001while managing a full weekly schedule it was outstanding for kids to be in school recapturing missed opportunities for the past year my focus now is on the 2021-22 school year we will welcome students back to school on monday august 16th for a normal five day a week full day schedule to prepare for this i look forward to meeting many of our families and community members in the upcoming meet the super events being held at three locations across the district the first being this thursday july 29th at blue ridge august the 3rd at scotts creek elementary and august the 5th at smoky mountain el meri these events are open to the public for anyone to come and meet and greet the intent is for me to be able to interact with the jackson county public schools
002community and stakeholders refreshments will be available at all locations several staffing changes have occurred in the past weeks within jackson county public schools we're welcoming new principal heather ridinger to jackson community school additionally a familiar name is stepping into the role as human resources director that will be terry wildlinder who is currently the blue ridge school principal until the end of the week and we will officially have a new principal at blue ridge school beginning on monday august 2nd pending board approval after this meeting most exciting is the news regarding our academics for the first time in many years jackson county public schools will have uniform math and reading curricula across all kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms our teachers and administrators will be provided district professional development and implementation plans to support these new materials
003as well as ongoing learning opportunities to strengthen instruction throughout the year this is really an exciting time for us our instructional leaders for myself included and this is going to greatly benefit our students here i also want to invite families to support our upcoming athletic events and just the first week of school again which begins on august 16th our student athletes will participate in soccer volleyball and football games just in the first week i hope to see many families and community members supporting our coaches and athletes we will be live streaming many of our athletic events again this year as a service to those who cannot attend in person more to come very soon on how to watch those games from home that will be streamed and finally there's been much discussion regarding critical race
004theory and what this means for jackson county public schools jcps will teach the standards as required by the north carolina department of public instruction we will teach history in an unbiased and factual manner most importantly we will follow the north carolina curriculum standards for social studies and history to ensure students receive appropriate standard aligned instruction so we're looking forward to great things growth and get gratitude is my theme for the year growth and gratitude and i'm excited to work with you all as stakeholders and the board thank you thank you laura good evening madam chair dr air is the member of the board um i just appreciate your time as always to provide an update on behalf of the school nutrition program and as the co-chair of the school health advisory council i'll be providing
005that update as well so we are so excited to start the school year first of all we are excited to see children and we are excited to have them through the line and to serve them and let them have options and hopefully just be excited to come to the cafeteria so we can see them again too because that is our joy and what our hearts are all about is to feed our students so we will be starting um the school year operating under the seamless summer option some changes that you're going to see under this option um the first one that is not a change is that it's still going to be free for all students um breakfast and lunch for those that are 18 years or younger and persons 19 years or older with
006a physical or mental disability as defined by the state so very exciting news um the meals are going to be free we are still encouraging parents to fill out an online free and reduced meal application i always like to say how this does benefit the school system for grant opportunities for student resources we will be available at all the open houses for families to stop by we'll help them with those applications we're always available for appointments anything that we can do to help families um fill out those applications um that application is also tied to the pebt benefits that came about several times last year so i always like to let families know that because sometimes that will slip through the cracks and keep trying to announce that and helping families so it will benefit
007the family possibly if that comes available again um under the seamless summer option we are going to be following the national school breakfast and lunch program so the biggest thing of change that you're going to see in the students is the subgroup of vegetables we will be going back to the dark leafy greens every week the red and orange and the legumes so we will do our best and as the students did get used to it we um really got a hang of roasted broccoli and all sorts of other things so we're gonna have some demos next week and we have our own training so we're excited to get back into that roller at least i am especially so um another change that's going to happen um that has not we're still waiting on approval
008from dpi um or through dpi from usda is that we will not be allowed to provide meals on the weekends or through the holidays so we're waiting on that change we're hoping that we'll have that change but when we start the school year we will only be serving when um school is open so five days a week when we're open no holidays and weekends we will continue to have curbside pickup at three locations which is going to be blue ridge school smoky mountain elementary school and smoky mountain high school for the main hub down here in silva and then those times will be um announced as i meet with the managers and the principals as well to discuss the best times so any questions about that i'm going to move along to our school health
009advisory update um just for those of you who don't know the school health advisory council is an advisory group that's composed of individuals selected primarily from the health and education segments of the community this group acts collectively in providing advice to the school system and aspects of school health programs so this past year was very different but we did hold on three virtual meetings and the focus of the council shifted to mental health and wellness so currently the school health advisory council is acting as a stakeholder for the district mental health improvement plan and i want to thank kelly daupke as well as her department who's been instrumental in updating us and working with us um and just allowing us to support the strip the district however we can um all of our upcoming meetings
010we will have four upcoming meetings we'll all be posted online um as well as our action plan and any minutes from any meetings that we have so they're public um as well as our wellness policy is online and any other documents that we have as far as procedures and how to contact and to support um one thing that we're excited to offer in person this year is our wellness program we have been working years past with harris regional hospital as well as the health department we have shaped and molded it in different ways to just support staff wellness within our district we did have a six-month program that was called elevate 828 and it wrapped up in april um the participants were challenged to run bike swim 254 miles and complete a nutrition and mental
011health challenge each month collectively jackson county participants jackson county schools lost 74 pounds in six months and increased their health score score by 458 points which is about 22 points per person so basically we are trying to form some healthy behaviors and habits which is very important for all of us right now myself included but i do want to congratulate the um school smokey mountain elementary school they were the top winner and they will be receiving a thousand dollars to just um use however they wish so um we're just gonna getting started for in um person assessments which will be a huge deal so we're very excited about that and those are my two updates thank you thank you i appreciate it good evening madam chair dr ayers members of the board in your board
012packet you will see your final unaudited financial statement for last fiscal year it seems very odd to say that but i'm very pleased to say that we finished the year very well that we reverted no state dollars that were not restricted and this was brought about by the hard work of our bookkeepers in our schools and my finance staff to ensure that we ended this year very well and within our budget is there any questions at this time thank you very much all right at this time we are moving to the action agenda items and we're going to start with uh safety protocols for the upcoming school year that begins in less than three weeks um and decisions that need to be made regarding math so we are currently until july the 30th under an
013order to wear masks until 5 pm and at that point the governor's executive order does sunset and last week on wednesday he announced that those decisions the safety protocol mask wearing will be up to local educational journals so my job is to share with the board all of the information that i can give them so that they can make a well-informed decision a couple of things before we project something um i have been in communication this week yesterday and today with our health director with jackson county and discuss some information that she had and some recommendations as well as just today lots of things occurred with the high school athletic association and the cdc so this afternoon board the cdc made a recommendation that students in grades k through 12 of the mass regardless of
014their vaccination status that happened at 3 pm this afternoon and so regardless of status of adults or our students because some of our students have been vaccinated we have to consider three options so jeremiah if you don't mind projecting um the three options that we have and unfortunately for our spectators it's on the board behind you can you make it a little bigger [Music] so these are the three options i am sharing out with our board proposals you might say and then they will be given the opportunity to have discussion regarding this so the three options are option a so with option a mask would be required for every student and every staff member pre-k through 12th grade regardless of vaccination status so that is option a option b is the recommendation that the governor
015gave just last week on wednesday that mass be recap required for k and i included pre-k because we have preschool classrooms at three of our schools pre-k through grade 8 students and staff and his recommendation said that math could be required for unvaccinated students and staff in grades 9 12. and then the final option would be to um make masks optional for everyone so a family choice an adult choice or staff member choice but i do want to point out some things that are highlighted in yellow that these are things that will be in place no matter which option is selected so the first thing is the uh federal order that was put out in january i think january 29th for buses and public transportation requires that anybody who is on a bus yellow bus
016or white bus that is transported on a bus is required to wear a mask so i'm going to restate that again so the board's clear whichever option you choose a b or c buses students and staff on a bus are still required to wear this okay and that doesn't just apply to public bus transportation the air and other um athletics for the 2021 school year will follow the current guidelines for the north carolina high school athletic association their guidelines right now as of this day and through friday july the 30th are that anyone that is indoors practicing or um participating in a game is to be masked and that also sunsets on friday july 30th which means that the decision to mask athletes indoors is a local decision to be made by our board okay
017um obviously we will continue to honor medical exemptions with any of the options that are up there and then events that we are already scheduled to have and we'll be having throughout the year that meet the super events we have open houses already scheduled and things that will occur throughout the year we will follow whatever option is required and this also applies to visitors and anybody that goes into the school to volunteer to walk their kindergarten kid into school if anybody enters the building they're going to follow whichever one of those options that are selected by our board and then just to make sure that we're keeping our finger on the pulse again no matter the options that is chosen tonight as we move forward we'll revisit that in just two months so every other
018board meeting in the coming months we will have it on our agenda to revisit as an established thou shalt revisit at that time that doesn't mean we can't talk about it at every board meeting in the in the coming months but we know it will be on the agenda at these established regularly scheduled board meeting days um i've shared with the board through email this article that i have been um given from health directors and things that i've read from the high school athletic association j buchanan is now serving as our district athletic director also so we have conversation trying to decide the best thing number one a primary focus is the best thing for our students i want our students to come to school every single day how they come to school master of
019math that is on the shoulders of the board to make that decision but i want you all to hear me say i want our students to come to school every single day so at this time i think the board needs to have discussion um board members if you need to ask somebody a specific question and jake may have some answers to things kelly or angie you're welcome to ask and this is your time to have a conversation okay if a student if you're unmasked and a student test positive recovered that classroom is basically shut down for however long that is accurate that is accurate so you know that then the time length has changed it was 14 days originally i think at the current standing is 10 days for folks to be quarantined for that
020that's basically two weeks of this class that would be a spot that we would have to consider flipping to a virtual option for that class or um an asynchronous option asynchronous meaning it wouldn't be live instruction at all and i think that that all of us feel that we would like to keep the schools open and the classrooms open as much as we can we've gotten advice from the cdc we've gotten advice from the american pediatric association and for me it just seems that we can't tell who's vaccinated who's not vaccinated we should just all be wearing masks but that would be the option that i would take at this time so i do i do agree with that as well um you know i think it's i think it's most important for our kids
021to be in the classroom um five days a week because we did not get that for the last year and a half um and i think if you start going to the option of you know if you are vaccinated you don't do not have to wear the mask that's going to take too much time away from instruction for staff to be figuring out who's vaccinated who should have their mascot who should not and i think it also allows us to have people back in the schools because they'll be maxed i mean that you will be able to walk your child into school if you're messed you know so um just think it makes us more normal again as much normal as we can be i don't see where there's any other way we can do
022this except to be masked i'd love to see option b work but i know i understand we cannot be mass police all day long in the high school you've got other things that need to be done and again with what you're talking about let me just add quickly the last year we were under a mandate to offer remote online instruction that mandate is now eliminated so students who would have to be quarantined if you didn't have math students that are quarantined could miss up to 14 days without any guaranteed right to online education so it would be asynchronous it would be the best the school district could do but the school district is going to be focusing its resources on in-person education so for students to miss 14 days it would be a lot more
023serious this year to miss 14 days of school than it would have been last year and i think that's in line with what you're talking about and again the toolkit does say that the two students are both fast then they don't have to quarantine even if someone tests positive so you're doing everything you can do to ensure that as many students with those changes i think that that play right do i hear emotion that's pretty much for all i agree with option name i make a motion that we approve option a which is mass required for all students and staff in grades pre-k through grade 12. second elizabeth cooper aye margaret mcrae aye wes jameson aye abigail clinton hi thank you and i want to um also make everybody very aware that we will be
024revisiting this um september 28th will be the next time we will read this i think we all hope that this isn't something that has to continue the entire school year but for now hopefully the way that we can keep kiddos in school so before we move on from the mask conversation we also need to definitely consider athletics so we have a looming date of august the second where our athletes can go live again so we would be remiss if we didn't have discussion about what that looks like for our for our athletes um it sounds like we voted for option a to mask everyone's students and staff visitors who come in the building so now that will mean that we are masking as the options said we'll mask indoors students are still permitted and recommended
025by the cdc that they can unmask outdoors um but we need to think about what this means now for our athletic events for spectators and for our athletes you might want to accept a motion to apply option a to visitors and community members because as stated it doesn't really include staff within it so you wanted to make that clear you might want to take a separate i make a motion that we apply option a also to visitors and anyone entering their school buildings that they should also be nice okay all in favor uh how do you vote ellie hi hi um elizabeth cooper aye margaret jack the margaret marie aye ms jameson uh so i guess it because we have this ruling then every spectator would be masked if korean considered that's correct so the
026only question it would be and this can be operationally handled it doesn't have to be necessarily will there be an exception for athletes involved in the studios activities just then there's clarity and you may want your staff to address how it's been just to remind everybody what it was like last year what the rules were about you mind doing that sure so um the rules from the high school athletics association transition over the course of the year but of course we started the beginning of the year the very first athletic um high school athletes was volleyball and volleyball wore masks during competition through basketball season wore and then transitioned into the outdoor sports and by the time we got to some of the outdoor sports the governor had lifted his requirement for wearing masks outside
027so he ended the year with with outside athletics being unmasked over summer workouts um any sort of athletic it's been indoor has been masked and outside has been unmasked has been the guidelines from the high school athletic association and that comes to an end the end of this week and as dr pointed out beyond friday it was up to the to the school board to to decide for each district the only other thing that the high spout association today said was that the home whatever the rules were at the home um the home location of the event would be the minimum required meaning that a district that requires does not require athletes to wear a mask at their home venues but if the visiting team there the board required masks you could they would be
028wearing masks in a venue where it was unmasked so you have a situation where math students were going to play against the team it was unmasked and spectators were unmatched um but the home team minimum standard would apply by the high school athletic association so if if our kids had to went to a school that outside of our outside of our district that was not vast they would not be asked so if if if our school board decides that students needed to be masked during athletic competitions and a neighboring county said that theirs did not have to be when we would travel to that um away game our kids would be marrying matt wearing masks playing against students that would be unmasked okay and the same would be the case if another school district was
029coming here to play us sure what happens then so if our requirement is that we require masks for athletic events then that visiting team would then wear masks when they're in our phone in our facilities regardless of what their home district's policy was at home i you know i feel really sorry for the kids because i think that playing basketball and the mascot would make up um and volleyball do we have any statistics on people playing basketball together like that that you know so i can only speak to our own in internal um and as the board is aware we only have two situations last school year where we felt like it was contracted um covered exposure took place during athletics and both of those took place at the high school level and both of
030those took place um at practice they were practicing okay in fact they were masked they were masks but i think what's what chris pointed out is that the toolkit has changed about wearing masks previously it did not matter if you were masked with the new guidelines in the toolkit in your mask then it changes it changes exposure vaccination and being masked changes the rules of whether you've been considered a close contact and exposed and if we want to entertain an option where kids who are in the strenuous activity part of the game not wearing masks and others in the stands or kids sitting on a bench warrior wearing masks we don't have to make a motion on that that can be decided by the administration um i think what you want to do is empower
031the administration to put athletic resolutions into place vibration so that they've got some time to look at this consult this happened today so i think that is not an unreasonable decision of the board is to just delegate to your superintendent to to modify the space government department for athletics if needed after after they look into it i think i feel more comfortable with that if meaning for clarity that if we followed the same indoor mask face covering rule if we followed the same that we're doing during the course of the school day if we follow the same with our athletes during athletic events we can add the specific caveat that our athletes who are actively participating on court or on the map if it's wrestling volleyball that they can take their mask off during the
032strenuous activity at that moment but when they return to the bench they put their mask back on we would have the flexibility to do that correct okay and we don't have to take any action on that no so the motion would be to delegate to these additional rules regarding athletic competition i make a notion that we delegate the mass requirement for athletic activities to our administration give me a second second ally how do you vote hi um elizabeth cooper hi diva hi margaret mcrae aye west jamison aye aye manchester quarterback superintendent can't bring that back to you if she would feel more comfortable saying we've looked at it we've researched it but we would like the board to be in agreement with what we're doing so that may come back to you as well but
033it gives athletics right around the corner so that this gives them um the next thing on the agenda is our um it's actually written as an msu but it's a memorandum of agreement with western carolina um university between jackson county public schools and the catamount school so we have in the audience um dr winter is here um and new principal it's hard to say this but new catamount principal angela lunsford um here with us so i want to just share a little bit about what the catamount school is and dr winter i may call on you um so we already have a current agreement with the catamount school to house this lab school which is a state initiated um idea to have lab schools where we are giving them physical space to run this lab
034school on jackson county public schools property so right now it is at smoky mountain high school and there are remind me dr winter about how many students right now about 50 students and they are in grades six through eight and so those students are students who may have chosen just a smaller city an alternative and so with this agreement with western carolina we agreed to continue what has already been in place for we're getting ready to start the fifth year um what has already been in place to allow them the physical space we also provide transportation for those we provide our meals our school nutrition and so we have a pretty open agreement with them and we're fortunate enough that miss granny at the high school has worked closely with the principal that had that
035was previously there and will work with this one over the course of the coming year so the memorandum has not changed this is just um a second amendment to that to say that we agreed to do that uh jeremiah's department provides technology so they follow um they use the same devices so students who go there and then return to us in the high school they haven't been um an outlier in using the devices that we currently use so it is a fair agreement that we have had with them in the past and so i'm bringing to you that we continue with that memorandum for your emotion make a notion that we approve the moa between west the catamounts hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae aye ms jameson all right clayton thank you madam chair dr
036ayers members of the board so um as the history teacher i do have to give a little bit of a history lesson um so as uh as many of us remember in the spring of 2018 after the parkland shooting in parkland florida we experienced in jackson county multiple bomb threats throughout our school district i think we we recognized that that our students when students live in chaos everybody wants to feel the same as everybody else and i think those bomb threats very much act after we got to the bottom of each one of those they reflected students that were in some sort of state of crisis and um in chaos and so trying to bring their peers into the same chaos set off these chain reactions of events as we experience those um and the
037shooting at parkland the board will remember that students at all four of our high schools at blue ridge early college jackson county early college the community school in smoky mountain high school student leaders in all of those schools summoned the school board summoned their superintendent their principals and the county commissioners for us to come and hear from them what they felt like that they needed and out of those meetings the students made it clear that they needed two things to feel safe at school one they recognized the need of mental health support and asked for counselors at the high school level that weren't so much focused on career planning but could engage with students when they were in moments of social emotional crisis and that they also wanted their schools to be single entry point
038that many of our schools had multiple entries so if you will remember our board this board the county commissioners the sheriff all pledged to work together to solve these to that end the county commissioners passed in an election year um a tax increase that had virtually no resistance no pushback that was geared towards sros in our schools and additional school counselors the second component of that now that has taken place years ago unfortunately building buildings and walls takes much longer and so we're at that second phase of getting those those single entry points so the the four schools that we were not able to secure with single entry points was of course smoky mountain elementary school fairview blue ridge campus and smoky mountain high school and so we worked with john court emergency management the
039sheriff's department the fire chiefs of all the the district's thesis are include included in to develop a plan to convert our schools that were never intended to be single entry points into single entry point schools and this is not a small challenge schools for the longest time were developed so that students left buildings went outside the idea of being getting some fresh air in different parts of the day and then come back into the building fairview for example was designed the sidewalks were all outside each classroom had its door you went outside you walked around you walked outside to go to the cafeteria um smokey mountain high school is a collection of about nine buildings that you all have to walk outside to to get to blue ridge campus is the the the same with
040pods and also some buildings and then at smoky mountain elementary about 25 years ago we built the the middle school wing which is separated from the the rest of the school so the plan that was developed is to to create egress courtyards these are safe locations basically putting large courtyard areas behind walls security cameras swipe card entry to secure our kids so that there's only one access point that can be closely monitored at every single one of our schools so we went through that process no school system in north carolina has ever engaged in this so we are trend setters with these um with these school designs which meant that the architects code enforcement and ncdpi which has to review every plan that we bring before them had to review this and so that's why
041we started talking about this in 2018 and here it is 2021 and we're actually to the point to move forward with this project so we went out for bid we secured four low bids for all four of the projects um the the architect has signed off that these are our valid bids and his recommendation is to to accept them dr ayers and i went and presented this to the county commissioners of course has to approve any of the capital money that we spend and so last week they voted for to approve for us to have access to seven million four hundred nine thousand dollars four hundred and four hundred four seven nine million four hundred nine four hundred and forty seven thousand dollars at this time i am asking the board to to do two
042things one to authorize the superintendent to enter into contract with buchanan and sons construction um for no more than seven million four hundred thousand four hundred nine thousand four and forty seven dollars um and that you authorize me to act as the owner for purposes of managing the project and all aspects of the contract moving forward i would be happy to answer any questions about the project or about the cost or any particular school the four schools of course like i said fairview spoken about elementary blue ridge campus and smoky mountain high school one other thing i'll point out is that the contract once it has been presented to us we will give it to the to your attorney to review to make sure that it reflects um everything you need to to protect the
043interests of the board in the district but once that has been approved i'm asking for your permission to allow the superintendent to enter into that contract they're in order of which schools are going to be built and then like what time of the year is construction will be taking place yeah so we have our uh indication so we're trying to be good stewards of the money so we indicated to all the bidders that we would allow we would not pick the order that we would allow them to pick the order they might decide to do two projects at once and then move to the other two do all four same time want the other whichever was the most cost effective so we don't have that information yet um we'll get that information once we enter
044into the contract but we specifically said that that our preference was whatever would be most cost effective for them to get it done we do anticipate it's about a 12 month project but we have basically set up a window for 18 months for for the total project with no one project exceeding more than 12 months for that particular project they could but they will probably be working during the school year also absolutely summertime construction school starts summertime it would not be possible just to do it economically in the summer time this will take place but the nice thing is this is an exterior wall situation so you're talking about minimal um interference to the buildings um the the exception to that will be fairview and smoky mountain high school um smoky mountain high school will
045be connecting sea building and de-building the breezeways there will be uh will be connected um so that will be safe uh safe travel in between the two and we'll do some reorganization of the front lobby and then structurally fairview will have the largest change at the front door um basically where the columns are now outside will become the front door to the school to create a breezeway and then you'll go into the so those two schools will have the most disruption to a school building but the other two will be minimal well i certainly appreciate the county commissioners giving us access to the funds to do this and it has taken a long time to do it right your emotions [Music] [Laughter] the superintendent enter into a contract following legal review with the canon sun's
046construction for 7.449 something billion and authorize and make the nation to authorize the deputy superintendent to the owner elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae hi for many years so he's been a really fine job and thank you to the county commissioners of the county manager they have been more than dinner in supporting the public school system so thank you yes ma'am hey the children of the board so as you know we have a website that we use for communication with parents and and our own staff our website was redesigned about six years ago and um i think it was at the time probably cutting edge as far as websites designs were concerned and um we would like to redesign that website for a couple reasons one of the main reasons is to give some extra functionality
047to the website we'd like to add the ability to translate our website into multiple languages for people that may not speak english as their primary language and we also like we also need to be able to meet some of ada requirements as far as for screen readers um and for the requirements that we have for accessibility um the provider that we're using for our website is final site um they've been have an excellent product and we've been very happy with their support um david proffitt is our uh cao he's our cco and he manages our website and manages all that communication and he'll be working with them on this redesign final site will provide a public school best in class product redesign with many people in their organization helping us with every aspect of every
048page the redesign will cost fifty four thousand dollars do you all have any questions yeah i think i i'm looking forward yeah david has some really good ideas on how to reorganize and restructure the page and i think it's going to be very nice so if there are any questions i ask for your approval to purchase the website redesign from final site for fifty four thousand dollars at the redesigned website for 54 000. and i'm also next on your agenda every three years we enter into a contract with microsoft for our licensing microsoft is used in pretty much all aspects of our organization these are for our servers our clients our offensive office products and all of those there's a contract that's negotiated by ncdpi for that product um we have been using this product
049for you know for many many years but it's now time for us to renew that three-year agreement and so even though the price of the contract has gone below thirty thousand dollars i would like the board's approval to approve that agreement to lock us into another three-year deal with them um we've already sent this contract over to campbell stately and they have looked it over and given us their approval so if there's no questions i'd like your approval to enter into a three-year agreement with microsoft for licensing i'll make the mention that thank you good evening madam chair dr ayers and members of the board i come before you tonight to ask for approval for our mou with the college advising court through appalachian state university this is a program that is grant funded through
050appalachian and they actually put a counselor at smokey mountain high school to explicitly work with our seniors on fafsa college applications in any type of college preparatory activities so the idea here is is that we increase our college-going population of students they reach out to a lot of rural communities so the only thing that we have to provide basically is office space and this mou as well as access to our data this is our second year in this program we come to you last year last year was very successful um even with um you know lots of various challenges due to code so we are super excited to bring us back to jackson county this coming year with your approval for that this is a really great we get a free person yes i'll make
051a notion that we have enter into a memorandum of understanding with appalachian state university for a college advisor and i am next on the agenda as well so i am very very excited to present this to you tonight i came before you to ask approval for a curriculum purchase of our whitten wisdom k-8 reading and ela curriculum this purchase would be for five hundred ten thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars and forty one cents it will align our entire k-8 reading curriculum it nicely fits with our district initiative of a 90-minute reading block it is research based and we are super excited we've had our instructional coaches and our principals vet this product in the past few months it provides all of the big five pieces of literary instruction that will provide sound instruction
052for jackson county this purchase will include all of the teacher resources both print and digital student resources for three years both print and digital and then it also will provide the sets of trade books and texts that directly align to the curriculum so the teacher will have all of the text sets there that if one of the lessons in the curriculum products says that students are to do a paired reading then the teacher will get one text for everybody so there's no reaching out so all of the the literary uh pieces there will match so we are super excited that um to to be able to have this opportunity this also includes professional development so we would have kickoff sessions for our teachers for our administrators and they would work on us uh work with
053us on an implementation plan throughout the next three years to make sure teachers have all the professional development the coaching and all the elements necessary to uh make sure that we can implement it to fidelity so it's very very exciting that would be totally aligned k-8 in our reading and ela curriculum do i i'd like to ask for your approval for that purchase this evening it's really exciting that everybody's going to be on the same page hey you guys have worked very hard on this thank you thank you thank you for your support that we approve uhla elizabeth cooper hi marco mcrae hi wes jameson abigail clayton thank you i'm also next to ask your approval of a geode purchase this purchase aligns with whitten wisdom it is uh decodable readers for our students it
054focuses a lot on informational texts those harder more rigorous texts that we'd like our students to be able to use that prepare them for those 21st century skills this is for kindergarten first and second grade the kits also come with professional development and training in the implementation it is a one-time purchase for those kit kits for our k first and second grade classrooms so to not ask your approval for that purchase for nine 185 eighty eight dollars and eighty nine cents i'd like to point out that both of these purchases are made possible through our ester three funding and that funding there is 20 of it is required to be spent on learning loss due to covet and other related challenges that we've been through from the past 18 months so these purchases directly align
055with the per uh purpose of that money from the federal government so i'd like to ask your approval for that purchase tonight as well um first and second grade allie have you vote aye elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcrae all right miss jameson thank you and i have one more last one ask your approval for the 2021 2022 student handbook with the knowledge that as board policy changes over the course of the year that handbook will be updated according to the board's policies that are updated it will be posted on our website for all of our parents and students and staff so ask your approval for that handbook for the next school year this one doesn't cost you anything [Laughter] that's true thank you thank you okay [Music] good evening madam chair dr members of the
056board before you use the school nutrition procurement plan and this large plan details all the procurement methods processes and expectations to be followed by our district school nutrition program which is a lot of myself as well as help of course the district this plan also ensures free and open competition in an environment that avoids unreasonable conditions and restricts competition and so at this time i would like to ask for your approval of this school nutrition procurement plan hi elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcrae hi wes jameson abigail thank you [Laughter] good evening madam chair ladies and gentlemen of the board dr ayers thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening i am requesting approval for the purchase of 29 new safety vision camera systems for our school buses the new systems consist of
057three external cameras and five internal wide angle cameras the camera systems on our buses currently that we are replacing range from five to ten years old many of the exterior cameras from these older systems are no longer working the new cameras are high definition cameras and will increase increased image clarity they will also communicate with our current gps system on our buses lastly they are wi-fi compatible and principals will be able to retrieve footage from their buses from their office without having to track a bus down the cost of this project for hardware and installation would be 114 000 14.61 that's great i make a notion that we've purchased hi elizabeth cooper i'm margaret mcrae hi jameson all right so for your your policy updates uh tonight there's uh all of these are coded impacted
058in one way or another and uh might defer to a couple of your directors if you have specific questions but the first one policy 3460 the board is aware that we suspended our local requirement for 28 credits for high school students and deferred to the state mandate of 22 as a minimum so this policy would return us back to 28 however it includes verbiage so that the principal can put together a committee that would be made up of school counselors teachers parent and student to consider if a student was put in the situation because of what have happened in the last 18 months to alter that from 28 credits to a lesser number with the the minimum being 22. so basically what this would do in um for which uh all the way back to
059the third junior right now this is for juniors and seniors well it would be our rising sophomores rising juniors and rising seniors the three groups right this past year going forward yes so if their high school experience had been impacted by covid that the school could have a committee that would make a determination what's best for that to help that kid be successful second policy returns our which is our foreign exchange program 3630 would return us to allowing foreign exchange students to come back into our school system and of course they would follow all of the protocols and procedures that we normally would for our student and it also changes and makes angie deals the point of contact for anyone that is uh interested in bringing a foreign exchange student into jackson county public schools
060policy the third policy 4400 is our absentee attendance and truancy policy and this is a policy that we had suspended during kovac and this returns our policy to to our this is specific to jackson county we've developed it internally over the years this returns it back to what it was prior to and then the last policy 7503 is a policy update at the suggestion of the state school board association which more specifically defines what would uh allow for the superintendent to grant someone to work remotely or do teleworking but it is a very narrow parameter for working remotely it's not the intent of this policy or your administration to have any significant amount of remote working for the for the school system but it does give guidelines to us um if the superintendent superintendent deemed
061the need me to do so so ask your approval for all four of these policy amendments an information that we approve policy updates one through four thank you ellie how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae hi wes davison uh thank you personnel i request personnel employee recommendations one through 24. separately policy recommendation 25. okay let me say that again policy recommendation one through 24 and 26 and 27. personnel recommended personnel recommendations for for employee hires i request employee recommendations summer programs 1-6 employee resignations 1 through 16 employee retirements 1 and staff non-staff returning coach recommendations 1 through eight an exclamation that we approve employee recommendations one through twenty three words employee recognization center program one allie how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper aye mark mcrae hi wes jamison request your approval
062for personnel employee recommendation number 25. i make an emotion that we approve employee recommendation number 25. second okay um ally how do you vote hi elizabeth cooper hi margaret mcrae hi bless jameson thank you at this time we're going to take a short recess because we're going to have a work session on ethics refresher and our next regular scheduled uh business meeting of the board of education will be august 24th at 5 30 at the at this boardroom um if you want to stay for the ethics you're welcome congratulations carrie i mentioned earlier but i didn't draw attention to but now i'm going to put her on the spot heather writing her way for him community school and they both start that role in a whopping five days so on monday you will vote both
063be principal so um as the board chair said um principles you are definitely free to go unless you so choose to say um directors that can say i've already let them know directors that can stay i would appreciate that uh you do so um if you can't understand because we have some folks have kids but we are going to have our work sessions we're going to take a little quick break before that so good thank you for coming thank you good to see faces hmm okay hmm wow hmm it was brilliant i'm going to provide you madam chair with a short refresher on some ethics issues because i'm good at reading the room and i know everybody's ready to go home after making some pretty serious decisions this particular evening but we are we're still
064being broadcast for an open session and this is just a brief work session the reason for tonight's session and thank you for making a few minutes of additional time is just to revisit some of the more central issues of the aspect pause real quick margaret is still on there because she texts everything yeah i'm still born and margaret can you hear me okay i hear you great good good good good well we miss you but i'm glad you can hear me thank you yeah the the reason for having tonight's session this board has received the full two hour ethics block that's required by state statute but now that dr ayers has been here for a period of time it's always good to kind of revisit best practice the relationship between the board and the superintendent
065the board and the administration and just kind of repeat uh some of the the highlights of that relationship just kind of as a reminder as we kind of look back on where we've been where we think about as we're moving forward as a school district so i've been a very short handout for you and i'll leave uh copies with you uh and dr ayres you're certainly welcome to share these with anybody if anybody's interested but again just a refresher on five things that i thought were important tonight uh and again we're not going to belabor the point we're going to go right to it the first thing you have in your packet is what i always call the hourglass and just to remind you about the hourglass what the hourglass is is it is a
066visual representation of how best practice and law come together to operate a school district and that is as the board of education you're represented by the group at the top of the hourglass you as a board of education set policy you set the direction of the school board you hire personnel you hear appeals you handle what i'll call the big ticket items as a school board vision purpose things of that nature the group at the very bottom of the hourglass is the universe of individuals that are interested in the business of the jackson county schools that is a huge group it is every employee that you have it's every student that you have it's community members it's vendors it's politicians local officials when you think about all the different people that at one point or
067another might have an interest in the business of the school district might be impacted financially or otherwise by decisions that the district may make that is a very large group in the middle of the hourglass represented by the schoolhouse is your competent superintendent and her administration it is all of the employees that work for the jackson county schools a school district works best works lawfully and works efficiently when issues are funneled through the superintendent in the administration when you said policy tonight's a great example of democracy 101. tonight you set the direction of the board in the school district as far as face coverings now the administration will do the hard work of implementing your decision communicating your decision educating folks they'll be the ones working with community members they'll be the ones working with
068parents and staff to implement that so once you set the direction it flows through your administration in order for it to be actually implemented well the reverse is true when folks are upset about what's happening in the district or disagree with the decision decision or they're seeking extensive information that likewise should be funneled back through the administration i've often said how nice it would be when it came time to renew all of your personal insurances you could just call dr ayers and say i want six quotes you know i want you to bundle my homeowners and my umbrella in my car and my son just turned 16 and i want some good quotes and insurance it'd be great right if she would then say to the deputy superintendent the finance officer go out and find
069some quotes you have that on school issues so don't forget that it's the right way to do it it's the lawful way to do it and it's also best practice and makes the most sense because it is the job of your employees the superintendent and the staff to look into things to investigate to research to bring information to you and we've talked about it so just kind of remember that hourglass that funnel i'll say this a couple of times but educate educate educators in my experience people come to you for some pretty basic reasons of school board numbers they come to you first of all because they voted for you they didn't vote for these folks they didn't vote for doctorate or say 33 years that's the number one reason they might come to you
070second reason is they don't know the process and that's a huge group that's most people they look to you as the school board so educate them say thank you so much for bringing this to my attention thank you for your question let me tell you how this works you know when we hire folks we have hiring committees and recommendations get made they funnel through the superintendent to the board we're not involved in hiring until we get a recommendation i'll be glad to get you in touch with the personnel director i'll be glad to get you in touch with the superintendent if someone's upset about something appeals come to us as a board and we ultimately hear them if it's a vendor somebody who's upset about a bid or something again go see our superintendent our
071staff is tasked with looking into these things coming back to us with a recommendation so make sure you educate folks the other reason they'll come to you though frankly is they know what the answer will be they know they're not in the right they know the policy does not favor what it is they want to do and frankly they're trying to do an enron around this hourglass they're trying to pull an end run around the entire process and come to you and that happens as well so just remember again that hourglass you can never promise a particular outcome but you can promise that things will be looked into investigated things of that nature so just remember this visual representation so what are the five things real quick number one on the next slide i've given
072you is of course the big one from a due process standpoint employees have due process right so directing grievances complaints things of that nature students have those rights as well to the superintendent to the administration for investigation board members do not investigate again you gotta educate folks and y'all do a great job with that you listen to them again they voted for you so you're gonna listen to them when they call you or if they grab you at the grocery store hear what they have to say thank them for their concern and then to educate them tell them you're gonna turn the concern over to the administration uh for it to be investigated you're going to call the superintendent and let dr ayers know so that it can be looked into and i think you'll
073do a fabulous job of that as just a small legal technicality if it did involve an alleged misdeed by the superintendent then you tell the board chair and the board attorney that's just standard policy and protocol in all school districts like i said never promise an outcome because you can't you don't know what the facts are you need to withhold judgment i may grab you at the grocery store and i may be very convincing about all those dastardly things that have happened at that particular school and when it's fully investigated you find out that there's more to the story and that's very typical so do withhold judgment don't promise outcomes don't promise to keep people confidential you can't you can't promise to keep people confidential if it's a serious issue if it's potentially a criminal
074matter you would be compelled to disclose who gave you the information so tell people that say i'll be happy to roush you to the right person i'll be happy to get this information superintendent but i can't promise that i'll keep you confidential and you took an oath and you need to remind people you took a note to uphold the law and protect the students so promising confidentiality is not something you can do as far as a source of information not talking about students or employee confidentiality and again like i said educate them on the process number two notify the chair if you believe a board needs action or consideration by the board i'm going to remind you very quickly that under your policy 2330 a board member made by timely requests have any item placed
075on the agenda so letting madam chair know there's an item you think needs to be discussed or acted on by the board in advance of the meeting and the policy does require six working days obviously you are free at a meeting to amend the agenda and add something if there were to be an emergency but just remember six working days is to provide enough time for all the information to come to the board and for you to know what you're going to be talking about decisions need to be made by the full board in official meetings rather than emails phone calls text messages things of that nature i'll say it i'll say it and i'll say it and i'll say it again and this applies to everybody in the room don't ever put something in
076writing that you don't want to read on the front page of the newspaper don't ever put something in writing anywhere that you wouldn't want to read on the front page of the newspaper you cannot guarantee that things will stay confidential i call it life in the fishbowl in public life in public employee you swim around in the fishbowl and people can look in from all sides there is really no situation in which there is 100 percent confidentiality and things you put in writing and a lot of times they are subject to public records requests so if you are going to put it in writing if you're going to send an email if you're going to send a text and again this requires to buy in this room say it the way you need it use
077proper grammar use proper syntax do a very good job with it make your grandmother proud is what i like to say but do it in a way that it's the newspaper or to receive your email that would be fine with you that would be fine with you so if you're the least bit nervous because you think something may be taken out of context you're trying to brainstorm something or think through something please don't use emails and text messages for that pick up the phone call folks meet with folks talk to them even board members can meet in less than a majority with each other if they just wanted to talk through something so you can have coffee with a fellow board member if you just wanted to kind of brainstorm something and think about it
078but be very very careful about things that you put in writing and remember that the open meeting law requires good faith so anything that is seen as trying to evade the purposes of the open meeting law can be a violation but when you meet have work sessions discuss things you have ultimate protection over those things number three one of my personal favorites when visiting schools attending events and talking with employees stay in your way and just remember you're always a board member and it always never ceases to amaze me we work with every 30 school districts in the state it doesn't matter what community it is when a board member shows up at a school people start talking board members here what's going on what's happened is somebody in trouble is something about to happen
079um go to schools visit go to events do all the things you love to do but just remember you are always seen as board members you just are you can't ever step away from that role as board members so it's unavoidable that if you are at schools or attending events or other things folks might inform you of things that they disagree with they may say they have a complaint about something again educate remind them of the process things of that nature because we've got kind of a two-way street here first of all i have always said as my recommendation that superintendents need to be careful not to issue anything that can be considered as a gag order of you cannot talk to board members that can have unintended consequences it's misleading employees can can take
080that to mean something that it obviously doesn't but on the flip side school board members need to tell employees follow the process there's always a process so if an individual employee were to come to you you're routing them back to the superintendent you're routing them back to the process our grievance policy for example has informal resolution so meet with the supervisor meet notify the superintendent or the hr director and try to resolve it if it can't be resolved and sometimes things can't be resolved we have a grievance policy you have a grievance policy just like every other school board in the state that's the way an employee comes before the board so it's like i say a two-way street you know board members are free to interact with employees and you're going to when you
081see them in the community and go to events and visit schools but at the same time if they bring concerns to you you need to be routing those back to the administration for that to be looked into and to consider so what is the process looking at the next slide if it's an operational concern or concerned about students or other employees just need to follow the chain of command have you gone to the principal if the principal didn't give a good answer have you gone to the hr director or the student services director if not is the superintendent aware of it if it's about the employee's own personnel issues and they're concerned about something that has to do with themselves then again you need to encourage them to follow the process and to look for
082informal resolution with the personnel director of their supervisor and then there is an agreement policy uh if that is somewhere that they needed to get but there's really no avenue and nor should board members be involved in personnel issues and y'all have always done a great job about educating employees and telling them they need to use the official channels in order to bring a concern forward the only exception to that is democracy school teachers school employees do not lose their first amendment free speech rights if it is a matter of public concern then employees are free to address their feelings to the board like any other citizen so take tonight's decision employees were free in public comment tonight to tell you how they felt about face coverage i can't think of a more classic issue
083of public concern than whether or not you were going to require student staff and visitors to wear face coverings so employees would have been completely within their rights to give public comment to send you emails to do things of that nature so i think that all of you have seen that in practice and you're used to it that difference between what's an issue of public concern and which you can address directly to the board what's a personnel issue or a student matter that really needs to follow the process and go through the administration and i think y'all know pretty much where that line is between the two number four do not disclose closed session or other confidential information error on the side of caution don't disclose what's discussed in closed session at all remember that
084student matters are confidential by federal law this is an easy one to forget a student is suspended they're not going to play on friday night can you tell folks oh he can't play on friday night because he's got a short-term suspension for a disciplinary infraction no you can't and i can't tell you how many times i've seen that exact quote in newspapers from clients of mine where principals forget and will say oh well that student's not playing tonight because he's suspended well anything about a details with a student is protected by federal law so just better off to err on the side of caution and tell folks students have federal confidentiality protection that's somewhere i'm not going to get with employees they have state protection and of course seek uh input from your chair from
085your superintendent from legal counsel if you're not sure about whether a matter is public record or not and then the last one is a little nuanced d2 that i think real important as you get to know dr ayers better she gets to know you better there's no hard and fast rules on asking a simple question and i can give you a million hypotheticals what time is open house are we going to have school tomorrow with bad weather when are the playoffs what's our policy on making up an attendance day if you have to go to a funeral these are the types of questions and sometimes you have other people may raise to you you may see an employee a principal have the ability to ask them a simple question again please keep in mind there's
086a difference between you just need a quick piece of information and you have a concern okay if you have a concern about something i strongly encourage you to route that through the superintendent she is here to look into your concerns and it will really help the superintendent if you have somebody come to you and say our attendance policy is unfair because of a b and c this is what happened to my child you might have the immediate knee-jerk reaction that you want to call the principal and say tell me about this situation had to be attendance policy applied to them what not all i can do is encourage you and i am strongly encouraging you right back to the superintendent say dr hares here's the concern i got look into it you know if you
087don't mind letting me know she'll be happy to circle back with you as individual board members if you've got concerns about things and then bring it to the full board if there's a bigger issue but certainly be thinking about that a test i like to use is if you were superintendent would you want to know that there's a concern out there and i think that's a good way to think about it are you just seeking a very simple piece of information that takes two seconds or is there a concern or potential problem out there if there's a concern or potential problem i think the superintendent needs to know about it and then there's a difference between researching and analyzing spending time on issues you may have what you think is the greatest idea in the
088world that the jackson county schools needs to look into and consider if you've got one of those epiphanies pick up the phone and call madam chair and say ally i got a great idea so i'd like to bring it before the board and see if a majority of the board backs this idea as far as the administration looking into it and researching it because dr ayres and her staff have more than they can do and so be respectful of their time too are you really asking for a quick piece of information or are you asking for research and if you're asking for something to be researched thought about looked into i really think that needs to come from a majority of the school board members for that to be something that comes before the board
089so those are just to me those are the big ticket items and i think as you all get to know dr air is better and she gets to know you that level of trust and education the last thing i will say is that when you tell members especially in the community and parents thank you so much for calling me about this i am now going to call dr ayers immediately because i know that she will do a good job of looking into this this is what we hire her to do in her administration you just told that parent that you've not only got incredible confidence in dr heirs but and everybody sitting in this room when you say to a community member or a parent i'm going to now call the superintendent of the administration
090have them look into this you just said they have my trust and confidence that's a whole lot better than yeah i know we got problems with that school let me see what i can do let me see what i can work into uh not only have you now stepped in it and uh bless your heart because you don't have time for what's coming next but inadvertently you've just communicated to that person that you have no trust and confidence in the very people you've hired then you didn't mean that but that's what they hear when you go yeah i know we got some problems and you know we need to do something let me look into it and just encourage you be careful what you say to folks i think when you say to them thank
091you that sounds serious i'm going to make sure that's looked into and we got a superintendent staff to do it then i think that you've protected yourself and you've also really uplifted the position of your administration with parents and others in the community i'm happy to answer any questions but i also know it's been a long night so i'm happy if you don't have any as well and i appreciate the time to see them thank you thank you for letting us know one more time it's always good to have reminders i think i won't say the honeymoon's over but i figured this was a good time to do that thank you at this to time during the meeting and they can mention that we adjourn tonight's meeting hi elizabeth meeting of the board of education
092is august 24th at 5 30 here at the board of education it we'll start with a closed session made thank you you