June 17, 2021, EBR School Board Meeting

001YouTube a link to watch the meeting can be found on board docs located on the school board's website a period for written public comment will be provided before the meeting as well as before each action taken by the board on an action item individuals wishing to make a public comment about any of the posted action agenda items will need to click on the agenda items and board docs and submit via the highlighted public comment hyperlink on the agenda item details online comments are available for public review I'd like at this point to uh ask Mr goday if he would uh lead us in an invocation and Mr Belo uh to do we have a Cadet to lead us in the no not this time okay um would you mind Mr God day sure um if

002you don't mind please rise our heavenly father please Grant US Safety and Security for all the students in your care all the teachers faculty and staff that work so diligently to try to elevate the character and minds of these students and may they all be successful in their Endeavors we pray for you to bless our gathering here today and to give us the wisdom to seek your will and to give us the wisdom to understand what is best for the children as we all see fit in your name we pray amen amen pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for [Music] all thank you Mr goday for being on call like that very nice prayer

003thank you um Madam Secretary would you please call the role District nine president tman present District Four vice president Collins present district one Mr Blue here District Two Mr lannis District three Mr Howard District Five Miss where Jackson District Six Miss di present District Seven Mr goday present District eight Miss Bernard we have a quorum we move now to item C1 approval of the school board minutes of the May 20th 2021 regular board meeting and the June 3rd 2021 Committee of the whole meeting as published in the official Journal do I have a motion moved by Mr goday seconded by Mr beloo any uh comments uh seeing no comments from the board uh any comments from the audience on the minutes seeing none back to the board Madam Madame secretary please conduct the vot V

004please vote I'm [Music] signing every vote is crucial in this moment okay we good up Miss Collins the motion carries minutes are approved we move now to item uh D recog nitions D1 recognition of the Belair High J R ooc Vex robotics winner Miss Collins is that do I have that right I have your name on it yes I uh uh usually there's a staff member but are they here are our jrc people here yeah come on up tell us about what you did and uh yeah either one sure tell us about the great news and give us your name too hi I'm Michael Matthews uh I came in second place and the RTC robotics competition uh it was fun it was kind of like really cool but I'm into that type of stuff so

005that's really awesome what what was your uh what was your robot like what uh it's a clawbot okay it picks up items and puts it in the go and you have to manually drive it so it's pretty cool did it have a good driver did your robot have a good driver uh I was pretty much the only driver I was just kidding with you I think that I think that's fantastic uh you yeah go ahead vice president Collins sweetie I'm sorry they changed the little protocol on me a little bit and so I was supposed to read something and that's why the PO baby standing there like it was nice okay so uh B Magnet High School participated in a three-day EB uh EBR Public School System Jr OTC Vex robotics seminar at Liberty Magnet

006High School students from the three state region so not just Louisiana but Texas Louisiana and Mississippi participate participated in aex V5 which is high school beginners course in students in for student built coded and competed with Vex robots and Mr Michael when I finish reading if you could explain what a Vex robot or a Vex robot is cuz you know I don't know we don't know Mr Michael Matthews upcoming Junior magnet student at Belair High participated in the competition along with two other students from Mississippi they were successful in competition and earned second place overall Michael will be participating with the magnet and JROTC robotics team for the upcoming school year our JROTC program is led by Lieutenant corpal Dana Donald and our Robotics and coding teacher is Miss Britney Jackson B principal is Angela

007Jones and the madness site coordinator is Lindsay Wesley um and uh Belair Magnet High School is in uh board member Madam vice president's uh School Board District 4 shout out for District 4 I'm I'm a queen of Shameless plugs and I encourage all my colleagues to shamelessly plug their areas as well and so Michael if you would proceed with sharing with us on your experience I'm very proud okay so basically build a robot by scratch so that is very challenging for people and then you have to also use the parts you can make your own adjustments you can make your own robot there's plenty of robots out there so you can move them you can pick stuff up with them there's competitions every year and we normally compete in those competitions and last year we

008went to We were supposed to go to world then uh Co hit so we're supposed to go to world champions okay oh say that one more time sir that last part World champs yeah world champions District Four B magnet high school thank you sir so much Miss Jones did you want to say anything did uh anybody else want to elaborate we're so very proud of Michael and as well as his mother um Miss Sarah Matthews uh we have a partnership of B Magnet High School with Kel hybrid and GRTC program so we're really excited about that they have invested in our school and we're able to do more things because of the jrtc program so thank you Colonel hyver and we have here first AUD Basset who's represented J TC program here with us car

009boy could not be here but thank you school board and continue to support B high school and I invite you all to please come and see the great things happening at B High School on behalf of the school board and the superintendent we are so proud thank you Mr Michael [Applause] and I just want to say that uh Michael has skills man we put him on the spot and he was smooth as could [Music] be you want to speak [Applause] M Mr Belo has a comment just real quick that's uh really exciting stuff uh if anyone's interested are there any pictures or video of the event online uh uh for anybody to see we don't have um any pictures or videos of this event but we do have uh many videos uh from previous events

010oh okay we just don't get to see this year's star what what am I how do I do this again last year's yes I was in last year's okay it's on the Belair website okay thank you thank you Mr Blue that is awesome and Michael is an impressive young man um we move now to item D2 Exxon um recognition of Exxon Mobile High School summer program recipients uh Miss stubs Miss Smith hi I'll be happy to do it it this is with the I'm just reading off of this yeah yeah I'm sorry I'm just reading off the agenda so I didn't I didn't know who was supposed to come up so thank you for coming up not clued but thank you absolutely to be here okay so good evening president tatman vice president Collins members

011of the board and Dr naris I'm Kathleen sarsfield with the foundation for East Baton Rouge school system and it is my honor to um welcome tonight Kelly Welch with Exxon Mobile she is here to recognize lots of amazing students so I'd like to bring up Kelly good evening president tman vice president Collins members of the board and superintendent naris as Kathleen said I am Kelly Welch I am a public and government Affairs adviser for Exon Mobile here in Baton Rouge and I'm here tonight to invite you to join me in celebrating some wonderful EBR students that have been hired into our brand new Exxon Mobile High School summer internship program over this summer these selected students will Shadow our Exxon Mobile craft specialist to explore high-paying and high demand career careers available to them right

012here in Baton Rouge the students will be mentored by our Exon Mobile employees and will learn how to get started in a variety of Trades to help them boost a career in Industry this program is especially exciting since it was just a few months ago that we sought this sport support for in bringing in our Baton Rouge Refinery integrated competitiveness investment to Baton Rouge so that we could provide opportunities just like this to our high school students this intern opportunity is largely thanks to your support and to Super intendent narcissa's vision for bringing EBR students an opportunity to have the Knowledge and Skills necessary to work in Industry three of our four EBR selected students and their High School principles are here with us tonight our interns are Jaden Moody for who will be a

013senior at arruma high school this fall and will join our Machinery group to learn learned about pumps in our Refinery this summer After High School she plans to attend the Southern University to study mechanical mechanical or chemical engineering Johnny Williams is an incoming senior at scotlandville Magnet High School and will have an opportunity to learn about our Machinery compressor instrumentation which will continue to build on her electrical background and zerio woods is a graduate of Broadmore High School zariel let us know that chemistry is her favorite subject subject so she will have an opportunity to work with a specialist in our analyzer group ziel also happens to be have been selected for our Exon Mobile and Baton Rouge Alliance for student scholarships among with others we'll recognize in just a few moments we are excited

014to welcome you into the Exile mobile family and to be a small part of your success story please join me in celebrating these exceptional students are these are these two separate agenda items or is there a one two three gotcha thank you I was just going to let him stay up at the mic and we can go right to D3 and I guess you can pick right up from there if that's all right thank you thank you trying to make it real easy for everybody it is also my great pleasure to present to you four exceptional EBR graduates who have recently been awarded a scholarship from Exon Mobile and the Baton Rouge Alliance for students in early spring we at Exile mobile asked the alliance to partner with us to offer a total total of

015$110,000 to five students who demonstrate academic Excellence an interest in science technology engineering arts and Mathematics and who have a strong desire to use their talents in helping their community in the future I'm joined tonight by the alliance's CEO adonica Dugen and chief strategy officer Liz Smith who helped select these amazing students and again we've invited their principals to join us as we celebrate their achievements the scholarship awardees are Destiny Caldwell from scotlandville Magnet High School with a GPA of 4.75 wow destiny that is to be celebrated Destiny is the valedictorian at Scot scotlandville High she plans to attend UCLA in the fall where she will study mathematics and biological sciences Jamie C link Jr who is also from scotlandville Magnet High has a GPA of 3.49 and plans to study engineering at Alabama State

016University Trinity oh yes I don't I think Trinity Quinn got stuck in traffic but we'll still celebrate her she was from a Madison Preparatory Academy and has a 3.9 GPA she plans to attend LSU and study psychology and again zariel Woods whom you've already met has a 3.6 GPA from Broadmore high school and plans to study engineering at LSU in the fall to all of you you exim mobile and the alliance are thrilled to have had a hand in supporting you and your future goals we know you are going to do great things and we thank you for thinking ahead of how you got Trinity I've already read your accolades I'll do it again miss Trinity Quinn from Madison Preparatory Academy 3.9 GPA plan and just uh go to LSU and study psychology thank you

017for being here [Applause] oh [Music] yes gotta I I want to uh thank Exxon and also uh to congratulate these amazing students I've got superintendent medals for everyone [Applause] thank you president tman thank you Miss Welsh and congratulations to These Fine Young students um we move now to um item D4 Proclamation consideration of requests for the adoption of a proclamation declaring June 19th as as the day of Celebration and recognition across the East Baton Rouge Parish system as juneth Mr lannis thank you president tabman uh first let me just say that this is a tremendous honor not just for our school system but for our entire state to know that we are now uh progressing towards an environment within our state and across our state uh where we can celebrate different cultures of and diversity

018uh my hat goes off to uh Governor John Bell Edwards for signing uh the bill into order naming juneth an official state holiday as well as state representative Edward t for his leadership with the Louisiana Congressional Black Caucus as well as the man of the hour uh the person who actually authored the bill uh Mr uh sorry state representative Larry selders my hat again goes off to each and every single one of them but I'll get into the proclamation itself Proclamation declaring June 19th juneth day of Freedom as a day of Celebration and recognition across East bidge Paris schools whereas juneth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the abolish the I'm sorry the abolition of slavery in the United States and the emancipation of slaves including blacks indigenous and other communities of color throughout the

019Confederate South Union Soldiers landed at galeston Texas on June 19th 1865 with the news that the war had ended and the enslaved were now free more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 18th 1963 until that day slavery had been relatively relatively unaffected in Texas by the Emancipation Proclamation and Texas had even been viewed as a safe haven for slave owners to relocate with their slaves because the state experienced no large scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops and whereas on that 1 juneth a name that combines June and 19th the people of Texas read the general order number three which stated the people of Texas are informed that in accordance with the proclamation from the executive of the United States all slaves are free this involves an absolute equality

020of Rights and rights of property between former former Masters and slaves and the connection here here here to for existing between them becomes that between employer and Free Labor the juneth announcement was met with jubilation that spread through the throughout the country as the communities of color relocated to neighboring states and became reacquainted with families and whereas the first juneteth celebration was a time of reassurance prayer and the Gathering of family members juneth continue to be widely observed decades later with many former slaves and descendants making an annual pilgrimage back to Galviston junee today continues to grow within communities and organizations throughout the country numerous local and National Jun organizations have Arisen alongside older organizations with the common mission of promoting and cultivating knowledge and appreciation of the history and culture of communities of color

021while encouraging continuous self-development and respect for all people and cultures and whereas we recognize that presently 155 years after the last enslaved people in the United States of America were freed from the shackles of bondage people of color continue to struggle and overcome racism and bigotry and whereas the East bar Ridge Paris school system wishes to show solidarity and stand with our black indigenous and communities of color by adopting juneth as an official day of Celebration and observation and whereas during the 2001 legislative session state representative Larry selders author the bill without opposition which was signed into law by Governor John Bell Elis name and Louisiana as one of 47 states in the nation to have an official state obser observance of juneth Freedom Day with which will be commemorated annually in Louisiana on the

0223rd Saturday in June now therefore be resolved that the East B Ridge Parish School Board hereby Pro Proclaim June 19th and every June 19th thereafter juneth Freedom Day across East bar rou Parish School System to be celebrated on the third weekend in the month of June making East B Rouge Parish School System the first district a first school district in Louisiana to bestow such an honor we encourage all East B Ridge Parish School System students employees schools families and Community groups to celebrate juneth as a day of remembrance and celebration ISO move moved by Mr lanis seconded by vice president Collins um we have a motion in a second I don't see any comments from the board uh we go to the audience any comments from the audience seeing none we come back to the

023board I want to thank uh I'll uh Miss Collins go ahead I I'll wait up I'm just going to say the same thing you probably are going to say that I appreciate my colleague on the board uh board member Lis for bringing this uh resolution for us thank you and and I I was going to say something very similar and uh Mr selders and Mr James and others who help uh put this together and what you might I don't think you mentioned was that uh the the United States House of Representatives just recently also passed this I did yeah you did okay I'm sorry I forgot I I may have been distracted I'm sorry but thank you very much for bringing this so I see no other questions or comments from the board uh Madam

024Secretary please conduct the role please vote the motion carries the item passes we move now to item e uh one um information on E information only E1 monthly financial report um and seeing no comments from the board E2 Personnel changes um seeing no uh questions or comments from the boards under item E3 I will uh read um I would like to read the announcement of the East baten rou power school board members who have successfully completed annual training for the 2020 man uh year mandated by the Louisiana revised statutes title 17 section 53 and the total credit hours received received um board member beloo 6 hours board member lannis 5.75 hours uh board member Howard 13.5 hours uh vice president Collins 5.5 hours uh board member wear Jackson 17.5 hours board member d 7 hours

025board member goday 19 hours board member Bernard 10 hours and yours truly 10 hours thank you all for your dedication to continuing education and as a part of your role we move now to item f one update from the superintendent Dr naris thank you president tman uh just this morning uh I was visiting uh Jefferson Terrance Academy where I was able to um uh hang out a little bit with our uh pre- students who were at their summer camp and summer programs just excited to see uh having almost 200 students in that building over over the summer in um in our ESL program prek and our uh summer camp so just want to thank the board for allowing us to continue to expand to get more children in our summer camps it was very exciting

026this morning uh facilities and programming expansion proposal uh we we were excited to announce earlier this week that we are proposing some program expansions expansions and changes as a result of our preliminary findings from the facilities plan and transition report and our Strate strategic plan work some of the highlights of our proposal will include uh creating a dedicated 62 Visual and Performing Art School expanding access to high quality magnet seats across the district uh building new school sites to meet the growing demand of our families in the South Baton Rouge area expanding and scaling the pathway to Bright Futures through dual enrollment opportunities as you saw many students this more uh just in the program um who were uh getting industry certifications and going to gr colleges so we're hopeful to expand that opportunity in

027our city um establishing a joint literacy task force with the Baton Rouge mayor's office to strategically improve literacy rates throughout the parish uh we'll continue to engage and work with our communities across the Paris to determine the details of these proposals but uh anticipate that these proposals will be soon coming uh principal of the Year finalist uh just wanted to congratulate uh principal claudet Perkins uh principal at oton elementary school for being named a finalist of the 2022 principle of the Year honor she is one of just nine principles from across the state who has made it to this level we're extremely proud of Miss Perkins and we wish her all the best of luck and whether she becomes first or not but we expect her to be first we'll invite her up to just

028um um uh acknowledge her for the great work that she has done as a principal of the year a strategic plan over the course of the last two weeks we've held two strategic plan Town Halls to gather key feedback from our constituents on our priorities and the priorities and goals of the district moving forward we've also extended the deadline to provide public input through our online survey until June 30th I encourage anyone who has not yet had the opportunity to share their thoughts around the Strategic plan to do so on our website EBR schools. org uh we want to thank Liberty High School for hosting us yesterday we had a a good amount of um uh community members there uh to be at our sh plan and the night before uh scotlandville High School uh

029who also hosted us U we're really excited about getting the community to be a part of our progress as we move our district forward um president tman that is my report thank you superintendent naris um I'll move now to item uh G G1 um reports from board appointees to committees or agencies are there any reports from board members on any activities seeing none um we will now move we will now suspend the regular meeting temporarily uh while we open the public hearing and workshop so I'll call to order this uh public hearing workshop for the 2021 2022 general fund budget Madame secretary please call the rooll district district nine president tman present District Four vice president Collins present district one Mr Blue here District Two Mr lannis here District three Mr Howard present present District

030Five Miss where Jackson present District Six Miss di present District Seven Mr goday here District eight Miss Bernard present Miss who's leading this Miss Lopez I see your name sir thank you good evening Dr naris and board members this evening I will be presenting the proposed 2021 2022 general fund budget the proposed 2021 20 22 general fund budget includes staff recommendations for revenue and expenditures Revenue projections based on the revised 2020 2021 budget approved in May of 2021 the financial summary for the general fund includes total revenues of 4915 million total expenditures of 4894 million a final balance of 2.1 million and an ending fund balance of 55.9 million as we have struggled to maintain a positive balance in the past several years we are strategically using our dollars in additional funding as a result

031we will have a positive balance of over $1 million to complete the fiscal year this chart shows that relationship between student enrollment and general fund Staffing the district is strategically placing staff in appropriate funding sources as a result of this strategy the district will begin to build a reserve in the general fund the projected unassigned fund balance at the end of the fiscal year will be 38.3 million unassigned fund balance is the fund balance that the district can use at its discretion projected assigned fund balance at the end of the fiscal year will be $17.5 million inclusive of ad inventory cost assigned fund balance is the funding that must be used for a specific purpose the total projected fund balance as of 630 2022 is 55.9 million as a percentage of general fund revenues it

032is projected to be 12% ldoe requires a 75% fund balance as a percentage of general fund revenues this ensures that the district is both financially stable and our fund balance is healthy the district goal is 15% the next slides will provide you information regarding our projected revenues for the next fiscal year revenue is projected to increase by $24 million adum tax collections are projected to increase by 2.2% or $4.2 million sales tax collections are projected to increase by0 5% or $6 million interest on investment will remain unchanged and administrative fees for Charters will increase by .6 million state mfp will increase by approximately 10.1 million inclusive of an $800 raise for each certificated staff member and a $400 raise for each support staff member federal funds will increase by 8 million due to IND direct

033cost from additional Federal funding JC will increase slightly for program growth the majority of the district's funding as you can tell from the graph is from property taxes and state mfp support Esser funding is providing a unique opportunity for the district it will allow the Strategic plan to dictate the movement of the budget and the general fund for all students and all staff members it will allow the opportunity to increase the district's fund balance to ensure that we can build a reserve for later years the next slides will provide you information regarding our projected expenditures for the next fiscal year total expenditures are projected to increase by $22.7 million a reduction of 1.8 million in Prior year cences is included regular education will decrease by 10.6 million inclusive of streamlining Staffing by using student enrollment

034projections and strategically using Esser funds to reallocate items from the general fund special education will increase by 3.3 million for additional staff members for our students magnet programs will increase by 1.2 million for continued growth in student enrollment throughout the district Career and Technical education will increase by .5 million also for continued growth throughout our district other instructional programs will decrease by 50,000 through funding of alternative school teachers through proposition 2 and Esser 3 instructional staff services will decrease by2 Million by streamlining resources and transferring positions to sr3 special programs budget will decrease by2 Million by maintaining the 2020 2021 funding source for all ESL instructional Specialists operations of Maintenance and physical Plant Services and Security will increase by $1.4 million the utilities through the district will increase due to national average increases and the

035return to in-person instruction transportation services will increase by 3.2 million this increase is due to increased staff and fuel due to the return of in-person instruction the district will continue to use der Grant funds to purchase additional buses for our Fleet public information and Human Resources will both increase one position to assist in working with our community stakeholders and Staffing in our schools other use of funds will increase by 21.2 million with the increase of type 1 Charters and the continued growth of type 2 and the decreased enrollment of type five Charters the vast majority of the district's expenditures as you can tell from this chart are on instruction and other uses of funds other uses of funds are where we categorize the charter school payments the next two slides are a summary of the

036special Revenue book that is available on boards and given to each board member it is also available in the general fund budget book on pages 197 and 198 the district has several opportunities that it can take advantage of the Rolling forward of the millage will be a $9 million boost to the district the review of land sales and school consolidation in the district this would allow the district to streamline programs in schools along with the Strategic plan reviewing each Department's budget to determine if there are any duplicate services or obsolete services that exist professional development contracts will be eliminated as the district begins to have a teams form to provide professional development in the district program evaluation will allow the district to re-evaluate all programming at the school level comprehensive staff program will work with

037the staff to ensure Ure that all schools are staffed based upon their individual needs the budget has been shared with each of our board members and was presented to you at the committee of the whole tonight we seek your approval of the budget any questions vice president colins um I just want to go back to the other use of funds yes ma'am on that slide can you break that down other use of funds is what mosa other use of funds there there's really only three things in other use of funds there is the appropriation for adult education that is $200,000 $200,000 there is the $1 million appropriation that we are still making for the 10% of unpaid that female will not pay back to us for the flood of 2016 and for the covid okay

038um and the rest is for charter schools so then that charter school is how much um 21.2 million is going to be the increase and the 1 million and the 200,000 haven't changed that's been continuous so an increase of 21 million yes ma'am and the total amount is what um if it's increasing by 21 million yes ma'am it's about a 100 I I would have to pull my budget it's about 126 million okay that's all I have at this moment sure thank you vice president Collins don't see any other questions did did you cover both the general fund and the special Revenue budgets in that presentation yes sir uh I see no other questions thank you thank you at this uh time I'll um take a motion to adjourn the oh I'm sorry U Miss

039D I'm sorry Mr I that and correct me if I'm I'm wrong but sure I kind of thought I was going to get some information um based on a question that we had at the committee of the whole and um when I spoke with you um I'm still seeing in this budget for tonight the um um the reduction of expected students at shann andoa Elementary yes ma'am I provided all that documentation for y'all it showed the proposed and the February counts and that also shows the February counts the major difference in Shin andoa is the prek because general fund doesn't fund prek right but I'm concerned because in February of 2021 it looks like we had five k kindergarten um teachers and then and and we had budgeted for four yes ma'am and we needed

040five and then now this proposed one goes down to three yes ma'am because some of the positions are going to be funded through other sources this is that is a projection for only the general fund it does not include federal funds state funds are are local grants that we can I see how many like is there a kindergarten teacher or two going to be yes ma' there's going to be kindergarten teachers yes ma'am we no I mean other than these three how many more are we funding and how I mean I just don't see that the children in the neighborhood are declining in any sort of fashion at all and the attendance lines include more than the neighborhood and those are not declining in fact the subdivisions are being built as we speak sure every

041minute so I don't see how these numbers are going down it's not that the population we're decreasing the population in the general fund yeah and I I kind of need to see it at the same time okay to know if this is something that I can approve because I don't want to be put into a situation where after the 10day head count warm body count then we have to go start scrambling for for teachers right and we're absolutely going to staff for their population that's not a problem so um I think I'd like to see this on a more of a like as registrations are occurring you know I really want to keep a very close watch on this uh yes ma'am so this is just general fund we have positions when we staff we

042staff general fund uh title any type of Grants and so we only provide the numbers that are for general fund in this book but we do give the schools all of their funding funded position so we can actually provide you what we provided the principal so you can see what what the principal received first based upon the other positions that are funded differently because when we when we actually meet with the principes and we staff the schools we give them based upon the available funding sources all of the positions um and so it it's more than what you see in this book if that makes sense right I know we don't get a whole lot of title funding um we may have an AGG um is that though for prek not for yeah I don't

043know where the funding that talking about and how many positions I'd like to know when we act I'd like to see and I thought I would see before I was expected to vote on this tonight because we asked at the committee of the whole I appreciate all y'all's work on on this but I didn't get the followup that I need to make this educated decision because I know we don't get a lot of title dollars and so where's this money coming from and how many positions and so what is the actual when you add it all up expectation of student enrollment and numbers of employees so is there a way to get that before I have to vote I can share the the document I tried to pull it off the Google Drive I can

044try to share it with you the Staffing rosters but it's I mean they're huge so these are huge documents but we can share it with you so you can try to see it um but again it's these numbers are just general fund they're but but we did not cut the it's hard because it's the school that works off of the general fund yes ma'am and so we don't have a lot of lanap yes and so I don't understand and I did ask at the committee of the whole I'm not trying to Blindside y'all and then I did ask in a follow-up meeting um and was told that that was going to get through not directly to me but through to get to me and I haven't seen it and I apologize I thought that the

045February count the proposed count that I provided was what you were looking for but as you know we're moving positions into Sr 3 that is probably where those positions are going to be funded through is Sr 3 because moving probably I'd like to see like how many I don't see how we're going to survive on three kindergarten teachers so I want to know what and we can provide the staff worksheet there's not going to be just three kindergarten teachers at Kinder at at Shen andoa but a portion of of each school is now going to be funded through s or three for those positions okay if I can just get the details sure I appreciate it would you like to feel it are you good okay um I'm sorry and I'm sorry I bounced you

046vice president Collins but you are up next yes um she did eventually answer my colleague's question board member D um that was one of the concerns I was Raising if we shifting $15 million from our general fund for regular recurrent expenses including something as simple as kindergarten teachers and we adding 20 something million dollars in new recurrent funds what happens when this money run out okay and yeah I mean we could say we trying to save money for the reserve but 15 million shifted to onetime money is a concern um and and can I get some clarity as well uh and it was a question I would have researched it before now but uh it was a question that didn't come to mind until you were presenting Miss Lopez um at the beginning you mentioned

047a $1 million balance of the general fund or something to that goal the goal of Dr NC's was at least 1 million and we're going to be at 2.1 next year okay and so then so that's cutting it kind of close I mean no that's what we going to have left at the end of the year yes ma'am that's that's very good for us well I mean the actual 2019 20120 was 9.7 and if we wouldn't have shifted $15 million of regular urren expenses sound like we have a problem well the 9 million was during Co and so it was a it was an odd year I hate to see to speak that is a normal year problem no problem but I still feel it's important to point out that 2.1 million is what we

048anticipate after shifting $15 million to onetime money so we going off the top unless we just streamline $15 million worth of people we G to end up with a $13 million deficit okay thank you thank you vice president Collins Mr goday yes thank you president tman um just a couple of quick comments I do think that um the information we were provided was the information that we requested at the time because I specifically it asked to have the February 2021 headcount there and I think what we're starting to do is cut through through the complexities of all of this because quite honestly right now all of these budgets work hand inand with each other and it becomes very difficult for us to track what Staffing levels are at schools what Staffing levels are in different

049departments because if I go to the special um proposed special Revenue funds for instance under tax plan proposition three it lists essentially all employees cuz they all get supplements from there some kind of way we need to have a listing of and not not for today obviously but for next year's budget and thing we need to have a listing of the Staffing of all the Departments of all the folks and how they're being paid and what funds they're being paid from and I recognize things like the supplements from prop three and stuff like that but but we just need to be able to get a lot more clarity because there's no way right now I can take this book and add up and understand who is being paid by what and what group to do

050that and I think that's what we're striving to get to so if we want to I'm just using her uh uh board member Dion's example if we want to look at Shen and do somewhere we should be able to see this is Shen and do and this is all the Staffing for shin andoa this is all the general fund this is the special funds and I recognize special funds flow Services provided and things like that but here are the headcounts at the school being provided by what and we just need to I think we're trying to get a better handle on that and we can do that through the Staffing worksheet because but we don't get the Staffing worksheet absolutely but we can provide something that does like that because like Miss Donaldson said Human

051Resources knows exactly how many people are coming from there and we know the sources but the general fund budget is only going to tell you what the general fund is going to pay for and and I get yes in order to approve the general fund budget what we're trying to say is we need to have that other Insight so that ab and I understand you can have it so I would just suggest that for part of the process for next year sure I think it would be a great addition to the general fund it can be an additional appendix yes thank you very much be appendix instead of appendix B it could be appendix D appendix B is my favorite I I know and you know Mr it's Mr crochets too um but it can

052be appendix eye yes ma'am thank you very much for your help I know this is a big task thank you president tman thank you uh um Mr goday I will uh entertain a motion to close the public hearing and return to the regular meeting uh move by Mr lannis no that's we we take we take public comment when the budget is up for discussion and consideration this was a yeah no this is a workshop right that is correct yeah uh for workshops public comment is not required it's the public we're going to discuss the budget when it comes up we did this as a as an extra step to have them come explain it so that when we debate the budget which we will have public comment on we will have more information for us

053and the public to be able to speak on youtrod the agenda I accept Mr lann's motion to adjourn and return to the full meeting we are now back on the full meeting we move now to unfinished business co uh consideration of requests for approval of a Cooperative Endeavor agreement between the East Baton rge Parish School Board in the Capital Area Human Services District Baton Rouge Mental Health Center children's Behavioral Health Services Miss dpri we have somebody's going to present on this H I don't have a motion yet but I'll move by Mr lannis seconded by Miss Bernard I would like to hear a little bit about it at least just a uh hi good evening I'm bethan gani I'm the director of the school-based Therapy Program for Capital Area Human Services District we provide social

054workers in 12 of 12 of your schools free of charge to you we just offer um school-based mental health counseling to students in the school okay questions Miss Collins oh just one two things thank you for your service I'm very familiar and which is why I have to recuse myself on this item but as a uh but also want to say uh when I met with my principles in my district some of them mentioned that they certainly Miss Capital Area coming into their school so I know y'all doing a good job thank you um it's it thank you vice president Collins Mr God yes thank you president tman I just wanted to remind the board the only reason we did not pass this at Committee of the whole was because we were worried about the

055required number of votes with several recusals so the fact that it was a pass of the committee the whole was strictly procedural thank you thank you seeing no other questions from the boards any comments from the audience on the Cooperative Endeavor agreement seeing none back to the board Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote did you vote you didn't vote yet oh uh [Music] she's the motion carries thank you very much appreciate it thank we move now to the consent agenda Miss di the following items are to be approved as part of the consent agenda and are considered to be routine and will be enacted with one motion there will be no separate discussion of items unless a board member so requests in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda

056and considered as an item on the regular agenda for a separate vote preceding the last item of the regular agenda 2021 2022 Property and Casualty Insurance program policies consideration of a request to authorize the administration to approve the most coste effective Property and Casualty Insurance program policy renewal package for the East Batton re Parish School System for the 2021 2022 fiscal year and to provide for related matters resolution reject uninsured motorist coverage consideration of a request for the approval of the resolution authorizing the board president and the superintendent to ex execute and sign all documents to reject uninsured motorist coverage in connection with the East Baton reach Parish school systems automobile liability coverage and it self-insured retention program for the 2021 2022 fiscal year healthc care and ancillary benefits plan consideration of a request for

057the approval authorization of the following a proposed 2022 healthc care rates for active employees non-medicare and Medicare eligible retirees participating in the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana administered medical plans for core buy up and Community blue b proposed contract renewal for with Baton Rouge um excuse me with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana for claims administrative services for 2022 through 2024 C proposed contract renewal with Unum for dental for 2022 D proposed contract renewal for solaric to continue hris system administration of all benefits for active non-medicare and Medicare eligible retirees for 2022 e propos contract renewal with opum EAP for employee assistance program for all active employees and household members for 2022 through 2024 F Pro proposed contract with AO for administering specialty Pharmaceuticals for 2021 through 2022 G propose contract renewal with Express

058Grips Pharmacy for 2022 H authorize the superintendent to negotiate and execute the 2022 contract for stop-loss insurance coverage I propose contract renewal for various voluntary benefits including discount program Group auto and or home critical illness accident Hospital Indemnity Legal Services identity theft and employee purchase program for 2022 extern agreement Board of Supervisors of LSU and Agricultural and Mechanical College consideration of requests for the approval of an extern agreement agement between the East B re PA school board and Board of Supervisors of LSU and Agricultural and Mechanical College in the amount of $2,742 120 for the provision of Psychological Services professional development and educational quality improvement services and the collection of data for research and program evaluation funding source iare Grant consideration of requests for the approval of the Charities Innovation and education grant in the

059amount of $1,031 for a total of seven teachers to provide for Innovative classroom ideas for the 2021 2022 school year agreements Center for educational leadership consideration of a request for the approval of the agreement between the East Baton R PA school board and the center for Education leadership in the amount of $89,950 to provide leadership ship coaching professional development funding source Esser three Professional Services contracts consideration of a request for the approval of Professional Services contracts between the East Baton R Paris school board and the following a national institute for excellence in teaching n in the amount of $397,500 to provide support and professional development on school Improvement best practices funding source redesign B DreamBox learning in the amount of $58,800 to provide mathematics student licenses professional development and support funding source sr3 c one

060goal in the amount of $78,900 to provide teacher training curriculum personalized platform and analytics funding source redesign D Baton Rouge early childhood education collaborative Inc B EC EC in the amount of 2,66 $266,000 to provide evidence-based School Readiness services to address the needs of the East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority EBR P families with preschoolers who are not enrolled in a Learning Center dayare or head start funding source Esser 2 advertising in official Journal fiscal year 2021 2022 consideration of a request for the approval to select the advocate as the official Journal newspaper advertising of the East Baton R Paris school system for fiscal year 2022 job descript job positions descriptions consideration of a request for the approval of the following job descriptions positions and descriptions a 504 facilitator B virtual classroom teacher C District

061504 coordinator D director of multi-tiered systems of support Mt SS e lead social worker F literacy Innovation coordinator G School social worker and H social emotional learning s specialist advertising of bids for fiscal year 2021 2022 consideration of requests to authorize staff to advertise receive and award bids for materials equipment supplies and services through June 30th 2022 to the lowest responsible bidder proposer meeting specifications and all state and federal requirements for quotes and formal invitations to bid request for approval RFP thirdparty administrator claims consideration of a request for the authorization for staff to issue a request for proposal RFP to seek proposals for a third-party Claims Administrator for the East Baton Rouge Paris school systems liability and workers compensation claims Child Nutrition summer styen consideration of a request for the approval of a $500 stien

062for Child Nutrition summer program staff for 38 days funding source Child Nutrition program agreement substitute privatization consideration of a request for the approval of an agreement between the East batoner Parish School Board and ESS South Central LLC to privatize substitutes for the East Baton Rouge Parish I'm sure that's supposed to say school system Professional Services contract Council of great City Schools consideration of a request for the approval of a Professional Services contract between the East Batton R PA school board and the Council of great City Schools to provide District departmental audits not to exceed $80,000 funding source general fund and um I would like to pull item four and then ISO move the the by Miss Dyson seconded by Miss Bernard does anyone wish to pull an item Miss uh Dyson what was which one

063did you want to pull four Miss Collins uh 10 10 any others okay so we are on the consent agenda minus 4 10 and 14 seeing no on the consent agent move by D second about Miss Bernard I see no questions from the board are there any comments on the consent agenda from the audience seeing none um back to the board uh Madame secretary please uh conduct a vote one second please vote the motion carries thank you we move um back to item four consideration of requests for the approval authorization of the following a proposed 2022 Healthcare rates for active employees non-medicare and Medicare eligible retirees participating in the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana administered medical plans for core buy up and Community blue b proposed contract renewal with Blue Cross Blue Shield of

064Louisiana for claims Administration services for 2022 through 2024 C proposed contract renewal with Unum for dental for 2022 D proposed contract renewal with cerx to continue hris system administration for all benefits for active non-medicare and Medicare eligible retirees for 2022 e proposed contract renewal with Optimum EPA for employee assistance program for all active employees and household members for 2022 through 2024 F proposed contract with AO for administ ative specialty Pharmaceuticals for 2021 and 2022 uh G proposed contract renewal with Express Scripts Pharmacy for 2022 authorize H authorize the superintendent to negotiate and execute the 2022 contract for stop loss insurance coverage I proposed contract renewal for various voluntary benefits including discount program Group auto and or home critical illness accident Hospital Indemnity Legal Services identity theft and employee purchase programs for 2022 do I have

065a motion moved by Mr lannis seconded by uh Miss [Music] Bernard um any uh comments from the board or questions seeing none back to the audience any comments from the audience on item number four on the consent agenda seeing none back to the board Madame secretary please conduct the vote V please vote the motion carries the item passes we move now to item number 10 consideration of request for the approval of the following job positions and descriptions A50 4 facilitator B virtual classroom teacher C District 504 coordinator D director of multitiered systems of support e lead social worker F literacy Innovation coordinator G social School social worker H social emotional learning specialist I need a motion um move by Miss wear Jackson seconded by Mr goday any uh comments or questions from the board on

066item 10 seeing none um we go to the audience any comments from the audience I promis Miss Jones that I would say that I am not speaking on behalf of Belair that I am speaking on behalf of myself um so some of these are very very very much needed um especially the cell um the seal one uh 504 coordinator Miss Chapman doing um 504 and special ed is too much um and so some of these positions though I don't think we have the money some of these positions um are very very very much needed um but again I'm going to say I teach 12-year-olds so I'm used to repeating myself all the time I think they think it's good for my health so they just want me to do it so but please please please

067please make sure qualified people get the position um some of the people that just got brought in don't even have active teaching certificates so you're going to come in as an Ed and you can't even come in my classroom and teach but you're going to tell my principal what to do so there's there's that but I do approve s several of these positions on here because they are very much needed in the district and hopefully we get somebody qualified that will do good for our kids and our teachers thank you good evening I'm James spinny I think you should wait to approve any of these for several reasons for one thing six clearly belong in one area they all have to do with um what appears to be Stacy dei's jurisdiction then there's something to

068do with literacy that's kind of off by itself and then there's another um job description for virtual teachers well you had teachers teaching virtually all year and they didn't have a separate job description so I'm not sure what the point is but furthermore I don't know why you would bother changing the do job descriptions because they don't seem to matter you approved a job description at Dr narcissa's request for a director of operations and then he immediately hired somebody who doesn't fit the qualifications that he asked you to approve he asked you to hire somebody as um chief of literacy who would be in charge of one of the folks that's in this list of eight job descriptions immediately promoted somebody that position and as far as I can tell she doesn't have the required

069certification whether she's eligible for it or not hasn't bothered so whatever you approve or don't approve it doesn't appear as though it matters at all to the superintendent so rather than do something that doesn't matter I would just let this die for lack of a positive vote and hope that sometime ideally before you approve a budget your superintendent presents to a complete organizational plan which he is not yet done thank you thank you Dr fny any other comments from the audience hello Kurt green it's been a while hope y'all been well um this one's pretty simple we're in a budget crisis we know that uh Miss Collins just explained it to y'all we're moving a shell game around to make it look like we're going to have money but when this one time money runs

070out it's not going to be there recurring costs need to stay in that General budget so we can see if we're going to have enough money if we don't we need more teachers if we need anything we need to lower that student to teacher ratio that's where we need to be putting money if we're going to have money to put anywhere make the make the classroom smaller for these kids every piece of research that you can look up says smaller classrooms affects achievement on every single level Middle School elementary high school it doesn't matter if we're going to be hiring people we need to be hiring teachers first to make these classrooms smaller on top of that we need to make sure we have qualified people make sure they fit the qualifications so y'all please

071pay attention to the budget do not bust the budget uh most of y'all have been on the school board long enough to remember we had what was it eight nine straight years of running over the budget and we had to cut a lot under I think Mr goday that was your leadership where we had to really cut into the budget so let's please be cognizant of that we don't want to have to see that done again thank you thank you any other comments from the audience on the job description positions hello Anita James Augustus out of retirement speaking as the community activist it concerns me that six months ago when we were talking about positions and budgeting and all of that that we didn't have the finances to Grant teachers what they needed teachers still

072Educators still had to go out of their pockets to purchase cleaning supplies I have receipts we continually talk about things that were not happening and you didn't listen and here again tonight I stand you're not listening that were positions that we didn't have the money to fund there were EDS that were replaced and placed elsewhere Mr go you assured me when I spoke to you that you listen to constituents I'm a constituent I may not be in your area but I am a constituent I was also assured that business and commerce would not take over and the decisions that will be made would affect our children at 83% numbers are rising that the children look like me so I'm here today to say look we need to make some changes and some of the positions

073that have been taken place in here with unqualified people you're responsible for it because you have allowed it when are you going to listen take to he what we're saying we're working hard I will continue to work hard for these babies that look like me and why do I say that because these are the babies who are not getting what they need because they come to us with a deficit and here you are doing things at the top top moving people around who were qualified and replacing people with people who are not qualified when is things going to change any other public comments seeing none back to the board Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries we move now to item 14 consideration a request for the approval of agreement between

074the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and ESS South Central LLC to privatize substitutes for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System do I have a motion moved by Mr goday seconded by Mr Howard Miss Bernard superintendent naris did did you all take into consideration my suggestion that we might only privatize a portion of it is that is that a possibility with this contract or are they going to have all of it uh yes board member um Bernard we did take into consideration but after a discussion with our team uh we decided that it would be much more beneficial for us to allow them to um take over because of their record on uh being able to get teachers uh substitute teachers for us they're in use in tangoa and I understand that the only

075reason that they continued their contract this year is they're going to give them another chance because of Co last year but they're not satisfied with their performance either nor were they satisfied in some other districts as well that I've heard from so um I'm just going to go on record voting against this motion I would like to Pilot it I don't think that you thr your hat completely over the fence when you're making a dramatic change like that I prefer to try it out a little at a time I would have been better satisfied with 25 30 or even 50% just to see what happens with this before we can't go back and I hope we can go back at some point but thank you thank you Miss Bernard any other uh questions or comments

076from the board Miss D um just and I had said during the committee of the whole and I understand it's in the logo and that kind of stuff but um if we end up using this this ESS I would very much like us to in every way possible on our website and in every way possible to spell out what that means and so that it is not a confusion and that the are not just strictly substitutes for our ESS classrooms so I just want to make sure that we we're very clear on this thank you thank you miss tyon any other comments or questions from the board seeing none we go to the audience any comments from the audience on item 14 good evening to Miss D's point any vendor stupid enough to have ESS

077as their primary trade name that wants to work in a school deserves not to be hired second backing up what Miss Bernard said I spoke to a board member intangible whole Parish who basically confirmed what she just said they only get one more chance because they're getting a free pass because they were horrible failures and maybe that can be blamed on um Co maybe um I also put in a record request with a uh Metropolitan Nashville school system I asked them who they were using for substitute teachers they're not using ESS or anybody else so even though Dr narcissa's group hired him that apparently didn't work out and I'm looking at the budget it says that in the budget you're going to consider you may be actually willing to pay substitute teachers who are like

078me we have at least one degree don't have a teacher certification you budgeted for a raise from $80 all the way up to $90 and somehow you think it makes sense to pay some 30 party that I've never heard of an extra $26 for each of those days there is no way I would ever consider substitute teaching if I was working for a third-party vendor whereas I've seriously considered offering my services as as a substitute working as a Public Employee I think this is a really really bad idea even if it were Revenue neutral but you're pulling from exactly the same source of employees if you're cabinet level Chief whose only relevant experience as is as an HR professional for decades can't figure out how to find substitute teachers and if a woman that Dr

079naris just promoted to Chief over Human Resources can't figure out how to find substitute teachers I don't know how you can expect a thirdparty vendor from somewhere in another state to magically from the same Market without dramatically increasing the pay or changing the conditions somehow magically they're going to I guess bring together a herd of unicorns and some rainbows and magically you'll have all the substitute features you want it's not going to happen but they'll make a lot of money in the process before you follow other districts lead and fire them meanwhile you're going to have empty empty classes I asked your HR department if there were any reports prepared in anticipation of this what I got was a printed copy the first 1,600 pages of the 1921 page report that basically said no they

080just have a list of when there was a substitute requested and whether they filled one there's no information there to say what the problem is much less that this would fix it thank you thank you Dr fny Nashville had a 27% markup on Subs under this um company we will have a 28.9 markup there will be no cost savings regardless of how poorly or how well they fill the substitute positions like Nashville we will not be able to afford it um Nashville also had situations where they charged them extra money that wasn't in the contract you guys when we see when somebody shows you who they are please believe them believe them this company I'm trying not to call it the the name of it this company has showed in every Parish they've been in

081I have not been able to find or County I guess in other states I have not been able to find a positive review of this company give the subs the raise they deserve a raise we pay them less than McDonald's give them the raise in house give the high school seniors $1,000 you'll still pay less than if you pay this company EBR can do it what I saw EBR do within a week with the calendar everything with the calendar what our people in central office pulled together and did we can do this give them the rise do the scholarship from EBR those are good things but do it from EBR and we still save money this we're just throwing it away and we don't have it I'm just going to keep repeating that we don't

082have it thank you m Matthews any other uh comments from the audience seeing none back to the board vice president Collins did I I had requested at the last meeting um we we're looking at for comparison and and cost projecting projection the 2016 school year which is a flood was a flood year and what I had requested was a threeyear average that way if something major happen in one particular year at least you have a average standard practice to do of the most current years not all the way back to 2016 I don't I I I don't see that I got it in my email were we able to come up with that uh information I just want to make sure I didn't Overlook it so so we we actually changed um provider system systems

083um between we went to front line from another company and so we don't actually don't have some of those records for those years because we just changed for this year to to Frontline um so we're we're missing some of those pieces so we had to use what kind of pieces of information that we had uh to that's what we were able to provide so we tried to to go back and find some of that stuff but it's it's because we don't actually have that subsystem and and anymore so Frontline is a software system that people use to sign up and we for substitutes now yes ma'am we were we were with another company but we don't own the data regardless of what software um we we we have to and I can try to see

084how we can pull it we don't actually the data is kind of done differently with that but I can try to go back and see if we can reach back out to that company and see if they can Pro pull pull that together for us so I can do that thank you that's another concern I have as well um with the contract it doesn't look like we going to own the data we I mean these still our people we need to at least be able to share the data uh because if it you know whether it's a one-ear contract threeyear contract what have you uh I'm just you know a whole separate concern I have is you always have control of your day at a period and yeah I know it's a private company but

085um they going they going to benefit from our data we going to say these who we using add to it so why can't we shareed data that day um but so anyway um that that's the only question I had I just want to say you know based on the 2016 numbers the projected cost is 700,000 and again without our one time money propping us up for a little bit that's just adding to the deficit thank you yes ma'am thank you vice president Collins Miss where Jackson thank you president tatman um I just want to ask a couple of questions as to uh or do we have any anything that someone can present that would show us why this is a need um how there is a savings and um and I have to have to

086say that um you know we've we've privatized uh an area with a a contract that has been very difficult to to deal with I think a lot of what we're hearing about this privatization uh reels from some of the pain that um we've incurred in the last few years with uh with other um situations where we've we've privatized an area where we've got questions about now um so can anyone show me uh and especially for people at home as we're vetting this what are the pros and cons what are the benefits why are we considering this yes ma'am so I can um they're going to pull up the presentation from the cow and I can go through it again thank you so we are considering um oh forgot sorry all right why are we considering

087moving to privatization and as I explained um previously you know I'm a former teacher I I understand the idea of you know that particular piece if You' asked me 20 years ago I would have said no you know um but education is evolving the workforce is evolving and we have to think in terms of that Evolution um 15 years ago when we talked about alternative certification for teachers it was it was almost like profanity you mean going to another provider besides the university all of those things and so we have again this is an evolution of some changes that we're we're considering so EV substitute Workforce the current numbers we have 647 uh active substitutes for the 2020 2021 school year uh the fill rate for this past year and just like both school districts

088around the country um The Substitute fill rate was very low now historically we we were you know in the 70s but this year of course it's about 52% and the reason why is many people uh most of the workforce for Subs was made up of retirees and many of them were not comfortable with coming into the classroom um so in 2019 2020 our fi rate was actually 72% when we talk about substitute indirect costs um we're we're thinking in terms of what can we start focusing on and what what we can use our human capital to work on and shift that work to to be able to get the most uh successful bang for your buck and so as we look through this particular slide here it shows kind of the work Equity that goes

089into to what we're doing uh for our as far as managing substitute teachers ourselves and and these are these are cost but they're pretty much considered indirect cost the hours and time that uh executive secretaries have to spend on doing several different things related to Subs where we can actually through this company consolidate some of that uh work um and then we also the work that we have to do within HR with verifying employment processing um the hiring paperwork those types of things it it it it's a cost so we're shifting time that we could spend on focusing on addressing substitute uh teacher shortages and and focusing on getting teachers because we're spending some of that work on this and so as we look at um 201617 school year and the salaries amount of money

090that we spent with for substitutes we look at Medicare costs workers compensation um unemployment and that's and uh benefits that we would actually pass over to them and we wouldn't have to deal with and it's it is it is a lot of of unemployment that we are hit with as a school district related to substitutes that we have to to fight um the total cost is about $3 million and that's including the the total actual cost of um 2.6 million versus the indirect cost now this year again when we talk about covid and we talk about sck leaves we're talking about a a spike in that information and so we we actually managed and process 2,426 sick leave requests now a sick leave request is an employee that is requesting to be off more than

091six days consecutively um so that could be a person that's out for maternity leave out for covid leave um uh FMLA leave it could be for surgery those are all of those those are individual um leaves uh we had 939 teachers who were out for six or more days this year so those were we had some employees that took the entire semester some who took the entire um year year uh because they had the time and and of course we honor that time based upon uh District policy how did we go around about selecting this company we we did research we did we've talked to other school districts we uh we talked about the good things we talked about what struggles they had because I believe you have to find out what was the challenge

092that you had with this company and so what what when you're doing that you strategically think about how can I not have the same struggle right you look at the history of what what occurred and make sure that you put things in place to ensure that you don't have those issues we looked at three companies Kelly uh services educ staff and ESS education we had a committee of multiple departments um and stakeholders and we we discussed and and we reviewed these companies they presented to us we we looked at their recruitment their uh training incentives and implementation how easy would it be to implement one of the things we were concerned with with one of the companies was if if we wanted to recruit out of the pool we would actually have to pay them

093to recruit a person out of the pool we didn't want to do that because we want to still have that connection with the substitutes because these these Subs even though they will be employees of e of um Educational Staffing support would actually be our we would still be able to connect with them recruit from them they would actually be housed in the office of Human Resources we selected Educational Staffing uh Services because we felt like they were going to provide us with the type of concierge service that we needed and so we looked at them as a a a partner and so we're not letting them go off and do this on their own they are a part of us us in the office we are going to manage it it is a year-to-year contract

094so we have not agreed to do this for 15 years or 10 years we are actually going to be able to re-evaluate this um and determine if it if is if it is in a good fit we'll get rid of them um we we we want this partnership because we do want to be able to focus on some other things that are really key and important alternative certification certifying teachers recruiting students to become teachers uh those are things that we would like to take that Sweat Equity that we're putting into this to do focus on building some programming within our department to support these things um one of the things we wanted to make sure is that our substitutes were not harmed in this process because we did not want to we were not going

095to send them to a a company that was going to harm them uh and cause issues for them they're able to actually offer health benefit incen incentives that we cannot offer and we can't afford to offer so they're able to get insurance through this company um they're able to uh do the substitute management through this company it's going to be flexible adaptable and that's what we're looking for if there's an issue we're going to be we're going to we're going to address it head on and we're going to make sure that that issue gets taken care of um there's custom reporting our information in the Frontline system they'll actually use our Frontline system so that our teachers don't have to learn a new system um so we still own that information data um we connect

096our Frontline system to their system for the payroll management piece so that they handle payroll another thing is that we're not able uh the substitutes would actually be able to be paid weekly versus how they are paid now um and so that'll be a very good recruiting uh piece for us because many of other businesses that have uh part-time workers they pay them every week and we needed to be able to do something like that we run a lot of payrolls when you talk about an organization with 6,000 employees we also wanted a company that was going to be committed and and give something back to our students and we felt like this was a a this was the only company that actually offered anything back to our students all the other ones were just

097about kind of just a contract um the benefits for the school district uh they will provide two dedicated employees that are going to be housed in the office of Human Resources so anyone interested in substituting they still come to HR we still have to manage the background check piece because that's state law we still have to do those pieces but they will actually have two people that will work through the the pieces with the sub and be able to spend time with our substitutes they'll also we are able to work hand inand with training the subs making sure those trainings are what we need to do they already have the marketing materials that are are necessary and then they have a local Regional and corporate support team that we'll be able to work with for

098the substitutes again we talked about they can do a 401K retirement plan um they have unemployment eligibility with us they don't have it because we you know at times when they they they're not able to do that so this would um allow them some economic security that they don't have as an employee of the school system um they get to pay into Social Security and that's a big deal because you're not able to pay we our employees don't pay into Social Security so as a part-time employee they're not paying into Social Security and they don't have the great benefit of the teachers retirement system like we have for retirement so they're able to set up a really nice 401K um medical and dental dental insurance and this is just the information about the bill rate

099and again they offer multiple types of trainings that uh will support what they're doing and so you know we hope that you consider this favorably but um we are definitely dedicated to making sure that this works and that this is not a negative impact on this District we we want to be able to focus some of our work on some other areas that we need to really focus on and also help our subs at the same time and H how long is the initial contract it's just one year one year and where does the evaluation piece fall in we will actually evaluate them every quarter so we will make sure that the numbers are correct I mean we're going to look at it every every week I I'm going to make sure that we have

100a report we'll be able to see that report because again it's our Frontline system so we're able to pull that report daily to see where that substitute fill rate is on a daily basis on a weekly basis and on a monthly basis so we'll be able to actually see what the fill rate is okay okay all right thank you okay and board member go thank you uh Madam vice president um just before I make my remarks I see Mr shamlan has gone I am not I do not think that it's accurate that it's a one-ear contract I think it's a three-year contract because I'm reading the term right here on Section s term begins July 1 2021 and shall remain in effect through June 30 2024 now it says it may be renewed on a

101yearly basis for up to two years after the ter I'm sorry I I misquoted so is the three-year contract but we can we can end at at one each year I apologize oh no problem I just wanted the public to be clear yes sir it's a three-year term with with the the legal terms is a rolling Oney year ever rolling 2-year annual Evergreen is the the legal term for that um I I guess the two things that I'd like to make sure gets considered here uh as we think about this one is I heard a lot about things for the substitute teachers and I view this as it does provide benefit to the substitute teachers as you just went over it does make them eligible for unemployment it does make them eligible for Social Security

102uh they do get weekly pay and all of these things things so I do think that that is a significant benefit to the substitute teachers uh for what they are God knows I'd love to pay them more but this does not pay them this pays them the same rate but gives them those additional benefits that we do not have uh the the second piece in here is I haven't heard anyone talk about students and I think for me one of the big items in this is how does it impact the students because if you if you have a teacher today who is out for a week the way we staff that means that we have to have two separate substitute teachers in there because they can only go up to 28 hours so they won't

103have actually that confinement I I realize that that's what I'm trying to say that to me this contract brings a significant benefit to the students because the students the substitute teachers for the student are no longer bound by that 29h hour uh bar that we have to impose as being this so uh I think that will be a significant advantage to the to the student I think that will be a significant advantage to our fill rate so that you know now we don't have two substitutes we got to find in that time one substitute can carry the whole week or or do whatever and you know I just don't like hearing as we go through these I want to keep bringing up what it means to the students because I think that's what we're here

104for and again going back to what it mean for the students this is freeing up a lot of time particularly a lot of time at the school sites where they can be focused more on the needs and requirements of making that school run and the needs and requirements of fulfilling our challenge to educate those children instead of finding being an employment agency trying to call around and find substitute teachers so there's a lot of things that have been said a lot of things going going around but I always want us to come back to what is best for the kids and I think given the parts of this contract and the way they are I am convinced that this is the best for the kids and and I think we should give it a try

105and we'll see what happens because I don't see anything in here that would be detrimental to the kids uh I know I've heard things about Nashville but from what I understand about Nashville the reason the budget it cost more than the contract was a originally done was because the company was more successful than anticipated in doing the fill rate so you know saying that the overand the budget is saying well they were too successful and you know that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense uh this year you know I I understand some of the comments from Tang AOA but you know I think this year with covid is an you know it's a very difficult time to make any comparisons because you saw our rate fell from 70 something per to 51%

106so um you know in my interest in trying to do because the only thing I try to sit up here to do is what's best for the children and and I think going this route is what's best for the children and as an added benefit I think it's best for the substitute teachers thank you thank you and uh I had put my name next in the queue but I uh I'll defer to my colleagues and and put myself last as madam VI president School Board member lanis thank you uh Madame vice president I just had a few questions uh given information that we just recently received from board member uh goday I wanted to know is it possible that we can get a year-by-year evaluation from uh getting employee direct employee feedback I know that

107the principles will be evaluating but in order to ensure that we get full accountability for what's taking place uh can we get evaluations before our board on an annual basis uh to understand directly uh what's happened and how is it impacting the students inside of the classrooms yes sir okay um another question would be how much are we looking to save uh in totality I know that I I know it said we had about $3 million that we would uh save just on Subs alone but I know we have to also we have that extended cost of of get actually going into the contract with the company so how much will we save after that cost um I can try to put together a different type of projection for you but when we talk about

108the savings um you know we're using numbers based upon what we've used before right and how many Subs we've had to put in place um there is um I believe there will be you know it's not going to be free of course to do this but I think there's going to be a savings to the work piece that we may not see we may spend the same amount of money annually but the work that we're going to be able to do in other areas that will impact student learning is going to be very profound and you may not see it in a doll bill but we'll we will see it so I will provide a return on investment um analysis for you so that you can see what that what that would look like okay

109and if we do happen to have any cost savings could you also inform the board at that time by the way uh could you also inform the board exactly how we going to repurpose those dollars and what that what those extra monies are going to be used for yes sir okay thank you thank you sir yes um so just to give our viewing audience and everyone some uh perspective on this so years ago when the Affordable Care Act um came in um I I made sure to alert both the local and the National State and LA national uh School boards Association that this was going to have detrimental effect on our students academic achievement because of the requirement that a substitute teacher who that's in the name it's a substitute teacher it's not a permanent

110position was going to then have to be uh uh offered um health benefits and that what that put us into a situation was where we have had to opt to switch switch it out switch it out and so that in a classroom that disruption in a classroom is just something that we cannot have it is just not conducive to raising our scores and our student achievement in the way that we so uh want as our top goal and so this I just want the assurance and I don't know if they're here again but um I just want the assurance that because this it would seem that they would be in a similar situation as um an employer that if they work the employee more than that 28 hours then they have to provide and so

111what is their incentive not to get around this as we have and what in the contract stipulates that we expect the continuity so why aren't they going to be in the same situation and and might need to have cost savings as well and and so what is what is mandated in our on our end of the contract that says we want that fifth day or you know that whole next week or whatever it may be we want the continuity if the substitute is a good fit in the classroom so so they are actually have their own health care uh benefit that they provide to their their substitutes so it is um it is um they they're not going to stop them from getting those those benefits so they provide that yes to substitutes who work

112one day that week or five days that week and they provide it to all of them they they have options yes yes and they're here U Mr shrunk is uh Matt shrunk is here uh from uh education if we could just just make sure that that is clarified and that I don't know if we need to look in the contract negotiation or anything about stipulating that we are going to the one of the things that we're going to be looking for is the continuity of these substitutes um if they're a good fit because I just see how they would be in the same situation we would be in in in a cost saving situation where you have to look at Cost why wouldn't they have that same uh restrict you know we did it to

113ourselves we opted to do that because financially we couldn't do but what prevents that from happening so this is this is their business this is what they do so essentially that's why they're able to do it their network is actually Nationwide so they're able to to provide Insurance because they're a nationwide company that provides these benefits for the substitutes that's that that is their business and I think so my question is do they offer the same benefit to a substitute that works one day that week or five days that week um yes I mean I can't tell you the the amount but they they have access to it yeah insurance hi good evening I'm with education Solution Services uh my name is Wendy um and yes we what we do is we've negotiated for on

114behalf of all of our 60,000 Subs across the US for that benefit and so we offer that to every individual um they you know Medical Dental eye care it's it's they they still are paying for it in an affordable manner taking out of their paycheck so that it is Affordable in a group plan yes so it's offered to everyone which that allows us to stay ACA compliant even if they're not selected to work that week they just keep on with their benefit they just keep on with the benefit and that payment and even during the summer when they're no longer working as long as they're paying you know their premium what they chose they're covered okay all right and then um appreciate very much that Clarity and um then um as far as this evaluation

115um I just would request that quarterly we get you know a little presentation on where we are and how we're doing and at a regular meeting so that the general public can see where we are and how this is going along the way and um appreciate it thank you for your hard work on this thank you ma' board member go okay thank you uh can the contract can the contract yes it could I'm wondering based on some of the things that uh my colleague [Music] mentioned with resolving the problem of us trying to avoid giving people health care and not doing the number of hours more than 28 hours there nothing I recall nothing in the contract that stipulates that FHA classroom needs they know that teacher so and so going to be out for

116two weeks which is if I understand correctly not necessarily what a longterm sub would feel right yes ma'am okay so let's say it's two weeks that's not a long-term sub type situation in that instance the district would switch out folks for that one classroom that have a teach out for two weeks uh so we try to we try to not do it so it's an average that we try to get to that you have to to kind of work with and so we we've done that kind of calculation so we did make some adjustments after the lean frog report to try to address that but um this would allow some continuity uh being able to to do this with the subs but but but yeah they they could they could work every day they could

117say hey I only want to work on Tuesdays Thursdays um there's some flexibility for for that particular piece but um as far as long-term sub assignments if it's for the week they can they can take it um they can take it if it's for we don't we won't put limits on them how many long-term Subs do we have typically in a year it depends on the year uh this year we probably had more because we had so many people as you saw 936 at average yeah at average so it wasn't that was a that was a really high I would say maybe um maybe about 250 across the year now when you talk about a long-term sub we're talking about someone that's work 21 days straight um and then we designate them as longterm at

118that point um and so that could be someone that's covering a maternity leave or someone who's out with surgery or um just a kind of a a broad spectrum of of situations okay uh and then if as I think and I think I asked this question last time if I didn't I apologize of the number of Subs that you all have in y'all pool what's the percentage of them that's using the healthare roughly I'm not asking you to try you know eent yeah yes I I think you did ask that last time and it is like it's a low amount it's a 10 to 20% use it um it's it's more it's there if they need it and want that yes okay all right um okay I think that that's all of my questions all

119right thank you Mr uh board member goday uh yes uh just one other observation I've Heard lots of people well two observations one is you have a monthly Forum where you present your personnel changes I would ask the superintendent and you and and others on the board to consider that that should really be changed to an HR report yes and monthly I would like to see number of classrooms that are missing permanent teachers and the fill rate of substitute teachers and these sorts of things because uh I I think that not having a a permanent teacher in the classroom has a great educational cost and then not having qualified substitutes in the classroom also has a great educational cost so I would like to see us change that Personnel report to being more of an

120HR report and items like that start to be included in that report just a suggestion but strong suggestion we can provide that secondly I want to be very careful as we talk about cost because people have thrown around things like cost savings and things like that recognize that one of our goals is to get more qualified Subs into the classrooms okay so if and I'm making up numbers as I fly along here if uh Educational Staffing Services uh raises that number from 71% which was kind of our average to 85% % we will be paying a little bit more for substitutes and there won't necessarily be a cost saving because we're putting qualified substitutes into the classroom now that number is going to show up as a higher cost for substitutes but the offset of

121that is we got better education going on in our classrooms so we need to be very clear as we talk about cost savings you know there's a dollar cost savings and there's a cost saving per substitute or however you want to do it if you and I think this is what happened in Nashville if you look at the total dollars if they do a good job guess what we're going to spend more and substitute teachers because we will be using their services more and we will be putting more qualified teachers in the classroom so dollars is not necessarily the it is an important yard stick but is not the only yard stick we have to be looking at Fu rates and looking at the education the educational opportunities that we are providing to our children

122because I always want to come back to what is good for the children so thank you thank you Mr goday um I see no other questions or comments from the board um thank you yes sir M Miss Donaldson um ma Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you we move now to new business consideration of a request for the approval of the proposed 2021 2022 general fund budget the budget resolution and the 2021 2022 salary schedules that's item one do I have a motion it says the proposed general fund budget yes item K1 that's what no we did we pulled 14 we didn't pull I can be talked out of it uh okay so K1 K1 okay moved by Mr goday and seconded by Mr lannis um comments from comments

123or questions from the board on K1 seeing none at the moment we will now go to the audience on the general fund budget K1 comments from the audience I've emailed each of you a presentation I've also made copies for each of you um including Dr naris um um cuz I figur some of you may be visual in addition to or instead of auditory so this way you can see it as well um first thing is uh Mr Shaman's position Mr Shaman's position is listed under Dr naris however he is not an employee of the superintendent he is an employee of the board so I feel like that line should be removed um and he should be placed as he is on the first page of the org chart where he is right next to him

124as he is your employee um special programs according to page 72 there is a 79.9 one% cut to ESL Services how would this $161,700 amount paid to retirement lower due to the mass Exodus of teachers over the last couple of years page 66 line five special ed prek why are we going from 32 to 12 prek teachers I thought we had a huge increase in prek are none of them sped travel expenses for EDS and other travel is going from $10,700 to $ 48,2 going back to pre-co I understand as y all's budget has gone back and it seems like a huge jump but it's really not it's just going back to normal however considering our budgetary crisis that we are in and the fact that most conferences which I know you guys are required

125to go to conferences which is why your budget went back up for that um to stay certified to be on the board um the conferences are required but you guys uh their virtual is still an option so we could do virtual conferences while we are in this budgetary crisis um also office of superintendent page 85 line four we have gone from $574,000 to $1,336 th000 Simply by adding four people traveling expenses from 16,000 to 62,000 we are projected to lose 631 students that is above the hundreds probably thousands that the state already considers lost when I talked to principles when I went school by school and I called principles principles all like storm no that's not my number I have this many kids hundreds more on their enrollment that the state ldoe already considers gone

126that those kids are going to be gone and at Charters we have four schools opening up y'all are considering three more tonight so we're we're just not going to have any kids left in EBR I assume okay so I'm not going to make it to the other three the only two people that matter the teacher and the student Socrates and Plato that's it everybody else can kick rocks love y'all look at the presentation thank you thank you Miss Matthews just to be clear on the earlier item it does say public hearing slw Workshop maybe I'm confused about what a hearing is anyway to not waste all the three minutes I have left your board policy says in essence that you've got until September 15th there's no rush it would be great if there were a

127complete easily understood clear sensible easily defendable and explained budget ready to adopt before the end of the current fiscal year but you haven't been offered one yet furthermore your um your policy policy DC says that the school board should cause to be published to notice in the official Journal that the budget is available for public inspection no later than 15 days prior to the date for Budget adoption I'm quite certain that significant parts of the budget changed between your original budget hearing and now and I didn't see any tracking document for me to be able to read fewer than 300 pages to see what changed so I don't think you've met the condition that you have to offer this to the public to review without it changing every few minutes for a full two weeks

128and then give him a chance to comment on it I think you should set a real budget hearing where you try not to cram a whole bunch of other stuff into the same meeting and actually hear what the public has to say after the staff has paid attention to Mr God's point he's far more patient than I am he asked that all the budgets be put together so you can see where all these um positions that aren't covered in the general budget are actually being paid for um I had to correct a few people on social media who thought a certain administrator's salary was what was reflected in the general fund budget because they had no way of telling how much was actually being paid out of the uh proposition three but that's really not

129why I came here I came here to make sure you read the email I sent earlier that says those brand new charter schools that you authorized more than two years ago and have never opened they no longer have valid Charter authorization those are revoked automatically by Statute and policy two years after you approved them on May 9th and May 13th so before you approve a budget you could you should strike the dollars for the new basis campus the new Aviation campus and the new legal campus because they don't have authorizations because they didn't open in the two years after you approved him in May 9th or 13th of 2019 so there are some savings to your budget thank you thank you Dr fny other comments uh from the audience great evening um I'm sorry I

130don't have much of a voice um so I'm going to be very nice and polite um our budget does not reflect the eight job positions that we just approved so each of those positions we currently do not have an idea of what that salary is going to be which means that we cannot accurately vote on a budget to say that this is how much money we're going to have cuz now we have to tie in those eight positions secondly our school system is not providing food for children with disabilities that have food allergies such as my child I actually have the box in my car right now that Focus food provided that does not have anything that he can eat or drink so the school system did not put in the budget how much money

131they have to pay me and other parents like me who have to pay for food for their children and provide it to them when they come into the brick and Mort building for extended school year summer school or School period according to the federal law that's something you are obligated legally obligated to fund and fulfill and because you're not providing my child with food you have to actually provide me with a voucher or stien of money and that is not reflected in our budget third what is not reflected in the budget is the cost in which you owe me for travel mileage for bringing my child safely to and from school the brick and water building extended school year all of these items are reflected in his IEP and our school system don't have this

132stuff reflected in our budget also I am waiting on my money from the school system and that is not reflected in the budget the legal expenses is not reflected in the budget the cost for all of these things what the council for Great Schools that is for that is horrible this this contract we just approved that's not reflected so it's so many things that's not reflected in the budget that as Dr Finn stated before we need to really have a real true Workshop that is just focused primarily on the budget cuz we still don't have a strategic plan that is going to impact our budget this has to be be reflected this is not rocket science this is M&M's this is 1 plus one and it's not equal in two right now at this moment

133I think that what we need to do and I strongly urge Mr uh president tman you and the board to actually have a workshop we're great at having workshops let's have a workshop where we actually have real true Community input about this budget and we have a real true itemized detailed expenditure report about all of the money that we going to have going out and what we really will have coming in because that's not reflected in the budget thank you Mr thank you any other comments from the audience on K1 hello again um instead of just a workshop I'd like to ask too uh Dr naris we've seen several times you've been able to get out to the public have uh some dialogue could we get that with the budget going out to the people

134just like I was at the meeting yesterday having them look at it having them give suggestions something like that with the entire budget not bits and pieces of it um if Dr naris wants to hire more people as we go along the summer that needs to be ref reflected we need to see the budget in its totality it needs to be given to the people so that we can see it all line by line look at what's really going on where all of this money is going like I said you've been out into the public a couple times with a couple of your initiatives on the calendar and yesterday on the strategic planning something like that would be perfectly acceptable and work well bring it to the public have a couple meetings uh where we're

135going around and getting pieces of of your strategic plan and we're able to give feedback on that something like that would work perfect before we get before we say yes to a budget first let's have the entire budget let's have the public look at the entire budget that way we know what is going on with our money I'm taxpayer your taxpayers that's our money we need to know where every penny is going and then we need to have our input not have input and then things added on after we have our input thank you thank you any other comments from the audience on K1 see none um we come back to the board any uh comments or questions from board members on K1 seeing none Madam Secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion

136carries thank you we now move to item K2 consideration for request for approval of the 2021 2022 proposed special Revenue fund budgets a proposed 2021 2022 adult and continuing education B revised 20 20 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 all Parish music concerts C proposed 2021 2022 radio training program D proposed 2021 2022 believe and prepare formula transition e proposed 2021 2022 Career and Technical education program number 998 F proposed 2021 2022 Child Nutrition program G revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 the cathlon fitness meet H revised 2020 2021 and propos 2021 2022 EBR kickoff classic uh I proposed 2021 2022 educational Excellence fund J proposed 2022 es SAA redesign Grant Round 4 redesign K revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 high school summer school L proposed 2021 2022 iare program M proposed 2021

1372022 Ida n proposed 2021 2022 i d EA preschool 619 o revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 J Raa Athletics P proposed 2021 2022 Magnet School assistance Q revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 Middle School summer program R revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 music instrument user fees ask revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 proposition 2 tax plan t revised 2020 2021 and proposed 2021 2022 proposition 3 tax plan U proposed 2021 2022 prek one approval letter for all prek budgets two Cecil J peard la4 three Early Childhood Community Network lead agency four Early Childhood Community Network lead agency five Early Childhood Program 8G six co-9 7 PDG seats 8 prek tuition V proposed 2021 2022 every student succeeds act consolidation V1 approval letter for all Essa Consolidated budgets two Title

138One improving academic achievement three title two part a four title three five title three immigrant six title four part a seven Title Nine education homeless children and youth eight direct student services W school activity X strong start achieve X1 approval letter for all strong start budgets two strong start achieve s 2 three strong start achieve Esser three do I have a motion moved by Mr lannis seconded by Miss wear Jackson any uh questions or comments from the board seeing none we go to the audience any comments from the audience on K2 thank you boy president uh for reading all that stuff um as it relates to idea funding we only allocated three pages idea have so many parts they have a Part B that received over $2 billion right now that's not even reflected it's

139so much dealing with idea that's not reflected in this special Revenue budget that actually should be it's including how much money are we really and truly using per child per child our school system have more than 4,000 kids with disabilities that have IEPs that fall directly under Ida that's not reflected in this special Revenue budget that is a real true problem CU that mean that we're about to approve a budget that is not accurate which is which is going to lead us straight back into the pot of Hell in which we just got out of why Essa Essa money we Essa money every student succeed act has money that is supposed to be spent dealing with parent engagement parent involvement parent engagement and involvement is not donuts with dads and muffin with moms parent engagement

140means that the parents are supposed to actually be at the table according to Essa to actually have a input real true valuable input into every single idea plan policy that every school and and and this whole entire school system actually put in place that is not being spent right now according to the law it's not being spent right instead what we are using ES money is for donuts with Dad Muffins with Mom that's not how Ela was designed Title 9 you are putting Title 9 as education for homeless children and youth but you sure did manage to forget that it is dealing with lgbtq plus we just had title n being being splashed across the news dealing with LSU dealing with all of the all of the sexual assaults and traumas that have had happened

141and and we have that happening right now in our own school system and yet that is not reflected in the budget so when we want to come up here in in my face and tell me about a special budget that is going to impact my child that is in this school system I want us to give me a real budget that reflects reality not a figment of my imagination and that is what we're doing we're giving us something that is fictitious which means the depart Depart of Justice will come in and have a problem with each and every person on the board the doj has not been to Louisiana in a while but trust and believe if I open my mouth they'll be here tomorrow so we definitely need to look back at this special

142budget and we need to make that special budget be realistic because what's not reflected is how many staff we are actually paying with that ibea budget and I have done a public records request for that and I do not have that information yet thank you thank you so much thank you earlier staff member mentioned with great pride it seemed to me how much you were moving recurring costs including permanent employees from permanent recurring funding sources off into these black holes the special funds nobody's supposed to pay attention to so you just approved a very detailed and also very incomplete General fud budget and now you're about to because you're probably all anxious to hear the hear about the charter schools and get home early you're going to go ahead and all vote Yes on whatever

143it is that the that the um Administration has put together for spending all these various little funds not enough details for you to actually be able to keep track of whether the money is being spent in the right way but at least he'll have a budget approved by June 30th and besides Dr narcis may choose not to follow it anyway so maybe it doesn't matter but at some point can't the public hope for Budget members acting as though they have some fiduciary responsibility how long are we going to accept sloppiness you you pay a superintendent a quarter of a million dollars he can't create a nice organized budget he brings in a million dollars worth of high paid support people Nothing Gets improved is this board capable of demanding competent worldclass quality of work from

144their administrators or is good enough good enough cuz you're all from Louisiana and you have a collector of self-esteem that is so low you'll accept poor work from the people you hire even though you pay them a lot of money and you made a point of getting people from out of state cuz God forbid you give a good job to somebody who spent so much time in Louisiana that you don't think they know anything this this set of budgets to be fair to Dr naris this budget process has been screwed up for years but now you've got some of you who claim to be from business some of you even claim to be conservative and still I defy any one of you to put even to the nearest million dollars how much stuff you just

145agreed to shift from General funding off into whatever just because the superintendent said yeah we can do it that way and maybe you'll all be out of office by the time it comes back to roost and those special onetime money don't exist anymore good luck thank you Dr any any other comments from the audience seeing none uh we come back to the board it's quick oh I'm sorry Hi how are y'all um I just want to request or just ask that we do have more time again I'm fairly new to all of this I'm getting involved this is my second year a part of EBR and is there a space um or more opportunity for public to have their suggestions and then we you know sit down and consider that and I've heard the word

146Workshop I'm not familiar with how often we have those but I do suggest just to kind of just open up that that line of communication that we do that so that's all I have to say and thank you guys for what y'all do thank you any other comments from the audience back to the board any comments or questions from the board seeing none Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries thank you um I would like to make a suggestion about we how we handle the next three items um I would I would just suggest that what we do is allow Dr Williams to come up and Lead um and then on each item have Dr blune our third party evaluator come up and uh give us her report is going to

147allow allow each um Charter applicant an opportunity to come up and give them 10 minutes or less to uh talk about their application and then after that we could take motions and then allow the public to speak does anyone have any does that sound okay to everybody take take motion yeah there'll be a there'll be a separate motion on each one but I'm I'm really asking that we hold off on that until after we've heard from both the evaluator and from the applicant is that okay with you all yes okay so Dr Williams good evening board president tapman wait I'm sorry I've got to read it in I forgot um discussion consideration of kennworth Science and Technology Charter School application and related matters go go right ahead good evening board president tapman M of Vice

148President Collins and our absence board members and Dr naris this evening we are bringing before you uh three topics three agenda items rather Charter landscape and application cycle so I'll give a quick overview of our current type 1 charter schools and uh student enrollment in those Charter Schools we'll hear from our third-party evaluator and now with the new process taking each School each application um at at one time and then we'll hear from charal school Consulting um Mrs Katie blune who will present information about the application process her process and the evaluations I do want to send a thank you to Vicky silus and Amy Norsworthy who are a very small Mighty Department of two who uh do the Lion Share of work um supporting our charter school office and our Charter Partners so what

149are the purposes of charter schools in Louisiana this is taken directly from the Bessie bulletin 126 you'll notice a few key words in each of those four purposes that includes Innovation I think you can see innovation in at least two of those um areas we also want to make sure that charter schools are serving the most economically disadvantaged students and that um Educators have an opportunity to again innovate and begin schools that have a focus on students currently in our school district we have 15 approved uh Charter type one charter schools um you can see by the map on the left those are charter schools in the north part of our city for in that area seven in the mid city area and on the right hand side we have four charter schools located in

150the South part of our school system so this is a total list of the type one charter schools that you as a board have approved for a school district this includes Charter Schools who have um have a projected opening date of August of 2021 you'll notice the year approved for each of those type 1 Charter Schools you'll also notice the current enrollment total enrollment in those type 1 charter schools that stands at 484 students at this time based on feedback from the Board of Education and your interest in Long Range planning and being responsive to that we've also listed the estimated enrollment and the 25 26 school year based on current enrollment and projected enrollment for those charter schools that you have already um approved to be opened and that estimated enrollment is 14,1 students

151so a couple of T key takeaways based on this very broad landscape a projected enrollment growth in our currently approved T type one charter schools will increase by 6,591 6,590 students in the 2122 school year uh that is projected to increased to a total of 14,1 students in the 2526 school year that has a percentage increase of 112% which is a um increase of about 7,400 students um being fiscally responsible we thought it was important to share with you that that increase will have an impact on our student enrollment in the school district our um student enrollment will Decline and that will um cause us to think about some cost reductions and adjustments to our budget as those student um numbers increase for type 1 charter schools and decrease for our our schools so I

152want to Bri briefly show you the cycle Miss blanchie will go into detail about the cycle this is based in law and your board policy regarding the applic a cycle for applicants this begins with a posting in January of the of the school year um Charter applicants have a deadline to submit their letter of interest if um they this is not required but they many do of intent by February their complete proposals applications are due to the district by April 5th uh those are posted to for the Public's review by June 9th and our meeting held tonight to review the evaluation of those Charter applicants so finally we want to point out that we do have a third-party evaluator per year board policy and we want to emphasize that this person is a um an

153outside uh the district employee she's charged with ensuring that there's Integrity in the process that um she has the utmost professionalism that it's unbiased and she is knowledgeable so I'll introduce our third party evaluator at this time Mrs Katie blune of Charter School Consulting she's a career educator with over 40 years of experience in uh the school systems she served at as a teacher school and District leader she also has a great number of years as a third-party evaluator and serving as your third-party evaluator for six years and she has um worked in neighboring districts in the same capacity and offered her expertise in that area so at this time um Mrs Katie blanchie will walk us through the evaluation process and um her evaluation of those Charter Schools thank you Dr Williams thank you

154Dr Williams for that very kind introduction and good even evening president tapman vice president Collins members of the board Dr naris and to our viewing public I'm Katie blanchie and I'm pleased to serve as your third party evaluator so what is the evaluation process the evaluation process is clearly defined in bulletin 126 and followed precisely the process consists of three parts a thorough review of the application the actual interview process and the final evaluation and subsequent recommendations in order to be fair and consistent in order to be fair and consistent to every applicant the rubric used in the evaluation comes directly from the Louisiana Department of Education it consists of four major areas an executive summary educational program and capacity organizational plan and capacity and financial plan and capacity according to the ldoe Charter School

155applicant process the applicant groups must meet all standards that's 100% for the evaluator to advise that the superintendent recommend to the school board to approve a charter applicant group so how was the evaluation process implemented the process ladies and gentlemen is very important it's important in order to be fair to each applicant in order to comply with bulletin 126 and in order to align the evaluation process with the Louisiana Department of Education East Benner's Parish received three Charter School applications by the deadline of April 5th all were from experienced operators one from in the city one from within the state and one from outside of the state the applications were read thoroughly selection and scheduling of the interview committee was completed in conjunction with the charter support office and the applicants were interviewed on May

15612th the interviews consisted of about 60 minutes 20 minutes for applicants to make a presentation and then 40 minutes for the EBR interview team to ask and answer questions applicants were given an opportunity to respond to team questions and clarify responses prior to submitting final recommendations in accordance with EBR Charter polic policy and with bulletin 126 notification of the final evaluation and subsequent recommendations was made public five business days prior to the board meeting as you can see the interview team had expertise in charter schools curriculum and instruction governance and management and finance those serving on the committee were Dr Sharon Williams chief of schools Andrea okonsky chief of accountability assessment and evaluation Stacy Dupre chief officer of support and special projects Dr Charmaine rutl assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Kelly Lopez Chief Financial

157Officer Bianca Brumfield Williams Director of Human Resources Patrice Hudson supervisor of exceptional student services kashana Bridges title one project manager Federal programs Erica Jones student information system Amy Norsworthy instructional specialist charter schools and Vicky Silas portfolio manager Charter Schools many thanks to the interview team for their service to this very important task I would also like to thank the applicants they were very professional throughout the whole process and thanks to our Charter School support team Dr Williams Miss Silas and Miss northworthy for this valuable assistance so what is the evaluation interview process the interview team had access to the rubric adapted directly from the ldoe both in print and electronic during the interview following the interview comments were compiled from the discussion and the rubrics follow-up questions were sent to the applicants to provide more

158responses for a comprehensive evaluation all responses were integrated into the evaluation recommendation the rubric itself consists of four major areas with indicators supporting each area the first is the executive summary it includes Mission Vision Educational needs and use of data the second area is educational program and capacity it includes curriculum assessments school calendar diversity culture behavior and parent and Community engagement the third area is organizational program and capacity which includes leadership goals professional development and Charter board governance and the fourth and final category is financial plan and capacity this includes management financial goals student enrollment recruitment facility needs Insurance and financial controls president tman if it pleases the board I'll present my evaluation about each applicant individually and reasons for my recommendation could could we take them one at a time yes sir um great

159thank you so we'll do Ken we're on Kennelworth now yes sir that's correct thank you kennworth seeks to open their proposed School in 2022 23 the gray configuration at start would be kindergarten first grade fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade and seventh grade they would start with 448 students the grade configuration at scale would be K through 8 and the enrollment would be 504 students the mission of K kennworth Science and Technology will be to create a safe healthy and student- centered learning environment that cultivates the knowledge skills and competence in computer science necessary for academic EXC Excellence stem careers and character development the EBR School Board policy states that to apply for a district authorized Charter School the applicant must have a b or higher or a c with a progress letter grade of

160an a for each year the grade is a c performance data for kennor Science and Technology is as follows in 20123 their school performance score was an 84.8 which is a c in 20145 their school performance score was a 50.8 which is a D in 2015 and 16 their school performance score was a 56.6 which is a D in 2017 and 18 their school performance score was a 59 which is a [Music] d and and 2018 and 19 their school performance score was 58.2 which is a DE their progress grade was an 87.4 B but a progress grade is different from a school performance score therefore the proposed School kenware Science and Technology Charter School does not meet the guidelines of note is that Liberty High School offers LSU Computing Pathways that's one of four

161Pathways that includes a stem Focus Glasgow Middle Schools and these are all schools in the area offers introduction to stem pathways and careers survey of computer science introduction to coding Roman Technology robotics and classical mythmakers Magnolia Woods as a stem wide schoolwide stem focus and Mayfair laboratory school as an ecost stem focus with an emphasis on the environment and Technology therefore the proposed school is not necessarily Innovative as required by bulletin 126 I recommend that you deny this application thank you Miss bluni so I would like to ask the applicants to please uh if they would like to make a presentation um give you um 10 minutes and if you can combine your uh presentation that way others will still have the opportunity to provide public comment once a motion is made but just to

162move it up okay um we're just going to do a public comment we were just planning for the regular time frame we didn't realize we were given 10 minutes it's okay you can you can do that now I think that's fair all right thank you um Dr naris um president tapman and Madame vice president um and members of the board my name is Lauren Allen I'm the director of Community Affairs at kennor Science and Technology school we are a Middle grades only School working with mostly minority students who are historically UND served our Progress Index was 87.4 a high B last year year whereas the progress index average of comparable schools in Louisiana was 77 or C kenor Science and Technology school is one of the highest performing Standalone middle schools in the state of

163Louisiana when compared to open enrollment middle schools serving grades 6 through 8 with more than 80% economically disadvantaged students we rank third in the state moreover based on the available data it is clear that schools across the Louisiana with Middle School only configuration perform lower than kennworth year after year our type one application is a result of continued effort to foster a partnership and relationship with the East Baton Rouge Parish School District it was our understanding that a type 1 route would be beneficial for our students and families as well as for the district this application was another concrete step to show good faith to work with EBR for this K8 we do not wish to increase our enrollment cap and pull more students from the district we only want to better serve our students

164and families by catching them earlier in their academic careers this will prevent learning loss and increase student outcomes we believe if our type 1 application is approved this will be best for our students and families while also building an ongoing relationship with the district thank you thank you is that it okay thank you I don't see any comments or questions from the board is there a motion on uh item uh K3 I move that we deny that we follow the recommendation of our evaluator and we deny the application for Kennelworth as a type one no we're going to do public comment after we have a motion we're going to make sure everybody's heard yes sir I'm sorry uh so I think we've got y'all got that we got seconded by Miss moved by Mr goday

165and seconded by Miss Bernard um Mr Howard thank you president tman um so I just wanted to make a as we go through this discussion um and talk about these schools and and how we decide on whether we are going to approve them or not you hear a lot of in the rhetoric as we we talk about these schools them versus US you hear a lot of hour you hear a lot of pulling away from the district in X Y and Z I was a teacher at kenor and Science and Technology school just so in full transparency I don't plan on voting for any Charter Schools tonight for for my L me of reasonings but I was a teacher at that school and many of the teach the schools and the students that we had

166at KF in science and technology actually entered in once they went to high school went back to EBR school so we graduated probably 60% of my class from scotlandville Magnet High School a couple of weeks ago so it just it just bothers me how we narrate Charters this them versus US these are students who live in this District who are a part of this community and so as we go through this conversation I would just ask for each one of us to do a gut check about how we identify these schools I don't care if a child goes to a charter school a private school a public school these are kids who live in ban Rouge who are part of this District you are part of this city so I just want us to all

167be very careful of the narrative the narrative tone that we talk about when we talk about these students thank you Mr Howard I see no other questions or comments from the board uh so we will now go to the Public Public comment on the Kenn on K3 the Kennelworth the motion um just to explain to everybody if you've not been here before the green light comes on you have three minutes when the yellow light comes on you have a minute left and then the red light thank you sir just introduce yourself and go right ahead yes sir uh thank y'all for letting me speak this evening my name is Chris Toms I serve as the LSU student uh Organization for the society for African African-American studies and I'm a grad student there and um when

168I saw this was on the agenda this today I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to speak on it um you know I see a couple Brothers in the room that are on your board right now that I had the privilege of serving as a teacher with at Kenworth it was a very uh interesting experience to say the least um I want to start out by saying that I move this up I'm a little you can absolutely all right that's is it right I don't want to all right that's cool I think I can work this yeah so um yeah so what I wanted to say is that I think their principal Hazel reges is a wonderful woman I think she's a great administrator I think that she's a stellar uh academian and somebody that

169I learned a lot from but that'll probably be like the best thing I'm about to say right now and so what I want to point out is there were two things on the board that was talked about it was culture and Facilities okay um young and look I'm for all kids learning but I'd be remissed if I didn't say that I'm definitely you know concentrating more on the African-American students that are being serviced in the district and I can tell you right now there is a huge culture Gap at Kenworth there's a huge culture D um there's a huge culture disconnect at kwth and it's not coming from I would say the staff or even M reges it comes from the people that manage it they do not know how to reach our children and

170I feel like they're using them as a means in order for them to fill budgets to pay people bottom line that's how I feel anytime you go into the boy's bathroom and there's not a running water urinal in that bathroom that's a problem okay the facilities need to be upgraded the facilities are subpar and in my my opinion they are made like that because you're warehousing students well got a minute left so uh I'll say this and I'll say this with an emphatic opinion I think that Miss Hazel reges is a great administrator but what that young lady set up here and said about the historically underserved groups they know nothing about serving them okay so I implore this board to do one of two things deny this deal or defer this and go take

171a trip to Kenworth and look around and see what I'm talking about thank you thank you Mr tombs having taught summer school for 10 years gives you very very open eyes in the district you don't okay I'm really short okay you don't um you don't just see the one school you've been at for 15 years you see who fails all the kids in the district EBR summer school was funded probably I'm just going to throw a random number out we all know I'm not a math person but probably good 75 80% by kennworth they fail a whole lot of kids where's you stop and ret where's you make sure they're getting it and I'mma tell you right now eighth graders coming in that don't know what an adjective or a noun is I have a

172problem with that Mr Howard's completely right and I do I'm I'm very anti-ar you're right but there's a couple of them that I like the ones that do right by our kids I I like that I like Madison prep okay they do right now they need to take special ed kids I'mma say that but they're there for the kids they do right by our kids but when you come in and you trying to make a dollar off of my kids and your whole goal is to make a profit those kids aren't a dollar sign they're not that $112,000 you're getting off of them and then you're going to put them out after October 1st and send them back to EBR that's not what they are those are lives those are future lawyers future robotic Engineers

173f future doctors future school board members future teachers those are people and they are important and they matter they're not money signs and kennworth has failed figuratively and literally those children since its Inception thank you Miss Matthews I can just go uh yes ma'am just state your name in the clock will start all right my name is dja Thomas I had no intention on speaking today but as I said and listen I thought my voice should be heard this is not my first rodeo here I may have not been at a charter school application but I surely have been a renewal one I do want to thank um Miss Katie blanchie for her work I know it's a difficult job that she has to do but I do have some things to say about her

174evaluation um for one being an employee of korth I know that there is school and it's Statewide stem focus and Innovation all throughout the school I know a lot of time these decisions are made based on how we respond or how applications are respond to very buzzword like Innovation which are very relative can be taken very different ways but it's been very much so a stem school that have innovated and taught schools on a multifaceted level I also wanted to make sure the board is considering that we're comparing Apples to Apples this is a middle school that is a 6 through eight Middle School to compare kider work to other middle schools or other schools around East B School District that service K through 8 or other charter schools in the area is not a

175fair comparison we got a grade of D with a metric that is consiously continuously changing and that should be considered although other schools have continuously changed the pandemic and um the problems that it faced this year has happened across the board I want you to to take the um the letter grade of the other schools and compare those I'm sure I I had to take a guess kenart will be comparable as though our score did drop a little bit I'm sure the other schools have done so as well but I couldn't sit and remain silent um I do agree with some of the people that spoke before me I think the board should visit Kor for themselves um I've only been employed there for the last two years I know when I got there there

176was an upgrade in facilities I'm not sure what they look like before so if you guys want to come and take a look at the school make that evaluation based on what you see for yourself and I what someone else is said thank you for your time thank you Miss Thomas good evening everyone um my name is Miranda monrie um I am an educator I have taught only at Kenn work for the last six years so I can speak from being there and that being my only experience as as an educator um where we are now is not where we were when I first began at kennor so when we talk about culture we've grown a lot and there are a lot of things that are in place and that are going to continue to

177grow like Mr Toms brought up Hazel reges is amazing I would not be the educator that I am today had it not been for her I can call her at any time of the night hey this is the things that I'm thinking and she will answer and she will respond she is wonderful I can look and see all of the growth that we have made yes our school is a d it is what it is but what isn't being highlighted is the progress that we make with students so we are 6 through eight when we look at the state's models for SPS and for Progress students have a growth Target to meet by the eighth grade if a student is at a school K through 8 or in the same district for K through 8

178that district has those nine years to help make sure that that student reaches that gross Target we at Kennelworth get three years so a lot of our students are coming in from EBR schools not the ones that were mentioned because our kids don't come from the schools that are around our district most of them are coming from North Baton Rouge mostly and a few from the guarder area but most of our kids are coming from North Baton Rouge and they do attend EBR schools so when we get them they're not where they're supposed to be at sixth grade and that's fine that's that's our reality but what what we are doing is we are growing children I see it every day and as the more of us continue to grow our children are doing better

179too so I don't think that it's fair to only look at just their SPS scores for our school progress matters and you should talk to more of our kids and our families because there are a lot of them who are invested in us as well thank you you thank you miss m cre other comments from the [Music] audience I'm handing out is one page your Charter policy this should be really really simple on page 10 of the charter policy you approved in August of 2019 to be eligible to submit a charter school application a group must and I'm going to skip down to part five maintain an average letter grade of b or higher for existing schools in the state of Louisiana for experienced operator applicants so I did a little bit of background which

180basically confirms what Miss blune said earlier this organization took over the uh School in 200920 the enrollment dropped from 613 to 426 between the last year run directly and their first year it appears to me um and that kind of fits my recollection their last two school performance scores were deep and school performance scores are almost a totally useless metric I'll agree but here's the problem with great Fan Fair you adopted this policy you need to follow the policy furthermore that organization wouldn't have been camped out on one of our newer campuses for the last 112 or 12 years if the state hadn't taken over that school based on poor School scho performance scores that school should not be in the recovery School District The Recovery School District was a colossal failure Al those schools

181should return to local control the solution is not to help their bottom line by letting them experiment with elementary school children democracy is important in the absence of a compelling overwhelming argument to let a private organization run a school you should turn down all these applications and with this one it's ridiculously simple just look at your policy that line number five they don't have the right score they weren't eligible to even ask this tell them no with an exclamation point Thank you thank you Dr fny other comments from the audience Anita Augustus and I'm going to stand before you and say when Kennelworth asked for to be a charter they knew that they had to raise the scores they knew what the conditions were don't give me excuses about you don't have the babies when

182you went into this business you knew what you were getting so to use that to give them our babies to experiment on is just unheard of we wouldn't do that in business why would we do it in the business of our children to be educated I suggest strongly that you follow our guidelines and vote no simple thank you Mr Augustus any other comments from the audience no seeing no other comments from the AUD oh there you go my apologies we we had a lot of people standing at the doorway so I assumed that they were coming up to speak um I I agree with Mr Howard these are children and the charter school systems or should I say the charter scam experiment has always made it a very point to discriminate against our children with

183disabilities and not allow them an entrance into any of their brick and mortar buildings when they do they wait until that October 1st deadline and then they tell the parents hey we realize we cannot service your child so back to EBR school system they come without the funding without the mfp funding that is needed to educate our children with disabilities cuz as we know the $122,000 is not enough to educate a child with a disability so what do we tell these schools I agree Miss Hazel reges whom I know and love is a beautiful person inside and out but that is not what is at that's not the question that's at hand right now the question at hand is do we accept this Charter their performance score rating would would impact and affect ours as

184a school district and system as a whole so we cannot allow that to Fall by the wayside especially when we are right now working on a strategic plan to actually help bring ours up second we do need to form some kind of committee because as I do realize there is no real truth middle school over in that area besides Liberty where there is no liberty so what can we do we can form a task force and see if this current Administration that we have spent so much money on can actually do the job of helping them to actually get to the performance go uh performance level that they should be and then embrace them coming back into our school system as a traditional school traditional middle school and when I say traditional I mean we

185eliminate the charter because we are make we are prostituting these kids out like it is nothing and I don't use that word lightly cuz that's exactly what it is when we are giving them kids out to collect a dollar that's the same thing as prostitution that's what we're doing we're prostituting kids out we the pimp and we need to stop cuz prostitution is not legal in Louisiana it is in in Las Vegas but not Louisiana so what I do ask that we do is we adopt a sustainable Community School model bring that school back in as a traditional public school once we once this Administration have proved themselves worthy of actually bringing that school in and we actually allow that school to directly feed Liberty where they is no Liberty high thank you so much

186thank you miss gley any other comments from the audience seeing none we go back we come back to the board Mr goday yes I would be very quick I just wanted to Echo what Mr Howard said uh nothing in you know I have been one of the big proponents of all kids are our kids and we work together on all of these so everything that I do and say and vote tonight is focused basically and solely upon what is the best what I think is the best for the outcomes of the kids so I applaud what Mr uh board member trell Howard said and I I hope that we all keep that in mind and that we don't let Inu window and and false beliefs because I've Heard lots of statements said that I from

187the data I've seen really can't be backed up but it's myths that are out there but I'm only looking at this an individual School in an individual case and going what do I think fits the best needs of students and what do I think best fits the needs for the students in our entire District thank you thank you Mr goday um vice president Collins I assume that um this would be cost neutral but I want to confirm the reason why I'm assuming it would be cost neutral is because they're asking for a grade ch that's not a Miss blunch question she looking like I don't know that's that's a Kelly Lopez question did we I I thought the superint when I asked about a fiscal note I think the information was prepared and I'm just

188I don't think I'm catching your way uh off guard how much would this particular Charter cost again my assumption but I want to confirm is that since they talking about a letter grade change did not complete a fiscal note for the the upcoming Charters we prepared a fiscal for the current Charters that we have and the growth through 2425 okay but with any Charter you will pay a cost you will pay the entire mfp per student and a poral of your local taxation which is inclusive of your property and your sales tax to both the general fund and then your propositions and the approximate cost um you're looking at about $4,300 for your mfp and currently it's about 7,000 7275 for your local it goes up and down based upon what you actually come in

189they in February they the ldoe sums it up and gives you a final costing based upon what you actually brought in you start with an estimate so a rounded down concern you're looking about $112,000 a child all right thank you okay that's it than thank you thank you vice president Collins uh Mr beloo thank you and I uh just wanted to say I appreciate all of the uh corresponden I received from uh people supported of uh Kennelworth and there's a lot of enthusiasm um which I appreciate uh and it's not lost on me how difficult uh to succeed at with a middle school only without a fe feeder School uh um the fact is uh as has been pointed out we uh passed a charter policy a couple of years ago and and if we

190were looking at a renewal of an existing uh Charter uh in our district uh it wouldn't qualify Kenworth would not qualify for Renewal and for us if um we were to approve this application I I think it would make our our current Charter policy meaningless so I uh do plan to uh uh vote uh to approve the U recommendation of Miss blanchie thank you Mr Blue uh Mr lannis thank you president uh tamman I'll try to be as brief as possible first I want to thank Miss Katie blunt I try to as much as possible always highlight you this is my former Middle School principal I think I say that a lot but you are so appreciated because you are very fair and balanced in your evaluations all the time and I just want to

191thank you for that um I just wanted to be clear because I didn't want to come as any shock but I too uh sympathize like uh my boy colleague Mr Howard tonight I will not be voting for any uh chter on any chart of application for several reasons and it is not because these are not great organizations I will not negate that it has nothing to do with that at all but more about the work that we're trying to put in inside of our district to right size and do the right things on behalf of the district because that's what we have been beholden to or what we need to be beholden to uh I think somebody already said it I too was once an employee of Kenworth so I have again nothing against that

192program uh all of these schools are serving kids as a former educator who has served in uh private settings Charter School settings as well as traditional settings every child deserves to be accepted as one of our own uh but this is the realization as of right now we are currently working through a strategic plan to try to right siize our district we're currently working through a facilities plan to try to rightsize the buildings that are under our Authority and currently we are in negotiations with the state to try to return typ five Charters back to our district and we still have no understanding as a board how that would impact our budget as well as our district now I say all that to say that in this time we cannot put the court before the

193horse and the reason why is because we need to know how this is going to impact our teacher Workforce as well as our student enrollment because that's how mfp dollars are allocated the mfp funding is allocated this is why the Strategic plan is vitally important that is vitally important that we complete that plan and that we get it before our board so we understand what it is that we're working with and exactly what direction we're going in and I think this also uh comes back to the point because over a year ago Mr Howard I'm sorry board member Howard was the one who said we need to start implementing rfqs before accepting All U sorry applications so that we have a better understanding of what are the needs of our district as it regards Charter

194Schools I think that we need to revisit that and I think that there needs to become an actual policy that we Implement and follow through on using rfqs putting those things out so that we have a thorough understanding of what it is that we're accepting before we try to accept them so I just want to be clear on that again nothing against any of these schools I'm sure they are phenomenal but we have to do what is best for the district and before we can do what's best for our district we have to understand what is best for our district thank you thank you Mr lannis uh Miss W Jackson thank you president t um uh thank you Mr lanis you um you covered a lot of the points that that I was going to

195make so I'm only going to make one and that is around the charter school policy that we worked very long and hard on and um there's always going to be uh organizations that come up that will not fit the policy and um but we we have to follow we want to follow this policy and I am going to follow this policy this evening uh regardless of how how I feel about uh any of these schools but at this at at this particular time about Kenworth I really like korth's um focus and uh I like where where they are uh but nevertheless um our policy requires that they have a be or hire for existing schools and um also even though they're not asking to um to add a school they're they're asking to increase um

196the the reach to uh at least add Elementary um and even under our guidelines they would have to have um a b or higher or C with a with a progress letter grade of an A and um it just doesn't it doesn't fit so um I I would recommend that we follow the recommendation of the um third party evaluator that we were required to do to have in place by uh the state thank you thank you Miss where Jackson Miss di I'll be very brief um but I was in favor of Us coming up with the guidelines because I felt like it could help to uh remove emotion from our decisions and make them on clear guidelines and uh so this is really um one of the first times that we're being challenged to really

197look at our guidelines and see how uh they match with the uh applicant and um this just doesn't match and so um we've kind of known this for a few years that we were heading down this path and um and it's unfortunate um but I too believe that at this moment in time this is the guidelines that we have to work with these are the guidelines that we have to work with and um I was part of the board our board who approved these guidelines and so we did it for a very specific reason and so uh I just needed to state that thank you thank you Miss D Mr Howard thank you president s and I'll be very brief as well um just to make some some final remarks and just kind of carry

198over into we as we go into consideration of our other two applications um first first thing I've heard a lot about numbers and what the money allocations are are are doing and what happens when we open new Charters but one of the things that I think that we don't do in EBR very well is is self-accountability Charter Schools exist um in in a form of however you feel about them but parents choose to send their kids to these particular schools so at some point the question needs to be what are we doing as a district where so many people are choosing to go elsewhere there's a lot of things that happen in this District that we are not accountable for but we are very quick to turn the head to turn our head and speak

199about how charter schools are existing you don't have to like them you don't have to love them you can hate them you can be anti whatever but we have to take some self-accountability to figure out why our families are choosing other options because at the end of the day they're not zoned to a charter school they have to go themselves fill out an application and do that Statewide the average ACT score for a black student in this District in this state is a 16.5 there is things that schools and districts are doing that are not accountable for schools and families so while we can bicker and debate about Charter versus non-charter we have to utilize this particular opportunity as a self-accountability metrics if you take away our selective admission schools in EBR we're failing kids

200that has nothing to do with a charter has nothing to do with anything we EBR are fing kids if you take away every single a selective admission school so at some point this needs to be a gut check I've sit in central office every day and some of the foolishness that occurs within our district so we have to be accountable we spend money every single day with no evaluations we're just selling it out we got people taking money from this pot to that's supposed to be a part we're doing things that we need to be accountable for so we we we're we're quick to hold charers accountable but we have to utilize this opportunity as a gut check so that we as a district can do better so that families can stay and choose our

201district thank you Mr Howard M vice president Collins I just want to say that I wholeheartly 200% agree with what my colleague just said uh we do need to hold all pieces accountable including ourselves um it's very important point that he made and uh I'm in full agreement with my colleague um that being said we do have to be phisically responsible um we do have to do our due diligence as a board thank you thank you vice president Collins the board is clear um the motion on the table is to follow the evaluator's recommendation to deny the charter application a vote Yes is to deny a vote no is to not deny and U Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote president T would you please repeat that a vote Yes is to deny

202a vote I did yeah vote Yes is to deny the motion on the floor is to yeah will you yeah everybody oh no for now I'm going to let me just do this again since we yeah we have the mo you're the motion is to accept the recommendation to deny the Ken War science technology so if you vote Yes you are voting to deny deny the application everybody good the motion carries thank you um we now are if it's okay with you we'll do it the same way um if Miss blanchie would um give us her evaluation on item number four I'll read it in discussion consideration of Baton Rouge Discovery Charter School application and related matters Miss bluni um thank you uh president tapman and thank you for your kind comments Mr lannis I

203do appreciate that our second applicant is Baton rge Discovery Academy they plan to open in 2023 24 they will have prek through 4 at start the enrollment would be 820 students at scale they would have prek through eight with 1,444 students the mission is to provide a rigorous learning environment where students achieve academically develop intellectual curiosity and practice environmental responsibility while exploring Health Sciences topics the East benri Parish School System will launch Pathways to Bright Futures excuse me in 2022 23 an opportunity that will connect students to high skills High wage high demand jobs aligned to local area Industries students can earn an associate degree or industry credentials in the following areas technology construction and Manufacturing transportation and Logistics and liberal arts and management of particular interest is medical and Premed the areas of study

204will include registered nurse Premed CNA Allied Health Care the industry Partners would include Our Lady of the Lake excuse me Franciscan Health Ministries universities baton R General oxner Health and Acadian Ambulance Glen Oaks Magnet High School serves students in grades 6 through 12 this high school offers AP classes dual enrollment magnet offerings and three centers of excellence including the medical magnet Health Sciences sports medicine and radio broadcasting acmis which prepare students for high demand high- wage occupations this school also offers El and ESS support an excellent Athletic program and boths the EBR counselor of the Year miss Murray the EBR Career and Technical education center offers high-wage high demand careers to students in 9 through 12 in the medical field among others they can earn certification in pre- nursing emergency medical technicians and in addition

205ctec offers dual enrollment and the ability to earn an associate degree while in high school basis Baton Rouge currently serves students in K through 4 and according to their website focuses on the Deep knowledge base necessary for students to tackle a demanding curriculum basis Baton Rouge is in partnership with Women's Hospital and therefore the application for Baton Rouge Discovery Academy presents nothing new and Innovative for the district as required by bulletin 126 other items of Interest the curriculum chosen for the pre for the proposed school is not tier one during the interview the discovery team indicated that the curriculum that they're using works well for them assessments for the proposed School are not tier one if the partnership between Discovery and oxner is finalized oxner would have 50% of the seats as a corporate sponsor

206employees of the school regardless of home address would have access to the remaining seats making the proposed School a type two Charter a location for the proposed school has not yet been selected during the interview the discovery team indicated they're looking at vacant private school property near the health healthc care district for the proposed school it's my recommendation that you deny this application thank you Miss bluni um I'd like to invite uh the applicants uh to come up and same as before um we'll give you you know we'll give everybody 10 minutes to make uh your presentation good evening there yes good evening Dr NES and EBR board members I'm Patty Glazer I'm the founding head of school for Discovery Health Sciences Academy I'm here tonight to support the Baton Rouge Discovery Charter application we're

207excited to bring Discovery schools to Baton Rouge we currently educate 2400 students in Jefferson Parish this coming year in 2122 we'll educate 2700 students with 2,000 students on our wait list we're an open enrollment SCH Charter School in 2019 we educated 72% economically disadvantaged for % sped students and have maintained an AB academic rating since our opening in 2013 Discovery subgroup performance in all subgroups exceeds district and state performance we offer a wide array of clubs and sports for our students in this past year with all of the many challenges of Co we provided oncampus instruction for 2,000 students only pivoting virtual learning when local data was significant which was approximately 3 to 4 weeks total Discovery also ran a virtual school by request of parents as they are our partners for 400 students this

208year due to covid I'm proud of our performances past year in regard to honoring academic minutes and students needs while keeping faculty safe our academic performance is excellent I'll wrap around services are exceptional and our Health Sciences Mission from prek through 12th makes Discovery unique and Innovative I urge you to support the creation of the Baton Rouge Discovery Health Sciences Academy thank you very much thank you Miss Glazer let me Begin by saying good evening to the EBR School Board superintendent NIS fellow Educators families and constituents of East Baton Rouge my name is Dr Jesse Watson founding principal of kener Discovery Health Sciences Academy over the past eight years Discovery schools has grown Leaps and Bounds while remaining a high demand and high performing school since year 1 in 2013 a supportive School culture has

209been an integral piece of the success of our Network by increasing connectedness within the school increasing engagement improving student academic performance honor endurance academic achievement responsibility and tolerance those are our core values and are the heartbeat of Discovery schools we have inspired and engaged professional faculty and staff who ensure our students Thrive have a safe and supportive environment that nurtures students growth and also have a strong strong social emotional skills uh to be positive and engaged participants in their learning we pride ourselves on having a welcoming environment when you think of essential characteristics of a positive School culture some if not all of the following may come to mind strong relationships being a foundation High academic expectations and strong supports consistency with the expectations both academ mic and cultural regular collection of feedback on surveys

210and questionnaires where our student and faculty as well as parent feedback has consistently been uh both uh helpful both qualitative and quantitative for our school environment and also how we improve it these are all facets of Discovery schools and there's also data that may not reflect on a survey the smiles and students faces as they step off the buses in the morning the Delight seen on students and parents faces as they're welcome in carpool also a fist bump preco or air high five many of us have adjusted to during social distancing we simply do what's best for children and what aligns with our school's Mission Discovery schools is second to none and would be an excellent open enrollment education option for school for families in East Baton Rouge I strongly encourage you each board member

211to carefully consider your thoughts and actions and vote in favor of authorizing Discovery schools to be a type one shorter within East Baton rot Parish Schools school system also each and every one of you board members as well as superintendent you're welcome to visit any one of our campuses to get a snapshot of learning and action thank you for your time thank you Mr Watson uh good evening to The Honorable board and Dr narcis my name is Natalie Newton I'm the director of strategic development for Discovery schools so I have served as the uh Charter contact Charter application contact um I also work with our teams for admissions and Communications at Discovery schools um I'm a former board member for Discovery Health Sciences Foundation um and there is here to just talk about our mission

212to homeg grown Future healthc Care Professionals in addition I'm a founding parent of Discovery schools um and the choice that I made I know I heard that word used earlier um to send my children there even before they had doors to open was one of the best decisions I've ever made for our family um I'm simply here to show Heart to show support for our school and to address any questions or concerns you may have related to those roles that I've served at Discovery and also to thank you for your consideration this evening thank you Miss Newton um okay so do we have a [Music] motion um would do you move okay we have a motion by Miss wear Jackson to accept the um evaluator recommendation to deny is there a second Miss Bernard I'm

213seeing no questions or comments from the board uh oh I'm sorry go ahead sorry I uh because of family relationships uh with Ashner Health um Administration I will recuse myself from thank you Mr goday thank you um okay seeing no uh other questions or comments from the board uh is anyone in the audience wish to speak on uh this item number four good evening board members and superintendent naris my name is Tanisha Ellis and I'm speaking to you on behalf of the Baton Rouge area Chamber we're asking the board to support the district moving forward and accepting a proven high quality and per High performing School we're asking the board to make a student driven decision that's in the best interest of our students and community and we be V important to boosting our talent

214pipeline bra bra supports school choice and believes the board should give parents the choice to have their students experience this phenomenal school again bra is seeking the board support to approve the highquality school with a proven track record of success thank you thank you uh good evening board my name is Caroline RoR and you often hear from me as the executive director of the Louisiana Charter School Association but tonight I'm standing here as a resident of Baton Rouge and a proud mom of an eth grader uh I know Discovery School personally um not only because it's a charter school but because I have visited it visited it a number of times um I'm told that none of you have visited the school I'm told that no one from your Administration has visited the school and

215I'm telling you it is a phenomenal place it's a place where over 1,500 families are trying to get get in through the waiting list the people that run that school are some of the best Educators in the state Dr Patty Glazier is someone that I would entrust the most important person in my life to my son I wish Discovery was here and I'm very sad that you all did not take more time to go learn about that school and see it I've heard what you've said tonight it's it's all about your vision and what's to come and I'm telling you you are missing out on a fantastic school that people in this city would be hugely excited over I hope that you get your plan together soon it took you 20 years to get your

216policy so I hope your vision comes within the next few months but I'm telling you you've made a mistake on this one if you pass on it thank you thank you Mr rommer any other comments from the audience I think you'd be wise to follow your expert's recommendation and deny this um I I like Mr Lan's comments not too many moments ago about let's get your own system organized see if there's a need if there is then maybe somebody can provide it but as a taxpayer and a voter I have a big problem with the concept that a bunch of people from mety and ker can do a better job of educating Baton Rouge kids than the folks we elected so furthermore I did a little bit of research and it looks as though their

217um second High School the one with Mr oxer's name in it is in violation of the requirement that they serve a particular portion of poor kids my reading of it is the Jefferson Parish is 85% educ um economically disadvantaged and that school appears to have 60% if they really have that long a waiting list they shouldn't be serving only relatively wealthy kids same problem as basis don't perpetuate that by having yet another exclusive privately operated publicly funded school that excludes poor kids and special ed kids so I think you're on the right path to deny this application thank you thank you Dr Finny great evening and I love that everybody from Kenna discovery had to read off their cell phones because that meant that they had nothing Innovative or nothing actually honest to say about

218their actual school if you want to speak to parents of children with disabilities that have actually attended Ken of Discovery I will definitely put you in touch with them so that they can let you know personally how Ken of Discovery has failed children with disabilities this is a school that is actually designed to only house the CH the the majority of the children of staff from Asner that's what it said 50% of the staff 50% of the seats would be uh children whose parents are employed with Ashner the irregardless of where they live irregardless that mean there's a selective admissions selective admissions is not something that we can have EBR school system traditional Public Schools does not have that same luxury so why should we allow that if Miss Roma would like to say something

219positive about Kenner Discovery then it should be that they have failed to service the children with disabilities that is a very well-known documented fact and I don't expect her to say anything that would be that would say something wrong against the charters considering she's the president of the charter Association if I had to give an analogy since people did not like my term with prostitution I would use a plantation Canada Discovery is nothing short of a modern-day Plantation now you get to decide on who the who the master is and who the slaves are but for sure I don't have to come up here and read off of my cell phone to tell you anything great about EBR traditional public schools and I don't have to tell you I don't have to read off my

220cell phone to tell you anything bad about Kenna Discovery it is an Abomination and it is nothing short of a civil rights violation that's exactly what it is and if they continue to violate those children with disabilities like they do with seclusions and restraints then it would definitely be another another uh problem that's why Congress is currently looking at keeping our children safe in schools partially because of Ken of Discovery thank you so much thank you Miss Corley any other comments from the audience name is Raymond Alman voter uh resident and homeowner in District 4 uh I'm coming I mean it's almost amazing uh to be talking about an open enrollment school that's a b and you have a consideration not to approve it I've heard some you know members talking about the um percentage

221of lowincome students at a school such as this there is only a handful of schools not many of them open enrollment that kids and parents are really clamoring to go to an East Baton Rouge Parish did you know of those schools right uh the ones that are highly rated that parents want to go to we don't have a lot of lwi income students there Baton Rouge high 35% per our definition right you're talking about this Charter definition of lowincome students did you know also sharew middle 49% 49% of low income students per this definition right that you're talking about and all of these schools Mayfair and we can talk about numbers right and and they're not asking to be like no low-income students but the more opportunity we give kids to reach their absolute genius

222they'll do it and we need more opportunity nobody can like give us that and you can't say it's about lowincome students uh and them not serving low-income students because our schools our low-income students don't have the seats black boys less than 20% in most all of these schools Westell Heights all of the schools you know people want to get in like we're not in the schools we don't have the opportunity to go to the schools you can ask parents and so they make other choices this is a great choice I've known Jesse for years and he didn't ask me to speak mean I don't work for them but it's an opportunity for him to come back home or for them to to take what they've learned to be a b school open enrollment no test

223like our magnet schools so somebody's hollering you know a percentage but you have to get a test to get into sharewood this is not a test right and so no matter what your percentage is kids are going to take advantage fam's going to take advantage if they want to and so you should you know give them an opportunity and hopefully if you don't the state will and kids will go I wasn't going to say anything because I don't know enough background on the school itself so I didn't feel um that I should say something um though I do know Miss blanchie and I trust her word impeccably um up there with Miss Crawford if she says something okay um but I I I will say that you know from the report it appears that they

224should have applied for a type two Charter and that would probably be approved because of the children they would be servicing not saying anything about the job that they are doing because I do not know about that oh and also Raymond almond is not registered to vote nor does he live in that house in District 4 thank you any other comments from the audience seeing no other comments from the audience we're back to the board any comments or questions from the board Miss Collins vice president Collins um being consistent I'm looking at the enrollment numbers the first year um based on what Miss Lopez was explaining at 820 students times an approximate 12,000 that would be a $9 million additional deficit to the board again everything is not pure dollars and cents but in the

225context of us already facing deficit is important to take note um and that's not going up to uh the total enrollment requesting at capacity it would be a $17 million deficit to the board and I just wanted to lift that up thank you thank you Miss [Music] Collins Miss Dyson I just want to make sure that I understand a few things um can can someone just reiterate to me um the numbers that they are um asking to serve up to um is I'm I'm looking Miss punie do you have that information I think I had it at one time but I just would like to I think it's 750 from prek to through eight it's prek through 4 at start with 820 students and then at scale it's prek through eight prek through four is

226820 to start yes okay and then it's scale it's prek through with 1,444 students okay and just the one site yes ma'am okay okay thank you um so I've been watching this um baton R baton rou health district for a number of years and watching um the um I I've I've been very interested in the whole concept and think I definitely support a school partnering in with that whole uh health district um I do believe um I know years and years ago we had other medical um magnets and a really large program at um belir that was highly highly successful um through um through uh mediation and all that was done with the deseg that was moved and so it's you know not in a very centralized area as this would probably be and I

227just feel like there are big numbers of students that are not being offered educational opportuni ities close to home in our district and I've said that for decades and it's hard for me not to um to want for all students every single family across our district to have access and um I'm fully supportive of our superintendent and what he has already been doing working seven days a week long long hours for the past past four or five months and I know that we can't take a new superintendent and expect the kind of change that we so need um any more rapidly than he is trying to promote and I I wholeheartedly appreciate the Vigor and enthusiasm and tireless energy um and as we design our plans we've got to become more proactive and I do

228believe we are in a position to become more proactive um because we have someone who wants us to be and is not accepting just the status quo and I so much appreciate it um but I don't know that we are going to be in a position to um I even had a meeting that I brokered with uh the past um CEO of um Woman's Hospital and uh it's a few blocks from one of our high schools and I tried and this was even before um basis uh I even knew basis was building there and I really tried to encourage a partnership so that our students at our nearby um High School could come and do volunteer hours at the hospital I've I've done everything I know to do and I've been watching this health district

229and we unfortunately didn't have a superintendent who was as eager to be Innovative and be out of the box thinking when um so we've lost some ground and we're trying now to catch back up and I just I have a hard time when I see the stats um not supporting opportunities for all students and so I do have a question um about the now we've done it with basis and that uh different contract with that hospital Partnership of with their their employees um so that has happened but um what I'm not understanding is the other the employees of the school regardless of home address um that part I don't understand because I don't think that's happening at basis because I understand that that it would be required to be a chart type two Charter if

230it was going to take a regional approach of acceptance of students um and so I'm a little bit confused as to is this really an application for a type one or is it going to be Regional please yeah it's a type one charter application uh if the board were to approve this the contract and the law requires type ones to only draw from with within the geographic boundaries of the district so the contract would reflect uh what's required by law mhm so the difference is if it's a type one it's only going to pull from EBR school system lines that's correct um if it is rejected by us and if they chose to go to the state and then a type two could make it a regional concept but in their application they wanted to

231be Regional the way that it's worded in this um evaluation summary it says employees of school regardless of home address would have access making this a type two Charter so I'm confused I can't speak to the intent of the applicant I can only say that if this is approved as a type one charter it's it's the the Geographic boundaries are uh the limits for uh student population so miss blanchie can you explain this in bold your sentence in bold here I just am trying to get some clarity here well and I I I appreciate the question I'm uh agree with what um Mr shamlin said it is all spelled out in the it has to be what I'm saying is it needs to be spelled out in the contract that it is a type one

232charter and only students who reside in East B Parish would be allowed to attend so you're saying in their application they actually used the verbiage that no that's my verbiage okay so they didn't say that they wanted to um regardless of home address correct oh my my concern is that it is a possibility and that need that when the contract is up or when the contract is designed it needs to sayate specifically that it's a type 1 chter with only students from East bent Parish so I guess I'm just trying to ask then the intent in the application I'm just wondering why this got brought up about the home address regardless of home address was there something in the application that made us think that they really did prefer a regional um plan not to

233my would y'all like to um speak to your preference here between Orleans and Jefferson parishes if a teacher teaches in one Parish or the other there's a tagalong policy that is complimentary for both it rarely happens but if a parent is working at the school the child can then go to the school there's I mean there's very few faculty kids you know they don't make up the majority of our school by any any way shape or form they take a couple of seats at every grade level if we partner with Auer like we did for the Dr John Auer school which will eventually be 750 seats when it's fully grown auctioner gets 50% of the seats according to the state law for a charter corporate contract the corporation can get 50% of the seats no

234matter where the employee lives because they are an employee of that Corporation okay so and state law also requires to apply to the district first which we did and we did in good spirit I'm not sure why the employee thing came up because I I think it applies to two students at our school and just the it's a a reverse policy the tag along between Orleans and Jefferson an understood policy because people cross Parish lines to work okay thank you very much you're um Mr shamlan so um we don't have any um like neighboring districts that agree to um to take our students or us take theirs do we to my knowledge no ma'am we don't all right so that requires a district to District uh agreement I believe so yes ma'am yeah okay all

235right thank you very much um thank you Miss Dion missw Jackson thank you president tatman U I have a couple of concerns um as far far as the um the services that are provided there are a lot of repeat services in the application and um although I I I support um more schools in that particular area um I think that as a as a district we need to um we need to really get on the ball with providing these types these schools ourselves instead of having another another entity come in and duplicate some of the services that we already have in our strategic plan and we already have in the district um thinking particularly about the services that ctec provides and U so I have a bit of difficulty with with this um with this

236application and also the the um going through the same types of um obstacles we're we're fing with uh the seats you know the some of the questions that Miss Dion just just presented you know whether whether these whether the students that are served will be students within the district and whether this this school is more or less uh a type two rather than in description rather than uh a type one so I just wanted to express my concerns and um and that's that's basically it thank you very much thank you Miss where Jackson Mr Howard just wanted to to lift up for a point of clarity the the intent of the the intent of Kindom discover whatever it is like they're coming to us for a reason like if they're applying to be a type

237one charter school in order for them to even go through the process of becoming a type two they have to go through this process first so I don't necessarily under like clarify like they have to come here first regardless of irregardless of what type and the regional things if they come here and we would to approve them they would be a type one charter school so just a point of clarity um it's a part of the process as we determine these applications thank you Mr Howard you press the button again you want to talk again no I'm just kidding with you thank you it's getting late um okay the board is clear the uh motion is to accept the recommendations of the evaluator and deny the application uh a vote Yes is to deny Madame

238secretary please conduct the vote please vote the motion carries we now move to item K5 U Miss blune discussion consideration of Great Hearts of Baton Rouge School application and related matters our third applicant is Great Hearts Baton Rouge 1 two and three the mission of the school is to cultivate the minds and hearts of students through the pursuit of Truth goodness and Beauty Great Hearts based in Phoenix Arizona seeks to open three schools in Baton Rouge Great Hearts 1 seeks to open in 2022 23 with 664 students in grades K through 7 at scale the proposed school would have 1,456 students in G grades K through 12 Great Hearts 2 would be the same demographics and open in Great Hearts 3 would open in 2027 28 with the same demographics making the total number of

239students enrolled in greatart schools in Baton Rouge 4,368 in nine greatart schools located in Texas the average percent of economically disadvantaged students is 22% greatart States in their application that they'll choose to take 40% economically disadvantaged students inclusive of 8% ESS and 5% in the proposed School bulletin 126 requires that Charter Schools must enroll a percentage of economically disadvantaged and ESS students that is at least 85% of the average of the school district where the charter resides the applicant does not meet this Criterion during the interview the great heart team indicated that school two would not open until school one was a success financials however indicate School two will be built in year two and year three and school three will be built in year four the curriculum for the proposed school is not tier

240one the assessments for the proposed School are not tier one according to information provided in the interview core teachers are typically not certified only 40% of the K5 grade level teachers at the greatart schools are certified the goal of the organization is to hire liberal arts majors and allow them to be power professionals as a year for training teachers are evaluated on a short cycle with the rubric created by Great Hearts and does not align with the ldoe approved curriculum I'm sorry evaluation tool which is compass dual enrollment courses will not be offered industry-based certification courses will not be offered jumpstart 2.0 will not be offered International balarat will not be offered Center for aerosol impacts on chemistry courses at cic will not be offered two advanced placement courses will be offered in physics and

241calculus the proposed school has no track record of partnering with local school districts for these reasons I recommend that you deny the application to Great Hearts one two and three thank you Miss punie I I would invite uh Great Hearts of Baton Rouge one two and three representatives to uh make a presentation and then you have 10 minutes please um thank you well thank you very much president tapman and to the board and to superintendent naris for letting us be here today and and thank you to miss blune we have some responses to some of her points about our application I have some other members of the application team that will also come up and address our program my name is Dr Daniel scogan I have a 25-year career in education as a teacher a

242coach a principal and co-founder of our nonprofit organization nonprofit at all levels great heartsmy and it's been the joy of my life to bring a classical liberal arts education to kids and students students young men and women from all backgrounds the overall point regarding Great Hearts the core purpose of Great Hearts is to unlock the potential of every child I've heard the board speak to that point tonight every child we are a a student scholar centered organization every decision we make is focused on our children and how we can serve them better and better every day and we think a classical liberal arts education that teaches deep critical thinking through the Socratic method a beautiful liberal arts curriculum is the best way to unlock the potential of every child we serve when um I would

243also point out that our schools are deeply inclusive we Define ourselves not by who we exclude by who we include in a classical liberal arts curriculum so we'd like to talk about that as well our goals for the school in serving all scholars in Baton Rouge when we met with superintendent naris several months ago he was very kind to take a meeting from us he said what's your Innovation how you how would you add value to the parish we are Innovative there is not an open enrollment classical liberal arts school in the parish we are bringing a deep Innovation that does not exist we think that's very important to note secondly the location of the school we seek to locate our first campus in the south portion of the parish where the demographic and and

244census track analysis clearly show there's a lack of open enrollment School especially in middle school and high school we will bring Scholars back into the parish into this academic program it's not a zero sum game it's addition it's multiplication together we can partner to add more kids into the parish by bringing them back in because they haven't had an option so that we think that's a very important point it's addition not a zero sum game of just a set amount of students we will add to the enrollment overall in in in the parish lastly I just like to point out results Great Hearts has a 20year track record of exceptional academic results in our schools in Arizona Texas we have 33 schools our low-income students outperform significantly outperform the state averages our average SAT score

245and this goes across thousands of graduates is 1250 public enrollment School ACT score 28 with hard work with partnership we can deliver that here in Baton too to graduates from these acmy so to close the reason that I believe you should Pro approve our Charter application today is that we will be a unique Innovative and value ad partner to the work that the parish is doing that's our sole purpose in applying for this Charter to serve kids it's at the center of our organization so thank you for listening to these opening remarks I want to go a little bit further president tman with this these 10 minutes minutes and and answer a couple of of of Miss bl's comments uh just to round out the context of our application so I'd like to call up

246our VP of curriculum Mr Jake tnie to talk about our curriculum as a as a tier one you have about six minutes left so go right ahead yeah it's all your time yes sir uh thank you president tapman board members it's such a delight to be here uh my name is Jake T I'm the vice president of curriculum for Great Hearts and wanted just to speak a little bit to that since that was called into question by the third party evaluator I the the classical model is something very near and dear to my heart really what we're seeking is to to bring the very best curriculum the very best pedagogy uh to to all students We Believe fundamentally with Mortimer Adler that the best education is the best education for all uh at the same

247time we remain open to Innovation we remain open to improvements of our curriculum as we look at our highly successful curriculum uh we it it meets or exceeds all the criteria that's laid out by uh the Department of Education for Louisiana uh in its description of of what it means to be tier one uh what we do is we offer the best that's been said the best that's been written what the model that we're offering really is the education of Cicero the education of Abraham Lincoln and the education of Martin Luther King Jr and and we fundamentally believe that what we're doing what is so Innovative is we're taking a model that has been really regulated to to private schools and we're bringing it to all students and we have a proven track record of

248success with this uh our our special education students are achieving at near the state average the general average uh re very near the state average in both states that we operate for economically disadvantaged students they're exceeding the state average exceeding the state average by 10 to 15 points and we do this consistently and our students graduate after having having having experienced the model and go off to the all sorts of universities around the country and and they're remarkably successful and one of the things we're most proud of is not not only are they they uh getting into the colleges and getting the scholarship money but they're they're remaining there and they're graduating from college this is the model that we want to bring to Baton Rouge and I'll just say very personally and closing there

249are two things that that I love that are near and dear to my heart one is Public District education I spent 12 years uh teaching in a public District school I'm the son of of Educators uh son of Public District Educators one is is Public District education the is classical education I am very excited about the opportunity to have a true partnership to bring those two worlds of my career uh together as we think about coming to Baton Rouge so thank you so much thank you thank you Jake and just a couple other points regarding um what what Miss plune said in our Charter we're very clear that we will meet the 85% requirement in the first year we talked about that 40% of low income as we build out our transportation plan in the

250South part of the parish we're right near gardier we also would seek to open three campuses including campuses in North Baton Rouge regarding teacher certification we will have certified sped teachers but as you know Charter Schools need not have certified teachers we hire teachers with master's degrees in math phds in literature who are deep subject level experts that we train within ourm to deliver a great curriculum to close I may just president tapman just if I have more time I'd like to invite Dana Henry from our community outreach team to just come up and say a few words about how we will bring the school to the community thank you members of the board for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Great Hearts team um there's there's three reasons why um why I

251decided to be a part of the Great Hearts team not just as a as an attorney in general counsel but also as a person who's worked in public education advocacy since 2013 um I was fortunate enough in 2018 to work for the Urban League of Louisiana uh and we did a education Equity report for Baton Rouge and as I talked to the Great Hearts team about them coming and knowing the options that many of the scholars and families need in East Baton Rouge Parish there's three three big data points that stick out of why we need true options like Great Hearts a unique learning experience in the parish the first one is African-American students according to our Equity report of Urban League in 2018 were underrepresented in a schools 52% of African-American students in East

252Baton rou Parish attended a d or F school first reason why we need a great Hearts type school second reason 53 out of 98 schools were rated drf by the Louisiana Department of Education in 2018 another reason why we need options in this parents for struggling parents who don't want to submit their kids to the school to prison Pipeline and the third reason 23,46 students 47.5% of students in East Batton rou Parish attended a drf school but yet we talk about potential Financial hits against the district those parents don't have time to wait for vision setting and strategic plans every day that we deny qualified applicants based upon the criteria laid out by the state we are perpetuating a school of prison pipeline so I employ you consider consider overruling the recommendation of the evaluator

253so these 23,46 kids can actually have a shot at a real life once they get outside of Baton Rouge well thank you president tman and board and that concludes our opening remarks thank you Dr scogan um we will now um so we can do this uh I would like to get a motion okay um Miss Bernard to I would like to move that we um approve Great Hearts Baton Rouge thank you Mr Blue Miss [Music] Collins what caused the um curriculum to be labeled not tier one miss I think miss bluni that question is for you yes ma'am and with that question I had help from the uh from the East Benish Parish School System there are certain career curriculum that are rated tier one or tier 2 or tier three and I relied on

254the help of um uh Dr rutage to help me with that decision in the the uh my basic on because I'm not a academician no not educator tier one there's a certain amount of rigor Etc yes ma'am tier two is less riger tier three okay um and then and so there was no way to have some kind of correlation with what they do to show I'm just you know he offered a different perspective and I'm just making sure I understand right the curriculum would have to be put side by side with certain criteria from the State Department of Education I didn't have access access to the curriculum so uh that was not possible okay I just know that they don't they are not tier one all right and and which is a certain level of

255rigor okay thank you um and again in the spirit of being uh consistent uh with the initial uh enrollment at 664 that would be 7.9 million and then the C the uh Max and at 1456 would be 17.4 million uh dollars and um uh the superintendent uh did a press release Etc uh a couple of earlier this week about some um plans for the district I think uh superintended one thing that would be important because magnet schools come up a lot and I some of the points I totally agree with and some of the points I've been educated to with some details and look at it differently and I just suggest to the superintendent that um as he moves forward with his plans that because a lot of people are saying things including myself all

256right and as he presents his plan to move forward that there be some board education on details about certain aspects of um of our magnets for example uh sure some of our high performing high demand magnets don't require testing uh which is a misconception now some of them may require other things but people at least need to speak the same language when they explain you know um and and so people could be on one Accord as they discuss the different concerns and issues thank you thank you vice president Collins uh Miss D so um in the backup material I had read um and I see I had pulled up State aligned curriculum um is what they are proposing so it may not be tier one but um I don't know that we've had um I

257think we're kind of new to districtwide tier one and we're very hopeful that it's going to produce what we're um hoping to produce by uh standardizing that amongst our schools but um but I do think they are committed to a state aligned curriculum and um so I wanted to kind of point that out um one of the things that um I am uh aware of is that the application is as is but there is um from what I understand and please correct me if I'm wrong Mr shamin there is a a way to although the application is what it is to specify that in contract negotiations we would like to contemplate just the first school for now and um because there was um it was going to prove itself and then it was like but

258this is already in the second year and the fourth year and then so we might not have enough years of data to show what what it really is going to be doing and not only that but I would like us to be as um as they are saying that they would like us to be a true partnership I have actually encouraged another of our Charters to uh do do something that's not been done as far as a truer partnership and um that is with the aviation um Academy I would really like to see some of our now we're not talking about our and there and all of that but I'm saying our traditional students in our traditional schools that we may have one school that Partners um to get our students have those same kinds

259of opportunities they're very good at philanthropy there you know maybe we can this is what Charters are supposed to be is innovative and show us ways to provide uh other potentials that we may have difficulties doing but in partnership with them we may be able to to do some replication um so I am not uh 100% sure but I understand that that is um a doable thing to say that in contract negotiations we would contemplate the first school that they're um proposing and that we would then see where our vision has taken us how quickly we've been able to move and how quickly we've been able to develop a true trusting partnership with this Innovative Charter um and so I guess I'd have to hear that that would be a willingness um amongst both and

260and I would like to see if it is that we might could make that as a friendly to the original um motion uh I I get are you offering to make a friendly amendment to Miss Bernard's motion yes and I've asked a question first though just to make sure that in contract negotiations and I'm asking of our general counsel and of the applicants all right so the motion on the floor is to approve the application for three schools schools one two and three if the if that motion were to pass I would have to negotiate a contract for all three schools so my recommendation is a substitute motion if you intend is to only approve one school for the night a substitute motion to do just that or a friendly friendly Amendment M and seconded

261and if we've got willingness that that will would be a doable um yes yes ma'am let's take it one step at a time friendly Amendment I'm okay with it I guess it's a moot point if the applicant isn't interested in in that uh um Dr Scag could we get at least a little bit of feedback from you yes sir we're very interested in that amended motion cor thank you um so yeah yes ma'am but you accept you you is both both accept that okay so the motion is now has a friendly Amendment and it's for just one is that is it just uh okay motion to approve Great Hearts number one okay uh Miss Miss Bernard with the understanding that you all would have the opportunity to come back for two and three um okay

262and so I think I'm next up in the queue um I just wanted oops I just wanted to point out also that I'm not sure that the Iliad Shakespeare Milton and Frederick Douglas are tier one curriculum either so I don't really see that there is a problem with classical education I think one one thing one challenge for our board when comparing this this type of education to uh to our tiers one two and three um we maybe need a little education on what a classical education is Miss Collins and I both have undergraduate degrees in English Miss Dyson has a degree in Humanities as well um and maybe some others of us have the same type of education so we have maybe a little bit tiny bit of understanding but we there's more that we

263would like to know I would like to say that so um and I just really wanted to comment on that that I I don't want to slam your curriculum or your your programming because it isn't what our state calls tier one because I'm sure that all of your students are getting a rigorous education especially when your average ACT score is 28 that's very impressive thanks thank you Mr Bernard seeing no other comments or questions from the board for now we now go to the audience is anyone in the audience wish to speak to the motion on the floor um I really appreciate I think his name was Mr Henry's passion um okay so I have two liberal arts degrees from Purdue University one in English one in African-American studies I'm alternate certified um the vast

264majority of the stuff that your high performing schools use is not tier one tier one is low sorry everybody behind me um if I'm going to dumb down what I do sure I'll start using tier one um but Dr Robinson you didn't hear that um so I can get past them not using tier one um but I can't get past is the 40% being economically disadvantaged and even worse than that 5% being sped so that means you're going to discriminate against my child that means you're going to discriminate against kanda's child and I guarantee you she gonna come up here you don't get to pick and choose when you get in the business of Education there's no picking and choosing which students you serve the children who show up at your door you educate you

265love you push you move you make them who they're going to become you don't say oh no we've hit this limit of how many special ed students we're going to have you don't do that and by the way my special ed child at 13 years old got a 97.8 at Yale in the middle of a pandemic so y'all might want to take more special a students I love liberal arts education I also love democracy if you want to have classical education at a bunch of elementary middle and high schools go for it don't hire a corporation from Arizona or Texas to do it for you one thing my liberal arts education did for me is to recognize logical fallacies if their application says they're going to have 40% economically disadvantaged kids don't believe them when

266they change their mind and suddenly say they're going to meet the 85 standard basis isn't pretending to meet that they've been in violation their contract since day one don't do that again but I'm going to make this really easy for you aside from the fact that you shouldn't give a private Corporation an opportunity to use our tax money to buy a private school building that we're never going to get back and that they'll be able to sell to some other purpose when they lose their Charter again I have a handout because this is really really simple again from your board Charter policy very top of this page page 36 of the policy approved in August 15th of 2019 the board of directors of each Charter operator shall consist of no fewer than seven members this

267proposed Charter operator has either one or three members depending on which page of their application you read either there's one member and it's an out of state Corporation or there are three members two of whom live in town if they can't get this right assume they can't get anything right reject this application thank you hi Dana Henry again just to qualify that statement the actual law says that the board of directors has to be a minimum of seven at the time the charter contract is executed between the charter operator and the district my name Raymond almond voter resident homeowner taxpayer in District 4 um once again you know you're here complaining about schools and and you know what you offer to parents uh we need more choice in East Baton rou Parish you know we're

268you know talking about the percentage of economic develop uh economic disadvantaged children and that just doesn't mean black children uh because you have a lot of black families that are not economically disadvantaged did you know so black does not equal low income so let's get that straight and so at the end of the day there is not enough opportunity for black boys in the District Two of whom I have uh you cannot just walk into Sherwood Middle and Westdale and Mayfair you can't and most of the kids there are black I mean are not black and they're not disadvantage at all and so at the end of the day we need more opportunity the more people that go to other schools you know it's more seats and more Ava availability I mean I couldn't get

269my son into a magnet school in East Baton Rouge some 20 some years ago you know he graduated college last week right top is class at NYU in engineering and so it wasn't the opportunity for me to have to drive from monacello to u high for 12 years but I did it because I built a house in monacello and and and greenb was in F when I was there so I wasn't going to do that to my son KB Rob him of his future and so you have an opportunity to bring the performance up for the district give parents to shot at classical education I'm rarely in agreement with Miss Bernard but I agree with her on this one give them an opportunity to do something different um and yeah Valencia Johnson um I'm the

270president of the East BGE Parish Association of Educators and I would like to say to the board to be consistent you just spelled out that you want to make sure that the vision of the superintendent is uh comes into fruition you want to re-evaluate what you have be consistent the first two you deny this third one you're thinking about it be consistent say no we can offer those same things in our district that the Innovative Charters do we just need to set up the programming be consistent thank you good evening everyone I'm Maria Harmon with uh stepup Louisiana and also a constituent in District 8 and I would just like to read to you guys revised Statute 17 3972 which is in the State Constitution under title 17 and it reads it is the intent

271and purpose of charter schools to operate it is the intention of the legislature and enacting this chapter to authorize experimentation by City And Parish School boards by authorizing the creation of innovative kinds of independent public schools for students further it is the intention of the legislature to provide a framework for such experimentation by the creation of such schools and means for all persons with valid ideas and motivation to participate in the experiment and experiment and a mechanism by which experiment results can be analyzed the positive results repeated or replicated if appropriate and the negative results identified and eliminated finally it is the intention of the legislature that the best interest of students who are economically disadvantaged shall be the overriding consideration and implementing the Prov the provisions of this chapter that is in the first

272paragraph and as you can hear experimentation and state law has been said multiple times and what concerns me is the best practices piece I heard about the curriculum and it's just concerning to hear if this is not tier one or not and I feel like expectations got to be high for going to implement best practices why should we start at a lower level um no disrespect to anyone who has came up here to present their organization or their speak for their application but I'm thinking about our children I'm also thinking about those black and brown children in East Baton Rouge Parish that are attending charter schools and are riding on a bus at 5:25 a.m. I seen this myself in my school district on lroi and O'Neal and further up the street they had small

273black children hopping on the Bus Around 5:25 also to go to schools across the parish this is concerning because it makes me think what time are they coming home around 5:30 6:30 because I'm seeing it myself we're educating sleep deprived children that way I don't know if that really correlates with the overall goal here so again I hope you guys consider that in your decision tonight and also uh I don't know if this is the best option to go with thank you thank you Miss Harmon good evening Dana Henry again I I just want to provide a little bit of balance to the discussion the the the conversation around experimentation has been has been discussed in the state legislature and in Parish uh school district for a while now in our state every technological advance

274that we have has started as an experiment we didn't always have the internet right it started as a military means called opet to actually communicate in time of a nuclear war but today it is the internet the same process the same technological Advance advancement we use today started off as an experiment power lights phones cars all started off because somebody said let's try something different that is what we are asking you to do for day for today for kids and families in this Parish they don't have time to wait they don't have time to wait they are literally waiting on an opportunity not just Great Hearts although I'm part of the Great Hearts team they want opportunities that don't currently exist and they cannot wait any longer so yes it is an experiment but not

275all experiments are bad if collectively we partner as smart thoughtful PE people with the community and parents at the Forefront of this decisions and partners in the decisions it can turn into from an experiment into a success not for us in this room but for every child in this city who doesn't want to end up a statistic because they don't have enough Supply to satisfy the demand that they need to be strong in life hi again Caroline RoR executive director Louisiana Association of public charter schools and I am speaking at this moment in that role I wanted to take a minute and actually talk about your evaluation process um as I looked at the presentation there's a key word that is continuously missed in that presentation and it's independent the law and the policies call

276for an independent thirdparty evaluator and while I I do not know your evaluator so it's not personal to them I would argue there is not a level of Independence that you are practicing through your process right now you can look at that presentation in fact and see that the review team were all employees of the district other than the lead evaluator who once was an employee of the district so I encourage Dr naris as he comes into this role to consider taking a look at what the law says what your current process is related to that evaluator and consider building some more Independence and the the whole point there was to find an entity that brings a couple things including the skill set to be able to review a charter application and understand if it

277meets the terms of the law if it meets the needs of the district but it's also to create that third party that is independent from a district throughout the evaluation it continues to again read more like a propaganda frankly for the district and less about the the value um that is within that application second as we've heard innovate I would also point out in the law it talks about Innovation but it has six or seven different ways that Charters can be demonstrating not just Innovation but opportunity and access for students professional development opportunities for teachers so it's not just that academic Innovation there are other ways of innovation again I look forward to seeing the vision I think until you get that Vision if you are not going to approve Charters you've talked a lot

278about money save yourselves some money just let Bessie know you don't plan to authorize any Charters and let those applicants go straight to the state thank you thank you Mr rommer hi colen kle please excuse my appearance I was not going to come tonight because your outside evaluator said that you should deny all of these and I thought you might have some common sense so I was at home in my pajamas with my children until about six minutes ago I love living close to you guys um we need to deny this one that should surprise none of you having seen me before at meetings like this um I just want to tell you I have a liberalist background I love Socratic method I have an English degree and a Latin minor so I love the

279classics love a good love a good epic in Latin um this organization in particular is not great part of my Classics degree is actually doing the research which means googleing the people um Great Hearts doesn't have a good record their Glass Door reviews from their former employees says that it's a Christian institution it's a Christian workplace and they want a public School charter so that's not great um they are pretty bad on transgender issues um which you know Louisiana is not the best on transgender issues but you know we didn't pass anything terrible in the legislature and hopefully John BTS doesn't sign the one thing that got through um they kicked out a kid for having braids because he was a boy and when the parents were like but he's black it's a protective hairstyle

280they were like well um well he's already left the school so it's over now and they didn't do anything um they had a homework assignment for a teacher uh who assigned homework to the gats to do the pros and cons of slavery right okay teacher was reprimanded but uh not fired and is back working as far as I can tell uh and then just this last year in 2020 they fired a teacher for wearing a black lives matter face mask that's all easily available if you do the search um so in particular this one is Is Not Great okay sorry I got out of bed ran put on shoes I'm very tired but um I care enough about this to drive here in my pajamas to talk to you guys okay we need to not

281do this one please for me and my pajamas good evening again board members and superintendent Nares I'm tenan shis representing BR and I come to you again asking you to approve this high quality High performing School we're asking you to make a student driven decision that's in the best interest of our students in our community and will be Vally important to boosting our talent pipeline bra supports school choice and believes the the board should give parents the choice to have their students experience this phenomenal school so again we're asking you to approve this school thank you thank you I'm the last person to speak on this horrible topic so don't get excited uh number one I I like that the gentleman keep coming back up to the microphone to say something the fact that you

282have to say that you're only going to allow 5% of children with disabilities it sure is a civil rights discrimination violation you didn't know it let me spell it out for you I will see you in federal court boom number two I don't think that we fully understand what it means to have all these Charter scam experiment systems up in this building okay so let me spell it out for you we have over 11 Charters already in North Baton Rouge if you want this Charter experiment put it over there by Woodland let's see how quick your parents going to be in here acting a fool on this microphone about the fact that their kids will get failed I am so sick and tired of us always trying to say that we got something that is

283innovative what is they doing tell them to spare Innovation for you tell them to show us something that we can't do and that we are not doing my child made the Honor role as a child that is nonverbal that communicates with American Sign Language and a at device he has been a he got an award for being the most improved student not because his mama come up here and get on his microphone so much but because he actually do the work and because this school system this traditional public school system is actually able to educate children irregardless of their ability or inability irregardless of their social economic class irregardless of their race and the fact that I have to listen to this crap from them talk about pedagogy that they're going to do that they

284don't even know how to spell they don't even know the meaning of a cultural competent curriculum let along social emotional learning which is something that we are embracing so like I said let them come up to Bessie board which I will be there in addressing Hills for them and I will let it be known with the doj that they do not none of the charter experiments know how to educate children with disabilities let this this board this high high paid salary cabinet that we have collect the data on how many of those students are are going to return back into our brick and water buildings the traditional public school and then you will know from then on how you should vote so no don't approve it Advantage is a big is a big charter school

285system that should show you that they are a failure all of them in New Orleans failure I don't need to I don't need to continue to elaborate that New Orleans is supposed to be the model for the nation and they have many federal decrees all behind children with disabilities thank you m gley good evening my name is David Whitten I'm a a resident of District 8 and also one of the three founding board members of Great Hearts uh Louisiana and I just wanted to real quickly address a couple of issues as we talk about this when they invited me to be on the board I had to think about it U actually not very long uh because one of the reasons I wanted to join this board it's actually the same reason I think think

286you should uh approve this Charter right is that there is actually a great need and a great desire for classical education in the Baton Rouge area I know that um because we participate in a homeschool co-op with a lot of other families who are actually doing uh classical education and those are the kind of families that actually in many cases would prefer to be in a public school but actually don't have the kind of curriculum or ability to be in that program that we'd have with a public charter like this um so I'm actually uh really enus eastic about classical education I've seen its work not just with my own children but with other children um and perhaps even more importantly uh my real day job is I'm a professor and so every so often

287in the humanities since everybody else is sort of throwing their credentials around um and every so often I get a student in my classroom who's classically educated and they always stand out they are great writers they're good readers they're they're good thinkers they have a love of learning and desire and they stand out you know I'm not it was really interesting that we couldn't exactly explain why this isn't a tier one curriculum you asked the question uh and didn't actually get a clear response right but sometimes I think you can tell the quality of a curriculum not by what's in the curriculum which by the way was freely available for me on the internet the first time I found out about great heart like oh let me look at the curriculum it's right there right

288you can look it up in a matter of moments if you want to but what we have is tier one results right so if you're really interested in tier one results then Great Hearts is the kind of program that you need to seriously look at because the track record across States is super successful so thank you thank you Mr Wht any other comments from the audience seeing no other comments from the audience we uh go back to the board Mr beloo thank you for the enthusiastic uh introduction there I'm a little tired Mark I'm sorry and I don't have I don't take it personally I'll I'll try to be brief just first of all I think uh you know the comments I it's a little misleading to say that uh that uh the school was

289going to limit the number number of uh students with disabilities or limit the number of student I think those were just some estimates but uh it's an open enrollment school so um students can't be rejected uh based on having a disability or or what whatever uh classification um you know I do think this school is is unique it it offers something that we don't have in the district currently I think it's going to strengthen our district and and uh uh give give us another another strong School within our district and and it's also going to uh expand our district and and bring in uh families it's going to give more options to families uh and choosing uh their school uh I think overall it's a win a win for our district uh to to include

290Great Hearts I think um especially uh if we're only committing right now to one school um I think it's pretty pretty safe bet so thank you thank you Mr Blue is that better vice president Collins yeah um I just wanted to speak to my question on the on the curriculum um I get what they saying uh I do have an English liberar degree that being said however we we still have no way to compare um or there has not been a true comparison perhaps is what you're arguing I also want to say and why I went ahead and and um responded to that is that's part of my broader concern like I am actually tired of having the same conversation I feel like it's a distraction from the fact that you have tier one tier

2912 tier three curriculum that as a district we are forced to respond to we are forced to put children in boxes demand that they conform and fit in whether it's something unique and better and different and then we have very punitive system and very demoralizing system in our accountability system um but I did didn't want my question and my curiosity about the curriculum to be confused for oh uh Miss Collins is just gungho about this particular uh curriculum uh particular application but I also just wanted to uh take a brief opportunity to lift up that is indicative of a much larger problem Beyond Charter Schools okay um our accountability system is is the is the experiment um thank you thank you vice president Collins Miss Bernard two things I have something I want to say

292but first before I say what I have to say I would like for someone from Great Hearts to come up and explain to the board what is a classical education what is meant by classical curriculum is there someone from Great Hearts who could just cover that for us thank you for indulging yes board member Bernard a classical education uh is the marriage of critical thinking and and forming the mind of the scholar while also forming the heart and sentiments training them what to love to love Noble and Lasting things great works of art poetry music literature problem solving so it trains the affections and the mind together towards Human Excellence so classical classic a classic means Humanity at its best so through those two modes it trains young men and women to pursue Human Excellence

293what does it mean to be a complete and full human being thank you now I have some comments um first I want to say to all those folks who want to compare this school to an existing charter school or existing Charter Schools period in Baton Rouge I've heard that several times and I don't think that that is fair so let's take that off the table I know that it is is very late and I promise you if you approve this school tonight it will be worth it there's one factor that the evaluation does not take into account and that is the location of the school and along with it the needs of the students who live in close proximity to the area Great Hearts has been provided with the and the lack of programming in

294that entire area as they have mentioned before they would serve children in the Garder area they would serve children in South Baton Rouge I represent District 8 where Great Hearts would be located do you know how many schools I have I have three traditional public schools in District 8 two are Elementary and one is a K8 magnet with Selective admission that means there is no middle school and no High School in close proximity for the students who live in District 8 or who live really between Mr tapman and Mr goday and I between between the three of our houses if you draw a triangle there's just there's just nothing except for these two little elementary schools the school is not a magnet school it is an open enrollment school that means that it will by

295simple math be the same demography as the rest of our schools because every if everyone applies to go to school there everyone will be accepted to go to school there but I recently saw a couple of years ago a report that said that 92% of the students in my district attend private schools 92% only 8% % of the students in my district in the area where that I represent and I represent areas that are similar in population size to your areas Miss Collins and I both studied public administration and public policy one of the first things that we learned was that the failure of bureaucracies to make exceptions to be policy bound when needed that administrators have the ability to go to sometimes go outside the norm for needed exceptions we also both studied leadership

296in our graduate programs we learned that sometimes you must lead with your heart and not your head and I am asking that of you tonight as I have supported the learning needs of students in your areas I ask that you support mine and approve Great Hearts bat and Rouge there is no more available land to provide for students in this area there are no programs for students in this area I am pleading with you I am begging you to lead with your heart tonight and have compassion on the students in this area and in the entire district and approve Great Hearts fat rouge thank you thank you m thank you Mr Bernard Mr God day thank you president tman um you know this one presents a difficult situation um first of all uh I thank

297Great Hearts for uh coming forth and putting this application up there for us to consider and I also in many ways would like to apologize for some of the hetic rhetoric that has been uh fostered upon your way uh I think that is uncalled for and I I am glad that our board has had a respectful discussion of the issues here and I would hope that all of our discussions could be that respectful so I I really appreciate you coming forward I guess the issue that is in front of me is you know when you go up in front of the Supreme Court and things one of the things they always look at is where the limiting boundaries if you have an opinion being made it's always well where does this opinion stop what is

298the boundary that this hits and I think Great Hearts is a good school I've visited your school in San Antonio and others but where is the limiting bound uh boundary for us with charter schools in this District where is it that we say you know do we have to accept every good Charter that comes before us simply because they're a good Charter and could be Innovative I started my career working in Laboratories and there were lots of experiments I wanted to run but you know what we couldn't afford to run all the experiments because there you have to pick and choose which ones you run and how you run them um so and I also understand and I'm part of that area where we have a lack of seats in that so one of the

299challenges I want to give to this board is if we turn this down and then we come forward with plans to build seats in that area please give consideration to those things because if you don't the next Charter come up will be approved we need to add seats in our district in the in the southern part of the parish and so just be aware we have to do it if we don't if we don't do it ourselves it's going to be done by Charters okay that's not an option anymore it's gone too long way too long that we don't have seats in that area of the parish and so you know with that one of the things that I was glad the presentation showed earlier today is people can't say we're sticking our head in

300the sand regarding Charters you saw we have something like 10,000 Charter seats coming up in the next five years we've already approved Kips we've already approved an extra basis we've already got idea we have Helix coming on WE expanded sees Cal we've done all these things we have Charter seats coming online a lot of them and I guarantee you we're going to be facing facility plans we're going to have to be shutting down schools it's going to happen there's no way for us to get around it there will be a lot of community disruption as we go through these we have a very hard four or five years ahead of us to get to the things that we need to do and at the same time do the improvements that our strategic plan wants to

301do and all of these things there is gets to be a limit as to what a system can swallow at a time and I think that right now we have shown very good faith in working with Charters we have put a good Charter system in place we have lots of charter schools coming on and the only exception of what we have done that I wish we could have done a whole lot better right now is have seats in the southern part of P parish and so you know with that I just cannot go for this charter school I cannot vote for additional Charters right now but if we don't get seats in the southern part of Parish I hope they come back next year or the year after and we'll put them there and get

302the charters approved to do that so you know I'm going to be casting my vote against the charter but it's also a message to the rest of the board is we have some real issues that need to be solved and we can't continue ducking those anymore and in the meantime we have a lot of cuts that need to come because of the charters we already have approved so we have a tough four or five years this is the first this is an easy vote compared to what we're going to have coming up and so I just want to everybody in the public and everybody on this board to recognize the job that we have ahead of us whether or not we we you know to me approving this Charter solves one issue but makes a

303lot of other issues even worse and so I'm I'm picking and choosing between what poison do I take on some of this but we have a lot of hard work to do in the next four or five years and I hope that we as a board step up to that work that we need to do thank you thank you Mr goday uh Mr lanis thank you president tatman I have to say that I am in uh if I've never been in full agreement with you before uh board member goe I must say that I am today and I would be remissed as someone that has always preached about the things and the needs that I have in my district and I hear you miss Bernard uh for that you need more schools in your area

304I hear every single board member that lives in the soft Eastern Area a region of this parish and said they they need more schools in that area and I uh place this up on your heart and your head Mr superintendent let's make that happen if it doesn't happen tonight with approving of these charters let's make sure that when we come up with the Strategic plan we're talking about how do we install and put more schools into those areas because we do our students every single student across East B Rouge Paris deserves to go to a quality school and is incumbent on us as a board to make sure that that happens uh but I can't take away with something that that you said Mr goday and that is that uh we have a lot of

305expansion happening I don't know if our board recalls but not long ago we approved idea Innovation which will be right down the street from The Proposal location where this school wants to locate to and last time I checked that school is supposed to be a pre- to 12 school so we have to really seriously think about that that's the reason why the Strategic plan is so vitally important why the facilities plan isn't vitally important and why we need to see it not long from now so we can understand where schools need to go and where there's a need for students so I just want to say I'm in full agreement with what you said uh and I don't think anybody here is against any Charter as I said before I think uh these schools are

306doing phenomenal jobs it's just timing right now and right now we have to get things right siiz inside of our district so that in the future we can make better decisions and better choices on behalf of everybody more more specifically our taxpayers our families and our students thank you thank you Mr lanis Miss where Jackson thank you president tman um you know some of us have been asking for so so long for this um comprehensive plan that shows us where all of our schools are uh traditional U magnets gifted and talented Charter Schools we need to see all of that and um you know I'm I'm learning um again you know about how many Charter Schools we've actually approved when they're um planning to come online and I know like uh Mr Lan has mentioned

307and probably also Mr goe about um idea right in that area uh so this is this is very very difficult because we know we need schools in that area and uh over the last few years we've not had a board that was willing to put anything in that area um even with saying that we're going to add a a magnet program that or a gifted program and then not have the seats in the school you know so we've got to really be consistent with um with our plans and you know we've worked in the last few months overworked um around the Strategic plan and and getting the facilities planned I'm I'm disappointed that we haven't been able to to see the whole picture uh before we come to uh this evening so it's very it's

308a very difficult decision Vision because you know this is one of the schools I I've visited uh I've seen Great Hearts I've seen the students in action the The Faculty um in action on a on a visit a couple of years ago and uh was really impressed with it um I I really like you know some say it's it's not Innovative uh but that that form of Education certainly was there was a certain Fe in the in the classroom and um so it it's really difficult to uh deny this Charter um so you know I I am a a bit perplexed you know because I saw earlier um a more detailed report than what we saw earlier today around the effects of of um all of the the the charters that we have already approved

309and when they come online and what kind of effect it uh may have on the traditional schools as far as as the budget goes so you know we've been talking a long time about what's the plan for our traditional schools our dnf schools and now we finally have an Administration that is willingly and just wholeheartedly behind um that effort that we have seen uh ever you know since since I've been on this board so uh this is is very difficult um but I I do want to see schools in that area because there a population that has never um used our our schools and um so you know it's It's A Hard Road to Ho but you know and and that the the plan that we have the tax plan does not address quickly enough

310the need that we have in that area if there was a way that we could move some things up you know we found we found dollars when it came to uh getting a Struma online when we had no dollars at all uh there's got to be something that we can do to improve the number of seats in that area so that we don't have to keep depending on or looking to or or are even welcoming with open arms uh the charter operators that are are willing to to go there and f that need thank you board members thank you Mr where Jackson um I have just a couple of comments I want to thank um Dr Scoggin and your team for being here I appreciate the way that you have presented yourself um I uh

311I appreciate your interest in our community um I want to make a comment about some comments were made about our third party evaluator um I uh I've known Miss blanchie for a long time and I may not always agree with her but I know that she operates with all of the individual uh uh points that were uh Illustrated earlier in the presentation with high integrity professionalism I think she's unbiased and I know she's knowledgeable and I know know that she has recommended to us in the past approval of many Charters and so I just didn't want that to go without saying I want to thank you for your work whether you agree with Miss Buie or not um I think she um again I I don't always agree with Miss blanchie but uh I respect

312her and so I appreciate uh the work that she does and I just didn't want that to go without saying so we are uh Miss Dyson now uh has the floor I just also wanted to thank you for coming and not only that but for integrating yourselves into our community over this past year or two um establishing board members already here in Louisiana um really trying to understand the community and our school system and the needs um you hit it right on the nail when you chose an area of town that is so lacking in schools um and the demographics have proven time and time again uh that the entire southern part of the parish is severely underserved and then we wonder why people make other choices when we don't offer them any ourselves um

313Without Really lengthy bus rides and overcrowded schools and it it is really really good to finally hear a few other board members realizing that we have a real issue here and um I don't know which way this is going to go um but I would very much hope that uh you would consider if this does not go the way you want it to tonight that you would very much consider coming back to our board for the type one again um next year because we we will at that point have made some real decisions on what we can and we can't do and I don't feel that we'll have done everything needed I don't think we can do enough right now as much as we do I don't think you can make up for decades of

314not addressing um shortages like like we have so I know that uh you'll have other options in the meanwhile but I really really am hopeful that we can have a partnership with you no matter if this goes uh through tonight or if you come back in a year from now hopefully so thank you so much appreciate all your time in our community the board is clear the motion on the floor is to approve Great Hearts number one a vote a yay vote is to approve Great Hearts number one a nay vote is against that motion Madame secretary please conduct the vote please vote um no vote is against approving it the motion carries the motion carries she's that's what she's saying just okay so we move now on to organizational items announcement of meetings Miss

315wear [Music] Jackson organizational items announcement of meetings Committee of the hold to be held on July 1st 2021 at 5:00 at the professional development center regular meeting to be held on July 15th 2021 at 5:00 p.m. at the professional development center and board meetings will return to the central office in August if that's it I will move to adjourn uh Miss where Jackson moves we [Music] adjourn [Music] n