do we must do the right thing focus on the schools that we have and expand them to get better and then once they get better then

088we can expand even further but if you don't take the time to look at what you are doing because here's the deal with mckinley we're talking about literally slaves built mckinley on rvu tax dollars and i think that's a great thing working together then we can work together now we're going to have to come to some type of rationalization rationalization that if we keep spending without being accountable for what we have already then we'll be moving in the wrong direction thank you oh name already so i'm up here good evening uh board members uh mr excuse me dr narc superintendent dale flowers um a couple of things that that i'm that has me puzzled uh i've read the memorandums uh one is k through six up to fifteen hundred students the other is six through

089twelve up to two thousand students we're also going to add kennel worth another six hundred which puts us at 4 100 students in the southern part of the parish where are these students coming from are we going to close some schools are there some schools that are about to be taken over by the recovery school district that we don't know about and you guys are going to have to close or you're going to pull students from other schools to go to these three schools speaking money okay i've got the tax plan from 2018. i've got it right here in front of us it says that you're going to purchase land 10 million dollars that was in the year 20 this year where 2021 you're going to build an elementary school for 25 million dollars okay

090i'm assuming that you're six to 12. in year six you are to build a new secondary school uh and that's gonna be 45 million dollars i'm assuming that's the six through 12. well that's year six you're jumping over the schools you're normal circle back to mckinley which was supposed to be in year five you hadn't done anything now chris you said 36 is actually 35 is what it's been approved for so my question is we keep doing these things in the southern part of the parish and it affects mckinley it impacts mckinley negatively we build baton rouge high school then we build lee high school liberty high school mckinley is losing students 2016 mckinley had over 400 gifted and talented students 2019 about 200. this year 30 gifted and talented students because they're leaving mckinley

091they're going to other schools they're going to baton rouge high they've gone to lehigh and now we're going to build more schools in south baton rouge it does not make sense to me you're going to spend 45 min you're going to jump mckinley and spend school 45 million dollars you're going to spend another 25 million dollars i'm assuming that you've already spent the 10 million to purchase this land where are these students coming from and why do we keep having these negative impacts on mckinley high school every decision that we makes in the south that you guys make in south baton rouge has a negative impact on mckinley let me say this you guys know i work in the school system dyson as well as uh narcisse you guys gave me an award just a

092few weeks ago because of the work that i've done at dewfrock so yes mckinley is my baby but i'm concerned about all of our students and something has to be done this this cannot continue uh what's happened to mckinley high school by the decision that you guys are making thank you any other comments from the audience so i'ma touch on several things april when you're ready to do my time i'm ready several issues for you okay number one we have had multiple shootings throughout our parish because of underage girls that are very developed that may be developed like i am which i am a grown adult woman mingling with high school boys and it results in deaths that's that's due to the model that you're talking about doing mixing middle school and high school they're

093not ready for that if we're gonna do anything we need to take a page from what mr warren drake has suggested which is doing our schools like zachary hi exactly school system which is put our put only two grades at each school if you do that then the high schools can actually separate the ninth grade and have ninth grade academy to allow them the opportunity to get a little more mature and then they can actually and they can still mingle and fellowship with the rest of the high school students during lunch and pe and then 10th 11th and 12th grade they're with the 10th 11th and 12th graders that's how you do growth now what we're proposing now to hurt mckinley high is a problem i would talk about north baton rouge area which i

094have saturated it so much with charter schools that i don't even know what to say on that we're disenfranchised in the north area but the south still have an opportunity and don't worry imma come back when we talk about some charters to knock them out the window too because we're not giving our school system and our students the fighting chance we're talking about building new schools we still have over 180 teaching positions that we have not filled even with the impacted letters that were supposedly to fill those positions that it did not do all it did was move people from one place to another it never filled any other positions and now we're going to create more what we're doing is we're creating a show sorry to say it like that but that's the truth

095we're creating a problem that we're not going to be able to resolve and by the time we actually realize how big of a mess we've created he's going to be gone my child still will be here in this school system and he will be gone he might be looking for a position now he is eight at 18 months 18 months make the 18th so that's next week he don't last nowhere past two years that's the longest place he ever stayed talk to him he'll tell you stay on the agenda i'm staying on the agenda i'm saying that what we're doing is not is disenfranchising to our students into our faculty and it's going to impact baton rouge area chamber of commerce to an extreme which means we are not going to have anything anything here

096in baton rouge to look at so i just ask that we not move this on but let's let's have a further discussion do another special meeting have a further discussion about this because a lot of things don't ever go to the actual community like we promised thank you thank you miss corley any other comments from the audience good afternoon i really when you listen and you know the history of mckinley high school you're talking about the history of baton rouge and i wish joe delpit could be here this evening you know and you would understand why mckinley high is important to baton rouge now when we go back in the school system you had a choice when it came with mckinley high and you had baton rouge high you had mckinley high with gifted it

097was the only high school that had the gifted program you had the regular program so you had students that were mixed into baton rouge high that had the magnet program so mckinley high had a program that was set up that students were going to that drew white students into mckinley which is said that mckinley would never have white students there were students when they were charged and it was redistrict to go to mckinley tara students were changed to go to mckinley they moved all uh wood down the street and moved to the next street to keep from going to mckinley because they felt that they were going to be the only white students and did not want to go so if you know the history of mckinley you know this really happened they went and

098met with the principal who was breeder at the time breda won them over to come to mckinley and he told them there is no fear i will take care of you and your children he warmed them and they solicited other students to come to mckinley and gave it a chance and mckinley made it and drew white students into mckinley high school that's the history of mckinley don't destroy mckinley they worked hard to get where they are if you look at the principles that mckinley had they worked to keep what they had the programs that they had and if you knew dr pereboom who gave the problem and tested the students who were gifted to put them at mckinley because that was the only high school that we had for gifted students don't destroy what we

099made from the beginning because you're talking about models from clay from nothing and made it something keep it we need mckinley and we're talking about it thank you very much near the comments from the audience seeing none we're back to the board i just wanted to make a clarification we're working with brac the recreation department on the land purchase i just wanted to make sure i did it sounded like someone said brac and i want to make sure it's breck we're working with them they're going to build uh i think it's called a school in the park concept uh where they're gonna we're gonna share some resources but it's it's breck and i want to thank ms bernard for her work as a board member on breck for helping us with that um miss ware

100jackson one question to uh clarify the timeline on this uh as it relates to the item that we're talking about um you know we're talking about grade configurations for some schools that are coming up in the tax plan but just to be clear where does the work actually happen in the tax plan it's my understanding that the and we can get we can pull the tax plan up it's my understanding that the elementary's first right it's early on and because that was in the old tax plan no this is a new tax plan this is all new yeah yeah yeah this is it and it was it's identified by year and um and so you know it's a pay-as-you-go program so we in that first year we collect the money to be able to pay

101for what is in that first year right but but it's my understand that the elementary school is is it's not this august but the following august that's correct yes sir and then i think the high schools may be three years three years and so with um miss white jackson to give you the clarity we purchased the land for both for both projects within the 10 million that was allocated if you remember the board we kind of had that discussion initially the board authorized us to go after the initial purchase we were able to come in under budget and because of the size of the property we purchased we realized we needed a second piece of property in order to realize the second school so we were able to take both pieces of property under that

102one umbrella yeah right and so what you know when we bought the first piece it was owned by a bunch of different owners and so when we got the full part of it our pro tax plan manager csrs um you know said it was going to be tight to get everything on there and so we had a million and a half left and so we decided to go after the other piece that we talked about and we brought all that to you guys and it looks like we're going to be able to pull it off which is it will be amazing if we do i think it's going to be an incredible concept and brexit been wonderful um but but the elementary school's first right and it it happens sooner yeah so we're actually behind

103schedule on that next year yes yeah i just wanted to make sure that people understand that we're not jumping ahead we're not jumping ahead and and doing something that is supposed to be done after mckinley this was well i don't know about the the high school part it's all that's we have i don't think we've asked for an alteration other than the broadmoor middle delay right um that was we asked for like a delay that's correct i believe we also had an alteration with the forest heights p so we requested oh that's true too that's true because we because the board member in that area and the principal and the community wasn't sure exactly because we had some options but that's the only two changes everything else is lined up in the everything else is

104lined up so we're not jumping past the work at mckinley to do this one no just want to make that clear thank you thank you miss warejacks miss dice um yeah that my i was going to say the same things that we actually had to bypass woodlawn i mean from the southeast new school uh we had to bypass it because we didn't have all of the um great work done yet on being able to acquire the land that was needed within our uh i commend everyone that worked on that sorry it did take longer but it was a lot to um maneuver around and i'm just so pleased that we were able to get it within budget so thank you all for the work we that we've all put in on that thank you miss

105tyson um the board is clear madam secretary will you please conduct the vote vote okay [Music] yeah absolutely here it is it just popped up the motion carries thank you we moved now to item b6 consideration for request for the approval for a pre-k 8th grade configuration at kenilworth school conditioned upon its return to the east baton rouge parish school system strategic alignment student achievement do i have a motion i would like to make the motion since the school is in my district and i would i would love for you to do that i would like to send this one without recommendation also just as a standard so there can be a standalone item and thank you do i have a second mr go day seconds it's across the street um okay see no comments

106or questions from the board we'd like to take public comment if you have comments on item b six again you've had no data presented and you've had no meaningful community input that says k-8 is the way to do things furthermore this is completely hypothetical this appears to be a request by the gentleman from maryland for you to tie your hands before you even know what's going to happen with kennel worth is the state giving them back who knows you know why decide now we're going to lock into k-8 as opposed to three-year-old through fifth or four-year-old through seventh or any other configuration even six through twelfth until you actually have control of the building it's ridiculous you've got plenty to do next week and the administration owes you and the public so much information that

107they aren't going to be able to pull together that this is worth talking about but it sure isn't worth talking about in the next week so i would passionately urge you to defer this until sometime in the fall by which point perhaps we'll know whether that building is actually available for this to be worth spending any time or energy talking about and by the way i keep hearing about a master plan and you keep shortchanging the master plan by locking yourself into decisions but somebody's going to say well we already decided to do that so what if the master plan says it's a really stupid thing to do you voted well at least six people were here to vote to pass it forward when are you gonna draw a line in the sand and say

108we actually have to have good data to support a decision we have to give the community plenty of time to consider that data we have to absorb their inputs and we have to do what's right for the community not what's right for resume padding for our visitor from maryland thank you so i took some time to look at what a focused school is a focused school is a school that utilizes an outside benefactor to support their mission and i think that's a great concept um i'm going to share some statistics with you based on the last meeting you had and this is the categories of scholastic academy uh gifted and talented great scholars and magnet the north in those categories you got 20 percent southeast of the parish you got 21 sherwood about 16 mid

109city old south 54 and 50 based on the scholastic academy gifted and talented great scholars magnet those are your statistics not mine so having said that kenworth is not in the district but it's possible they could come back to the district mckinley is supposed to have a middle school next year it's a straight slap in the face to consider a great organization like ochsner to be with an entity that does not exist in the district yet why can mckinley not be partnered with ochsner why can't mckinley be partners with lsu i stood here and gave you a concession with polk elementary because that was the right thing to do i liked the concept i liked the idea but now we're circling wagons it's time to stop the wagons from circling our neighbors went up the

110street from us my school i love lsu i love southern great schools it's great city but understand what i'm saying you went up the street with lsu you had to go through mckinley to go to pope and now you got kendall work that's not even here national we've got nothing please defer this take your time and look at this let you sense let sensibility rule right now let's be sensible because right now we're being everything but sensible that is a slap in the face big slap in the face to an alumni that has obscured so much pain over the years and you guys i listen to you you are all intelligent very bright people you have earned your position you have been elected and shown yourselves approved my expectation is that you will take your

111time you will look at this and you will look at it with the idealism that should be given to it given what mckinley has gone through look through the records of the history of this school board you can see it we always get here and then here here then here and we're always last but not in pride not in service we're number one in that eddie robinson john michael guidry cleo fields look him up ted james these are great people and they were taken from clay to diamonds at mckinley thank you thank you any other comments from the audience and i've i've been reminded please um identify yourself when you go to the mic um each time so it's for the record we know who you are but we just want to hear you we

112just want to hear your name yes my name is karonda corley proud parent of a child with a disability in ebr school system and a national advocate for individuals with disabilities um i spoke on record in regards to getting a focused choice program actually to be exact it was the lsu plan water plant program at mckinley high and miss bernard made the motion for that to be a community meeting and somehow our superintendent managed to um absurd her and actually go behind her back um stab her in the back if you will like a like what that was julius caesar caesar augustus yes he did that greek tragedy did not bring it to the community and it's problematic because now you have kennel worth talking about doing a focus choice program he just promised uh

113capital high that they would have a focus choice program with baton rouge general now we don't know if that's going to actually come to fruition but that is a promise that he gave capital high alumni it's also published in the newspaper just in case you want to go back and verify um this is a problem kendall work and ochsner we already have a charter school baton rouge discovery that has a partnership with ochsner that we actually shot down because we didn't want it and they bypassed us and went to bessie and now it's going to be a title two and it's opening august at the old ronald's building why are we gonna try to do it when i asked mr trey nelson i'm gonna say his name with ochsner i spoke with him at the

114last board meeting in regards to what was their plan they don't have it i asked him what was the curriculum they don't have it i ask them who sits on their board for this program they don't have it i asked them how would the students be selected it was going to be via a lottery which means exclusion we were going to exclude children with disabilities from actually being able to participate in a program where every student every day is supposed to be our focus tell me how is that a focus choice that focus say that we not focused it say that we blur the line when it's convenient that's a problem because i've been asking in public records requests for the for the fiscal note for all of the focus choice programs it don't exist

115i still have yet to get it and i know when i get my verdict next week then i can get a federal subpoena to get it so that means dr narcisse and his team gonna have to come up with them numbers real quick because board members ask for that last week it still don't exist but this plan these focus choice plans are supposed to be into existence in august what are we telling our children because we damn sure not gonna have money thank you thank you miss corley any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board miss diaz i just um wanted to um let the superintendent i think he was trying to interject a little while ago did you have something that you wanted to share yes uh kenworth will be

116coming back to ebr uh kenowworth went to the state and they are they've requested to be a type 2 which was approved type 2 means that they get to get students across anywhere in the state which means that they will be leaving our build building because kennelworth where they're currently located is an ebr building and that building will become vacant uh um in about a year and so therefore this is why we're making this recommendation for that configuration it is also an area that is very highly populated of students and we've as we've shared many of times there's a demographic shift that's been happening in the district and so we need to be able to begin to create schools in places where we have many students thank you for that information um so i don't

117think that that what we do with um kennelworth takes away what we are going to do with mckinley i know that it is in line in the tax plan and we've we've got the elementary school uh you know that's happening now and it's going to be it's called mckinley elementary actually and so i'm real excited about that that's coming to that area and we need mckinley high school as a great feeder for all of those students and we need to put programs that are attractive so we haven't voted on anything as far as capital high or any of that has not come to us um and i'd like us to open our minds as to um what what we're going to do when you know mckinley is new and improved and what programs are going

118to be there because i definitely support that too um but i but i i am supporting this um and i'm very excited to get kennel worth back into our control as far as what we do with it i think that as superintendent narcisse has said that the population has grown so much out in the southern part of the district and um last the last 10-year tax plan prior to the one that we're in now we didn't we didn't get the schools that we needed it was you know it's been a few decades since we did and the population has continued to shift so we've got to right size and you know we've got to look at how many little two and three hundred peop student populations we've got here and there so that we can

119do some consolidations and really be mindful about every area having the programs and the capacity that they need and we can we can re-engage this baton rouge and i'm looking forward to it so thank you and if i could just add i'm going to be out of order president tatman um uh just for the kind of um not kind of with the mckinley high school alumni in school we have not forgotten about mckinley we are actually have the innovation school engaging in conversations because we are trying to line up with as you know we're moving all of the high schools to choose three of the five pathways and to look at specialized programs specifically at the school and i know we're trying to engage in that conversation with us ensuring that uh within those three

120to five pathways whatever this is chosen by mckinley that we can have partners engaging them so i wanted to make sure that we say that publicly because we've been working to try to get to a resolution on trying to do that we have many partners i think as many of the public heads come up that would love to engage we just have to make sure that we are able to get what that program is to be able to increase uh that partnership so that is not forgotten our goal actually is to be able to make those decisions sooner than later even before buildings are built uh because we have to create that pipeline so we've been engaging in that conversation i just wanted to i guess share publicly that it's important that we don't think

121that this is an either or we do have a lot of students in our parish that um uh families and parents that want to come we have to create more choice options uh for that but we think that mckinley will uh will do exceptionally well once we go through that process as you're going through to create a great program and so we're excited we're excited about that so we'll continue to engage the mckinley alumni and community around that process thank you miss ware jackson thank you president chapman uh earlier this week looking through the back up and looking at this item in particular around kenworth and seeing that the um the idea is to move it into another medical focused choice school you know i had to wonder and we already have that model in

122one area and now i'm looking to to do this before we look at this comprehensive plan that we've been waiting for for a number of years and i know we're getting close to it so i'm thinking i'm feeling like this this concept is a little bit premature i don't see what the real urgency is in deciding exactly what the model is going to look like and if we don't we haven't presented the research that shows what's actually needed in that area and um i just can't support this at this time with um knowing that we have promised that we would have a comprehensive study done a comprehensive plan for the whole district and look at everything that's in place and this is very new um the news of kenworth the building coming back to us

123and and deciding what we have to do with it and it looks like we do have some time to make that decision and i think that in the meantime we should have this comprehensive study done and we should have input from community around what is going to happen at this particular school so um i would ask that we just delay this until after we have the comprehensive plan done and we have more information about what we really need in that area so if i could just uh respond to that president so the board members your vote is on great configuration not on the programmatic piece as of now so you do need to decide on the configuration of that building so what we what we've been able to do is uh we've brought up a

124pre-k a configuration and then we can engage in a conversation around programmatic but the the reality is that area is still heavily populated we have many of students and families there and um um just wanted to make sure we highlight that yeah thank you appreciate it i understand you you're saying that grade configuration is uh is an urgent matter but you know looking at the backup and i see that the it's tied to the focus choice so you know if all this is in the back up it must be there for a reason and i simply don't see the urgency in um in making that decision before we see the research before we see what we're doing in that area i know we talked about in the previous item you know around um what the

125demographics may or may not say i would simply like to see this before we make a choice make a decision about something something new as far as kennel worth coming back the building thank you mr jackson are you i'm done or did you was that a question no i'm done i'm just saying what i want what i mean yes ma'am thank you mr jackson mr goday yes uh i'm gonna take entirely different tact than my colleague we do have the data the data is simple look at woodlawn middle school that is busting at the seams there's no middle school along that whole stretch of the entire parish from woodlawn middle to mckinley middle uh when we lost kenworth we lost that middle school and that's where that neighborhood went we also have the data that

126my district which abuts kennelworth was 25 percent over the population necessary in the redistricting plan and my colleague miss bernard's district if i remember right was 8 or 10 percent over 12 percent over so that is where the population growth has been you can go down burbank and go look at all the new houses that are up uh quite honestly we don't have the seats that our parents would like us and demand that we have in that part of the parish when you look at the tax plan a large amount of the tax plan was spent in other schools there have not been new schools built liberty was redone hey it's in my district i wasn't on the board at the time but liberty was redone woodlawn was built what 15 years ago 20 years

127ago so it is and uh jefferson terrace is the closest where we have an eighth grade anywhere uh to that school it we need it we need it badly it has been known for several months that kennel worth is coming back to us we need to get on with it and we need to we need to do we do need to work on what is the programmatic theme that is going to be for that school whatever we and the public decide it needs to be but we need to get on with it for too long we have sharded seats in our part of the parish where people complain about how the demographics of our district are so heavily skewed to one side or the other part of the reason they're skewed that way is because

128we don't have the seats to put other people in and they end up all going to private schools so we desperately need this we also have you know it's just time for us to do this this is almost like a gift coming to us uh with kenworth charter deciding to move out and get into their own building and i don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth this is what we need desperately in our district in our part of the parish and to delay this would be uh it takes a while to get a school set up you have to staff it you have to figure out the thematic programs and things in it it's time for us to to move on it and i seem to remember after the jefferson terrace decision

129when mr drake was here because people keep like the referring back to mr drake that the k-12 i mean the k-8 configuration was the preferred configuration that we were going to try to go with as we go through so this is just following up on the same kinds of things that was done under the previous administration so this isn't really a change so i i think we need to get out of our own way and let's go ahead and get this done thanks thank you mr goday miss dyson yes um i just um wanted to say that the overcrowding in some places is real and um that it will be great to offer this kind of opportunity um in this area of town um it's it's you know the people in the most southern part

130this southeast part they have over an hour of many of them to travel to some of the uh opportunities that we offer so we we need capacity and um it's it's exciting um i don't i believe in the master plan as well but i do think that well i know that kennelworth as it exists today is going to well actually it's going to be expanding to k-8 in another site in august of 2023 so that means we should be getting our building back in a little less than a year from now and so if we're going to be opening it in august of 2023 which i would definitely want because we don't want buildings sitting it's not healthy for that and plus because we've got students that need the space and so um you know

131i think this time is of the essence and we did not put off our votes for the park focus choice or the eva lagarde we supported those wholeheartedly and uh i think across the board we did and um so this is just an another one of those and this is a great opportunity for us because we're getting capacity that is so very needed and we've got this opportunity i was actually very interested in creating partnerships when the baton rouge health baton ridge health district was formed and i was very wanting us to be a part of that and so it's exciting that we can get something that close to the health district and wanting to be partners with us so i'm excited about this and i think it'll bring opportunities but we have a pretty

132fast track ahead of us in preparing for you know one school year away so thank you thank you miss dice and miss bernard i just want to clarify as the maker of the motion that this item that the motion is to refer this to the full board meeting without recommendation but it is um to approve only the grade configuration that's what the motion is to approve the greater than you agree with that mr goday yeah okay yes i think yeah that's what i did too thank you miss bernard miss where jackson yeah um you know i don't disagree that that a middle school in that area was needed we talked about that a long time ago we've had other discussions around other schools about the way they were changed without consideration of the need for

133middle school in that area what concerns me more than that is it being tied specifically to a focused choice school as if this will automatically happen that that is the only thing that we will consider and i would like to see that we would consider that we would not be tied to that because we don't know exactly how that model is going to be successful in in other in another area where we're doing the same kind of thing especially with with there being a stipulation that a student has to maintain and a grade point average that is higher than the the um normal magnet school so uh you know i have no disagreement with taking kennelworth back and and having it serve students the middle school students especially because like i said and everybody else

134has said we have had that conversation for quite a while my concern is around having having it tied as it is in the back up when i read that in a backup even though looking at what the uh with the vote says here on paper tying it in the back up specifically to a focused choice school is what is disturbing to me thank you mr jackson uh the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote motion carries thank you um we moved now to item b7 consideration of a request for the approval of the neighbors federal credit union project grant in the amount of one thousand four hundred and seventy seven dollars and twenty nine cents to provide fund funding for six teacher projects strategic alignment student achievement do i have a

135motion moved by mr ballou seconded by mr goday and then this is for the consent agenda okay see no questions from the board on this item any comments from the audience on b7 seeing no motion no movement we come back to the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote adjust the motion one second please vote the motion carries thank you we now move to item b8 consideration of request for the approval of the lead agency grant in the amount of 358 050 to assist with coordinated enrollment and support services for children's center charters charter schools private schools head start in early head start strategic alignment student achievement do i have a motion um mr baloo moves to the consent agenda to the consent agenda do i have a second miss dyson

136is the second seeing no uh comments or questions from the board we go to the audience any comments from the audience on b8 good evening i'm james finney i'm a proud parent of three mckinley high graduates back when it was still a strong gifted and neighborhood combination school which unfortunately has gone away in recent years with this item i noticed that it's three hundred and fifty eight thousand fifty dollars even for this organization that's a lot of money and i don't necessarily like the idea that you're collecting a lot of money from the state in order to fill private child care centers it seems as though with 358 000 you can organize a way to provide free well-qualified child care in schools for everybody in our community and the baker school this covers also and

137i'll speak more when the related item comes later but we shouldn't be providing the feeder students for impact charter elementary we shouldn't be sending kids to phil dalton and lanier's preschool ranks to keep those failing rsd schools going for just a few more years and we certainly shouldn't be taking nine thousand dollars ahead of federal money and subsidizing private day care centers when this is finally an opportunity for the couple years that this estimate will last that we could actually provide age-appropriate three and four-year-old programs for as many students as families would like to send them for three hundred and fifty eight thousand fifty dollars we could engage in some systematic planning so i would certainly not recommend that you approve this next week i would recommend you have a separate meeting sometime in the

138not terribly distant future after you adopt the budget and talk about do you want to be in the business of providing education for three and four-year-olds and if so what is the best way to do it i don't think subsidizing privately owned schools with no grass no playgrounds in industrial neighborhoods is really the best use of the public's money thank you any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board i swear jackson thank you president tatman um now this grant is the same one that that's a parish wide grant right that we are the lead agent on dr narcisse is that right uh uh you let me make sure i would make sure uh uh miss webb can you please come up it's not really clear what it's used for but um

139it that is the the uh good afternoon program right yes ma'am this is a lead agency grant that is provided by the department of education it requires us to partner with our child care center since we are our early childhood network those funds are to support our child care center charter sites and that's the parish yes ma'am and they require us to reach out to them and make it public so we can share in that funding yes yes um that's what i thought uh when this comes to us next week can we make that clear and also if we could give some specific locations where you know where the funding needs are and maybe what kinds of categories are we are we paid through the grant to administer yes good good so there is an

140admin fee that comes to the district for our services yes ma'am okay all right thank you if we could include some of those things i think it would be a little more clear okay you know that we are the lead and this is a parish wide um initiative that we're that we're taking the lead on and uh if we can see where it's going and what kinds of needs we would be uh satisfying would be helpful okay yes ma'am thank you ma'am thank you you're welcome thank you ms where jackson board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we moved to item b9 consideration of a request for the approval of a professional services contract between the east baton rouge power school board and seamless in the

141amount of 12 455 dollars to provide a digital work based experience platform to document student work based experience and coordinate business partnership strategic alignment student achievement we'll have a motion moved by miss ware jackson and seconded by mr goday to the we're consent yes ma'am thank you thank you mike thank you mr goode um miss swear jax thank you one question uh notice that the address for ebr schools is actually the ctec building so i'm wondering if this is being administrated through ctec mr nikkeis good evening president dr narcisse uh miss ware jackson uh i'll be the grand admin or the uh contract administrator and that's my location so that's why i'm connected there yes ma'am the whole workforce team will be using it and we'll be using it district wide [Music] thank you miss

142square jackson thank you um but no other questions or comments uh from the board thank you mr me case um we'll take uh comments from the audience on item b9 any comments from the audience see none back to the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you uh we move now to item b10 consideration request to authorize the administration to approve the most cost-effective property and casualty insurance program policy renewal package for the east baton rouge school system for the 2022-2023 fiscal year and to provide for related matters do i have a motion yes mr goday my motion would be to refer this to the consent agenda with the addition of that we would instruct our staff to provide for an rfp for the 2023-2024

143year and i'll come back to some of my thinkings behind behind that but uh i'd like to see us as as it's written but to add on to it an rfp for the following year 2023 2024 for our consulting services on liability insurance that's an order um that's in order is there a second to that motion um okay a bunch of hands can't went up evelyn miss where jackson i'm sorry okay um is that what you were pressed for well i'd like to comment sure uh i i just want to explain a little bit why i want to do this and again before i get started i want to make sure everyone understands i'm not saying anything bad is happening or anything like that but our insurance bill has grown to 4 million dollars and

144the situation we have right now is that the people who are recommending the agency is recommending our insurance coverage also gets renumeration from the placement of that insurance coverage so it's not in my opinion independent and while at smaller levels and in the past uh that might be okay but this bill has grown to over four million dollars and i just don't think it's clear fiduciary responsibility for us to be taking recommendations from someone who has a financial interest in the outcome of those recommendations and again i'm not accusing anybody of doing anything wrong or anything under the table it may be perfectly the best deal we could get but i just makes me uncomfortable in that situation particularly when i have no insight into what that remuneration is that they're getting back from uh

145placement of these insurance policies so i'm i'm in agreement with going what we have for this year we can't do anything different but i would like to see us like we do with our health insurance get a consultant to come in and review our our coverages and things like that to make sure that what we have is uh is what we can get for the best of our money and just to remove any conflict of interest questions or anything like that so that's the basis behind this sir thank you thank you mr goday we we i know you're with you would you like to say anything you're good yeah let me i'm just gonna weigh in here because i work in that industry in the legislature and i am a licensed pnc agent i don't

146write um i happen to unfortunately know a little bit more about this than a lot of other things i can tell you right now the market is absolutely collapsing um i think we've lost something in the neighborhood of uh 20 insurers over uh since uh it was the it's the what quadruple whammy laura delta zeta ida ida is one of the largest wind storm damage 450 000 claims and a lot of companies are pulling out big companies i'm not going to get into that now but companies that are pulling out of everything so they're pulling out of property and casual casualty but they might have bundled something with auto and um it is uh i'm that both of my policies moved and i don't think i've made a claim in 30 years but both of

147my policies move because the markets are gone and so this is something we're going to deal with and frankly if the wind blows this year it's going to be it's going to be worse and so i agree with everything you say i don't think anybody has a an issue with that but i just i want you to know that uh it's it for i've been think working in this industry for about 30 years it's the worst it's ever been it's way worse than after katrina um so and rita so it gives you some perspective of where we are and then there are other things that are going on around the world but we're we're we're going to need to budget appropriately for this because i don't think things get better anytime soon so um but

148i do appreciate your comments miss ware jackson you know i might add that 2.3 million of that increase is from in the addition of a building at la bel air and i didn't i don't even remember us doing that so um you know that's that's part of the increase along with uh with what you were saying also mr tattler and mr goldie thanks thank you oh mr good day i just want to echo what you said i have no problem with the bill that we're getting and what we have here i just think that that's become a big enough number that we really need some independence yeah and how we go about doing this and it's like you said it's gonna probably be six million dollars next year so um if we can get it

149and so i i think it's just time for us to change how we do our process yeah and i'm i will respond to that and not get on the cue but just to say that i think also if you look back on some of the claims we've made in the past for things that have happened to us it is impossible to fully insure us right we can't and so it gets really complicated but it's i think it's something we got to look at i think it's something every governmental agency is going to have to take a look at um and frankly personally you need to be aware of it because it's going to hit everybody so but i do appreciate your comments mr goody um see no other quote oops that was an accident man

150i am i'm off tonight as usual um seeing no other comments from the board or questions any comments from the audience seeing no comments from the audience we come back to the board um the board is clear madam secretary please uh the motion carries thank you we move now to b11 consideration for requests for the approval of the resolution authorizing the board president and the superintendent to execute and sign all documents to reject uninsured motorist coverage in connection with the east baton rouge parish school system's automobile liability coverage and its self-insurance retention program for the 2022-2023 fiscal year ms dyson moves to put it where okay and uh miss bernard seconds i see no questions from the board of any comments from the audience on this item b11 seeing no comments from the audience we

151go back to the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you um we move now to item b12 consideration of a request for the approval to select the advocate is the official journal newspaper advertising of the east baton rouge power school system for year 2022 2023 do i have a motion moved by ms dyasen uh seconded by mr goday it's a motion to send to the concealer yeah i'm sorry yeah sorry about that thank you for helping i see no questions from the board are there any comments from the audience on the item b12 james finney i have a suggestion however futile it may be it would be awesome if when items are sent to be published there was a way to make note of

152that in a particular place on the school system website and then those of us that are interested in such details could go find a hard copy of the paper confirm that that announcement made it in there or perhaps trust the things worked well and see a copy of that official notice online that would be helpful but i have no objection to publishing it in a paper that's in our community so thank you any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we move to item b13 consideration request to authorize staff to advertise receive and award bids for materials equipment supplies and services through june 30th 2023 to the lowest responsible bidders proposer meeting specifications and

153all state and federal requirements for quotes and formal invitations to bid move by ms bernard seconded by mr goday to the consent agenda thank you board no questions or comments from the board we go to the audience any comments from the audience on b13 seeing none we come back to the board and the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we moved to item b14 consideration or request to amend the real-time salary schedule to approve a 40 increase in compensation for the real program part-time employees strategic alignment student achievement do i have a motion moved by mr bellew to the consent did you was that you miss bernard do you want to do this yeah um and seconded by miss bernard see no uh comments or

154questions from the board are there any comments from the audience on b14 seeing none we come back to the board miss ware jackson you sir uh i see this is for the uh cir elementary sites through june of 2024 where we increase the part-time rates that'll bump from 25 to 35 an hour i'm wondering if this grant is offered every year and uh if there's a plan for sustainability beyond 2024 thank you ma'am okay honestly for uh this school year and the grant is well this school year and possibly next school year so it's a two-year grant and the teachers will be able to earn the 35 dollars per hour for the real tutoring is this uh offered annually no matt we just received this grant this school year for our comprehensive and urgent intervention

155schools i mean can you apply is it something that is that comes up every year that you can apply for yes ma'am i see and this is our is this our first time yes ma'am this is our first year first time applying and we got yes ma'am okay so um yeah i'm always thinking about what about later if the opportunity presents itself again we will apply and we'll be looking for other areas to continue this and we could you know we we're going to need them for a while i believe yes yeah okay thank you thank you mr jackson the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote i believe you have to go to the audience yeah i did nobody got out you did okay please vote the motion carries thank you we

156go to item b15 consideration for request for the approval of the professional services contracts between east baton rouge parish school board in the following a city year in the amount of 360 000 to provide support services strategic alignment student achievement b achieve three thousand inc in the amount of one million three hundred ninety one thousand and ninety dollars to provide professional development and student web-based activities strategic alignment student achievement c castle in the amount of 50 000 to provide support services strategic alignment student achievement employee development d national institute for excellence in teaching in the amount of 454 000 to provide support and professional development on the school improvement best practices strategic alignment student achievement e national institute for excellence in teaching in the amount of 120 000 to provide support and professional development on

157school improvement best practices strategic alignment student achievement f rethink in the amount of 175 000 to provide for social emotional learning and mental health support services strategic alignment student achievement and employee development do i have a motion move by mr blue and where are you moving it consent do i have a second mr goday miss ware jackson thank you i know you must think she's full of questions tonight huh yeah well you know looking at this i'm you know i'm always following silly city here see what they're up to um is i think this is an increase from last year right city year so i'm wondering about how many schools are we looking to cover compared to last year can someone speak to that hello okay so this year it is the same amount as

158last year and we are serving four schools glen oaks park glen oaks high park elementary and crestworth elementary okay i don't know why i thought it was it was an increase and around the two niet uh contracts they seem like they're for the same purpose can you you know just looking at what's what's here tell me the difference between the the two okay so the one that's for 454 000 that is for all of our schools that are labeled comprehensive support and urgent intervention and we have to use this vendor this is the vendor that ldle recommends so they'll reimagine grant is going to pay for the 454 thousand and then for title two it is for our non-urgent intervention in comprehensive schools and title two will be the funding source for those schools okay

159and one more about rethink this is another one for um social emotional learning you know about how many contracts we have in place now that cover social emotional learning roughly smith and i see it come up pretty often so i was just wondering well this particular contract of 175 that is going to be for next school year we did have a contract for rethink this year but this contract will be for the next school year but miss dupray can i think the question is how many total contracts for seo is that correct yeah right not just for rethink duplicate and if we don't have the exact number we can get that too we have one with rethink ed one with castle and then we have several schools that have contracts with manners of the heart

160those are the only ones seemed like it was more than that all right all right thank you thank you mr jackson see no other questions or comments from the board at this point we go to the audience any comments from the audience again i'm james finney and i have a couple suggestions with regard to the introductions since all of these meetings are presumably going to be live streamed for the indefinite future it would be useful if those of us that speak frequently if the if our names were put on the screens that might be helpful to people and particularly you know i don't necessarily need people to know my name but when a member of the administration comes up to speak it would be very helpful if their names were presented on the screen both

161in this room and to the viewers at home to this item i think it would be absolutely irresponsible to consider spending any s or money until you have a necessary budget for the coming school year furthermore these six items appear to have nothing in common other than the fact that they're separating our tax money from us and they're going to contractors they may all six be perfectly reasonable expenses but they shouldn't be lumped together they should even each be considered on their merits so i would urge you to either have the maker of the motion bifurcate this for separate consideration and it belongs nowhere close to the consent agenda particularly these three esser items you don't have an ester budget you don't have an answer you don't get fiscal notes you don't know how much

162is left board members particularly a couple of gentlemen that are absent have asked for that over and over and the gentleman from maryland continually refuses to prep provide that information at least in a public way now maybe you board members are getting perfectly reasonable comprehensive updates about how much yes or money has been blown and how much remains it'd be nice to know how much is left maybe we could actually make school buildings secure and it would be useful if somewhere we could see exactly you know like i can see because i ask for it every month how much we spend on people that are employed here it would be nice to have a comprehensive list of how many of these million dollar contracts are out there and what where that money's coming from so

163again with respect to this item it should be deferred you're not ready to vote on this next week you don't have a budget for three of these so you shouldn't spend now budget later you know think about this in july august maybe and split these into six separate items or be anxious to all leave by eight o'clock tonight and just ram it through whatever thank you hello fairly jackson district five uh evelyn we're jackson's district i really want to thank the board members and administration that took the time to talk with me around sr funding over the last few days i appreciate it what i realized is i agree with dr fenney on many points as far as this goes i do not feel you should move anything forward that is based on sr funding

164right now this does not have anything to do with thinking that the district is out of um you know compliance with reporting there is no doubt there we trust that there are people that are definitely reporting even more than they need to but the fact is the dollars and the amounts have not been given to the board they've not been given to the public the budget for esser that should have been included as a special revenue budget last week was not included so any revenue source special revenue source above 500 000 is required by statute to have a public hearing so i have been told that you all might be having this hearing next thursday i think that's wonderful if that happens you are required to publicly notice that in our official journal which is

165the advocate 10 days in advance but we have not seen the budget for esser i can go to egms on lgoe's website i've had conversations with lgoe with the louisiana legislative auditor's office they all agree that this should have been included in the budget hearing they all agree with that no one thinks you're out of compliance but when you're presenting a budget and when you're about to adopt things like this three out of these grants come from s or dollars you have millions of dollars coming out of this it needs to be more transparent you need to share this information with the public you need to share it with your board we don't want to drive you all crazy i don't want to be calling the legislative auditor's office i don't want to be calling

166ldoe but you know what they're incredibly responsive and and they agree there's a problem here you the board are not getting what you need and that is why we stand up here and say you shouldn't approve this it is what makes every meeting longer than it needs to be it is what takes multiple presentations and answering questions that you all have been asking for months nobody wants this we have to fix this so i encourage you bifurcate this as as dr fenny said i do not think you should approve anything as far as the sr budget goes thank you and i'll look forward to it but that's our budget hearing thank you any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board ms dyson yes thank you um president chapman um on this

167item b the achieve 3000 um i wanted to bring up that from the ground from the teachers with the students i i have heard a lot about the time that achieve 3000 and dreambox is taking out of the instructional day and something like 90 minutes and i don't know if that's the two included or just one but then on top of that with the encrypt with the um they say that you know especially in the middle and high when students really develop minds of their own they just press buttons and they don't if it doesn't if it can't have any grade attached to it that they just they're not getting students to take it seriously and um they would uh they with the additional grade required for each week because we've increased that from one

168to two grades per week in every class that then on top of that when you take out these things that cannot be graded then and or even counted as a participation grade that then they're having to come up with a second grade for that week that's just something that's not really productive and so i have hesitation in approving this achieve 3 000 until we can have a conversation because it's it's close to a million and a half i think we need to really consider what you know the unintended consequences of this at the same time we increase double the number of grades that that that teacher needs to record and make sure that those grades are meaningful grades instead of just getting that second one in because they've spent all this time on this so

169i think we need to have a broader discussion about achieve 3000 um and i'm thinking that i might make a substitute motion to to pull it out it's a large a large number it's a lot of dollars and i want to make sure that we're using it in a way that really is beneficial to our students um because of that second grade requirement in addition to all the minutes that it requires um i don't know if anyone has any comments or suggestions that they can make on that to me to make me feel you're going to be able to any better if he goes to the consent agenda you can a single board member can pull it off the consent agenda next week yeah right so um you know i didn't know if anybody here

170tonight has any thoughts on that or they just don't seem the additional requirement along with these additional minutes they don't seem to go together mesh together very well remember dyson um as we shared before um uh dr robinson and team have received the feedback from teachers to talk about the grading um and so they are working towards that next year on what that looks like for the programs i would not recommend for us to not do um achieve 3000 and other programs because the uh the feedback that was given to his team was around the grading i think we need to separate the grading with the program as two different spaces this the programs have helped to identify um where challenges and gaps have been for kids and also uh this has been the year

171that it has been implemented uh one of the things we are trying to do tremendously is to not change the amount of programs uh teachers have had so they can have uh become they can become comfortable with the current programs they have and get used to being better at it over time and so uh but we do we do hear the great change piece around qualifying for those assignments and so they are working through that issue to have a better recommendation for teachers for next year but i would separate the grading in the program in two different spaces but it is it is helping from a data standpoint on helping to determine uh children progress um so i guess um i'm hoping that you're not taking that that survey that went out to teachers and

172um i hope that that's not i hope that has totally been taken off the table because the questions weren't yes we're memorizing the uh you're referring to something totally different the survey is something i hope that that is totally off the table because the questions weren't appropriate yeah so those those are not uh those are that's a totally different set of issue to this and so separate surveys that went out to the teachers about no no the that survey was different from this uh programmatic approval here um for this program um the question that i hear you asking to make sure i'm correct is can they um can teachers have the opportunity to when they do the program whether it's a cheat 3000 dream box is to be able to use that as a grade

173for kids whether it's participation or those things and i think that is what the academic team is working on to provide more guidance to teachers for that but again i just want to make sure we're not putting the program and the grading in the same box okay well so i'm hopeful that we can get a report on that yes uh that's uh their team has been working on that they plan to actually um engage uh teachers about what would be the things that um they should be could help them correct in managing their day yes okay thank you miss diaz and miss swear jackson i would like to separate out b c and f as standalone instead of seeing them sending them all forward to the consent agenda can i make a suggestion yes can

174we send them all a standalone it's fine blue just for time purposes yeah that's fine i understand they would have to the makers of the motion would have to agree to that i mean you don't have to but from a time perspective yes trying to keep us a little ahead of midnight so um you okay with that yeah okay so um now the motion is to send it as a standalone item any comments from the audience on it being a standalone item it should be six standalone items or at the very least one standalone item for the three esser um funded concepts and a separate one for the other three otherwise it's gonna get bifurcated next week anyway you may as well get that done this time thank you any other comments from the audience

175seeing none back to the board miss ware jackson is that what you wanted okay i'm sorry i kind of slipped you you good okay thank you mr blue you good mr goday yes uh i would like to ask our general counsel sorry i didn't to you up to this earlier but could you just quickly there's been a lot of uh insinuation around esser funding and public hearings and this that or the other i know you sent us a memo uh on where we were with the esser funding could you just walk through that to make sure that the public understands that we're on top of this and we believe that we're following the law exactly as it says because i hear people talking about well i talked to ldoe and they said this well i

176have no idea who they talk to and what that person said or whatever and it may be totally correct but i would just like to for you as our legal counsel to give us and the public view of uh as you outline in this memo where we are on the assert funding in esser budgets thank you yes sir i'll try to be brief um and i did send the board a memo um a memo um regarding a lot of questions around the assert budgets whether we had appropriately concerned or or addressed those budgets with the public et cetera and i just did a fact-finding uh approach i just provide the facts to the board and that was it essentially um the initial ester budgets two and three were a part of last year's budget um

177and they were workshopped with the public um and i'm talking about the previous year's budget general budget they were part of the special revenue budget um and so that was what was workshop last year by the board i believe uh board members in the public have asked for updates on the essa budgets it's my understanding that next week ms lopez and her team will provide those updates as part of the second workshop uh public hearing or public hearing we provide for the public um and so that will occur next week ahead of the approval of the budget um we will include those budgets as well i spoke with several individuals from ldoe about compliance which came up earlier and was assured by them that we are in full compliance and that we've done what we

178need to do legally to make sure that we are following the law and so that i got assurance on that uh and i'm following up uh with ldoe to make sure that um but as to the budget and the hearings process um it's my understanding this lopez and group will provide that update next week but that the initial s or budgets were in the budget general fund budget or special revenue budgets from the previous year and were properly workshopped thank you mr goday um seeing no other comments from the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote we need to get some clarity repeat the motion did we change it did we bifurcate no we just we just put it all as um okay yeah same thing thank you sorry that was

179not a fluid explanation but that's okay yeah and i just want i wanted to make sure i was clarifying for the board the item is being sent as a standalone which is essentially without recommendation for the regular meeting of the board at that point if you wish to bifurcate the item you'll be able to do it and that would be it next meeting so we'll send it without recommendation yes we'll send it without recommendation please vote the motion carries thank you we're on to item b16 consideration of request for the approval of an mou memorandum of understanding between east baton rouge power school board and southern university at new orleans to provide milly charles school of social work students an opportunity for practical experiences in the area of social work strategic alignment student achievement to

180have a motion moved by miss ware jackson seconded by mr duke goday and how do you want it on the consent okay see no um comments or questions from the board at this time we go to the audience any comments from the audience on item b16 seeing none we're back to the board the board is clear madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we moved to item b17 consideration of request for the approval of a professional services contract between the east baton rouge parish school board and lsu and agricultural and mechanical college in the amount of 123 891 dollars to provide staff and program support at the eva lagarde learning center strategic alignment student achievement do i have a motion moved by miss bernard seconded by mr goday their

181board is clear miss ware jackson i'm sorry consent yeah thank you president tatman um in the back up i see that within this contract it's asking us also for a name change there's a name change attached to the service contract in the back of the areas no ma'am um but for to be uh i guess for clarity um the the name change and i've spoken with the superintendent and chief of staff we the board will still have to go through the process of a full name change with the school that's only conditional and so the board's action tonight does not change the name of the school um it's merely authorizing the contract to support services at school yeah i just wanted to make sure that uh that we weren't stepping out of line because i

182know there's a particular process for name change but it's it's a little bit concerning that that's in that contract if we approve this as is are we bound to that no ma'am but if to um ease your concerns we can easily amend the contract before next week to just say conditioned upon board action to change the name of the school okay thank you a lot of time went into it the first time and i know there was a lot of community support for the name as is and it was done that way so that as a learning center so that we wouldn't have to change a name no matter what program was there thank you miss swear jackson seeing no other questions or comments from the board we go to the audience thank you i'm

183james swinney the building has been named you can put whatever school you want in that building without changing the name of the building and given that um the doofrock school gets alphabet alphabetized under teas and lee high school was alphabetized in the r's and nobody calls baton rouge foreign language academic immersion magnet that name and nobody calls west dale heights academic magnet that name and nobody actually says baton rouge center for the performing and visual arts or whatever it is be really really careful about not giving ridiculous names to schools but to this item 891 dollars for professional development at a school that's going to have 50 students the gentleman from maryland said that the purpose of all the impact letters and shuffling teachers around and making everybody worried about whether they were going to

184be able to work in the environment they wanted next year was in terms of equity you're throwing an awful lot of money into an experimental program to have one sixth grade in elementary school you know if you put this program at my kids alma mater where it should be this should be at mckinley high school that would make sense if you're just going to have you know build sixth seventh and eighth graders at polk and then when it's time for high school they'll go over to the high school and use pope for something else then i don't have objection but if you're seriously going to have a 6 through 12 program in a tiny little elementary school and tell kids if you want to be interested in the coast of the environment you can forget

185athletics you can kiss off any auto mechanics or other interesting stuff you're probably only going to have half of an academic background you might not be available for tops and you're not going to have any art or music that's asinine mckinley high school is a comprehensive high school you've killed the gifted program there this would be something you could put in its place if you're gonna start with a few sixth graders this year and maybe seventh graders at the evil guard center and then later move it to mckinley that's fine but this six through twelve silo is really ridiculous it's just as bad an idea as the conservatory is three blocks from another high school those are really foolish uses of money and you need to be very careful as you look at the budget

186next week to see just how many thousands of dollars you're pouring into this focus choice school that may or may not be a success and every dollar you spent on that is a dollar you didn't spend on something else thank you other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board mr goday yes thank you um i i think the evil guard memo that's in board docks needs to be updated because um it talks in here for key performance indicators and gray brands pre-k and three eight so i well i guess it doesn't i understand now it's six through eight so it could fit in there i'm sorry i withdraw my comment i understand it now when i went back and read it in context my bad we just watched mr gotti have a

187conversation with himself [Laughter] thank you mike i mean thank you mr goday um seeing the board is clear we uh will now take the vote madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries we move now to item b18 consideration of a request for approval of the actual december 2021 semi-annual financial tax plan update and the 2021-2022 revised budgets for propositions one two and three strategic alignment operational excellence do i have a motion um move by mr blue i have a second just go day to consent um board is clear right now um we go to the audience any comments from the audience on item 18. james finney i'm disturbed that the budget package that you're considering next week last i looked at it had nothing in there for proposition one and i

188see that the oversight committee doesn't appear to have addressed a 2022-23 budget for proposition one or two or three so maybe it's the new budget and then they have to look at it and decide if they approve it but it's important to mention proposition one because with early versions of the tax plan that was strictly capital expenses and so you do it kind of a project at a time that's no longer the case for some god awful reason you ask the voters to put a whole bunch of salaries into proposition one and so i don't think you can reasonably exclude it from the special budget book and i think you probably need some more guidance from the oversight committee in terms of how you're going to spend those three budgets in the coming year thank

189you for your time any other comments from the audience seeing none back to the board the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we move now to item b19 consideration a request for approval of the mou memorandum of understanding template for children's centers charter schools and private schools in the ebr community network for the expansion of pre-k 3 and pre-k 4 student seats strategic alignment student achievement i have a motion uh mr baloo and you wish to send it to the consent agenda we have a second anyone um mr go day miss ware jackson is this item also tied to the parish program that we were speaking of earlier miss will you please call yes ma'am this is the lead agency we are the lead agency

190for the evr early childhood network and so that requires us to form a partnership with our charter schools child care centers private and parochial schools each year for the last four years we'll come to the board to approve the mou template so we can have a partnership as you know pre-k 3 and pre-k-4 unfortunately is not mandated in our state and we're not included in the mfp as a result of pre-k students not being truly prepared for kindergarten across the state we are reaching out to these providers who prepare them we provide professional development we assess them with the accountability tool which is the class observation tool so we receive accountability ratings not in a letter grade but in a rating system and so that helps us to prepare our pre-k 3 and pre-k four-year-old

191to be ready to come to our system so this is tied to the same yes ma'am speaking of earlier that's past white yes ma'am thank you ma'am thank you miss swear jackson um no other questions from the board at the moment um we go to the audience any comments from the audience james finney thousand 926 hundred sixty dollars imagine what you could do with funding real three and four-year-old education i wasn't convinced last year that the state says we have to subsidize these day care centers in industrial areas or the one down the street from me that popped up with the ebr logo even though it wasn't on the list nine million two hundred twenty six thousand nine hundred sixty dollars and there's nothing to even suggest these students will ever come to baker public

192schools or east baton rouge public schools let's think of one an example impact charter impact charter exists because baker school system had a low letter grade it is in baker's school system it gets more local tax revenue from this school system than those from the baker system it would probably cease to exist if you weren't feeding it 20 subsidized pre-k seats every year the rsd would probably shrivel up and cease to exist if you weren't subsidizing choosing to subsidize intentionally subsidizing pre-k classes at the rsd schools dalton lanier they didn't have pre-k classes they probably wouldn't fill their kindergarteners it wouldn't make sense for the company from california to make their profit on our backs and we could finally kiss the rsd goodbye but no you're subservient to whatever agenda the state has and they

193say you're responsible for feeding this public money that you are responsible for administering wisely but you must give it to these other organizations instead of actually funding the three and four year old program imagine if you have nine million two hundred and twenty six thousand nine hundred sixty dollars available and maybe you could eliminate the waiting list from the three and four-year-old montessori programs maybe you could create a few more of those maybe you could put a montessori program at kenilworth middle and fill it like that think outside the box don't spend nine million dollars just because you think bessie is forcing you to do that or kade brumley insists you do that have some creativity have a spine thank you any other comments from the audience on b19 seeing none back to the board

194and square jackson can you tell me what percentage of this is uh funded through s or two see there are several funding sources miss webb we have if you look on the um if you have these attachments we have about um 20 to 30 percent of them funded by esser funds in our sustainability plan we're now working with our consultants to build an expansion plan to and we have stakeholders that include business industries um lots of our community stakeholders to build in funding to make sure that we can to so we can sustain the funds and so what happens is the state has said hey what we want you to do every community network across the state has to put together a sustainability plan and so they are if you're watching new orleans they just

195made a tax plan and just in may the senate approved the 84 million dollars for early check early education care and so those dollars will return into grant and so we can continue funding these programs okay thank you ma'am you're welcome thank you mr jackson the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote thank you we moved to item b-20 consideration of request for the approval of school board policy bbd school superintendent relations strategic alignment exemplary customer service do i have a motion i'm sorry um i'll move and i'd like one little um tweak in the language um with my motion it says will be provided by the superintendent okay provided the central office is opened and i think we just need to say is open a response will be provided thank you can

196i get a second is that and that's to the um incentive to the consent yes and i just thank you i need a second miss ware jackson thank you um the board uh no questions or comments from the board at the moment any comments from the audience seeing none back to the board the board is clear nope oh there you go just snuck one in on me there mr goday mr goodie yes um with all due respect to my colleague i will be voting against this i think that this is getting into the minutia of the board and superintendent relationship and that we as board members and the superintendent need to be able to work together in a manner that is not so prescribed uh this is not an open uh open records uh public

197records law or anything like that we work together as a team and i think we'd be a lot better off trying to build the teamwork around these kind of issues than trying to put it into a policy so i just want to i understand the intent and i think the communication can be better but i think the communication can be better in both directions i think we can be a lot clearer on what we want if you look at the last meeting he went five hours because that was a lot of information that had been requested by board members coming back from the superintendent and i just think that this change is unnecessary and i to me it it makes us look like we and the superintendent can't work together with a good working relationship

198so i would be voting against it um thank you mr goadage um seeing no other questions or comments from the board madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion fails we move now to item b21 consideration of a request for the approval of the amendment of the board approved stipend include to include all employees that utilized approved family medical leave act leave for the 2021-2022 school year do i have a motion moved by miss ware jackson seconded by mr goday and we are sending this to consent to see no comments from board members we go to the audience any comments from the audience james finney as is the custom of this administration there is woefully inadequate backup information it sounds great to provide stipends to a few people who you may believe were

199unfairly deprived of that but the million-dollar fiscal note would suggest that that applies to roughly 500 people and if if you've got a 1200 stipend increased by some democrats that's about two thousand dollars per person roughly what's a million divided by two thousand anybody so how much is this really going to cost furthermore if somebody had saved up plenty of sick leave and took it for maternity or paternity leave and didn't invoke fmla does that mean they don't get the stipend it what exactly do you mean how many people is this gonna cover three eight twenty five hundred why is it so hard for the gentleman from maryland to force the people that work for him to provide you useful backup information and why do you refuse to make him do it this is stunning

200it's appalling it sounds wonderful to provide some stipends but there's no way of telling from this information and from the motion what exactly you're doing who it's going to benefit and how much it's going to cost and that's not acceptable how many times you're going to keep approving stuff that's not acceptable what level of incompetence does this community have to tolerate this should have been easy you should have had a report attached to this that says we provided stipends of 1200 to this many people we provided stipends of 600 to this many people there were so many other people that would have been eligible for the 1200 stipends but for missing more than 20 days then we'd have at least some concept of where that million dollar figure that came out of the wilderness came

201from and you're just gonna vote for it six to nothing without a clue as to who's gonna benefit or why because you're all anxious to go home because as is the custom the superintendent put too much crap on the agenda and none of it is sufficiently well explained it's pathetic thank you yeah sure please state your name and there's a little clock there yeah you have three minutes when you get to yellow it yeah oh sorry green yeah and then when you get to the yellow you have a minute black yes sir thank you yeah i'm sorry i didn't mean to be confused no no no your name please yes sir i'm samantha mash lahan um i was a mother who took maternity leave um this year and first i just want to say thank

202you for approving the stipend um as a teacher i was very excited to hear that we were getting that i think a lot of us were very grateful and i think i understand the rationale behind not giving it to people who took fmla however we already take a pay cut for going on maternity leave we do exhaust our sick days but um i didn't have six weeks worth i think i had like four and a half so we take a pay cut after that um i believe we're also ineligible for the 500 highly qualified stipend which i'm used to getting so that's another pay cut for this year and then not having the stipend feels unfair my slts were level four highly qualified so there was student achievement at high levels in my classroom as

203i'm sure is true for lots of other women who took maternity leave or other people who had to take fmla um not just mothers but um it just feels to me like i'm being penalized for starting a family um and so i just wanted to say that i think um that it would be more fair to extend it to people who did take family especially because a lot of those circumstances were beyond our control we can't you know necessarily time when we get pregnant or when a family member gets sick so um yeah i just think it feels unfair that those people don't have the same um benefits thank you thank you hello my name is amelia gilmore thank you first off for adding this to tonight's agenda i am a mother of an 11

204month old and i did not receive the stipend due to my time on maternity leave at the start of the 2021-2022 school year i have been an active employee of the ebr school district since january 2015 and have not taken a surplus of time since i began teaching the 272 hours of time that i took for maternity leave was made up entirely of sick time that had not been taken throughout my employment i was also pregnant at the end of last year and had no choice in the number of days that were missed by me this year i am one of four teachers at my school who did not receive the stipend due to maternity leave this stipend was intended to increase morale but instead it left us feeling undervalued we are women who put

205ourselves and our pregnancies at greater risk to cover 19 complications to teach during the pandemic we are women who use countless hours of our personal time to plan extensively for our time away to ensure the transition was smooth and that our students remain successful we are women who return to this school district following our leave and continue to teach our students as our own and we are women who leave our infants in the care of others daily to devote our time to this school district i ask that you adopt this amendment to show support for us in return for all the love and support we show ebr kids every day thank you thank you and congratulations hi my name is mary trigg i'm also a teacher in the district and a mother and i just

206wanted to echo what the last two commenters have said that having a baby and going back to work is incredibly hard with an infant you're losing sleep you're already giving extra hours to working on lesson plans and grading beyond the school day and preparing for maternity leave i mean for me took all summer long of coming in on extra hours and copying every single copy every single plan for the day and if the point of the stipend was to truly reward you know the extra effort teachers made adjusting and um staying with the district and the greater risk taken during the pandemic it would seem that people who had to take fmla for these circumstances would definitely deserve that too in fact even putting you know themselves and their families at greater risk and um

207having to put out that effort um just in fairness and in the spirit of rewarding people for teaching during the pandemic should be included in the stipend too thank you storm matthews um teachers who last two speakers have talked about this who are preparing for maternity leave they don't just leave when they have their baby and a sub comes in and teaches the class they prepare every single lesson every single thing so that when a sub comes in it's taken over seamlessly there's actually a teacher who was out and missed the stipend because they were assaulted by a student so they're out on assault leave they didn't get stipend because they were assaulted by one of our students and they didn't get the stipend i'm not sure if that falls under fmla but that person

208should get to stipend there's a teacher who missed days after the disbursement date and didn't get the stipend on fmla i had a stroke on monday i was teaching tuesday because i was worried about how many days i had missed not wisdom but i needed the money these are things that we take into account when we've been teaching for sixteen and a half years and barely broke fifty thousand dollars i might consider taking one of those guard positions makes a whole lot more thank you uh fairly jackson district five again um i just really want to support the teachers and the staff the entire staff of ebr i think it's wonderful that the stipend was extended to support all of the team members of epr as a parent with two kids in two different schools

209one in fifth grade and or going into fifth and one going into second i think i've experienced teachers i'd say three pregnancies now and when i can tell you these teachers like storm said they don't check out they do not disappear they are still in your world they are still in your children's world they are setting up the substitutes for success they are connecting with us they are keeping our children connected our kids are still so excited when is miss so and so having her baby you know i mean it's you know and it's not just it's not just maternity and paternity i mean it's the other things that life throws at us so i just really want to urge you to support this thank you all for starting this conversation um you know i

210remember when you all first started talking about this and it's been a long road coming and it's evolved but you're getting there and i think voting for this tonight we'll be getting there so thank you all so much colleen kissel excuse me walking in late you guys got through those last items fast i left my house at 17. um this should have been included when we originally passed the stipend and i'm glad to see it come up again so that we can finally get all the teachers who deserve this money and the staff who deserve this money their money so thank you for putting on the agenda again and we should absolutely be giving him the full amount thank you so oh i'm sorry my name is corona cola give my five seconds back six

211seconds back seven eight nine but my name is karonda corley and i would like for us to look at the federal laws that we're actually violating by not actually giving them their stipends when everyone else received them so fmla is a federal that's federal and all of those were all of the individuals that used fmla they were federally protected their jobs are federally protected which means they are supposed to receive everything that everyone else is receiving so we need to look at that because we have now violated the law in addition to that it is also an ada violation american disabilities act because when a woman have a baby or if a parent is a parent of a child with a disability by federal law they can use fmla to attend their children's iep meetings

212eeoc this is an equal employment opportunity commission we are violating eeoc when we hold discrimination or discriminatory actions against women for having children that's a civil rights violation this is called we created a hostile environment towards people just for living life like any of y'all can go outside right now and have a car accident and be injured and yet what would you have to do you would either have to file for an fmla from your job or you would have to go up under ada but you would expect your job to uphold what they're supposed to by federal law the department of justice right now is investigating our state department of police they can easily come right over here because that's a couple of blocks over i think that that's something that we need to

213look at and that's something that i would actually educate all the staff that were not afforded that opportunity to receive the stipends it's for them to file eeocs against our school system so that way the feds can come in and actually see why they didn't receive them in a timely and feasible manner but i do ask that if we're going to give them this type and we need to give them their stipend plus interest because that money has now accrued interest and that's a law courtesy of governor john bel edwards that say that they are supposed to be afforded interest more after it has been over 45 days so thank you kindly thank you miss corleone you don't always need to use all three minutes by the way no i'm just kidding look i i

214was being nice because i could actually take like my last 20 seconds and x where's my asl interpreters but you know i was being nice to you thank you thank you miss corley i'm sorry i was just teasing with you i see you're at the capitol all the time working so um miss ware jackson thank you president i just wanted to thank the the staff for uh helping me through this especially mr shamlin um when we first gave the stipend you know i don't think the board realized that we were leaving our women on maternity leave and having done that three times myself and looking at the um the volume of women that are uh employed in the district especially going to the graduations and looking at the faculty come up and seeing that as

215you know it's mostly women i could count the men on one hand and still have fingers left over um you know we talked about this and we talked about just maternity and then we thought about you know maybe we should look a little further and see what those costs would be and i understand that there it's a lot more than it would have been just to cover the uh women on maternity leave but you know i think we cover ourselves a lot better by including uh all of the ones that are in the uh that fall under that fmla so um i appreciate that i just wanted to express that to you all and um i knew you know i know every time we do something we we got to get a little spanking anyway

216so but you know i appreciate your comments and uh but i certainly do appreciate the work in uh in being able to um offer this for the board tonight so thank you staff um thank you miss swear jacksons dyson i just want some quick clarity please on the backup it talks about that um approved stipend to include all employees who utilized approved family medical leave act leave for the school year and then when you go to the bullet checks down at the bottom the middle one specifies that must be an active full-time employee that has not missed more than 20 work days during the fiscal year um and that coved leave does not count against so is that contrary to each other or what am i reading wrong there it says that the specifications of

217the corresponding approval requests for consideration are below and then when you read those it still has in there to be eligible for the stipend individuals must meet the following guidelines you must be active full-time sorry sorry guys so for um the reason why this was put in place we do have um we don't understand fmla right um and we do understand that we had to put some stipulations in place to make sure that yes we want to encourage and share the wealth as much as possible but we also want to make sure that folks who employees miss in 20 days or more and we also have some concerns in the past about employees who are missing work should not receive a stipend because they don't show up right so that was put in place to

218address that um so it's not contradictory and it's also when it comes to cold with leaf um we do provide a district approved covert leave if you apply for that however the the situation that happened is if i take my approved code leave that the district approved and that's exhausted i have to now tap into ffla to take care of a family member etc this is why we put that piece of stipulation in there to say that if you exhaust your if you use your covert leaf we're not going to count that against the person and if that has happened because of coding issue from the school secretary or from payroll we encourage folks to reach out and call us or myself for email and we'll look into that uh specifically but it with it

219saying that has not missed more than 20 work days um and that kovid won't be a part of it well what if they used over 20 using their fmla well if the fmla is approved if it's an approved um fmla then you're fine we're talking about employees who didn't show up can we just get that clarified okay in the document for the board meeting okay so i'm going to okay refer to mr shamlin from a legal standpoint to make sure that it's online i'll welcome this home okay okay thank you very much thank you miss diason um the board is clear but i'll just say this all three of my children were born while my wife was teaching in ebr and we as much as we might have loved for it to happen in the

220summer it happened in april twice and once in december uh so uh the best laid plans but i uh i definitely appreciate uh how difficult it is even to go back to work and leave your baby with somebody else and so i appreciate you all very much and i uh appreciate the fact that you're building expanding and starting your family so thank you um the board is clear madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we move now to item b22 a consideration of a request for the approval of the pathways to bright futures expenditures do i have a motion moved by mr goday is there a second seconded by mr blue oh yeah i'm sorry good point thank you for consent um we have a motion by mr goday

221second by mr blue the board is clear um we go to the audience does anybody in the audience wish to speak on item b22 store matthew was one of the short people okay um my public records request that i did on the financing of bright futures said that it was going to be 300 per course and at the total implementation it would be 18 million dollars it also said that the act prep courses would be 522k and dual enrollment would be 599 k as per the projection that is now on board docs but wasn't it first it says 400 per course cost change that's understandable yet the total amount is listed at 10 million a ct prep costs only 215 000 that doesn't sound right dual enrollment cost sounds or says 160 000. why such

222a stark distance different excuse me i am not a math teacher so i had somebody else do the math for me and if 50 of the kids choose because by law you cannot mandate anybody to take dual enrollment courses parents please make sure you know that this is your choice um that at the four year mark on track for a d it will cost 32 million dollars a year the memo also says it'll be funded by esser for the first two years and has been applied to the proposed budget for the school year 22-23 yet esser is not in the budget um lots of issues here so we have either my public records request was illegally done or the board docs documents are illegally done very big cost differential also i do think that i've

223talked to several teachers from glen oaks and there is much to be said about challenging students and helping students but there is a lot for the 60 of students that we harmed their college transcripts this year sixty percent of students that aren't going to do well with tops or don't qualify for tops any longer ap courses don't have to go on a college transcript maybe we need to rethink the entire thing and if we don't have the 27 million dollars to give the 8 increases to teachers which we don't have we definitely don't have the millions of dollars for this i'm james finney this program what whichever version of bright futures the man from maryland is touting this week as the next greatest thing for the poor poor children of north baton rouge it's not

224sustainable it's not educationally sound we've never gotten a clear idea of what courses would be available where you know you he's dangling this equity crap and people are buying it this is a stupid use of money and it's abusive to the poor children that get pushed into classes they're not ready for as matt miss miss matthews mentioned you have minors i sure hope you have um good strong um releases from their parents because you have permanently damaged the higher education potential for a whole bunch of 14 year olds they have d's and f's on their transcripts they'll never get rid of i don't know how that's supposed to be good for them furthermore you don't have an s or budget i don't know why we're talking about how you're going to spend s or money

225you still don't have an s or budget on the um special budget book that got put on because the 2021 budget got thrown on into a 2022-2023 book or maybe it was the 21-22 anyway somebody put some irrelevant pages in the special budget book and thought that would be enough to make everybody happy why don't you here's a thought announce with 10 days advance legal notice a hearing on the esser budget and then hold that hearing and then decide how you're going to spend this money in a way that recognizes that it's one-time money it's not for ongoing expenses and then decide how you can make proper high school classes and if proper college courses available to as many students as possible the solution isn't make everybody default in and only the parents that are

226paying attention can pull their kid out and i hope if if you don't have signed agreements from all the parents of the kids that got these and fs i hope they sue you because that was child abuse you should never have set up a 14 or 15 year old to have d's and f's on their permanent college transcript that can't be fixed that's obscene you should not tolerate as a board you shouldn't tolerate that kind of an arrangement from the man from maryland the damage he leaves will last in this community long after he's gone barely jackson again district five um a parent um when we look at the presentation that we were given last week um which i feel like we've been given so many presentations and i'm i cannot say how disappointed i

227am that you all didn't pass what ms diason and mr shamlin worked on because i feel like if you all were actually given the information that you needed and we were given the information that we needed we wouldn't have to have multiple presentations over and over and over again but again i'm going to stage your main to this topic um you know this pilot program at glennox looks amazing i mean these people these kids this cohort had amazing support they had deans they had counselors they had non-profits they were actually physically removed from the rest of their school and given a separate environment where they were fostered and nurtured and supported and that's incredible if we could replicate that for every ninth grader in this system you wouldn't find one person in this community that

228would be against pathways to bright futures you just wouldn't we all would be but that's not really what we're seeing in this budget i mean when we look at not just the budget but the csm when we look at everything that's been proposed over the last several months none of it fits together to support something like that we're cutting counselors we're cutting deans so you know it's very confusing for us as the public when you say that this is a really great plan but it's not actually being replicated the way that it was created at glen oaks it was a model for success but these kids were given the support that every kid deserves that'd be awesome you know that's that's one thing that i have concerns with here i also have concerns with when

229there's an email that's circulated that is for board only with a budget that really bothers me and we've talked about how that's happened um the other thing is that again the esser budget again mr goday no one is saying that people aren't in compliance i said that before we're not saying that but your fellow board members have asked for updates like quarterly updates that are submitted to the ldoe that's all they've asked for that's all we're asking for again it needed to be more transparent i'm glad that we're going to see these numbers but also when de is thrown flashed up on a screen back in march in 2021 that doesn't count for reporting for potential expenditures for 2022-2023 for lgoe i am it's esser mr chapman this is esser funding that's what's funding this

230right yeah we're talking about pathways your brighter future yeah yeah that's exactly and it's funded by esser correct if you say so if i say so i'm going to reclaim my time i appreciate you i appreciate you really you're going to cut me off because you were miss ma'am any other comments from the audience good evening everyone my name is maria harmon i stay in district six and i'm also one of the co-directors of step up louisiana grassroots community organization where we organize with parents in east baton rouge parish and we support equity but we do not necessarily support the implementation of how this program intends to play out the uh aspect of mandating anything without a parent's full consent is not in compliance of state law like there is a possibility if this comes

231to fruition if you guys prove this this will have to come before betsy you know so i think we may need to rethink this and how this is going to be implemented and it's not like dual enrollment um advanced placement or any type of access to higher education while being enrolled in high school is not accessible or it wasn't ever existent it did it was just about parents knowing about it and tapping into those resources and nothing is stopping us to really revisit the implementation of this also i feel like bright pathways to bright futures is a bit misleading because if you're going to call a dual enrollment program a dual enrollment program then just call it that because there's more to a bright future than just a college education we have to think about

232other vocational programs we have a c-tech program in the school district that a lot of parents are not taking advantage of like i as a community member who is well connected with a lot of other partners that do direct service programming for children that would benefit greatly from holistic education say that hey the parents are not coming in there something has to be done about this and there are holistic education models like the sustainable community schools model i'm just lifting this up as an option to consider and maybe prioritize the efforts and resources behind this because it's not negating getting our kids where they need to be and having the proper resources to reach their full potential thank you good evening board members my name is chris toomes um and i wanted to speak on

233this uh pathways to bright futures um item the pathways to bright futures represent a system-wide approach to offering ebr pss students the opportunity to pursue high-skill high-wage and in-demand career pathways while simultaneously earning their associate's degrees or industry-based credentials each pathway was created in close collaboration with business and industry leaders and aligned to the jobs of the future so that every student will graduate college or career ready technology construction manufacturing transportation and logistics liberal arts and management medical and pre-med i don't know about all the particulars of the financing everything that way but i do know this i live in baton rouge i've lived here for well over 35 years i have seen our system as a city progressively get worse from a crime statistic from a brain drain perspective and we are in big

234detriment of not getting businesses to come to baton rouge you're just not marketable right now but i will say this by being optimistic and creating a project like this this may encourage kids to put the guns down i like it i think it's innovative i think this is something that we can get behind and we can really build out but definitely we are going to have to be intentional about making sure that our community partners aren't just um from one side of the block we gotta get everybody engaged everybody at the table we can make it work because think about it we're talking about transportation and logistics you're talking about medical and pre-med i mean if there's anywhere that is a food desert it is definitely in the inner city would it be great to

235have our inner city kids like understanding what their career paths could be very early on get them out there ahead of this thing so by the time they graduate they're job ready they're college ready my myself we uh my son went to river parish community college and started as a ninth grader if he would have been on a high school campus with that program it would have worked but he had to go to college he had to go to our repairs community college he was on there with the big kids and it didn't work out for him unfortunately i would like to see a kid from old south baton rouge be able to get access like that and still be in this neighborhood and still get the same opportunities that he wouldn't have to go

236to brcc and get it at mckinley right i think that's ideal i think that would work so my i would say this though y'all need to figure out this financial piece and everything else like that cause it sounds like y'all got some upset people out here but i'ma let y'all get paid to do what y'all do i just want to bring that to your attention and i wish you the best of love hi colleen kissel um i want to raise a point that fairly made that the pilot program was not a true pilot program because it is not replicatable with the current resources that we have at all of our schools a pilot program is something you can take instantly double it but with all the changes we certainly made it's not going to be

237a true pilot program um when we look at the supplementary material for this item the two items that i've pulled up um they do not name a program that we're going to go with for the dual enrollment that we will be paying for these classes with um now i know we had that super long meeting last week that i watched most of which may have said the name of the program i think this way it is written now it is a pathway to a bright future for some people but those people are not the kids with the f's and who had to withdraw and it's not the kids who had a hard time and it's not necessarily the teachers it's a pathway to the bright future for the money interests who will be getting these

238contracts that will be coming in outside sources maybe the schools that we know narcissus loves to bring in to do these if you pass this whatever but know there will be people in the community who will make graphics telling people how to make sure their kids are opt-out-able because we can't force dual enrollment on every kid right we should only be opt-in for those kids who want it and honestly you should not pass the money for this until you have literally every question answered because last time it took me like what two hours for this presentation and i feel like there were still questions at the end that board members had and that the audience members had so we need to have this nailed down in fine detail fine point not a one page like

239tiny document of where the money is going to a big old spreadsheet of all the money before we start approving this money thank you start her clock i'm just kidding hey don't stop and collect them get to the mic okay name's karonda coyly and look mr tapping you're happy running okay so i think that this is something that y'all are gonna really like children with disabilities and children that have that are considered gifted and talented all have individualized education plans acronym ieps those students legally are supposed to be educated according to what is in their ieps we cannot legally force mandate for a child with an iep such as a child with a disability or a child and gifted and talented to actually take that one class which originally it was for so we cannot

240force them to take that or mandate for them to take it number two children with disabilities and children that are in gifted and talented that have ieps have due process rights meaning if you try to force them to take anything outside of what they are taking in their iep that parent can pursue a due process hearing and when because now you're violating their right to free appropriate public education as well as their right under american disabilities act you cannot do that third that parent can prevail and then pursue federal and if it was me i would go after mental anguish because i attended all those meetings and at every single meeting we heard something different every meeting it was something different i even called mr cedo myself personally and one of the police officers actually

241asked i asked these same questions every time and got a different answer the funding source right now on board doc say esther three funding now we are very much aware because miss nicola hall has told us multiple times we don't have money so how exactly are we gonna fund it we also was told it was gonna be under idea funding until i shot them down on that and told them that money can only be used on our children with disabilities all and the children under gifted mentality we can't actually act like we don't know what misappropriations of funds is that's what that would be if we try to do that so here's a nice proposal and solution i know for uh board personnel and you're gonna love this i'm gonna say it in about 10

242seconds we can actually have a special meeting a real true special meeting and actually dissect the problems that we have let parents submit questions maybe to the board because when we submit them to the staff they get ignored but we definitely have to address those those critical things because what what the board members i think you are failing to remember to think about is you're ethically obligated and your job is to supervise him not him supervise y'all thank you miss corley [Music] seeing no other comments from the audience we come back to the board miss where jackson thank you president tatman um a lot of my questions were asked by audience members um the item itself doesn't say where the funding comes from in the projections over time but in the back up it it

243it does speak to esser funding so my first question is around the sustainability of the program over time and the different numbers that we've received like someone mentioned 18 million once we get to the fourth year and in our backup there's a a different um a different number um we speak about um whether it whether where is the option um if there is is if this program is optional for parents and so that's a question i i would like a yes or no answer to and i would also like to know at what point is the payment made for the dual enrollment course is it at the very beginning when the child starts um and if they withdraw are we still responsible for the full payment because that would definitely be a waste so can

244you answer those few questions first before i get into any others smith not as tall as ms hall but i still need to lift up the mic good evening everyone caron smith chief of staff um miss where jackson i just want to make sure that i address your questions and i capture most of them but i may ask you to just revisit the last two just to make sure that i'm being responsive to your inquiries so one of the questions you asked was about the numbers in the budget so the um the item the spreadsheet that we submitted to the board um prior to it being posted on board docs was based on projections that our finance team made based on assumptions we're making about the number of students who will engage in the program

245based on the design of the program and an estimated cost of four hundred dollars so i did hear on one of the audience members comment that the cost was three hundred dollars per course that has not changed however we in our recent estimate added a hundred dollars to that three hundred dollar cost to include textbooks and other materials so that is for the 400 but the um the um the projection of 18 million dollars i would have to revisit that with you all because i'm not aware of that i can ask miss lopez to come up so she can explain where our projections come up come from now that you're seeing but i'm not aware of any other previous document that was released to you guys with those numbers okay miss and are all the

246supports that were in place during the pilot expected to be in place when we implement the program just as the pilot yes so one of the things so and then the last board meeting i can see where there was a miss um there was a takeaway that we had actually added additional staffing to gleno's high but i do want to make sure that i'm clear the only hired personnel for the good old pilot was the academy coordinator position ms mayweather who came before you who actually participated in the the presentation the other um personnel that was spoken about during that presentation were actually roles that were already in that school in that school building what we did was we restructured the utilization of those staff members to help support the program so we looked at

247everyone who was in the building and we looked at how they could push in support to the program itself and we restructured their utilization and staff members in the building to support the program are we prepared to do that in every high school across the district when this is implemented to have the same supports as glenno's pilot had so one of the things too because it was addressed in here about the isolation of the students one of the things that we are looking at doing next year the majority of our high schools is operate the ninth grade academy so that structure that you saw at goodwill's high school which is separate from the pathways model this was a night great academy model will be implemented next year we've been working throughout the course of this

248year and pushing in next year to have that model instilled in the majority of our high schools so that portion yes we're prepared to move forward with secondly when we talk about the staff we will look at each school individually and we are going to work with our leaders to make sure that they are utilizing their staff appropriately to support the students in the ninth grade um cohort as well as all the students in the building so we are prepared to do that as we would do with any program that we're initiating this goal and you mentioned the majority of the high schools yes already excluded yeah the only schools that and the nurses please correct me but the only schools that are excluded will be our magnets our dedicated magnet schools baton rouge high

249and liberty high because their unique programming and of course ebr readiness because the ultimate because an alternate school here in the district and what about the process of parental choice yes yes so we're prepared to make sure that we're maintaining the uh the igp protocols that are in place by the state that is not changing and also with the design of the pathways to break futures i want to make sure that people understand that we're not dedicating or dictating dual enrollment i know that that has been a focus of a lot of our conversations but the pro premise of pathways to bright futures is both college and career so included in our model is choice for students and their families to look at dual enrollment ap as well as ibcs or industry based certifications as

250a choice of a course selection at least one in each academic year moving forward initiating next year with a ninth grade cohort so would they would they be required to take a dual enrollment class no they're not required to take a dual enrollment class they have a choice to take dual enrollment arap course or an ibc or industry based course in the industry based prudential course and about the industry based credential course is this something that's already available at the high school level or is this something that must go through a higher ed body no those courses are already available students have been engaged in the jumpstart students already those students on the job start diploma track have been engaged in ibc courses prior to the implementation of the vision the pathways to bright futures

251and after esser funding is gone what's the path what's the plan to uh sustain the program okay so one of the things that you would see in the backup memo in the fiscal notes we did say that five million dollars was already earmarked for um pathways well dual enrollment courses in the district based on a previous um board motion and authorization back in november however beyond that because this is not going to be a two-year initiative we are looking at other funding sources one of the things that we have already started doing is researching my team working with a grant writer opportunities for grants that focus on college and career readiness to help also fund this program but most importantly we're going to do what we do each year with the budget we're going to

252look at our academic priorities and make sure that we're making the appropriate decisions for maintaining our programs as we define them for the district with the authorization of the board so have you identified enough funding that would take us into years beyond uh beyond esser funds right now we have funding that goes up to year 23 24 that has been earmarked i could just add i want to make sure we reiterate this because we've been saying this a lot every year as a school district we look at our priorities in our programming we make sure we invest in those programs we don't just keep the same programs for 10 20 years right so you modify you make adjustment as this program grows we continue to make adjustment in our programming for programs are not effective

253we take those away for programs that are effective we prioritize and we go accordingly and our our assurance as i share with folks is you will never come with a negative budget while i'm superintendent it is always a balanced budget and we go ahead and move programming accordingly but every year we visit our programs you as a board member are able to look at those programs to make sure they are fiscally sound and we're doing our fiduciary responsibility we will always continue to narrate that through that as the program gets larger and succeeds we will continue to move that prioritization into our budget but ensuring again that we have a balanced budget in that process so when we always get the question of sustainability there's a number of ways we ensure sustainability in the program

254one we make sure that as this is one of our major priorities to ensure that children have access to college and career courses we make sure that's a part of our future budget as our our plan grows and again remember the pathway to bright fuges is not just dual enrollment although we always hear people just talk about the dual enrollment it's dual enrollment industry-based certification and or ap and as we prioritize that other programs that are not things that we're doing and we make cuts and we adjust accordingly and so that's how we stay in the program also the state department uh is also moving a lot of us towards dual enrollment as as the state of louisiana we don't do this on our own we have conversations with various um folks in the state

255around how we continue the program because the state is trying to move this um the state is trying to move us towards providing more opportunities and access for children in industry-based certification and also opportunity early advanced courses if you look at parishes around us they're also moving to doing that as well so it's a part of the entire process that we're doing but again i just want to reiterate when we ask the question of sustainability like we do every single year we balance our budget we prioritize programs that are effective and those that are not effective we make reductions to that to make sure that we are connecting to what the the board has um voted on in the strategic plan to ensure that we are successful in ensuring that children get a high quality

256education in the pilot there were several non-profits that um that were on hand to provide tutoring for the kids that were taking these classes where we have that same kind of support in the uh in all of the high schools that we'll protect yeah we so we have a youth network that we work with the brain youth network we have various folks that are offering tutoring programs at variations of schools our goal is to coordinate with them to continue to provide tutoring we actually want to expand tutoring across the system so we're working through that in that process whether that's a live tutoring for children and or they do it to technology but it's uh tutoring is something that has not changed and continues to change because this is academic programming and uh the ap

257costs are also included in these projections that we're looking at no no no not in the fiscal note no we haven't however what i will say is that that one second i'm sorry it's miss um miss lopez i know you're asking specific uh budgetary questions maybe we can hit the slope as to answer that so the ap costs are not included in this so what we did for this is as you can see on the side it says the 2122 so the act prep course is dual enrollment all that information is only through may of 2022. um with the mou we have to pay for the courses at the end of the year most of those courses are paid through in june so majority of the funding which for this year was approximately 971 thousand

258dollars in mfp funding put aside for sca that is has not been spent yet it will be this month and by the end of the year so i have no doubt we'll spend all of that because many of our students take ap courses when this was done and like i i've told everyone this is very raw data okay i used a basic dual enrollment cost was approximately 300 of course plus 100 for textbooks which is 400 my assumption was taking the average of our eighth grade and our ninth grade cohorts in our proposed budget i took an average number of students and i multiplied that out over the years and so this is if every child takes one dual enrollment every year this is what will cost which is what was prescribed the original budget

259that was uh requested by board members many months ago was with the uh with the understanding that the children will be required to take four dual enrollment and that is the difference in cost they are now required to take one as prescribed in review not per semester correct so that's why there's a change in the amount obviously you remove three courses per child per year it goes down significantly so that's the different cost now can i promise these costs are going to be the same absolutely not i don't know dual enrollment will get more expensive as the colleges and different parishes start growing it they may charge more for it i can't tell you that in year three a junior will say well i have completed my carnegie credits i am no longer need foreign

260language i no longer need pe i'm going to take two additional dual enrollment classes that may happen and at that point we will have to decide how we are going to adjust our budget our alignment our curriculum and how we'll take those things into account so like i said these are very first-round raw numbers of everyone takes one will everyone take one i don't know will some take three i don't know this is every child taking one as prescribed in the vision of the superintendent and that is how these numbers are come to is the supplemental course allocation that that sca sca yes ma'am that's how we pay for our act and our dual enrollment and ap right now so you take your act prep your ap and any dual enrollment that is done is

261paid for with the sca funding that's only like 59 a student roughly it's a 971 000 this year 2223 mfp is 1.153 million so it goes up a little bit more is that in the general fund or is that a separate general fund it comes it's funded through the mfp and because that and the cdf have grown if you'll look in your 2223 budget i've actually separated and a line item under mfp that way everyone can see that yes it adds up to the mfp money that i'm expecting but these are very specific categories because they are to be used for specific things and um i understand that tara over the last few years have been uh taking their their kids in that program with the ibm program yes they they're also doing duel and

262they are they are also taking advantage of dual enrollment right yeah and then when you look at some of their most top graduating students for example that we had a student that was highlighted this year with that enormous amount of scholarships they went through the same similar type of program but again the question has been to ensure that we provide access for all children uh to be able to have the opportunity to do it and it's also saved parents money oh absolutely absolutely if parents choose that they can really save a lot on their uh kids hire it do you know about how many students started in the tara do enrollment program and how many finished does anybody have that information i'm sure mr nicase does mr nikes and the workforce commission would and wouldn't

263absolutely know that information i do not okay could they send that to the board so we'll have that to to kind of back up what we're we're looking at as well as what we're seeing at glen oaks so other than just uh highlight p-tech programs a little bit longer too i think it's a six-year-old four to six year program so [Music] it's almost six years yeah this this uh by the time children get to 12th grade they'll be um pretty much done i think if we can make it really clear to parents about the options and about whether this is optional [Music] and what the process is if they do not want to take a dual enrollment class it would be very very helpful so if i could just reiterate because every time we talk

264about pathways we always talk about the one option and again the pathway to fight concern about the pathway to bright futures children take an advanced course whether that's ap dual enrollment or an ibc and parents have that option to do that i think what has been unfortunate which we've been working to continue to engage folks is when they talk about pathway talk about one option then so parents have the choice to take either or uh within that and so um i think that the schools we've if i'm not mistaken we have been able to meet with a lot of eighth grade parents at variations of schools to be able to go by the time they got to ninth grade to make decisions and a part of our process and communication really to go to the

265eighth grade families who were going to experiences to explain that and get them to understand uh that context but that that is a part of that and the big piece that's even more important the pathway is the connection to uh industry-based certification so when children are getting through uh nights not just college but as they get the opportunity that they get their internships they get uh exposure to jobs and those things we've been working with groups uh such as multiple companies through the chamber uh we're engaging uh gibra in that just to understand what are those opportunities and more importantly we're also engaging in understanding what our labor markets are in terms of where the jobs are available in our city and surrounding area now when we're talking to different schools about certain pathways that

266they want to take are we talking the same are we speaking the same language about pathways to bright futures or are we looking at just specific pathways that the students would take so schools will have a choice to make the freshman year is a basic year so children have a choice to make there's courses that are sequenced the goal that we have spoken to all high school principals in the city is for them they will go out to their communities and have community meetings to pick which are the three of the five pathways that they'd like to follow through with the engagement of their community and then from there our goal is to tie those industries to those schools as they make their choices around what pathways so an example would be if tara we

267can use tara high school's example said we want to do technology medical pre-med and construction manufacturing then we would take industries within those three areas and tie those companies to those schools so children can get exposure and opportunity in that space so that is what's going to happen this year and this is why we showed dr robinson shared the programming part one if you recall the programming about where our programs are where are the population of kids located what are the programs you have whether it's magnet gifted all those variations of stuff that you saw which was just a part one because we're gonna bring back a part two to help us to begin to create pipelines for families within those particular communities so when we speak about those types of pathways are we talking

268about pathways to bright futures yes yes so pathways the bright futures fall same thing that's correct they fall under five areas and we within each of those five areas are a lot of um different uh career paths so for example if you're in technology you have cyber security you have informational design networking all those components and we align those to the courses in uh jointly with the um post-secondary institutions in terms of their access when when we started this program months ago this design was done in partnership with we collaborated with lsu we collaborated with brcc we collaborated with southern university as a part and also some other partners as we've been kind of talking through the design across the school system before a full rollout okay well i would like to make a motion

269that we move this without recommendation because i'm looking at the numbers here yeah i'm fine with that okay so it's a friendly amendment mr blue sorry thank you president tapman you know i think one aspect of this uh pathways program that's overlooked and is the potential to to improve culture in the school the mindset i think you know mr coombs touched on it earlier and principal signator talked a lot about it last week um you know when i went to graduation last month and the valedictorian i'm paraphrasing but he talked about it you know he he was able to succeed despite you know the neighborhood he grew up in people didn't give him a chance and uh it's heartbreaking to hear someone say that that um wonder why they would think that school school system

270doesn't think that they could succeed and i think when you look at all of the opportunities we're offering in the pathways program it just reinforces the message to our students that you know this school district and this community believes that every every student can succeed in life and it can i think change that mindset uh and and a lot of students uh that that believe uh people don't think that they can succeed so i just wanted to point that out thank you mr baloo uh mr goday yes uh thank you i know i'm the finance walk on the board here on some of these items i just want to go back to the glen oaks model and with the glen oaks model did we hire any employees to put it glen oaks because of this

271we had the one now if we roll this out to all of the high schools the only additional staff would be the one coordinator in each high school correct yes yes so that would be what i'm i'm sorry to be one i'm sorry it was dyson they had a lot of big budding oh yeah but i'm talking about the money the employees i'm talking about the employees that we hire because i'm trying to get to what is our fixed cost versus whatever is a variable cost so our fixed costs are going to be how many high schools we have we have 15 15. so we have fifth we'd have 15 employees that we would be hiring to oversee this go ahead 14 because we're not including the ebr readiness so we'd have 14 employees that's

272we're looking at this and that would be the only real staff that we have to this okay how many vacancies do we have going into each school year well i think we got over 100 so absorbing 14 employees that are qualified teachers out of 100 plus vacancies would not be very difficult so i'm trying to get back to the constant thing i hear about sustainability sustainability sustainability we're not making a huge big fixed investment in this this is all variable costs and as we go forward with this if three years from now we decide this is not working we're not hiring a university staff that's the university's issues and those sorts of things so if we decide we want to restrict this because we'd rather spend money somewhere else or or do other things we

273have that total options in front of us we're not committing ourselves for the next 15 years to be able to be spending this if we don't think we're getting a return on the money if we do think we're getting a return then then we can find a way to pay for it but when i keep hearing the question about sustainability sustainability the sustainability is going to come from if we see the results and we want and we choose to continue it we're not making a huge investment it's an investment that we can back out of in a year if we want to and the students would not be really hurt because they'd have their classes and then the next year they'd get their regular classes so i'm just trying to a little bit pop that

274sustainability bubble because i don't really see that as being an issue i really don't because we're only talking about 14 positions which we can easily absorb because these are some of our top people we can easily absorb those so i i appreciate the cost estimates and things like that i'm just looking on the downside if this doesn't work what is our risk and our risk is very minimal yes and that's the only point i was trying to bring out thank you thank you mr bodak go day so it's getting late man i'm running out of gas again um the board is clear um thank you for your the engagement uh madam secretary please conduct the vote please vote and that's to move it without recommendation the motion carries thank you i just want to take

275them one more minute before we leave and thank the staff uh for being here uh thank you for your work we really appreciate it um miss april thank you mr shamlin thank you i want to thank the board members for hanging and keeping us five together and a quorum and um so we have uh announcement of meetings i want to thank the sheriff's deputies too who do a great job thank you for being here um announcement of meetings regular meeting to be held on june 16 2022 at 5 p.m at the central office board room committee of the hole to be held july 14 2022 at 5 pm at the central office boardroom regular meeting to be held july 21st 2022 at 5 pm at the central office boardroom and i would entertain a motion

276to adjourn moved by mr goday [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you