001for the following purposes under subsection a1 to prevent the disclosure of privileged or confidential personnel information pursuant to gs elect 115c 319 321 and a3 to discuss matters protected by attorney-client privilege i um [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey adam can you hear me thank you foreign okay education will um start their open session meeting and we will start with the pledge of allegiance we have of course it doesn't work when you try to make it work at this time we're having a little bit of technical difficulty but the um jackson community school students are going to do the pledge of allegiance as soon as we can get in sorry this is what happens when you think you've got it and then you don't good evening i'm catherine moses from jackson community school i'm joined by allie
002haley zach serenity and samantha please join us for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much [Music] a second each month the first part of at least one regularly scheduled board meeting will be set aside for citizens to address the board through public comment each speaker will receive three minutes to present comments however the public socks public comment session will not exceed 30 minutes total except by a majority vote of the board a sign up sheet will be available 30 minutes before the meeting begins for any individual or group to indicate their desire to address the board during the public comment period the board chair will
003recognize speakers in the order in which they signed in substitute speakers will not be permitted and speakers may not donate any portion of their time to another speaker if a speaker is unable to present all of his or her information within the specified time limit which is three minutes the speaker may provide the board with the additional information in written form if an unusually large number of people request to speak a majority of the board may decide to reduce the time for each individual or to require the designation of a spokesperson for each group of persons supporting or opposing the same positions at any time the board may establish additional procedures to ensure that public comment sessions proceed in an efficient and orderly manner we have one public speaker who has sent in a comment
004a written comment and he has asked that i read that to the board we received this today from mr keith blaine and he writes dear board members jackson county public school staff teachers parents students and guests during an interview of north carolina public school superintendent catherine truitt on august 9 2021 the following quotes from her are as follows question are you adamantly opposed to the teaching of critical race theory in our schools superintendent truett replied yes absolutely the idea that we have not made any progress towards a more perfect union since our country's founding and furthermore that our country is somehow inherently racist is not true and actually does damage to the way that we want to educate kids to have a better understanding of civics and what our government has done to make that
005more perfect union over the last 250 years superintendent truitt what are what we really should be focusing on in schools is not making kids social justice activists what we should be doing is being focused on helping kids be proficient readers and learn math so they can graduate from high school and choose the post-secondary plans of their choice and be successful end of quotes from superintendent truth this is mr blake speaking i am requesting the jackson county elected public school board members to vote to oppose promoting and teaching critical race theory in all jackson county public schools which includes one teacher staff training and two teacher instruction and assignment to students the critical race theory statement from the staff does not condem or prohibit crt training or instruction in jackson county public schools another quote from
006superintendent truett from the same interview question is critical race theory being taught in our schools right now superintendent truitt there are tenants of critical race theory for sure being taught in our schools as well as popping up in teacher trainings that districts are offering the idea of woke-ism is predominant in our schools through individual teachers keith blaine replies jackson county public school students are the future leaders of our county state and nation please do not allow walkism as superintendents who said in our schools stand up for what is right for our future leaders right here in jackson county vote tonight to stop crt in jackson county public schools thanks keith blaine our next speaker is dr john edwards and i will go get him thank you time uh we have four papers okay thank you
007for the opportunity to come and put my bring my petition back in front of you all before you all uh i believe everybody's gotten a copy of the petition and it seems that there might be a slight misunderstanding i don't want the bible to be taught by a teacher that's not the idea all our teachers in all our subjects and all our grades from the littlest to the highest we want those that say something that pertains to the bible to have freedom to use the bible as a reference or if there's subject matter that would help the children be enriched in their learning experience to be able to utilize that and not be bullied into saying well that's myth that's for uneducated people because that's the kind of thinking that seems to be out there
008prevalent in many circles we need to have the right to be able to tell about the god that we refer to when we say one nation under god we need to know who this god is and if we don't know and shame on us for not being allowed to know and not finding out for ourselves it is imperative that we go back to the founding documents of our country to our constitution to the writings of the people that wrote the constitution that signed the declaration of independence now those people what did they have to say about it how are some of the things that we take for granted is celebrations of our nation like thanksgiving it's coming up pretty soon how is it that our people don't understand who they're really thankful it's almost like
009they have a bad case of memory loss if you've been around the loved one that you enjoyed their fellowship and they're speaking you're speaking with them and they're telling you stories and you've written stories from them and somehow that would suddenly be taken away because they lost their mind it's almost like that that the educators have lost their ability their memory for what was there to be able to pass it on to the next generation and with that in mind the petition is aimed at the biblical basis of our learning and our thinking and our way of life back and available in our schools both locally and i feel statewide and nationwide and someday maybe god might not be global i don't see any reason why the values that we have should be subjected to
010the thing oh oh this is white man's religion like people would refer to it in india no it's not it's the religion that god gave man black light and indian new language okay it's what god revealed to man and our founding fathers understood that what we believe and why we believe it is on the basis of revelation and communication from god himself thank you um approximately the same topic as dr edwards would you like me to pass this out to you we have five thank you for coming in you will have three minutes about the bible being able to be in school more particularly to allow gideons or other organizations to be able to hand out a bible and what a place before you is the north carolina state constitution uh it begins on things
011when i humble through it all i promise but it recognizes that it is grateful to the almighty god the sovereign ruler of nations and then more importantly if you'll go to the first tab that i've placed there for the section 8 disqualification from office it says the following persons shall be disqualified for office first any person who shall deny the being of almighty god if in our classes that we teach of a god that's in this constitution but yet we don't allow the book that talks about that god are we not setting our children up for disqualification from office this is our north carolina constitution it's on the website operating straight off the website um i feel like that it should be there and if you go on the back to the last tab which
012is article 9 on education it says religion morality and knowledge being necessary to good government it lists three things for good government religion morality and knowledge this is in the section on education being necessary to good government and to the happiness of mankind schools libraries and means of education shall forever be encouraged i feel like as the school board for the schools of jackson county that it would be important that you would encourage biblical teaching or the bible itself other neighboring counties do this i graduated from swain county please don't hold that against me i hold in my hand the bible that i was given when i graduated all of my teachers signed this bible there's about 40 of them letting us know that they encouraged us in the lord to follow the teachings here
013these are simple teachings of not to steal not to kill not to destroy i feel like that's the same teachings that our schools are teaching but i feel like this should be a book of reference and that it should also be welcomed in a school not not shown thank you for your time i won't hold you any longer thank you all thank you very much make a motion that we approve open session minutes of the regular meeting on august 24th 2021. one second all in favor aye at this time you will give us reports good evening madam chair of board of ed members let me begin by thanking all of our jcps staff students and families for the tremendous work they have done to make the first six weeks of school successful we are fortunate
014to have a school system that remains open for business during tumultuous times as it relates to the pandemic fortunately i have not had to make the difficult decision to close a school like many of our neighbors who have had to do so for safety and health reasons i attribute our successful beginning to our staff and families thank you for the incredible support and engagement i'm also proud to share that our coveted positivity rate as of today is 0.5 across the district this is so exciting to know that we are doing well with our safety precautions following the mass requirement and keeping schools on schedule and open it is vital that we remain diligent in mitigating the spread and continuing with face-to-face instruction over the last month north carolina department of public instruction released our 2021
015state testing data this data has reinforced our decision to implement a consistent district-wide curriculum and and allowed our schools and directors to focus on specific academic areas to target this year and for future years we will focus on uniform reading strategies understanding and reading comprehension in our k-8 schools with the new reading curriculum materials our goal is to see growth and achievement for all students while they gain critical reading skills to last a lifetime i'm most excited to announce that all of our newly purchased whit and wisdom materials arrived last week and they are at the schools and already in the hands of many of our instructional staff likewise we continue to focus on improving our state testing data results in mathematics we desire to improve our math skills and student performance using the district
016curriculum purchased last year this too is a district curriculum resource for ka our state test data reflects that there are definite strengths in our high school courses as well furthermore our 2021 graduation rate is 92.9 percent this is the highest in the western north carolina region and ranks eighth in the state of north carolina on the athletic front i want to offer a big shout out to our jcps coaching staff our coaches are working extremely hard and are dedicated to our student athletes in high school sports the blue ridge bobcats volleyball team has a 1-5 record while the men's soccer team is 2-1 the smokey mountain high school volleyball team has a 7-6 record and are traveling today to west henderson the mustang varsity football team is three and two and will host wes henderson
017friday evening for homecoming the men's varsity soccer team is eight three and one while our cross country tennis and golf teams are all playing very well i encourage our families and community members to attend athletic events at all of our schools and support these student athletes our smoky mountain high school marching band has been busy too they participated in their first competition of the season this past weekend and walked away with the following awards second place in color guard second place drum major first place percussion first place musical first place visual and second place in their class overall way to go up to our marching mustangs and they will be traveling again to compete on saturday in high school tennessee finally i'd like to encourage our families and community members to participate in the blood
018drive hosted at coloey valley next wednesday october the 6th from 12 to 5. we have an extremely supportive community here in jackson county and we are grateful for what is done for all of us thank you too to the families and community who support our school system in a kind and respectful manner through your interactions with our staff your participation in board of education meetings and your attendance at athletic events it is abundantly clear that our community is committed to the success and growth of jackson county public schools respectfully [Music] indicators [Music] i am good evening madam chair and board can you all hear me okay yes yes my apologies that i can't be there with you tonight face to face um so i wanted to come tonight and update you on our ec compliance
019indicators jackson county public schools ec department is responsible annually for reporting data on 14 indicators to ncdpi the indicators you are used as part of our state and federal monitoring requirements and this data helps the district as we plan for program improvement we recently received a report on two indicators indicator 11 reflects the percentage of students for whom a referral was received and placement determined within 90 days i'm proud to share that jcps remained at for this indicator it is important to point out that this the data was collected in 1819 and is likely um we expect that to be lower next year because during the spring of 2020 we didn't have access to students in a face-to-face manager to complete some of the timelines and evaluations our department is responding to these delays from
020the spring of 2020 on a case-by-case manner discussing compensatory services with families and students and providing academic recovery on a case-by-case as needed basis for students with disabilities the second indicator reported was indicator 12. it's a similar data point that reflects on our child find process for our preschool age students with disabilities the goal here is for us to evaluate and determine eligibility by a student's third birthday now this data is different it's based on 1920 numbers and we did see a dramatic difference from our normal 100 compliance on this indicator in all previous years um last year's data was 78 and since we're below 90 on this indicator we're awaiting directions from dpi for a corrective action um in our ec directors um meeting this week they did say that um across the state
021all the indicators look this way and even nationally indicators are down down for childbind so it's important to point out that this non-compliance is a direct result of covet closures and has impacted our entire state and nation locally for this year we're on target to meet both of these indicators our ec department and teachers are working um diligently to make sure that that we're meeting our 90-day timelines and our requirement to implement an iep by their birthday i'll take any questions right now if you have any thank you very much kelly if this time adam hope um will give us a state data thank you good evening madam chair members of the board dr ayers i'm presenting tonight on some north carolina state data release that dr eric has already read on some of those
022data points already so the data that i'm going to be presenting on tonight is from the 2021 school year but i do want to remind everyone that there was no data released from the 1920 school year because we were out doing protocols that spring also with this data all federal and state accountability waivers are in place for the following areas and that's our school performance grade calculations that's the letter grades that schools receive those have been waived all of our federal and state identifications have been waived as well as long along with school accountability growth so any identifications that are listed on the website are from the data from 2019. there is it's difficult to compare those data points from pre-code test results so we'll kind of look just at this data in isolation there
023is a link to the ncdpi data that is on our jcps homepage under the testing accountability department we would like to look further into these results first i want to talk about is our participation rates so we're evaluated every year our goal is to meet 95 tested in all areas this past school year we had over 239 areas as a district and we met in 216 of those that 95 so i want to thank all the hard work that the schools and students did thank them for coming out and taking those assessments even though we were still in kind of a hybrid role of remote and face to face um where we ended the school year but we did a great job assessing all of our students for the majority of our students last school
024year there were a couple areas that we did not meet under the all student categories and that is our eoc biology we missed it just barely at 94 percent bct at 92 and act workkeys which is something that is just for our seniors who are cte concentrators looking specifically at some of our eog and eoc data so this first indicator that i would like to present tonight is our combined eog and eoc results so this includes all of our third through eighth grade leading and math eog along with our science grades five and eight the eoc data includes nc math 1 math 3 english 2 and biology and we are looking at the percent scoring at a level 3 or above jackson county was at 41.5 proficient north carolina state average was at 45.4 this
025ranked us 13th in the region um there are 14 districts within our region and we are 63rd in the state um out of 116 districts in the state our eoc data so if we look just specifically at high schools as high school eoc courses we were at 50.1 proficient north carolina or the state average was at 44.7 this ranked us eight in the western region and 32nd in the state for our eog data this is just looking at students in grades three through eight our proficiency was 39.5 percent proficient and the state average was 45.6 um that puts us ranked 13th in the western region and 73rd in the state uh dr harris mentioned earlier some of our curriculum expectations that we already have put in place this year to help in some of these
026areas to get us moving in the right direction our act data and also every year all of our juniors take the act in march one of the indicators that we look at in the state is the act composite score of 17 or higher that 17 is the north carolina entrance minimum for all of our state schools in north carolina so jcps had 66.2 percent of our juniors meet that minimum so that's fantastic the state average is 55.2 that ranked us third in the western region and 11th in the state lastly i want to talk about our co-work graduation rate which dr harris alluded to earlier we are at 92.9 percent the state average is 86.9 this does put us first in the western region and eight overall in the state uh we are very proud
027of our graduation rate and our continued support of our secondary schools and supporting our students as they graduate from high school and the last slide that i have tonight is just a little bit of our graduation rates over time so as you can see all of our high schools are performing very well with this indicator and supporting students as they graduate and move forward i'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have about the data me again um and my topic is coveted testing so i wanted to come to you tonight with an update on our plan to participate in an optional covid testing with concentric ginkgo you may have seen a press release from mr prophet earlier today about a new opportunity for our school system to do our part to continue
028to mitigate the spread of covid students and staff in jackson county public schools will have a convenient option for free covid19 testing right right in their own school the minimally invasive tests from concentric will be conducted weekly for individuals who choose to participate in the program to save time the district will use a system known as pool testing it's a strategy approved by the state that's gaining popularity across the country because of the low cost and relatively quick results each pool will include up to 25 individuals in a class a pod or a cohort the students will the students or staff will swab their own nose and place the swabs into a single tube these samples in the tube will then be tested as a single sample using one test if a poll returns a
029positive covid 19 result the school can test individuals in the pool and begin immediate contact tracing pool testing should prevent the spread in groups thus allowing us to continue with face-to-face learning and and also prevent large groups and classroom quarantines we're really excited about this i anticipate that we'll start next week with a um a slow roll out of this to see how it goes at smoky mountain high school um miss reagan has already started um getting consent from families and staff members and then the following week we would proceed with other schools in the system do you guys have any questions about coda testing i think it's great thank thank you thank you good evening madam chair dr members of board thank you for allowing me this time to provide you with a few
030financial updates in your package you have your unaudited financial statements for september which also includes comparison data from last year this reflects that we are in compliance with our continuation budget that was adopted in june 2021 and this continuation budget will remain in effect until we pass a budget resolution for the 2021-2022 school year it was originally my plan to bring this budget resolution student at this board meeting however at this time we do not have a finalized state budget and there are several key pieces in that that could impact our current budget plan budget updates from north carolina dpi school business section are optimistic that we should have a state budget passed in early october so after discussion with dr ayers we both know it was prudent to wait until october and reassess the
031final update i have for you tonight is regarding our external audit with anderson smith and black so each year our audit typically begins in april and ends in august and consists of three basic areas they look at our compliance our internal controls and our transactions it also includes audits at our school levels we have the final portion of this 2021 audit last the last week of august excuse me with an on-site audit team mr dill and mr poole from that team met with myself and dr ayers and shared some preliminary results i'm pleased to report this evening that we have no findings and everything is looking good they're putting together our financial statements and they were also able to share with us that we have increased our local current expense fund balance by approximately two
032hundred thousand dollars considering our total 2021 budget this is a modest amount but it's positive and it's more to jerry they commented that compared to other districts across the state we were on a good trajec trajectory with our fund balance due to our conservative management practices this update will not replace the formal presentation that mr walk with anderson smith and black presents to the board when our financial statements are finalized and we anticipate that presentation to occur in november so those are my updates for the award tonight does anyone have any questions thank you very much sorry i didn't think it was coming up that quickly i'm sorry you could talk for a few more minutes okay so this is an action item i'm here tonight to ask you for board approval on a memorandum
033of understanding with westbridge vocational westbridge formerly known to most of us as webster enterprises provides our district with transition specialists to provide free employment i'm sorry pre-employment transitional transitional services for students who are 14 to 21 years old in our ec program services are provided at smoky mountain high school jackson community school blue ridge school and jackson county early college for eligible students and families the transition specialists work for webster and they come to our schools to provide their services the pre-employment transition services will include things like job exploration workplace readiness training work based learning counseling on opportunities in comprehensive transition or post-secondary educational programs the focus is really to get students with disabilities to focus on their interests to find jobs that they would like to do after high school and then to pair
034them with good supported employment situations we're really grateful for our continued partnership with westbridge and tonight we respectfully ask for your approval of the mou with jackson county public schools and westbridge vocational make a motion that we approve the memorandum of understanding with westbridge all in favor thank you kelly thank you [Music] ladies and gentlemen the board i've applied for some federal e-rate contingency funding for the 2021-2022 school year uh e-rate ecf funding was was created by the government to help with connectivity and devices for teachers and students during the covet 19 pandemic in total seven billion dollars were available for schools to apply for we applied for a total of seventy seven thousand dollars and 27 cents from the ecf program this this funding will provide chromebooks for two of our grade levels and
035staff laptops for 120 staff and 275 mobile hotspots for students and staff with lack of internet access at their house ecf will cover the cost completely for the student chromebooks and mobile hotspots which i've previously gotten approval for the staff laptops ecs will provide up to four hundred dollars per device which means that we will be using seventy thousand nine hundred and thirty four dollars and forty cents of our local technology budget to cover the difference staff laptops will be used to replace devices that were purchased during the 2017-2018 school year and we received three responses from three businesses yns was the best option that met all of the requirements of the bid and in total um we will need to spend 70 000 of matching funds are there any questions so if not i
036asked you for permission to use local funding to purchase staff laptops at the total cost of thousand nine hundred and thirty four dollars and forty cents the motion that we approve the e-rate teacher laptop purchase don't hear a second all in favor thank you jeremiah and i'm also next on your agenda so i've also performed an open bid for the purchase of interactive tvs for our classroom uh jackson county schools is standardized as promethean as our manufacturer of the interactive classroom devices and we've received bids from four vendors prologic was the winning bidder with a total cost of seventy thousand one hundred and fifty six dollars and twenty nine cents which was over five thousand dollars cheaper than the next closest competitor will be installed at fairview scotts creek smoky mountain high blue ridge and
037colorway valley these schools will be purchasing these panels from their own budgets but we centralize the purchasing in order to take advantage of a bulk discount are there any questions no thank you if there are a motion today make a motion that we approve the promethean panel purchase a second our favor thank you thank you very much so i continue with the next action item which is authorization for jackson county recreation and first department to make improvements to the fairview school youth complex just a little bit of background on that they will be working on the concession stand and the press box we are owners of that property however um we are allowing the rec department to do these upgrades and they will do so um on their diet on their own dime they are
038paid for all of this um and so i have talked with don adams and jake has talked one several times to be honest with don adams about this project um it will not impact any future plans that we may have or for that complex because we're always working with the county commissioners and um and don adams so ashley has reviewed the contracts and what we're looking for is um permission for authorization for this to take place and we think it will be a benefit to us make a motion that we authorize jackson county wreck and parks department to make improvements to the fairview elementary school youth complex greatly needed um all in favor okay all right i am next um on the agenda to talk about our architect's services proposal so we are fortunate that
039we talked about the last two months that we received the funding from our county commissioners for the 7.4 million egress projects and we are ready to move forward so i'm going to restate that to you as the board is aware for over 20 years the board of commissioners has had a contract with john court to provide all architectural services for smoky mountain high school two years ago john court's firm merged with macmillan passin smith architect out of greenville south carolina this amendment to the constitution makes the current egress county yard project the last project of the 20 year old contract with court the county commissioners voted at their last meeting in favor of this amendment we asked the board to approve the amendment making this the final project on the old contract mr buchanan will
040be going through a request for qualifications processed this year to find an architect for the school system so that we control the contract for our architectural services mr buchanan has been working with the county manager don adams and he fully supports us going through this process to find our own architect so i asked for a motion to approve make a motion that we approve the amendment to the architect services agreement all in favor thank you dr ayers the next thing on our agenda is the reviewing the mask mandate um on july 27th of this year the board of ed voted to require a mask indoors during school hours with that requirement um we voted to revisit the mask mandate every other month beginning on september the 28th which is today however earlier this month the
041north carolina legislation has required school district districts to revisit this mass mandate monthly in july the board also gave me as the superintendent the authority to make decisions about match requirements during indoor athletic events initially there was no mandate for spectators at indoor events but i changed the decision with input from principals and athletic directors and reviewing time metrics effective september 7th all spectators who attend jcps athletic events are required to wear a mask that has been in place for nearly three weeks and we have had no issues that i'm aware of at this time i want to offer the board the opportunity to discuss and review the mask mandate that's currently in place with a few pieces of information added in there so remember that those students are exposed to a covered positive student
042who are properly masked so if everyone is masking the classroom and the student is exposed they're not required to quarantine currently our positivity rate as of this afternoon as i said before is 0.5 so we are less than 1 we have 17 students right now who are covered positive and two staff members and our quarantine numbers right now as of 4 30 this afternoon across the district we have 115 students who are quarantining and remember that you have to quarantine if you are in direct contact and not properly wearing a mask and that could occur um at the lunch in the cafeteria um however most of our classrooms most all in fact are eating outdoors and we're going to continue to do that as weather permits so i wanted you to have those pieces of
043information we've also received some documentation this afternoon from two local physicians who endorse a mask mandate that we continue because our positivity rate is so low and the fact that um we have been able to remain open for six weeks six weeks and two days um so i'll leave the floor open for you all as a board to discuss this i don't see any reason for that to change that mass mandate at this time and i think that we have shown that this has kept our numbers down and i really appreciate all the teachers and the students and the parents cooperating with this but this has made a wonderful addition to our school because we can keep them open and so i would really like for us to go ahead and make a motion to
044pass this mandate again i do i got one request can we separate the number that you're saying are actively quarantined is there any way to distinguish where they were exposed either at school or outside of school so we're looking at a manner that we can try and track that we use the qualtric system so every time there's a positive case we put it in this wonderful system that disaggregates adam is the man in charge of that he's our data guy one thing that we're looking at attempting to do is because that database is managed using the student's user id that we could probably pull in another column to see their address and see if we could geographically see if maybe it's because where they live and play in their community i had the health department
045come out two weeks ago and walk through one of our schools two members of the health department and just do some checks and and have conversation about what else we can do and in that conversation both of those ladies from jackson county health department said that they think that the transmission is more outside of a school setting than it is inside so i don't know that we could truly track other than knowing their physical address where they live whether it happened on the ball field or at church or a birthday party or some other event so if they're quarantined and we don't know that it's because they were exposed outside the classroom so the quarantine numbers that we are trying to track are just the ones that we are telling them my team now we
046have had some random parents come to us and say hey guess what my kid was exposed somewhere else and so we are keeping those numbers but they are clustered within our our school warranty members i'll give a good example we had somebody already out quarantined because their family member was an adult had contracted it somewhere um and they stayed home to quarantine because they were close contact and they were infected thankfully they recovered um but that's just hard to track and understand where it originated all right i'll make a motion that we uh continue our mass policy all in favor thank you you're welcome um the next thing on the agenda is a discussion of our location for our october meeting so as you'll remember we voted to have our board of ed meetings at
047schools so we could highlight a specific school and students and showcase for lack of a better word each of our buildings we made the decision in august to hold this meeting which should have been at jackson community school here simply because we want to be safe and again not take anything into a school that is one of the reasons that our pledge was done by the jackson community school students because that is where we were supposed to be so our next meeting in october is scheduled to be at holy valley school we need to make a decision if we would like to pull that meeting back here in the format that we're doing right now or if we want to move forward and host the next meeting at quality i think at this time that
048we should pull it back here especially where we're limiting visitors in schools right now parents like to attend those community members and i think that it's best for us to continue what we're doing right now is working for us so let's just for everybody let's just think i think it's much better than um this time and we certainly want to want to have the opportunity to showcase when it's safe so i'm hoping for a motion to have the next meeting here at the central office i make a motion that we have our next regularly scheduled meeting at the central office a second all a favor thank you field trip so we have three field trips to be approved because they are all out of state field trips and i'll give you a little background on
049each of them the first field trip is for fairview to visit the planetarium which is in young harris georgia so about one and a half hours away it is a day trip they are leaving a little after eight and they'll return before dismissal that day um i did have a good conversation with safety um measures regardless if if the planetarium is requiring mask or not we are requiring mask of our students indoors and so they will continue to wear their masks it is an hour and a half on a bus ish an hour and a half maybe a little more on a bus um the federal mandate is that we wear masks on public transportation and they will continue to do that um and i just talked at length with principal mccauley about making sure
050that this is going to be a safe option for our students to be able to go we feel that our third grade students are mature enough to be able to keep that mask on the bus i think that's probably the biggest concern and when you're in a spread out planetarium you're able to monitor really closely but we've got teachers going along on the buses and they can also monitor students and so that's the first field trip and we can talk about them or vote on them each individually whichever you want the next two are overnights where our students travel to um to the the ripley's aquarium and they sleep with the sharks i chuckle because it's such a great thing i wish i were going um and those are overnight trips but those are not
051until next march and april so we've got six months knowing that if we need to pull back on that principal mccauley is well aware of that and we know that that that may be the case but right now we want to move forward we'll be planning for that um next spring and march 8th so i'm looking for approval i don't know if you want to take them each individually or you want to take them as a whole for these traveling out of state make a motion that we approve field trips one two and three all in favor thank you very much and at this time we'll do a disclaimer employee recommendation okay so um we're looking for approval for the following employee recommendations numbers one through and then we're looking for approval of employment resignations
052one through seven and then employee retirements one and two make a motion that we approve employee recommendations one through fifty three employee resignations one through seven and employee retirements one and two i second all in favor we always hate retirement so we have two um our next regularly scheduled business meeting of the board of education is for october 26 2021 at 5 45 at the jackson jackson county public schools central office do i hear a motion to adjourn thank you very much you