[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:04] Good evening, everyone. Good evening, fellow board members. It's good to see you all, you guys look amazing. And hello, little rock and beyond. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule to join us in our agenda meeting tonight.
[0:27] We have a short agenda meeting this evening and then of course we'll go over the outline of next meeting as well.
[0:39] First and foremost, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to open up our meeting, which I have already started to do, but I will do the pledge of the legions.
[0:48] And if we can please have a director Adam to please lead us in the pledge.
[1:20] Okay, you know, this, this, this is, we are in the fourth week of school and so definitely
[1:31] want to give a shout out to all of our staff that is working amazingly hard to do what
[1:41] they was called and signed up to do whether it's in the classrooms or behind the scenes
[1:47] and so we truly thank you all for that.
[1:55] Also I do want everyone, this is not so
[2:02] much of good news. However, we do have a few passings that we want to acknowledge.
[2:09] The first is Ms. Collier. She taught over at Brady and she passed away and so she was
[2:23] promoted on beyond life as well as Mr. Sheldon Joshua also passed away.
[2:33] And then director, little rock city director,
[2:40] Irma Hendrix passed away yesterday evening.
[2:46] I've had the pleasure to get to know director Hendrix
[2:50] over the years and leading up to the point
[2:55] of where you all hear me now.
[2:58] And she will be tremendously missed.
[3:02] She always looked at things right through a lens of equity.
[3:08] She wasn't afraid to have the hard conversations or make hard comments.
[3:17] And so with that, if we can just take a moment to remember three beautiful lives
[3:25] that graced us upon Earth, right as they are now promoted beyond life.
[3:46] Thank you, guys, for participating in that Director Adams.
[3:51] Thank you, Ms. Heather. I just wanted to add a additional word of condolence and gratitude for Mr. Joshua.
[3:59] He was my children's, one of my children's music teachers at Martin Luther King Elementary,
[4:07] I can tell you that a highlight of for my family of our LRST education were the music programs
[4:16] at Martin Luther King Elementary, we would go there and there would be a celebration of
[4:21] children and a music and of all the different cultures that were represented and really make
[4:29] You make you feel good about what the world was and what the world could be when you did
[4:34] that.
[4:35] And he is such a kind and talented soul, and I'm glad that he was a part of my children's
[4:41] life and the lives of so many other children there at P.E.
[4:45] Elementary.
[4:46] Thank you.
[4:47] Thank you for that.
[4:51] Next, we will have a word of expression, of inspiration.
[4:57] And
[5:00] I believe I don't have someone pre-programmed in my mind at this time. So we will have a, okay, director
[5:09] morning. We're going to have director Shandrick morning, lead us in that. It's great segue,
[5:16] like a second line. Come on.
[5:23] Well, hello, everybody. And thank you for letting us have it on the silence. So something
[5:33] that I've been doing lately is exercising my voice. You know how we exercise our body but
[5:38] you know oftentimes exercise our voices. So I wake up in the morning and I go walking and while
[5:44] I'm walking I'll talk practice my stories, I'll scream, you know, do anything that I want with my
[5:52] voice. And today I went to a park and a park my car I got out and I was walking on this pavement
[6:02] And then I made it to a point where there was a trail.
[6:05] There was an entrance to the trail, but it was surrounded by trees.
[6:10] And I stopped, because I was a little headed to take some of my men's
[6:14] a lot of trees right here. I can't see the end.
[6:16] It might be some lines, tires, and bears down here.
[6:21] So instead of enjoying this possibly nice trail, I turned around
[6:26] because in my mind, I had convinced myself that there's some
[6:30] terrible that's in there that you can't see, so let's just turn around and not even worry about it, and I was thinking like, you know, how often in life do we go through life, getting to the entrance of something, but we turn around because we allow ourselves to be
[6:47] psyched out by fear, so I can create these stories in our minds that, hey, there might be my insight into theirs, or I might not be able to do it, like we literally allow ourselves to be
[7:00] paralyzed by fear of uncertainty.
[7:04] So I just wanted to encourage everybody to listen to everybody that's here.
[7:08] Right now, yeah, they're in an entrance of something, maybe a new business I've been in,
[7:11] a new career change, a new relationship, a new way of thinking.
[7:15] You're in the entrance but you've allowed yourself to be scared and hesitant
[7:20] because you can't see all the way through to the end of your afraid of what you don't know.
[7:26] Don't be afraid because you don't know you might rob yourself of a lot of
[7:29] You are two of these when you leave your fear, so right now, even though you may not be able to see the end.
[7:37] If you see a group and fight through the end, you never know all of you that can be on the other side.
[7:46] Good deal. Thank you so much for that.
[7:50] So, you guys, we are going to have some refresher reports and discussions
[8:00] and we will talk about just really quick as you guys already see it.
[8:04] As a Ford and GL update, which I'm really excited to hear more about that
[8:10] and write where it is today.
[8:13] And we will also speak about our board zones, which will be a review,
[8:17] which is our first and initial view and possible discussion around that.
[8:26] and then we will get into City Year and then of course moving on down into just the outline
[8:34] of the agenda for our next meeting and so you guys we shouldn't be here you know too
[8:42] long but at the same time we will definitely hear these reports and have room for a discussion
[8:53] So first up, I am going to see what our superintendent has to say.
[9:00] Thank you, Ms. President. I just want to share a couple things.
[9:03] One is, I actually jam Ms. Hatter up a little bit.
[9:07] Mr. Collier actually was an employee at Fair Park.
[9:11] And she was hearing my story today about Brady as well that I got to do a tour.
[9:16] And I think that's where I got combined.
[9:18] But Mr. Collier was a longtime employee at Fair Park.
[9:21] and so we want to honor him.
[9:23] There have been several things that you as board members have received in terms of some
[9:27] community, kind of just pushing in to all of you with wonder how things are going.
[9:34] And I want to first off just provide an update with Ignite.
[9:37] As a board, you gave pretty clear direction to me and our staff to say, please move forward,
[9:45] but do it that we don't have to use Pearson if at all possible.
[9:48] and I'm proud to say that we have every teaching position filled K6 and 712 with a certified
[9:57] Little Rock School District teacher.
[10:00] In other spots in the district, okay, because we've had that and we're going to have to fill that in particular. We're still like many districts searching for additional support for special needs. But the positions, even for special needs in the night program, are currently filled. I'll also share that school, school G is up and running for all of those parents and that we have actually had very positive feedback from our overall parent community.
[10:29] That does not mean that everything is perfect, nothing ever is.
[10:32] And so, as you receive any input in from Ignite parents that are presenting problems, of
[10:37] course, you want to try to keep that at the level of the principal if at all possible,
[10:40] but you can certainly make Dr. McGee and I aware of it, and we will do everything we can.
[10:44] But, school G is up and running, we're fully staffed.
[10:47] We have one issue today, because Dr. McGee and I wanted to make sure that was AC unit
[10:56] it went down at Henderson in one of the sections of that area where we have our ignite group
[11:01] and so we should have that up and running by tomorrow. If we have a couple of other
[11:06] problems, we are in the third grade classrooms. We need to create a better divider space inside
[11:14] that room so that the two teachers there, there's going to be a little bit of feedback between
[11:18] the two teachers of this distracting to the learning environments for the learners of those
[11:24] two groups of kids, so we've got to become the better divider system for third grade.
[11:30] We have one teacher in the 712 group that is struggling with the delivery of the platform
[11:36] of being a virtual teacher, and we are looking to make some form of a change with that
[11:43] individual to then transfer that individual out and get another person in.
[11:48] And then the final concern that I would share, just like we have within our environment
[11:54] of in-person, we also have some students that have not been engaged as formally as what
[11:59] we would like, specifically at the K6 group, where approximately between 70 to 75 students
[12:05] that have not really been engaged like we would want in terms of their learning, have not
[12:11] picked up their device, have not got online, and we are trying everything that we can
[12:17] and humanly do to get that engagement.
[12:20] And so we're going to have to go to step three and four.
[12:24] Ms. Hadter and I even talked about that.
[12:26] That we may even put some of you to work
[12:27] and go knock it on doors and trying to make sure
[12:32] some of our disengaged families, either in person
[12:35] or in virtual, that we get them into schools
[12:38] as quick as we can so that they can start.
[12:40] That kind of covers what I wanted to bring up about ignite.
[12:44] Hopefully that helps our community and then all of you.
[12:50] I'll stop and pause just for a second to see if there's any questions.
[12:54] I have two.
[12:56] Thank you for quickly putting together an update for us.
[13:01] We did have some emails that came in and asked us to do an update on it tonight.
[13:04] So I appreciate Mr. Por for very quickly putting that together for us.
[13:09] One question I had and this isn't one.
[13:12] trying to think how to frame it. So I've gotten a few parents who are concerned or have
[13:18] questions about the level of engagement in terms of the number of assignments or the number
[13:22] of zooms. And I think the best way to ask this is is there a process that if a parent
[13:28] is concerned about that, who do they reach out to? How can we make sure that you know some
[13:33] parents were concerned that it was too much? Some were concerned that their child was not
[13:36] getting enough engagement. So how can they address those concerns?
[13:41] Well, you know, of course, first we want them to, you know, hopefully talk right directly
[13:45] to their teacher, but they can also make the principal aware, and if they make the principal
[13:49] aware, and CC Dr. McGee and I, you know, we will also make sure that we're falling up and
[13:53] understand the issue and problem. And we've struggled with that really for the last two years
[13:58] of the pandemic of trying to figure out that balance. So, you know, I'm sure that's still
[14:03] maybe a work and process as we switch to some educators that that's all they're doing
[14:08] as virtual.
[14:08] There may be an over ambitious in some cases or there could be a problem where we're
[14:13] not.
[14:13] So just us being aware of the problem is critical.
[14:16] Okay.
[14:17] And then the second one, and this one may just be one where I'm making all aware of a concern.
[14:21] I've had a couple of parents say that there's a lot of background noise on these zooms that
[14:27] make it very difficult for their child to actually hear their teacher and engage.
[14:30] And I'm trying to understand because I mean I don't know exactly the set up, but it's
[14:35] kind of like they're saying background noise from other teachers who are also teaching
[14:39] on Zoom at the same time.
[14:41] Well that's an example. That third grade classroom I just shared that we are aware of that.
[14:45] And if there's any others need to make the principal aware.
[14:49] And again, Dr. McGinayne, we will make sure we look into it.
[14:52] Okay. So it may just be either physical barriers or timing of Zoom.
[15:00] Questions or something so that they're not? I will share the other thing that we've done to cut down on noise as we boarded carpet. And it's been installed now. So before when we began the year, we did not have carpet in those rooms. And so we now have carpet similar to what you're seeing in this boardroom. It's been put into all those classrooms because we are running into just too much background noise, just even if you move the chair, it could be distracting. So we've taken that step to put into Henderson as well.
[15:28] That's those are the concerns that I have right now.
[15:32] Thank you.
[15:33] The next one that I wanted to bring up real fast.
[15:36] I have one question.
[15:40] Have the teachers received all of their curriculum and their manuals
[15:48] and their manipulatives and everything because that was a concern that I've heard recently
[15:55] But in the last couple of days, to the best of our knowledge they have, but if you have
[15:59] some specific example and can share that after the meeting, we'll look into it.
[16:03] I'll do that.
[16:07] Okay.
[16:07] Next.
[16:08] We have, but as you received at least one email asking all of you to say, where do we stand
[16:14] on the community task force that was dealing with community schools?
[16:18] And if you remember, we did discuss this in the early part of the summer and task force
[16:24] was to be created, and then that was going to create a governance model that we could
[16:28] have in a memo, a memorandum of understanding between the city and the school district.
[16:33] And I will just share that we got a late start on actually doing the work with that task
[16:39] force just because of the schedules of everything, and that's a little bit on the city, but
[16:43] even more so on the school district in terms of where we were with just the loads of things
[16:48] that we were trying to deal with.
[16:49] and I apologize for that and so we are going to bring that forward to you, nothing has been lost
[16:56] but we know that that's still a target.
[16:58] We did put that into your board report but one of our sharp community members was paying attention and said
[17:04] that report should be coming to you right now this month and they didn't see it.
[17:08] That is accurate. We're just pushing it back a little bit and that will be coming forward to you in a real quickly.
[17:14] Two other just very quick things and then we can jump into the reports for tonight.
[17:17] Board members that you're at the Dias, you have the Community Report.
[17:22] Now, this is the first time you've seen a physical report of this.
[17:26] You may have looked at this online.
[17:29] We always produce a physical report, but the past year during the pandemic,
[17:33] we did not go into the trouble of making the hard copies.
[17:37] We thought it was advantageous to go ahead and produce this.
[17:41] Knowing we're going to produce another one in the month,
[17:44] usually we have those ready and produced in December.
[17:46] but we thought it was good timing because it's a level of accountability, it's a level of celebration, it's a level of targets for our future as we go forward on some of our election efforts.
[17:57] So board members you have this for your copy, you can always guide people to the website and then if you need more physical copies of this then obviously we can produce it.
[18:08] tied to the election. You also have just the facts sheet. We've given that to you
[18:12] virtually. You actually have a hard copy there in front of you tonight too that
[18:16] you can use. If you need additional copies, we can make those that you can
[18:21] hand out. If you're if you're trying to meet with small groups of people or even
[18:25] large groups, and we also can produce something that can be sent to you virtually.
[18:31] Finally, I just really want to honor what was said by Ms. Hatter that our staff,
[18:35] a tremendous job. One of the things some of the board members had a discussion with as we got
[18:42] ready for the board meeting and had a little bit of dinner was the wonderful numbers that
[18:47] are coming out of Little Rock School. Wonderful is probably the wrong term. I would say good
[18:52] numbers that show us being very responsible in terms of this pandemic dealing with the
[18:58] COVID situation, dealing with the Delta variant. If you look at it, we're never anywhere in
[19:04] the top five that I've seen in the last month.
[19:08] We are typically number seven, eight,
[19:11] yet we're the second largest school district.
[19:13] I attribute that to two things.
[19:15] One, this community takes it really serious.
[19:19] Our whole community.
[19:21] And if you travel to different places,
[19:23] go to different places like for a ball game,
[19:24] you go to a gas station or go out to eat,
[19:27] it is much different than when you go here in Little Rock.
[19:31] And so people are masked up,
[19:32] And people are doing, my guess is our vaccination rate is probably high for this large of a center.
[19:39] Right behind that is our staff deserves a tremendous amount of credit because we have to be around 75% right now of our staff that's been vaccinated with both first and second shots.
[19:53] That's pretty unheard of in terms of this state in an organization of over 3,000 employees.
[19:59] Please.
[20:00] And one of the highest with the school districts right along with our staff, our parents and our kids are doing the right things with the mass mandate. That's cut down on the number of positives as well as the number of quarantines. And again, you go look at those reports and look at it with any type of longitudinal daily data. This district is, you know, any case is potential, you know, something that could be really terrible.
[20:29] But we are doing a pretty good job where we're having our biggest issues in terms of the quarantines when you look at those reports.
[20:36] A lot of it is in the pre-case level where mass compliance, we just can't, you know, give good, good solid answer to say,
[20:45] mass were in the right place and were fitted the entire time that they were in school.
[20:50] We just can't do that and when we can't do it, then we have to go ahead and quarantine.
[20:53] We have had very few positives at the secondary level with staff or with kids and our biggest
[21:02] numbers have been at the elementary level, which kind of makes sense and most of the
[21:07] things that are coming in and happening in the school, it's coming from the community.
[21:11] It's not being spread inside the school district.
[21:15] So that's a shout out really to our whole community, but in particular our staff deserves
[21:19] there's a lot of credit for how serious they've taken,
[21:23] especially distilled to variant.
[21:24] Thank you, Ms. Hatter, that concludes
[21:27] just the kind of some opening remarks in the meeting.
[21:30] I'm excited about talking about Ford and GL, too.
[21:32] Oh my God, that is the highlight for me,
[21:36] just to hear how far Ford and GL have come within our district.
[21:43] We know we do have a flagship school,
[21:46] which is Southwest,
[21:47] that is the furthest within the Ford and GL implementation as far as the academies and the offerings.
[21:58] And so, I see some wonderful people.
[22:01] I know them all.
[22:02] I've worked with them for years and I just don't know which one of you guys will call.
[22:08] Okay.
[22:08] So, I'm going to start off with Montgomery coming up.
[22:11] I'm going to also share, you know, I'm with you.
[22:15] that, you know, we tagged him all the time in the Saturday night, but, you know, the
[22:19] combination of having to make a Montgomery in your district, that's the director of
[22:23] career ed, and what that meant, you know, from the moment I came into the district, I was
[22:28] like, wow, you know, I was kind of nervous about, you know, what, because it's important to
[22:32] me.
[22:33] Yeah.
[22:33] Where ed is super important.
[22:34] I think it's really important to many of you as board members and coming in and finding
[22:38] somebody so talented that had so many different skills and could talk to every type of stakeholder
[22:44] and get stuff done. Man, it was a blessing. But right behind that, one of the other calls
[22:50] that was made as I came down was with Jay Cheshire. And I believe I called him the very
[22:56] first day that I got the job and said, you know, I need to talk to you and I need your help.
[23:01] And I want to try to be able to engage the business community in a different way. I think
[23:06] he and I talked within that 24 hours then three times after that 24 hours. And those calls
[23:14] never have stopped and now you know when you talk about the academies of central
[23:18] Arkansas I'm following a Ford NGL model. It's very very exciting and should make
[23:23] all have you come on up and we get ready to kind of get started but I'm famous
[23:27] for stealing PowerPoint data off of people so I am gonna stop there and then
[23:32] battle let Shamika be able to own because I want to say some more but I'm gonna let
[23:38] a little I shouldn't, oh it's from our American.
[23:41] No you know the American at this moment.
[23:42] No, thank you.
[23:43] We go ahead and again you can't.
[23:45] Okay, I'm not so sorry for asking.
[23:46] Thank you.
[23:47] I was wondering what to do about this,
[23:49] did anything everyone how are you?
[23:51] Good.
[23:52] Good morning, thank you so much for sharing.
[23:54] Those kind words of expression because when we talk about
[23:57] Ford and GL and the academies of Central Arkansas,
[24:00] it's all about that injury.
[24:02] And we've been at this entry point for three years and
[24:05] working diligently to transform our school.
[24:13] All right, as you guys know, Fort NGL was an initiative that all four districts in
[24:21] Pulaski County are taking our heart in to prepare students in Central Arkansas for
[24:27] college, career, and for life, and we're bringing career-focused high schools to this community,
[24:34] and it's a special thing because no one else in the country is doing this work as a region.
[24:40] Usually, it's just one school district who's implementing the Academy's model at one time.
[24:46] And it's a community-connected approach to transform our educational model for high school
[24:53] students.
[24:54] And so, we're on the cutting edge of innovation to transform the high school experience.
[25:00] As we've shared before, the Ford NGO framework includes three strands of transformation. The first
[25:09] strand is transforming how we teach and learn, how our kids learn. You know, we want real and
[25:15] relevant learning experiences for our students. The second strand is transforming the secondary
[25:21] school experience. We want our schools to create and maintain those career and interest theme
[25:28] academies. It's funny because my daughter is a singer and she's entered one of the medical
[25:35] programs and every day she has a story to share with me and she's a child who has never called
[25:40] me about school so I was excited that she's getting that experience this year. And thirdly,
[25:47] we're transforming how we interact with the business community and within our schools and the chamber
[25:54] has been a large part of that since we started this implementation and so I do want Change
[26:02] Reddish who serves as the executive vice president for the Little Rock Regional Chamber
[26:07] of Commerce to come up and share kind of a timeline of where we started three years ago
[26:12] and all the work that we have done thus far.
[26:15] And then I'll come back up to share with you where we are specifically in the Little Rock
[26:19] School District.
[26:22] Welcome, Mr. Reddish.
[26:25] Thank you, Shemika.
[26:26] Thank you, Shemika.
[26:29] President Hadter, members of the board, Superintendent Por,
[26:32] it's a real honor to be in front of you all this evening.
[26:36] I'm here, as Shemika said, representing the Little Rock Regional Chamber
[26:40] but also representing our four sister chambers in Malmel,
[26:44] Sherwood, North Little Rock, Jacksonville,
[26:46] and the business community that has really rallied
[26:48] around this work here over the last three and a half years.
[26:52] You know, our chamber has said, and in fact, Jay said, at our annual meeting two and a
[26:57] half years ago, this work, supporting this district, supporting all four districts, and ultimately
[27:05] working to we get to a place where we can all say that every student in every one of these
[27:11] districts and every one of these schools is graduating college ready, career ready, and with
[27:16] the strongest academic foundation that we can give them
[27:19] is our number one priority as a chamber until that day.
[27:23] So this is not a small commitment that we've made.
[27:25] We've invested significant amounts of dollars
[27:27] and staff resources and will continue to do so
[27:31] in a very happy and positive way
[27:34] because we feel like this model really has the opportunity
[27:36] to transform not just to district, not just for districts,
[27:40] but in fact the entire economic future
[27:43] of our region and it's an economic development organization
[27:46] And that's what we get up every morning thinking about.
[27:49] So I'm going to give you a little bit of background here.
[27:52] I want to also draw attention to my colleagues,
[27:55] Kristi Barr and Jay Cheshire, who have been sort of leading
[27:59] this work for our chamber.
[28:01] But I wanted to give you a little bit of the history here.
[28:03] Let you know where we stand today with the entire initiative,
[28:08] as well as some next steps as it relates to work
[28:10] that we're doing to bring additional resources
[28:12] and business partnerships to the table.
[28:14] So I'm not going to go through all of this.
[28:15] you all have had this in advance, but really want to take you back this began in June
[28:20] of 2018. So really closer to three and a half years at this point, and it has survived
[28:27] a lot of good and positive change over the last three and a half years. Something that
[28:33] I always want to celebrate, because I think what we've said from the beginning is, this
[28:38] is different than anything we've tried before, because this has to be permanent, this has
[28:41] to be wall to wall. This has to be inclusive of everybody within our community. And so that is
[28:46] what you'll see as we as I walk through this, the path that we have walked for the last three and a
[28:51] half years. So it started with making sure that the four districts were willing to come together
[28:55] and senior leadership from the superintendents were a partner in this into early 2019 when we did a
[29:03] sort of benchmarking analysis. We had a chance to bring in some experts who met with each school
[29:09] In each district, teachers, parents, students, alumni, faith-based leaders, elected officials, business leaders, that report came back very positive.
[29:18] That led then over the summer of 2019 to some important work that we did with the teachers with AEA and LREA to make sure that the voice of the teachers was first and front and center in this.
[29:34] And then into the fall of 2019, when we started the master planning, the visioning, we made
[29:39] sure that in that process, we actually did a full matrix.
[29:44] We had every zip code in this county, which is more than you would think, actually, 30
[29:50] sum ad zip codes.
[29:51] We had representatives from every one of those zip codes, again, representing faith-based leaders,
[29:57] elected officials, teacher students, parents, they were all
[30:08] And I will never forget. March 12th was the day that we had our final master planning session. It's a date. I'm sure many of you remember as the governor first sent students home due to COVID-19, which we now looking back. It's almost hard to believe where our minds were on that date, but it seemed much more innocent time back then. But we got the master planning done. So I think we're going to be able to do that.
[30:29] such that actually the start of school year 2020,
[30:33] even in the midst of the pandemic,
[30:35] was able to begin the initially planned implementation phases.
[30:39] And at most schools within Little Rock
[30:42] and in fact across the four districts,
[30:45] that included the first freshman level freshman seminar course
[30:48] that you'll hear Shemika talk a lot more about.
[30:51] Continued planning through the last school year.
[30:56] And again, you'll see a lot of that work
[30:59] because what Shimiq is about to show you that the districts and the schools did, identifying
[31:04] academies, identifying what was right for the school, looking at existing programs, imagining
[31:10] what the future could look like at each one of these schools.
[31:13] I think many of you have heard this before, but the part about Ford NGL that I think is most
[31:19] important to its success is it's meant to be a framework that is individualized at the
[31:26] district and then at the school level.
[31:28] So each one of these schools will be implementing the model, but it will be implemented in a way that it's right for
[31:33] rest school of innovation that is right for Central, that is right for Hall, that is right for Parkview, and that is right for
[31:40] Southwest. So, and similarly across the other districts. So, I'll take you then to
[31:46] some next steps and some
[31:49] important work that we've committed to help lead and to bring additional resources to the table. So,
[31:54] So, we have gone through some of the pathway design and implementation, continuing to get
[32:01] to the levels of curriculum and stackable courses and from a CTE standpoint, what is
[32:08] the right credential that would most advantage the student upon graduation in terms of career?
[32:14] What are the post-secondary concurrent credit partnerships at the post-secondary level so that
[32:20] every student has the opportunity to graduate with college credit?
[32:23] And then again, how do we think about most importantly equipping the teachers in real
[32:29] time, just in time, as they lead this change within their individual classrooms and additional
[32:34] professional development that might be needed to help support them?
[32:39] And continuing to market and advertise, we actually did run through some investments made
[32:44] by 50 for the future, last fall, hopefully some of you saw TV commercials, and banner ads
[32:51] on Facebook, try to, again, promote the Academies of Central Arkansas and, of course, by extension
[32:57] the four districts and 12 high schools that are part of each one of those districts.
[33:02] The work now ahead of us in sort of the immediate term over the next several months is to secure
[33:08] business partnerships. We are starting at the foundational level. This work is, again, being led by
[33:13] 50 for the future and what we have said is a pretty audacious goal that every one of the, what is
[33:20] ultimately 29 academies across 12 high schools will have a foundational partner, a business
[33:25] partner who is coming in at a, in some cases, six-figure, multi-year level to bring additional
[33:33] resources to the table to help schools as they work to implement this model, committing
[33:39] not just dollars and volunteer hours, but more importantly, that sort of one-to-one connection
[33:46] that adoption of the school as it moves forward.
[33:50] What we've seen in Nashville, for example,
[33:52] those initial business partnerships are still in place 17 years later.
[33:56] So what we want to do is set up business partnerships here on the front end
[33:59] that will stand the test of time that will endure
[34:02] and that schools can come to depend on as sort of an extension of their resources.
[34:08] But last thing I'll say and you all will be getting an invitation to this
[34:12] if you have not already. This is a national network
[34:15] for NGL is a program of the Ford Foundation.
[34:19] There are 40 other communities across the country
[34:22] and we will be officially designated a member of that
[34:26] national network of excellence on October 7th.
[34:30] So we'll have leadership from the Ford Foundation
[34:31] that will come in.
[34:33] It will be probably 95% celebrating locally
[34:37] and about ourselves and 5% business
[34:40] of getting the sort of formal blessing
[34:42] and designation as an NGO community but that's really a testament to the hard work that this
[34:47] district and the other three districts have put in together to a place where our master plan
[34:53] and our implementation plan are at a level that is equal with our peers across the country.
[35:00] I will stop there, Jimmy, because I've got a lot more important information to tell you specifically about the Little Rock School District. But I just want to close by thanking you all for the continued partnership and for the ability to come before you tonight. It's absolutely a highlight of my career. And I think I can speak for Christy to be able to be working with this district and the other districts across the county on this important work that we think will change the future for thousands and thousands of kids and families that we'll never know that we are a part of it.
[35:28] So thank you,
[35:34] James.
[35:38] So we're in our district, we decided
[35:41] to implement the academies using a phased approach.
[35:45] When we started this work, we were in the process
[35:47] of building Southwest High School.
[35:49] And a lot of the career programs that were implemented there
[35:53] was because of us knowing that we were going to start implementing
[35:58] the academies of Central Arkansas.
[35:59] And currently Southwest High School has a freshman academy and a sophomore academy.
[36:06] So they're further hit than our other schools.
[36:09] I'm proud to say that Hall and West are implementing freshman academy and part of you in Central
[36:14] are now implementing freshman seminar, which is a year-long course that I'll talk about
[36:19] in just a second.
[36:21] Part of you was in the process, as you know, they had a change in leadership.
[36:24] and so basically we were allowed to set, hit the reset button and allowed them to work together as a staff to come up with their academies and pathways that they want to offer for their school.
[36:37] And we're meeting continuously with them through that process.
[36:41] We have hired Academy coaches for all of our schools and they are working diligently to bring in partners and plan exciting experiential learning activities for our freshmen.
[36:54] Now, this process of coming up with or selecting academies and pathways has been a collaborative
[37:01] process as Mr. Reddish shared with you all, we're bringing it together all stakeholders
[37:07] and it's a long process and it's ongoing because as the needs of the community of industry
[37:13] changes or more student demands change pathways may change and so know that it's fluid.
[37:21] Additionally, we're working with our high school principals and their teams to have a
[37:28] more collaborative structure to how we master schedule, how we develop teacher teams,
[37:36] how we present course selection, and how we advise our students in selecting the pathway
[37:43] that's best for them.
[37:48] As mentioned before, our Academy coaches are essential to the work of the implementation
[37:57] of the academies of Central Arkansas because they meet weekly with the chamber to stay
[38:02] abreast of any changes in business and industry.
[38:06] They host our school tours with business and community partners and they secure those
[38:11] industry speakers and mentors for our teachers and students.
[38:14] They facilitate the implementation of academies.
[38:19] I meet with the academy coaches monthly,
[38:25] and we work to just look at our school review,
[38:27] our school systems, what's working, what's not working,
[38:30] and how does our current systems conflict with the academy's model.
[38:35] And they also lead professional development.
[38:38] So our academy coaches are busy working,
[38:41] planning those career fairs along beside the Chamber, college tours, academy
[38:47] signing days, because we want to wrap our arms around those freshmen and make
[38:52] that first year of high school special for them. And so the Academy
[38:57] coaches are essential to that work.
[39:02] And then last spring, you all approved, allowed
[39:05] us to teach a course, the freshman seminar course, but we embed professional
[39:11] of Communications. And so within Freshness Seminar, that's that transition course as we
[39:17] move our students from middle school to high school where they have a support system.
[39:23] We work on their social and emotional learning, we work on their academic skills, their professional
[39:29] skills, and it's a year-long course where we focus on college and career exploration. Students
[39:36] learn about their personal interests and strengths, awareness of career, careers, and pathways.
[39:42] And we talk about college.
[39:44] Well, how much does college cost?
[39:45] What does it take?
[39:46] What do you need on your ACT to even get accepted into college?
[39:50] And at the end of their freshman year, students have an opportunity to select the academy and
[39:57] pathway they want to explore in high school.
[40:00] Next three years in their 10th, 11th and 12th grade year, they'll take as a sequence courses in that particular pathway.
[40:11] And freshman seminar, you know, since we are embedding the professional communications standards within this course, we have to build a plan to make sure all of our teachers are supported in the implementation of the professional communication skills, where we have professional, we've had professional development days of this summer, and we have ongoing
[40:33] professional development monthly with those teachers so we are our district has
[40:38] wrapped around them to make sure that they're they have what they need to to
[40:42] teach our students those professional communication standards so and so now
[40:50] I want to get into our academies and pathways for each of our schools all schools
[40:56] like I stated earlier offering freshman academy hall since the hiring of
[41:04] is Cooper, they've made adjustments to their pathway offerings, and right now they're offering
[41:09] the Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Health Sciences, and this doesn't mean
[41:15] that they're not offering other CTE classes as electives, these are just their Academy
[41:20] pathways that they're offering.
[41:23] Part view is still under construction, we're developing what that's going to look like,
[41:28] And we actually have a meeting next week with industry partners and the school, their
[41:35] guiding coalition to continue the conversation of developing what their pathways and academies
[41:41] will look like.
[41:42] Of course, Southwest, they offer, I think, 11 pathways within three academies.
[41:48] And we're very proud that West is one of the first school, I think the only school in
[41:53] in Pulaski County who has decided to opt for a program in agriculture by implementing
[41:59] quarter culture technology and veterinary science and I don't know whether you follow them
[42:04] on Twitter or not but they posted pictures of their chicken coop that was installed, that
[42:10] was installed a couple of weeks ago that we're very excited about and so those are our pathways
[42:16] and academies that we're offering in the district and of course we still have that outlier
[42:21] of Metro and Excel where students can choose those pathways. They are not academies. They're
[42:25] simply pathways that students are giving information about in the ninth grade year.
[42:32] Right, so are there any questions?
[42:35] I just have one. It's not for you. I just have one. It's not for you. It's for my board member.
[42:44] Allie, did you have anything to do with that chicken coop?
[42:49] I wish that I could say that I did.
[42:50] I do love the fact that they have chickens.
[42:53] But I think they were doing it on their own.
[43:00] So I have an overarching question.
[43:02] But I think it may be directed more to Mr. Poor.
[43:05] And it's really one we've had this conversation,
[43:07] so this is really more because it's something
[43:09] I've heard continuously from the community.
[43:12] How are we balancing the career readiness aspect
[43:17] that is a part of this with the general education
[43:23] because it makes you a better person
[43:25] and a better citizen and is good for education's sake
[43:27] and we don't want to lose that as well.
[43:30] We don't want to shift the focus too much
[43:32] so how are we making sure that we reach that balance?
[43:35] Yeah, I think that we're still tied to the standards
[43:39] that are established by the state in terms of content areas
[43:44] and then we're still pulled true to the things
[43:46] that we want to do to develop good citizens and we actually think by doing the career academies
[43:53] that you actually enhance that whole experience because now you have teams of teacher working
[43:59] together on it reinforcing it and actually creating relevance for citizenship in an industry
[44:05] area or maybe even in a service type project that can be out there for our community to go
[44:11] would make a difference whether it's in a medical exploration thing or whether it's in
[44:15] trying to solve a problem on pollution and a river.
[44:19] Our kids are going to end up being engaged in those things, they're going to be tied
[44:22] to it with the work force.
[44:24] So I think it's the most exciting thing, and especially looking at the model out of Nashville is that
[44:31] when all this happened, and I don't know, either one of the three of you is a chamber member
[44:36] who want to come up with a couple of stats, but when you look at Nashville, one of the
[44:40] most striking things was that as an urban school environment, it has a lot of
[44:44] similarities to us, just a little bit larger scale. They had a graduation rate
[44:48] when they started this that I believe was it 58 percent, 58 percent haven't used
[44:53] that stat in two years I think, but 50
[45:00] 38% and because of everyone working together and because of teachers working together, business
[45:06] working together, their graduation rate, now I believe, is in the mid-80s. And another
[45:12] stat, James, do you want to show your favorite stat on that?
[45:15] Yeah, actually, so there's a couple, it's a great question. So there's a couple different
[45:19] examples throughout the network that we've been able to look at. So Lexington, Virginia,
[45:24] their big win was absences, tardiness in school and
[45:28] high school suspension, all down by double digits in just the first year across
[45:32] all three high schools. Hampton Roads, Virginia, GPA for students in the
[45:36] Academy versus previous is about a point higher. We see graduation rate in
[45:43] Pinellas County, Florida, which is Tampa graduation rates again about 20 points
[45:49] higher for students of color 30 points higher.
[45:53] So, I mean, this has the ability because it integrates relevance across the core academics
[45:58] to really fundamentally change what the days like for a student.
[46:01] You're not just sitting there turning into chapter whatever in the McGraw-Hill textbook.
[46:06] It's you need to learn this because next period your CTE class is going to require you to take
[46:11] a measurement or to make a cut or to do a project and you're going to need this math equation
[46:17] or you're going to need to know this historical reference to be able to execute upon this.
[46:21] So that feedback loop, they're not just learning core academics now for the hour and a half
[46:28] that they're in math, they're learning math now for the entire day in different bits and
[46:33] pieces relevant to what's all in the academy.
[46:38] So, it's funny, because as you were speaking, I was thinking, I may have, I may be making
[46:44] a point for you here, but when I was in high school, many of the things that interested
[46:49] me most had no career readiness aspect, but then I thought about it and I thought, well
[46:54] maybe they did, and I just didn't know it, you know, because it was art and literature and
[47:00] things like that, that I didn't think of as anything being involved in a career pathway.
[47:04] I just love them because those were academic interests, but I like it.
[47:08] And I think that's what you're going to see in Parkview or at Central with ROTC.
[47:16] We talk about career pathways because that's the majority of what will be in there.
[47:20] But what you need is relevance.
[47:21] And so if that relevance is art or dance or music,
[47:27] if embedding that then in math, science, English, and social studies,
[47:30] all of a sudden takes a D student or a C student to a B student or an A student, that's
[47:36] the win.
[47:37] That's what we're looking for.
[47:40] Hi.
[47:42] She'll make it.
[47:44] Is this on?
[47:45] Yes.
[47:45] It is.
[47:46] Um, where is, and this is something for rest, uh, restaurants and hospitality, we're in
[48:03] about it. It's Southwest High School. We have a health and human health and nutrition
[48:10] pathway and we have a human services pathway. But students can still choose culinary
[48:15] arts that's offered on the Metro campus. Okay, but there was a course in restaurant
[48:23] and hospitality, a statewide course and career intent. I mean, it was a pathway. That pathway
[48:30] his it's more culinary art now. Okay because we have so many open
[48:37] casinos and hotels and there's going to be a lot of and that's what we were
[48:43] told years ago that that was going to happen was it's going on now and the
[48:51] hospitality industry I think there was a one to put on that seminar and I think
[48:57] it needs to be clarified and you know just brought out because a lot of people I think
[49:03] would be interested in that you know like train hotel managers and what not and but
[49:10] courses they go with it. At one point it's fair they had a who we were doing the career
[49:20] academies, that was an armed piece to that. Now I don't know, it might have went the same
[49:27] place the storm machines went, but that I just think that that would be something that
[49:35] a lot of people would be interested in.
[49:40] Ms. Coway, can I respond to that?
[49:42] I appreciate your thought and one of the things Ms. Montgomery and I did is we fought at
[49:48] the state legislative area to maintain the funding levels for the culinary arts program,
[49:54] and we did not get any kind of traction within that.
[49:57] and they actually decrease.
[50:00] We reached the level of funding for that type of program. So we still offer it, we still partner with the Plasky Tech Group to be able to tie our culinary arts together. We, along with the Northwest part of our state, were two loud voices saying that culinary arts needs to be maintained. I think this is a classic example of what Ms. Montgomery brought up in her presentation to say that there could be some adjustments that need to take place because I do think it's an industry that is one that
[50:29] many kids are interested in, businesses interested in it, but the cold reality is
[50:34] funding was cut and so what we have on our map right now that that Miss
[50:39] Montgomery was sharing the the Academy thing we probably stretched the
[50:43] opportunity about as much as we can at its current time until something changes.
[50:49] Okay I know that every since Governor Hutchinson has been in he has been
[50:54] He has really gone the computer science way and cut everything else, but the industry
[51:03] that's coming into Arkansas is a hotel industry and tourist.
[51:09] The hospitality and tourism was the thing that we developed and I was looking for that.
[51:17] you know, and I know they do have those fact classes at software. I mean, yes, software.
[51:28] And I think that's probably the only school.
[51:31] No, we have them at Southwest Central and Hall.
[51:34] Wonderful. Okay. But that was a career path. I think that needs to be explored more.
[51:42] I guess what I want is more visibility.
[51:47] Yes, ma'am.
[51:50] No, I was saying to you.
[51:52] Go ahead.
[51:52] Yeah, excuse me.
[51:56] Do anybody else have any questions for Mrs. Montgomery?
[52:00] No, OK.
[52:01] I, thank you.
[52:02] For all, obviously, we're very hard on this,
[52:05] and I appreciate it.
[52:06] Thank you.
[52:08] I look at consider myself to have the best job in the district
[52:10] because I get to see kids actually getting their hands
[52:13] and starting on real and real and learning almost every day.
[52:16] I love it.
[52:17] Mrs. Montgomery, I have one question.
[52:20] On the 9th grade seminar, are there any reporting given
[52:30] to you to make sure that only 9th graders
[52:35] are taking that class or else write it there's not
[52:40] enough space to give that class in 9th grade. How does that work out? Because my question
[52:47] is, what happens in the might of a 9th-riter miss seminar? Not because they weren't at
[52:53] that school, but then because they didn't have room or someone to teach the class.
[53:00] Well, right now, this school year, all of our 9th graders are currently enrolled in freshman
[53:06] and seminar and report just yesterday.
[53:08] However, for those students who come to our district
[53:11] and they don't, they won't get the oral comm
[53:14] or professional communications credit,
[53:16] we'll offer that, we'll offer a course face-to-face
[53:18] or in person at the school,
[53:20] or we'll offer a digital option
[53:21] for the students to get that created.
[53:24] Okay, thank you.
[53:26] Yes, and that is a point five graduation requirement
[53:29] for all students.
[53:31] Can I bring up one of the famous Hatter,
[53:32] and this is something that Ms. Hatter and I talked about
[53:35] out and I believe we talked about it with the Chamber team is that we really think it
[53:39] would be helpful if it's all right with all of you to bring forward as a part of our
[53:44] agenda next time just a resolution of support for the Ford NGL model and that would fit well
[53:50] with right before the bigger announcement in on October 7th but to have you all endorse
[53:54] it similar to what we did with the models for Hall and Parkview and West School of Innovation
[54:00] to say this board because you've never got to vote on this matter.
[54:03] And just a vote to say we as a board are in, and we're supportive of this model and we're making a commitment over a five-year stretch to be behind it.
[54:16] I hope that honors the thinking that you and I had with the Chamber.
[54:20] Yeah, I think it's important to make sure that we as a board, which we speak.
[54:29] And then we give the board a voice right by a minimum of five members voting the same way.
[54:38] And I just believe that it's important to have a level of direction coming from the board
[54:45] instead of ornaments put on our district because people are trying to shape it.
[54:49] But then like right if we truly believe in it, and then right to have a voice in it and
[54:56] went from the board and so because this work had been
[55:00] Going on with the district prior to most of us, being here, and then, of course, prior to the election of the entire board, three and a half years. And then if we make a five year commitment, and then we are watching it expand. And then adjust right as the supply and demand of our society goes. I think that we will truly give children
[55:29] and something to bank on right when they graduate out of our K-12 system or PK system.
[55:38] That's all I have on that.
[55:41] But yeah, it honored.
[55:42] Thank you.
[55:45] Thank you all.
[55:47] Is that it?
[55:48] Yes.
[55:49] Okay.
[55:54] Okay.
[55:55] You guys moving forward, we will have an introduction
[56:02] of what the potential board zone will be, or not be, but look like that is just for us to have a level of conversation right now.
[56:17] The state is drawing, or redrawing those lines we did, or at least I had a thought of possibly even in the beginning looking at outside of the state
[56:31] to do that. And as it stands right now, the GIS department has come up with a couple
[56:42] of models. And please forgive me. My agenda does not have this name on it.
[56:48] I apologize. I'll introduce the topic a little bit. And then also introduce our guests.
[56:53] We've been very fortunate in the fact that when we started to work on creating your board
[57:01] zones, that was when I was first introduced to the state GIS system.
[57:07] I previously had no experience in working with them, and we had Shelby Johnson who was the
[57:14] person that leads that group, and then one of his right hands, Jonathan Durand, who's
[57:19] this evening both helped us in engineering those board jumps and what I really liked and
[57:26] of course Mr. Mason and Mr. Wood and this morning were a part of hearing some of those
[57:31] presentations is that you know I like the fact that they brought multiple models to
[57:36] be looked at and they shared the different variances within the models and justification.
[57:43] They also come with a fact of when you look at this, they're always going to try to present
[57:50] things so that you're looking at population inside those current zones and how much
[57:58] variance there's been.
[58:00] Looking at demographics is always a key factor for them.
[58:04] Looking at ethnic composition as well as amounts of poverty in those areas, taking into consideration
[58:10] all sorts of natural boundaries, well made land made lines as well, and then creating
[58:15] zones that are continuous, so they're not broke apart.
[58:19] So they did that I think really well with the board zones that you're currently in.
[58:24] Just to round this off before I turn over to Mr. Durran is that this is a process, okay?
[58:31] So tonight is just step one.
[58:33] One of the groups that's very interested in making sure that we have a process so that
[58:38] the public can have input has been the League of Women Voters.
[58:41] And so the League of Women Voters, we should have reached out to them this week.
[58:46] I hope that happened to be able to give them this agenda, give them the materials.
[58:51] We will have public meetings coming up.
[58:54] That's outlined in your executive summary so that you'll see that on October 14th we'll
[58:58] come back with actual options.
[59:00] Next, on the 28th, we will have the chance for the public
[59:05] then to give comment about those board zone possibilities.
[59:10] And then we're looking at the potential of a November 18th timeframe
[59:15] for you all to potentially take an action on the creation of the new board zones.
[59:23] The final thing that I would share is that there's, you know,
[59:26] So this is just about the right time for all this to happen.
[59:30] You might have all had an urgency, there have been multiple articles, and every time there
[59:34] was an article, you all came back at me and said, hey, win, how about?
[59:39] But a part of the work couldn't really begin until the census data came in.
[59:45] The fortunate thing is that by having the state GIS group do your board zones, they already
[59:51] were starting to work with it, have familiarity with what makes up the Little Rock School
[59:56] district, so they don't really start totally from scratch. With that, I'm going to
[1:00:00] Presentation that he'd like to deliver for us. Mr. Graham, would you come on up? Thank you so much for being here. Remove this, because I will just stay bogged up the whole time. I mean, do you wear glasses? I'm exactly what I'm talking about. So what I'm going to do is I'm going, well, let me back up. Again, my name is Jonathan Durran, I serve as the deputy director for the Arkansas GIS office. Under typical service circumstances, Mr. Shelby Johnson, who's our director, would likely have been
[1:00:29] here but he is taking a couple days off and so he fully deputized me I guess you
[1:00:36] could say not for this task and as Superintendent Poor mentioned this is sort
[1:00:42] of step one in a process what we'll discuss here what I'll show you here is
[1:00:47] going to be very highly focused on the zones you have right now and how those
[1:00:54] compare now that we do have the 2020 census numbers and those just we just got
[1:01:00] those within the last two to three weeks so this is all very new and as you
[1:01:07] can imagine people all over the country are anxiously anticipating and
[1:01:11] waiting on and maybe not so patiently waiting on those census numbers so what
[1:01:16] we want to start with I'm just gonna direct your attention all over here you
[1:01:21] You don't really need them.
[1:01:22] I'm going to move out of y'all's way.
[1:01:24] You don't really need to see me in this way.
[1:01:26] Shelby, we do need you to come up and they'll still see it and the audience will be able
[1:01:31] to see it fine, too.
[1:01:32] Okay.
[1:01:32] I just didn't want to bother you.
[1:01:33] Shelby and Jonathan, I'm sorry.
[1:01:35] Okay.
[1:01:35] It's up there, too.
[1:01:37] So what we want to start with, and I'm going to back up here on the slide.
[1:01:41] There we go.
[1:01:43] Just an overview of redistricting and what really goes into that, and the criteria that you're
[1:01:49] really looking for when drawing born of a fairing number of election geographies.
[1:01:58] Obviously
[1:01:59] you want those zones balanced in population. One person and one vote, you want these
[1:02:05] zones substantially equal in population.
[1:02:11] Continuing, the voting rights act 1965 prohibits
[1:02:14] any discrimination based on race, color, language, minority. And a lot of these things that
[1:02:20] were going over should be very familiar to these types of criteria.
[1:02:27] Equal protection clause 14th Amendment limits redrawing those district boundaries strictly
[1:02:32] on the basis of race.
[1:02:36] Compactness and these next two kind of go together, this compactness and continuous contiguity,
[1:02:42] those are kind of this eyeball test.
[1:02:46] Compactness you want in a perfectly compact would be a circle, you know, it might be a square
[1:02:51] But in reality, it's hard to get that because you're dealing with census blocks, there's
[1:02:55] little pieces.
[1:02:57] But you still don't want these things with fingers running all over the place.
[1:03:02] That's probably going to get you in some trouble down the road.
[1:03:07] Same thing with this idea of contiguity.
[1:03:10] You can't have a detached piece over here.
[1:03:14] That's like I said, it's just an obal test sort of thing.
[1:03:17] And
[1:03:21] as much as possible, it's really good when you do redistricting to try to not make
[1:03:29] unnecessary splits in existing geographies, because that then becomes kind of a nightmare
[1:03:37] in an election with the administration of the election, because then you end up with
[1:03:42] all these ballot styles.
[1:03:44] So as much as possible, you want to minimize splitting of these types of split of subdivisions
[1:03:52] and things like that.
[1:03:53] You know, maybe at a larger scale if we're dealing with state senate district experiments.
[1:03:59] As much as possible, you might want to try to keep a city with the exception of having a
[1:04:04] little rock, which the population just wouldn't permit that.
[1:04:07] But if you've got a city that could be kept whole, you might want to keep that for various
[1:04:13] reasons.
[1:04:17] Communities of interest. Communities of interest could be quite a lot of things, whether
[1:04:24] that be economical, social, political, cultural, there's a lot of things that could qualify
[1:04:31] as a community of interest. A city could be a community of interest.
[1:04:37] As much as possible,
[1:04:40] When you read your audio, obviously I want to try to avoid putting in comments against
[1:04:45] each other.
[1:04:47] There's some obvious, I mean, like I said, a lot of these things are not, you don't have
[1:04:53] to be an attorney to, you know, really get rid of...
[1:05:00] There's a lot of these signs are coming from.
[1:05:03] And then lastly, minimize partisanship. You don't have preferential treatment of one party or another when you draw these signs. When these signs are laid out, obviously there's a lot of different things that could be litigated thereafter. And as much as possible, you want to be working ahead when you do these and to not get yourself in that situation.
[1:05:30] And so this map
[1:05:32] That is primarily for context for the whole state.
[1:05:37] What this map gives you an idea of is where the population sort of moved between 2010
[1:05:44] and 2020.
[1:05:47] So anything that's in the darkest of blue shade are rated counties that had increased
[1:05:54] in the population.
[1:05:55] The darkest of red are the counties that lost population in that 10 year between the
[1:06:02] to the census, the decennial census.
[1:06:06] And so, as you can see, there is a getting population,
[1:06:11] primarily, are in central Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas,
[1:06:15] and then Northeast Arkansas out of there
[1:06:18] around Jonesburg and Paragold.
[1:06:22] In a lot of cases, these population moves.
[1:06:25] A lot of times, these follow economics.
[1:06:27] People move to where the jobs are.
[1:06:29] I mean, it could be, I mean, any number of reasons
[1:06:32] while these shifts, population shifts.
[1:06:35] But we did want to throw this in just to give you
[1:06:36] the context and overall context of the state.
[1:06:43] And then now this is probably what you're really interested in.
[1:06:46] So these are your existing board zones.
[1:06:51] The stars you see on the map are locations of you all.
[1:06:56] And those are the incumbent locations.
[1:06:59] and then the percentages you see under the zone numbers are after the 2020, because these were
[1:07:09] drawn based on the 2010 census numbers. That's the best numbers we had at the time. That's what we
[1:07:15] had to use. These are the same zones, and these have been redrawn, but the 2020 population has been
[1:07:22] applied to these and variances calculated.
[1:07:25] So the darkest blue here are zones where the population
[1:07:32] is above what your target is.
[1:07:35] So when I say target, that's total population of the district
[1:07:39] divided by nine zones.
[1:07:43] And so whatever that number is, and I'll top my head,
[1:07:45] I don't remember what that number is.
[1:07:47] It's on the next slide.
[1:07:49] It's in here if you've got that printed off
[1:07:51] in the next slide. But the darkest blue is a zone that has too much population. It's
[1:07:58] over the target. The darkest red is a zone that's under the population. It's population
[1:08:04] is too low. So what that means, the red zone, zone seven, that zone is going to have to
[1:08:11] increase its size to be able to kind of grab more population to bring it up. So that's
[1:08:18] And that's, I think, that's the one that's the most out of tolerance, so to speak.
[1:08:26] I think that's 6.98, almost 7%.
[1:08:30] And then on the other end of the scale, zone 1, that one's going to have to shrink a little bit,
[1:08:35] because it's essentially got too much population, because these things need to be,
[1:08:40] you know, substantially equal, or as equal as possible.
[1:08:45] You can start to see some real challenges in this, for example,
[1:08:49] example, your zone that's the farthest taught out of whack in its population is zone 7.
[1:08:58] It's got to grow, but it can only, because these things have to be continuous, it can only
[1:09:04] grow into zones 5 and 6.
[1:09:09] Well, zone 5 right now is a really good it.
[1:09:13] It's less than half a percent high, which is a really good variance.
[1:09:19] So seven has got to grow into five and six.
[1:09:24] So there's some obvious challenges there when you start really drawing these things
[1:09:28] because it's this cascading can be this cascading effect.
[1:09:33] You do have some instances where, and that's kind of, you know, this is kind of good news, bad news type thing.
[1:09:39] So, maybe the good news is that if you look at zones 1 and 2, zone 1 is not quite 6% high,
[1:09:50] zone 2 is a little or 4% low, so perhaps those become an issue if you just sort of swap.
[1:10:00] Thank you. You can have something.
[1:10:04] You got these adjacent zones, they sort of, the solution,
[1:10:10] they're sort of each other's solution. Because one's this much too high, this is too much,
[1:10:15] too much love, you know, you bounce them out.
[1:10:22] And we can come back to any of these, this table here,
[1:10:25] here, this is the actual numbers that are sort of baked into that last map. And so when
[1:10:32] I said that target, so the target, 20,121, that's where you want your population to be.
[1:10:39] In a perfect world, everyone that will have that population. In reality, it's very, very
[1:10:47] difficult to achieve that, but you want it as close as, you know, to sustain this idea
[1:10:52] of substantially equal.
[1:10:56] And then you can see the actual 2020 population numbers for each
[1:10:59] district. And when you've got, I mentioned zone, earlier I mentioned zone, I think it's
[1:11:06] five, and I said was less than half a percent high. It's 94 people.
[1:11:12] Zone three is 34 people
[1:11:15] too low. So you know, those are the best ones. But then when you start changing some of
[1:11:21] these district lines, it's, you know, you change the line, make this one better, but
[1:11:27] then there's a downstream effect to the neighbor.
[1:11:34] There's a lot of information in this slide.
[1:11:37] It's color-coded just to show, you know, give you this kind of a spectrum idea of the ones
[1:11:45] down here in red, you know, those are your points that you really got to work on.
[1:11:48] The ones in the darkest blue, those really got to be worked on because they're the farthest
[1:11:56] away from what you really want.
[1:12:01] With that, that's the last slide we have in here.
[1:12:04] Again, this is a very high level view of this, and as I understand from Supertinent Pour,
[1:12:12] or you will get more into specifics on this
[1:12:16] and actual trash plans and things like that
[1:12:18] as you go through this fall.
[1:12:21] But do you have any questions about those masks?
[1:12:25] I'm gonna keep those handy just in case
[1:12:28] somebody did have a question about the particular one.
[1:12:33] There are two items.
[1:12:37] Thank you, Senator.
[1:12:38] I don't know.
[1:12:39] This may not be a question for you, sir,
[1:12:41] but it may be a question of perhaps your administration
[1:12:43] for our legal people, but, you know, we drew lots for returns to stagger returns in the past,
[1:12:52] knowing that this could impact, change that altogether, or we have to adjust it, and some of the
[1:13:00] things that have been written are that the possibility that all of us would have, if you start
[1:13:07] redrawing zones that everybody would have to run again, as opposed to just a couple,
[1:13:11] So based on these numbers and the way it looks now is do we know yet if that's going to
[1:13:20] be the case that all positions and at the end of the day we'll have to run again or
[1:13:25] will be among the similar positions we need to run again.
[1:13:29] I'll take my best guess at that, at least to the staff as I actually feel the way I interpret
[1:13:37] how Mr. Graham, Mr. Johnson, have shared it, you're going to make changes really within
[1:13:43] all the zones and in the reality of that means that we are going to have to have an election
[1:13:48] for all board members again a year from November. So that's kind of my interpretation. At
[1:13:55] one time, when we first started to think about without, well, maybe we only have two areas
[1:14:01] of the city that have to be changed. And if that happened, maybe we wouldn't have to
[1:14:05] do everybody, but in this thing, and we've tried to consult with legal on this in-house lawyer,
[1:14:14] we've contacted the school board association, we've contacted the Friday firm, we've contacted
[1:14:19] the state, and I will tell you the answers aren't totally consistent on that, but for the
[1:14:25] most part, the majority of them with the data that we have here say that we would have
[1:14:33] to make changes across the board or everybody would have to run and we'd have to make changes
[1:14:39] to each board. So just for clarity sake with Mr. Porra that's based on what you've heard
[1:14:45] and consulted with. The most likely scenario would be that all nine positions would be
[1:14:52] up for election in 2022, and at the bad time whoever is elected will be.
[1:15:00] We would go through, the people who would go through a process like we went through before, where we would, you know, draw lots or randomly have staggered terms again. And we go through that full process again, or wouldn't mean a BS, but whoever's elected, we'll go through that process. I assume so. Okay. Thank you.
[1:15:30] seven. Now what does it mean by status is illegal? Because you have nine, five, and three that are
[1:15:38] preferable. So that really has to do with that variance column. And so the DBA is the fourth column
[1:15:52] right under the word school and so there's all sort and like I said I'm not an attorney
[1:15:59] and by no means a legal expert on any of this but there's there's a generally held
[1:16:06] idea that you're sort of shooting that plus or minus 5 percent and so that's kind of
[1:16:16] the way that's the way this is depicted, although that plus or minus five percent is not
[1:16:24] necessarily guaranteed to be safe from legal challenges.
[1:16:30] So can I add to that then?
[1:16:31] So with that, that represents in the reality is that if you don't make a change and there's
[1:16:37] the variance of a five percent or larger and you were to keep the board zones as they are,
[1:16:42] You would face a legal challenge, the district would, because we didn't adjust to meet having an opportunity for the one-on-one type vote of each zone being as equal as possible across all the different levels of standards.
[1:16:59] Okay, so, but you will be, you're going to draw, you're going to draw, you're going to draw
[1:17:07] nine songs and I don't understand how you're going to do it because if you have close
[1:17:16] two or positive and like from one to three, all of those are, I guess the two eight, seven
[1:17:27] are going to have to come in and get some additional people in the zone and so with that you're
[1:17:36] going to have to take people from each one out of each zone, right? Now why do we have to
[1:17:48] go through that, where we can make some adjustments possibly and in some of those areas that he
[1:17:57] showed us on that map because I'm so afraid that what's going to happen we're going to read
[1:18:03] Landon's District and does everybody know what that means yes okay all right I don't
[1:18:15] want to see that happen you know and this looks like what that's what is going to happen
[1:18:23] is some point that obviously zone eight and zone seven are who are the most
[1:18:32] people who have had the biggest drop. That's your inner city, right?
[1:18:37] Well seven you know seven I think we're in seven now and then eight is out
[1:18:43] like brick eight is that brick of ridge and all that going out towards rock
[1:18:48] Broughton a param and stir bridge and going all that way present Valley. And then seven is
[1:18:56] Right up in here going all down Asher, Colonel Glenn and back into the Southwest
[1:19:02] It do you have the east and to the east and college station part of it right and all that
[1:19:09] This cowboy. Let me jump in again and this may help is that first off
[1:19:14] When you when you
[1:19:15] And we, several of us, actually even attendants of school board training, really you're looking
[1:19:22] at almost a majority of the school districts having to do a similar type of situation.
[1:19:29] This is not uncommon.
[1:19:31] This isn't just a little rock school district.
[1:19:33] And the reality is that some of the changes, a good example would be zones one and two.
[1:19:39] You know, it doesn't mean this is going to be the reality, but the potential of what you
[1:19:45] do and where zone two lost, it might mean that zone two becomes a larger zone, taking
[1:19:52] away some of what zone one currently represents.
[1:19:55] That balances it out.
[1:19:57] Okay.
[1:20:00] The same thing goes on zone 7. Mr. Durand mentioned that one is a good example of zone 7 lost, and zone 5 is basically state even. Zone 6 has gained a little bit, so you've got to make some adjustments potentially there. But that also could lead to some adjustments in zone 3, 4 and 8. So it kind of spills itself over in terms of where you end up having the tweak. And that's why the good thing what GIS does. And again, the three existing cabinets can at least confirm
[1:20:29] that they'll come in with multiple models for you to consider, you know, as to which one seems to make the best sense to all of you.
[1:20:37] You'll get the chance to vote on it, and the public will also get the chance to make comments on it so that, you know, those things that say,
[1:20:45] well, I think we're drawn a line that is going to segregate a group of people from not being able to have a voice.
[1:20:51] You're actually going to see the intention is going to be to be very equal in terms of our populations of ethnicity.
[1:21:02] That will actually play itself out. That's how it worked in the time when we did this two years ago.
[1:21:09] And two, I think it's important to highlight is that this city, it is racially segregated and right in the way that it's designed.
[1:21:19] And so even though other areas are, you know, people of color are moving into areas that typically does not have a lot of people of color.
[1:21:35] But then right for the most part, I think we could probably automatically know one, three, two, six and seven is probably going to be heavily people of color.
[1:21:49] of color and then we're going to see, you know, growths of BIPOC out in the
[1:21:57] wine and other areas, but that's just the way that the city have created its
[1:22:02] neighborhoods and with the red lining and all that.
[1:22:06] That's what happens.
[1:22:12] Zone 70 is now town will right, right?
[1:22:16] Yes, and then zone 7 have changed.
[1:22:19] Right.
[1:22:20] And I bet that encompasses the East End and whatever.
[1:22:25] East Village and all that, which has pretty much been industrialized and I can see why
[1:22:32] they would lose people because that the housing and whatever has been destroyed, okay.
[1:22:42] And that's pretty much what is going to be changing.
[1:22:47] Now, I just really don't trust people as a whole.
[1:22:54] That's just me.
[1:22:57] And I just really think that this is going to be not what we think is going to be.
[1:23:07] And like you say, this city is racially segregated.
[1:23:16] It has been for a while, but pretty much it used to be like the South in East in whatever
[1:23:26] and the central little rug, which was like central in whatever.
[1:23:31] And then, the word zone three is pretty much was nothing.
[1:23:36] And zone four, let's see, that's north of 630, right?
[1:23:45] I'm sorry, it's zone 4.
[1:23:47] Zone 4?
[1:23:48] Yeah, it's in the northwest, northwest, in part of 630.
[1:23:54] Okay.
[1:23:56] And so, but those people were probably going to west or hawk and what about people in zone 8?
[1:24:06] Well, I guess, you know, zone 8 is out there, I mean, it's out there by, that's Greg's area.
[1:24:16] It's roughly between Rodney Perry and the University of North of Markham, I mean there's
[1:24:22] some in North of Evergreen.
[1:24:24] Oh, that's right.
[1:24:25] Like Lee Wynne.
[1:24:25] Uh-huh.
[1:24:26] Uh-huh.
[1:24:27] Yes.
[1:24:28] Uh-huh.
[1:24:30] Yes.
[1:24:30] The southern part is Markham and it just up there Mississippi and it's Evergreen as the southern
[1:24:38] part as you go east.
[1:24:41] Oh, yeah, that's right.
[1:24:41] It goes all the way out to Cantra, huh?
[1:24:43] Okay, yeah.
[1:24:44] Yeah, it does.
[1:24:47] It's on five goals.
[1:24:48] Okay.
[1:24:49] That's Cantra.
[1:24:50] Mm-hmm.
[1:24:51] But I think we need to be real careful.
[1:24:54] Here.
[1:24:55] I do.
[1:24:58] Oh, because...
[1:25:00] Getting a lot of e-mail from different and various people, Black, you know, who I don't really even know what their race is, doesn't matter. But, uh, this, I'm not sure about any of this. So, I have a question. Um, when, when you, when, I guess, um,
[1:25:27] right, right, when these lines are, um,
[1:25:31] We're drawn. Is it about moving people in bodies into these zones or are you guys looking at ethnicity?
[1:25:45] Are you looking at race when you're pulling in these zones?
[1:25:49] Yes, it's all they love. So all of those things are considered in the larger view of adjusting these lines
[1:26:01] So what happens like for instance, like with zone seven, of course if it does go out,
[1:26:11] I guess you get into stiff station a little bit of hill crest and all that, but in zone
[1:26:17] six you'll pull in, I guess you don't ask her, but that's all, you know, a pretty heavy
[1:26:27] black area so I mean in his yeah but so what happens and then right when you're pulling the
[1:26:35] only thing you're pulling is my minorities as as listed here right is that factored in or do you
[1:26:44] try to jerry mandor and just like what happens and then right when it's only people of color in
[1:26:52] I don't know their answer.
[1:26:53] To the jerrymandering.
[1:26:55] Yeah.
[1:26:56] Nobody would say yes, but it happens.
[1:27:01] All of those things are taken into consideration when these lines are drawn.
[1:27:08] You can see on this one, the demographics are displayed there.
[1:27:15] Of course, the color coding is just based on the overall deviation.
[1:27:19] And, of course, this map in that table are strictly based on the current zones and the
[1:27:25] raw population.
[1:27:27] It's like this is just the numbers, essentially.
[1:27:31] There's no, this map is the current zones and nothing has been altered into these lines.
[1:27:37] And so just for context, what may help is really what you're not seeing in this map and this
[1:27:42] map is fairly, there's really only two layers in this map.
[1:27:47] You know those zones and and the locations of the current board members
[1:27:52] What you're not seeing there is number one
[1:27:55] And I'm gonna try to hit you in place for this laser point
[1:27:59] For instance right here between four and three
[1:28:03] I'm fairly sure that's 430 that was used to make that
[1:28:08] Correct me if I'm wrong there. I think that's it's obviously. Yeah pretty clear. That's how that's a road
[1:28:16] And so, you know, it's typically a good idea when drawing these things to use those recognized and natural lines, because it makes so many things more straightforward and
[1:28:33] the process of doing it then becomes less complicated.
[1:28:37] And that just don't trust you.
[1:28:39] I mean, could I ask you for that for just a second?
[1:28:43] It's kind of on the mind that since these lines
[1:28:46] on the on the screen right now were drawn,
[1:28:48] I've heard almost zero criticism of these lines.
[1:28:52] No one has ever said there was anything nefarious
[1:28:54] about the drawing of these lines.
[1:28:57] And the same people that drew these lines
[1:28:59] are gonna draw three proposals for us to consider
[1:29:03] and vote on to be the next lines.
[1:29:05] And so, I think that, you know, there's a certain amount that is fair to have a healthy
[1:29:13] suspicion and accountability, but I think that to just flat out suggest that the people
[1:29:19] drawing lines can't be trusted when there's almost no criticism of the current version
[1:29:24] of the lines, and they were drawn by the same people.
[1:29:27] I think that it's really doing the community and just service for us to suggest that.
[1:29:30] And let's just let's let the process play out and let the community see what what in my opinion very trustworthy people they they did a fantastic job
[1:29:42] Drawing three different proposals for us either a year and a half or two years ago. I can't remember when when we did it
[1:29:49] But it was a very good very open process the community had a lot of input in it and
[1:29:56] And I've heard almost no criticism of it.
[1:30:00] You see what happens? I think you'll be surprised at how fair it really is. Well, I respect your opinion,
[1:30:05] state man. And that's my opinion. Because I have seen this none before. And I think that
[1:30:18] But somebody is going to get the short end of the stick as far as this is concerned.
[1:30:24] I don't really, but we knew we all came on board that they were going to probably have
[1:30:33] to change these at some point of a real population move and whatever.
[1:30:41] But then, you know, everybody's going to run again, and that's because that's what
[1:30:47] the report could legislation do you?
[1:30:50] So what I'll say to this is, and two, don't think,
[1:30:57] I just want to say two really quick things.
[1:31:03] I have heard concerns about the way
[1:31:07] that zones are dormant, how they are now,
[1:31:11] because particularly like even my zone is, it's large.
[1:31:14] You know he goes all the way into Southwest and then two even how other zones are
[1:31:20] Predomically one race and it drops down and pull in another like but like you see it
[1:31:28] However, right when you're looking at what their target number is if they're trying to make it
[1:31:33] You know that 220 121 is at your target number and that's and like I said that's just the
[1:31:39] the
[1:31:40] the total population of the district divided by nine.
[1:31:44] That's not a magical number or anything,
[1:31:47] just that straightforward division.
[1:31:49] I'm sorry.
[1:31:50] And so like you, we've heard,
[1:31:53] like I think the thought is out there.
[1:31:56] It may not have risen to everybody's awareness
[1:32:00] or even like with the redistricting scene of the congressional.
[1:32:04] I think that's worse.
[1:32:06] Well, I don't know.
[1:32:07] And then if you was at the Jack Stevens building
[1:32:09] But when they had the town hall, some of the same comments that was made there that I'm hearing in the room.
[1:32:21] Congressional redistricting is very different than school board zone redrawing.
[1:32:28] Anything from the state, the legislative districts, the Senate districts, the congressional districts,
[1:32:36] there is a level of politics that goes into that given the natural way that the
[1:32:41] Constitution sets up who is in control of that process. The same level of
[1:32:46] partisanship doesn't exist at the school board level and it's not influenced
[1:32:51] by the same, you know, partisan constitutional parameters. The governor, the
[1:32:57] secretary of state and the attorney general are in charge of redistricting on, you
[1:33:03] the state legislator and congressional seats,
[1:33:06] and they have zero input in what we're doing.
[1:33:09] I mean, what we're doing is very data-driven that.
[1:33:12] I hear that, you know, you say
[1:33:13] that there's some criticism or suspicion now,
[1:33:16] but there really was almost no negative comments
[1:33:20] about the drawing of the lines two years ago
[1:33:23] when we went through this process.
[1:33:25] And again, it was very open.
[1:33:28] And the data, the level of the information
[1:33:32] that they provided us, whenever they proposed the maps,
[1:33:36] broke down our race and showed how closely populated
[1:33:41] every zone was.
[1:33:43] And it was their best guess at what zones were.
[1:33:48] And they're not going to get everything right,
[1:33:51] but they did a pretty good job of guessing, you know,
[1:33:55] what zones were.
[1:33:55] You have some that are over, some that are lower.
[1:33:58] But, you know, if you drew this on a belt pair,
[1:34:00] they just about hit where, you know, the averages would hit.
[1:34:04] Yeah, and do I appreciate that because I was a part of those meetings, right?
[1:34:10] And so, like, there was a level of criticism around those lines,
[1:34:14] whether they was at a part view meetings or other meetings here in this room.
[1:34:22] There was a level of criticism, right?
[1:34:25] And so things had to go back and be tweaked.
[1:34:28] But either way it goes, right where people reside is breathing, residing, and then like you can only do what you have put before.
[1:34:44] So my last thought, and I think it might piggyback off of what you were saying direct to Callaway, is right going.
[1:35:00] The 2020 census, right doing the 2020 census, we heard how the census data collectors weren't able to reach everybody and get everybody to fill out the forms, right? The census. So my question is how did you all account for those that may have not been able to reach everybody and get everybody to fill out the forms? Right? So my question is, how did you all account for those that may have not
[1:35:29] not, or did not complete the census, and then the other question is, are you guys a part
[1:35:39] of drawing the lines for the Congressional GIS?
[1:35:45] Okay.
[1:35:45] So the second question on the Congressional, no, that's totally a function of the state
[1:35:51] legislature.
[1:35:52] And so I think the last, I read an article yesterday in the newspaper, I think September 29th
[1:35:58] It was when they intend to come out of recess and do that.
[1:36:03] Your first question, honestly, not really a way we can do
[1:36:08] anything about any non-response to the census.
[1:36:15] You know, legally, everyone that does redistricting, whether
[1:36:19] from the school board zones, county ingestors of the peace,
[1:36:25] state housing, and all that, to Congressional.
[1:36:26] Well, everybody legally, everybody has to use the 2020 census numbers, whatever those
[1:36:34] are.
[1:36:35] Okay.
[1:36:35] But he is a thing.
[1:36:38] I'm going to let him finish his question.
[1:36:40] I mean, he's fine.
[1:36:42] I was just asking those questions just because I know that they may be out there.
[1:36:47] So the basic answer to your question is there's really nothing that we can do about trying
[1:36:52] to find out how many people didn't respond. Unfortunately, that's the nature of how census
[1:37:00] works. And it does rely on responses from folks just like ourselves. And there's always
[1:37:08] that percentage of non-response. But the other side of that is, like I said, we're legally
[1:37:16] we have to use what you said in the single census numbers.
[1:37:20] Got it.
[1:37:20] Thank you for your question.
[1:37:22] We're going to round off with the work to Calloway
[1:37:25] and then we're going to end it with Director Adam.
[1:37:30] The work to Calloway, do you have a question?
[1:37:32] You know, this is something that I'm always
[1:37:34] and wonder not just because of this.
[1:37:39] He lives in a pandemic.
[1:37:43] And it is smart to do this.
[1:37:46] You know, okay, 2020, that's when we took, we were supposed to do the redistricting and whatever and whatever, and we're using those numbers.
[1:37:58] And, but in the pandemic, if you had not, my daughter has a sound, my daughter said no.
[1:38:04] Old people being okay, come in, you know, but I'm not sure that the numbers are correct.
[1:38:13] you see and I'm afraid that this is not going to show the correct number now as far as
[1:38:23] what they did as far as setting the zone before we were elected and whatever. I didn't know
[1:38:33] you could even talk about it really or come up with it. I guess I was not really paying that much
[1:38:38] attention, I had to come back and start paying attention about how those, it's like, like
[1:38:45] you said, Jill, people didn't question it. I would have, if I had been really paying
[1:38:51] attention, I would have. But, I still think that y'all, they didn't go back and look at
[1:39:00] the pandemic quotient. Not only for this district, I'm not enough for the state. You know,
[1:39:07] the pandemic has changed everything. Everything has changed completely and we don't
[1:39:18] know when that's going to reestablish itself. Yeah and then too, I suspect Mr.
[1:39:25] Durran that will have to catch it in 2030 but when they do their... but I think
[1:39:36] they also do a 10-year, right? Well, yeah, 20-30. Yeah, every 10-year is 20-30. Director Adam?
[1:39:45] Thank you, Senator. I just want to make a comment. I respect your concerns, Ms. Calaway.
[1:39:52] And I remember, when we re-zoned after 2010, we got very little
[1:40:00] Local community input about that, except we had members of Latino community ask us, please
[1:40:08] don't, do not split our community when you rezone. And we split our community. And we
[1:40:17] had a divided vote and we did not respect the request. What we can do, though, is that
[1:40:24] that anything that happens, any plan that gets brought to us, it's us in this room who
[1:40:29] can, who make the decision.
[1:40:31] And so our job is to listen to the public and to listen to what's presented and look
[1:40:38] at all the different angles and then to make the fairest decision possible, and I don't
[1:40:42] have any doubt that we can do that.
[1:40:45] I think this group of people can do that, does that mean that everybody is going to be
[1:40:49] pleased?
[1:40:49] No, we don't do anything there, but they're pleased with everybody, but I think we can
[1:40:53] make a fair process and make a reasonable outcome and the best case scenario that we could
[1:41:02] explain to somebody else about it because it's up to us, you know, to do that.
[1:41:08] And if these fine people come back to us and they bring us models and we think that none
[1:41:15] of them meet the concerns we have, then we would just say these are our concerns, please
[1:41:20] come back to us again because again in the end that's what we're elected to do and we can do
[1:41:26] that. And I really do trust it that nobody I don't think anyone in this room but certainly not
[1:41:33] a majority of anybody else in your room. We don't want to do that. We want to have this fair as
[1:41:38] possible a mass. And I was just thinking a second ago that you know we're our office we're not obviously
[1:41:49] not in any way going to dictate where those lines are.
[1:41:54] That's just like you said, that's a function of the decision of you in the room and your
[1:42:01] judgment and the feedback you get from your constituents.
[1:42:04] We're here to simply help you do that, help you draw these things or adjust really these
[1:42:13] things that are on the screen right now.
[1:42:15] Okay. Well, thank you. We appreciate you coming and sharing the data, the maps of
[1:42:25] where they are now, giving us the projections of right where the data, what the results
[1:42:34] of the data are, and then our next step forward. And so as a board, of course, we're going
[1:42:40] to look for the maps that you guys draw and have that input and go through that process.
[1:42:47] So thank you so much for coming and spending part of your evening with us you did a good
[1:42:55] job.
[1:42:55] Thank you.
[1:42:55] If any of you have any questions after this meeting, Superintendent Boer has our contact information.
[1:43:01] So feel free to reach out.
[1:43:03] We're our offices right down here right in front of the Capitol the building got what most folks
[1:43:09] Stu referred to is the 501 building
[1:43:11] The title one building so I'll wait and reach out if you do have any questions about my
[1:43:17] Thank you, I hope you don't think I was trying to take
[1:43:21] He got tough skin
[1:43:23] I want to make one quick comment if I can on this I was trying to get in a queue and I just couldn't catch her I
[1:43:29] I just want to make sure that we acknowledge up front that we're going to be in a difficult
[1:43:35] situation rezoning our own seats and so I think we need to make sure that community input
[1:43:41] is really at the forefront on this and that we really listen and abide by what the community
[1:43:47] is telling us on this one because when you have sitting elected officials who are making decisions
[1:43:52] about their own zones and their own seats it's going to always be a little bit difficult
[1:43:55] So we need to really make sure we reach out and, you know, I was around and I was, you know, speaking at the meetings when we were deciding these zones, but there wasn't a time of community input on those.
[1:44:07] And so we do need to make a huge effort to make sure that we get that input before we make this decision.
[1:44:14] So that was all I had to say on that.
[1:44:15] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Underran. So moving forward, we are going to get into our city here.
[1:44:22] We're going to hear this isn't an action. I know me. No, ma'am. We have Ms. Ford who is here from city here.
[1:44:32] I'll just give a quick lead in and then turn it over to her. We also have Mr. Jerry and Smith who along with Dr. McGee kind of has the
[1:44:39] responsibility of supporting city here. I've never given up on supporting city here. I'm like heavily involved in it because I so believe in it.
[1:44:46] I feel very fortunate that we have a city here inside of the Little Rock School District.
[1:44:52] City here is on a national level opportunity to really support and serve to the state of
[1:45:00] Students who need help. And I'll tell you from the moment I came into this district, and I had no clue what city it was. I've just always get amazed by what these young people do. The spirit, the attitude, and I know I'm probably taking away something that Ms. Ford wants to say. But boy, they show up before the kids arrive, and they stay until the last kids left. They have also gone even beyond when the last kid leaves to help us with tutoring this past year.
[1:45:29] and again this year in terms of support for virtual students so that they are helping young people even beyond the normal work day.
[1:45:38] The work day just doesn't seem to inform.
[1:45:42] They have, and I will tell you, one or two of our schools for the first couple of years that I was here, they were probably the key culture component of that campus until we got the leadership in the right places.
[1:45:55] So, these guys are really awesome and extremely important to us and we want to have you get a review.
[1:46:04] So, Mr. Smith, did you have anything that you wanted to add before we turn this over to Ms. Ford?
[1:46:08] I know that you were a principal that had a city or a program.
[1:46:14] Thank you, Ms. Ford.
[1:46:16] Like Ms. Ford say, the city has been an integral partner with lower school districts since 2004.
[1:46:22] and the main mobility is the longest running partnership school would see here and they have had a tremendous impact on our
[1:46:30] school and our culture in the school and is with support stated. They're there before the kids arrived and they're after the kids
[1:46:38] leave bringing energy and hope for our students each day and our kids get excited to see them when they enter the campus
[1:46:45] he could point it. So actually this evening joining us, we have Mr. Jeremy Hill, who was
[1:46:50] the director of INVAC. He'll be joined by Mrs. Shannon Ward, who was the interim executive
[1:46:56] director of Mr. Hill will actually be doing a presentation for us.
[1:47:12] I'm sorry, I guess. Suddenly, even everyone, I'm Shannon Ford and as Mrs. Smith stated, I'm
[1:47:18] the interim executive director for City of Lodora. And joining me is my Holly, Mr. Jeremy
[1:47:24] Hill, who says is our impact director. We really appreciate the opportunity to share
[1:47:30] with you what the year is and how we've supported the so-no-no-riselo district over the past
[1:47:35] 15 years and how we're able to continue to further move forward. You may have questions
[1:47:41] as we go through our presentation and we ask that you hold them until the end and we will make
[1:47:47] sure that we have time for a question to answer once we're done.
[1:47:50] five,
[1:47:54] please.
[1:48:00] National and international education programs,
[1:48:03] American or organization with 29 service locations across the U.S.
[1:48:08] City of your little rock was founded in 2004, and we've had a strong
[1:48:12] partnership with the Little Rock School District for over 15 years.
[1:48:16] And partnership with teachers and schools, our diverse team of City of
[1:48:21] American members called the Bay Learning Environments where students can build
[1:48:24] on their strengths and fully engage in the learning theory.
[1:48:30] Thank you,
[1:48:31] you've already put it by, can
[1:48:37] you do that?
[1:48:44] City here has a whole project that is based on research
[1:48:49] on the social, emotional, and academic aspects
[1:48:51] of how students learn and develop.
[1:48:54] Ensuring that students are strengthening all
[1:48:56] of the skills of central force success in and out of school.
[1:48:59] City here and our partners commit
[1:49:00] to multiple years of service in schools
[1:49:02] so that students basically grow up with City here,
[1:49:06] receiving support from third to ninth grade,
[1:49:09] which are the key transitional years
[1:49:10] of their educational experience and the years where research shows students are most at risk for
[1:49:16] following off track. So we're just at how level overview in mind. I'm going to pass it on to Jeremy
[1:49:23] who will build on that taken us through our feeder pattern strategy and then give you a snapshot of
[1:49:28] how our AmeriCorps members serve students in specific schools.
[1:49:36] Good evening Mr. Lieutenant.
[1:49:37] and Mr. Madam President and the rest of our board.
[1:49:41] Thank you for this opportunity.
[1:49:43] We're going to move through the next slide, Dr. McGee.
[1:49:47] So our continuum of support in a nutshell,
[1:49:51] our desired impact on our students
[1:49:53] at Little Rock School District
[1:49:55] doesn't happen in one year.
[1:49:58] This happens over time.
[1:50:00] Who's entering high school, who may be 4 or 5 years behind, particularly in ELA or MAF,
[1:50:07] MAF those, city year comes in and we strive to work with students at the elementary and middle school level
[1:50:17] and walk with them over the academic career up until high school. And this leads us to what we call our feeder pattern. Next slide for me.
[1:50:27] So our targeted high schools. So first we determine which high schools account for 50% or more of students who are now on track.
[1:50:37] We use this data to then move into analyzing what we call analyzing the gap and that moves us into our selection of middle schools and elementary schools.
[1:50:48] Next slide.
[1:50:49] So through analyzing the gap, we look at those high schools and we determine who needs
[1:50:57] to move from off track to on track to achieve the school percentage of 80%.
[1:51:04] And on track, middle of the means earning the right number of course credits to graduate
[1:51:09] high school in four years.
[1:51:13] Next slide.
[1:51:13] So
[1:51:17] that moves us into our selection process
[1:51:19] of our middle school as elementary schools.
[1:51:21] So here we define the feeder pattern deployment
[1:51:24] needed to support each high school.
[1:51:27] So we want to ensure that we're working with students
[1:51:29] who are off track at the middle and elementary school levels
[1:51:33] so that over time we can walk with them
[1:51:36] and push them actively and socially,
[1:51:40] and emotionally as they prepare for high school
[1:51:43] to hit that percentage rate of 80% and after that we determine the sequence and the pace
[1:51:50] of growth.
[1:51:51] So the sequence of growth is which schools do we start first in the feeder pattern
[1:51:55] and that in the pace of growth means we are already district, the registration, determined
[1:52:01] if there are new schools and additional schools we need to add two hour feeder pattern lists.
[1:52:07] And of course all this is growth is determined over time.
[1:52:12] So, here in this slide, you see two high schools, Hall of High School and a new Little Rock Southwest High School.
[1:52:18] These are two schools in particular who had pretty high percentage of students who were off track.
[1:52:25] So, working with the district last year, self was little right along with first of all Burton,
[1:52:30] who was a longtime city year supporter and ally.
[1:52:34] We decided to move into the Southwest Little Rock feeder pattern.
[1:52:40] And from that feeder pattern last year, we started in the Southwest North, high, high
[1:52:45] Henderson Middle, Cloverdale Middle, Mill Mill Mill, and Mill Mill Mill, elementary.
[1:52:50] This year, we're in the same feeder pattern with the exception of Henderson Middle because
[1:52:55] it's in the Henderson Middle consolidated into the new J-A fair, primary towards school.
[1:53:01] Thank you.
[1:53:01] Next slide.
[1:53:03] So the evidence about impact, this data, particularly here, is from 2018-2019, because last year's
[1:53:11] date, of course, we weren't able to gather what we needed to do to test in cancellations
[1:53:16] through COVID-19 restrictions, a lot of quarantine and a lot of school closings for quarantine
[1:53:22] period.
[1:53:23] And so we wanted to pool our data from 2018-2019 and Mr. Smith in a test, even our support
[1:53:31] to a degree that city year thrives on moving the needle forward in terms of student academic
[1:53:39] success and this year in particular we're adding the social emotional academic support there.
[1:53:46] So I just want to read this quick note from one of my partner teachers here at the bottom
[1:53:50] and again our principals and our partner teachers are our champions. They are our everyday champions
[1:53:55] this school, and they have an opportunity every quarter to give feedback to
[1:54:01] City, or that we use that data, and we go back and try to tweak our program
[1:54:05] awareness there. So this is just as my City of Merrill Corps member is really
[1:54:08] good at helping students calm down their focus. But I'm trying to get through my
[1:54:12] lessons, and there are students who want to act up, having her in the room as a
[1:54:17] huge help. She can stand by and ask them questions to get them focused, so I don't
[1:54:22] I have to stop my entire lesson just for a few students.
[1:54:26] She also helps when they have questions
[1:54:28] after I go to the material.
[1:54:30] I wouldn't be able to sit with each student
[1:54:32] and address every question.
[1:54:34] When she is not in the room, there is a big difference.
[1:54:37] And this is just a one quote out of many quotes
[1:54:39] from teachers and our administrators,
[1:54:43] and I'll ask them a side note.
[1:54:46] So I service for this year.
[1:54:48] Our focus is reconnecting, re-engaging, and recovery.
[1:54:52] re-connecting students with their community and helping their re-engage in their
[1:55:00] Of course, we're focused on the math and the literacy frameworks of the academic part. The city
[1:55:07] here has invested time, energy, and resources on a national level from training our core members
[1:55:14] and our staff and the socially emotional academic development. We believe with which data has proven
[1:55:21] that if we can touch a student on a socially emotional level, then the academic part won't be hard at
[1:55:29] And I'm not sure if we can build trust between a core member and a student versus Jeff
[1:55:35] and Ryan trying to, you know, retrain them on a test they didn't do as well as with
[1:55:40] well on or some course material they just haven't picked up on.
[1:55:45] It'll be a little harder, but if they can build that one-on-one relationship or
[1:55:48] rapport with the student by asking them how they're doing, asking their
[1:55:53] favorite sports teams. Things of that nature, reconnecting on those levels
[1:55:56] then the academic part will fall right in line.
[1:56:01] And so with that being said, some tools of investment
[1:56:04] that we are looking for seeking from senior,
[1:56:08] I'm sorry, a little or a school district.
[1:56:10] Number one is laptops.
[1:56:13] If S or funds make it possible to purchase laptops
[1:56:17] that the district owns and senior coordinators can use,
[1:56:21] it will be a great help to us.
[1:56:23] number one, because it allows our core members to stay on track in terms of the district software,
[1:56:30] make sure we're in a district network, ensure that we can get it to school, a school
[1:56:34] of G and school zillers to look at our data resources. That will help us tremendously versus
[1:56:41] having their own personal map types which may not connect to some of the data points and or sites
[1:56:48] that the district uses.
[1:56:50] And a second tool we would like to consider
[1:56:52] is our training and curriculum, specifically LLI,
[1:56:56] and do the math, which we've used these before.
[1:56:59] And if every senior year of support
[1:57:00] at school had this curriculum and resources,
[1:57:03] as our data has proven in the past,
[1:57:05] our students will be successful in literacy
[1:57:07] and mathematics.
[1:57:10] So Shannon, back to you.
[1:57:14] Sorry.
[1:57:15] So I'm not going to write up everything
[1:57:17] that we shared with you up to this point, we're respectfully asking for an aggregate investment
[1:57:24] from the Little Rock School District of $800,000, which is about 25% of our actual operating costs.
[1:57:33] And just wanted to know to you guys that for every dollar that the Little Rock School District
[1:57:38] invests in city here, we match it with at least $3 from other sources. And that includes federal grants
[1:57:44] and private revenue.
[1:57:46] With the reason that the American Rescue Act,
[1:57:49] the district has an opportunity to use S&P funds
[1:57:52] to support investment in city year.
[1:57:59] That was more for the previous slide.
[1:58:04] We highlighted some of the specifics
[1:58:07] of allowable youth for the S&P funds.
[1:58:11] And here's some specific information
[1:58:13] about how city of programming is aligned
[1:58:15] with the extra spend requirements. Beyond allowable sit year is an exceptionally effective use of the 20% satisfied for learning laws given that those activities are required to be evidence-based.
[1:58:30] They are required to respond to student academics, social and emotional needs, and as Jeremy just mentioned, that is a target for our city or service.
[1:58:39] and then they're also required to address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on
[1:58:46] student subgroups, including some of the color in those remote income families,
[1:58:56] highlighting
[1:58:57] the traditional title programs that can be used to pay for our services.
[1:59:04] So, I'm going to be just saying thank you for learning more and hear more about senior and
[1:59:07] hearing us.
[1:59:09] And now, if anyone has any questions, we're happy to address them.
[1:59:14] I have a question for superintendent and the laptops and the LLI training was at the
[1:59:23] first time you've heard about that request.
[1:59:27] That is my first time and if I missed it, I apologize to the city or crew but I have a
[1:59:32] written down on my to-do list leaving tonight for us to go work on.
[1:59:36] Okay, and then I get the information about SRFNs. We always get people to tell us how they
[1:59:48] are able to be used. It's so funny. But my question is with the two things.
[1:59:58] the cost.
[2:00:00] In the past, what was the cost in the past? I know you did a helicopter overview of the things
[2:00:08] you were tackling, but what is the rubric of measurement for that, and then how did you
[2:00:16] come up with the price tag you're asking now?
[2:00:19] Act
[2:00:26] has been 650,000 in the year due to a request for us to extend our service to include
[2:00:36] something that was very successful last year, which was our homework hotline, the superintendent
[2:00:41] mentioned before, which was an extension of our tutoring services, and it also included
[2:00:46] virtual student support, including that in our service this year is where we reached the
[2:00:54] the cost of 800,000.
[2:00:57] If you need further details, I can provide that information
[2:01:01] to you.
[2:01:02] I go back and provide that information.
[2:01:06] It's Khan Academy has a homework outline that is part of the state
[2:01:14] that wouldn't cost the district money to have that.
[2:01:20] So just something to think about.
[2:01:22] I do have other questions, board, do you guys have any questions?
[2:01:27] Well, I would like to comment on just that about Khan Academy.
[2:01:32] What's unique to sitting here is that these are AmeriCorps members
[2:01:36] that our students are working with daily in schools.
[2:01:40] And as we have a, they build relationships with them.
[2:01:44] There's a trust level there.
[2:01:45] We also build relationships with parents and teachers.
[2:01:47] So this would be more of an interpersonal relationship and hopefully support for our students
[2:01:56] with the one that's familiar with them or familiar with their service and their teachers.
[2:02:01] Okay, so with the hotline, my next question then with a piggyback of that question, answer.
[2:02:07] With the hotline, be those city year folks inside the school answering the phone or would
[2:02:17] it be somewhere else because with that statement it makes me think that it is the city
[2:02:23] year staff inside the school.
[2:02:28] The AmeriCorps members who are answering and yes they will be virtual so as we ask for
[2:02:36] with the computers they will be tutoring virtually and it will be city or AmeriCorps members
[2:02:43] that are available to not just the schools that we're studying but this would be a district
[2:02:48] why initiative. Okay, and so like that hotline, both um, AmeriCorps members would be anywhere
[2:02:55] within the AmeriCorps network. No, they would be specifically Iowa and Iraq, uh, AmeriCorps
[2:03:02] members. Okay. Supporting the Illinois School District.
[2:03:07] Round off the amount, the, the questions
[2:03:09] around funding, is the laptops and the training included a part of that $800,000 estimate?
[2:03:17] I believe the laptops are in an additional ask,
[2:03:27] but I believe that's an additional ask.
[2:03:30] Providing the laptops is like providing laptops to give to city here, but allowing city here
[2:03:35] to use motorized school district laptops that are connected to the motorized school district
[2:03:40] network.
[2:03:43] The work done.
[2:03:46] Thank you, Mr. Sarah.
[2:03:46] This is a question for Mr. Ford.
[2:03:49] What is the process?
[2:03:51] You walk through the process from what happened from now until we have a contract that will
[2:03:56] be presented to us to devote them at some point or what is the question, what are the
[2:04:00] steps from this point?
[2:04:03] The, you know, we will work on the finalizing what the actual agreement looks like and
[2:04:08] so that it will have all the details of how many city or folks are employed at each campus.
[2:04:15] That's where we traditionally made adjustments.
[2:04:18] And so when we got to the level we were at last year's contract, it was because we made
[2:04:24] a reduction in the number of those served specifically as an example we move folks out
[2:04:31] of hall because we didn't have the need and so we've made adjustments. City
[2:04:36] also had a challenge over the last two years of having enough AmeriCorps
[2:04:42] volunteers to meet the staffing number and so that's kind of another factor that
[2:04:47] we have to work on with the city or team of understanding how many they have
[2:04:51] ready to go and then also the school, we determine where the art schools, whether or not we
[2:04:59] want to use them for the...
[2:05:05] Thank you, and so what will be the timeline for when that will be brought back to us? I think we'll be trying to bring that back at the next board meeting for review, and that could be potential action.
[2:05:20] So I was going to ask, I was going to make a very specific ask when you say the next
[2:05:24] board meeting in your about in two weeks, okay, so this isn't asked that would have to
[2:05:28] be done in two weeks, but I would really like to get some feedback from the teachers who
[2:05:33] are working with City Year volunteers and just to get a feel for the value that they place
[2:05:41] on not just on having the volunteers there, but maybe the different services, like the
[2:05:45] Homework Hotline, so we can get a feel for we're being asked to extend the contract to
[2:05:52] cover additional services.
[2:05:54] What is the value that the teachers are saying that that brings, you know, and just get some
[2:05:59] feedback from the teachers that are working with City Year in the schools, please.
[2:06:03] Thank you.
[2:06:03] And I would add, I would like to see data, I would like to see the data in the movement
[2:06:11] of students.
[2:06:12] I mean, because we need to make sure that we are getting what all we are investing in
[2:06:21] because it's just one thing to, you know, say it, but it's another thing to see ex-amount
[2:06:28] students whereas here we don't need their name attached we can have other
[2:06:34] identifiers but then we want to see pre-imposed assessments and then how they
[2:06:40] have improved over time. Could we have the next meeting? Yes we'll if we can't
[2:06:50] then we won't bring you the agenda item. Okay my question was related to the data
[2:06:55] they portrayed or gave us some data about the letter grades that I was interested in, what
[2:07:02] are actual standardized testing grades that the state assesses us for, are those numbers
[2:07:08] moving or is it just, I don't always say just, but that's the number the state uses to
[2:07:14] measure us by.
[2:07:15] So are those numbers also increasing, or are they staying the same?
[2:07:21] And of course, a little bit of the challenge there is, just like the last data presentation
[2:07:28] that we had, we skipped one whole year of testing.
[2:07:33] Next, we also had a decrease in overall achievement, just like the state did.
[2:07:40] So it's a little bit difficult thing to track, but there are some things specifically related
[2:07:47] to the behavior.
[2:07:48] But even that's a different game from last year because we were in a 50-50 at the high schools
[2:07:53] In terms of those that were in person and those that were virtual. This is one of the more difficult years to track it
[2:08:00] So we will do our best. Can we look at 17-18 data compared to 18-19 data?
[2:08:07] There was some data that was gathered and
[2:08:10] We're gonna have to ask our city or partners to help us with that one, but we did have some of those things over the first three years
[2:08:16] I know that I was, I have worked with you all.
[2:08:19] If I could suggest that, you know, we've had the map testing for several years now,
[2:08:27] I believe that started in 2017, if I remember correctly, potentially 16, 16.
[2:08:34] And so, you know, identifying which students city year has been involved in their lives and
[2:08:41] tracking their growth in the map testing or lack thereof I think would be very
[2:08:48] telling of you know the trends even if it's not particularly the ACT aspire
[2:08:54] but if it's otherwise very very an assessment that we lean on heavily for
[2:09:02] we're seeing the picture of a student.
[2:09:06] How many years have City Year been in the district?
[2:09:12] Mr. Smith, I think, had the answer he'd provide at the beginning if he could, Mr. Smith again?
[2:09:17] Just 2004.
[2:09:21] 17, 18.
[2:09:24] Oh, Director Calloway, I'm sorry, Director Calloway.
[2:09:27] I'd like to say that when city here came into the district, they were tremendous help
[2:09:35] and I worked with them for 10 years in our high school and of course things have changed.
[2:09:43] But with everything that's going on, they're going to need as much help, I'm talking about
[2:09:51] our students at this possible, we need help, you know, and the help that we would give
[2:10:00] In the years, I remember when the whole program started. I've got to compliment you guys on it. It worked for us. So it worked for the,
[2:10:12] you know, the incoming students.
[2:10:17] I just want to come in for the city representatives in general that these questions, at least I take
[2:10:26] these questions for data and then I got not as skepticism that you are not working hard
[2:10:33] or you have not made a difference but just helping us to be our due diligence to make a decision.
[2:10:37] and I think that it's testimony from Mr. Smith
[2:10:41] and Mr. Ford, Ms. Cowdoway, and the people
[2:10:45] that I've known over the years has really spoken highly
[2:10:48] and affirmed that the needs that are being met
[2:10:52] by the city or program, and I agree with what you said,
[2:10:57] Ms. Cowdoway, that at this time of any time,
[2:11:01] we need to do everything, use all the resources we can
[2:11:04] to help for learning laws and social and emotional learning,
[2:11:07] and I think this group is already in place to help that.
[2:11:11] All that being said, I think, trying to figure out the date and understanding things so
[2:11:16] we can be really clear about it, makes it a bit of a sense, but I wouldn't want you
[2:11:20] all to get a sense that we are not appreciative of the work that you've done since 2004.
[2:11:25] Yeah.
[2:11:25] No, yeah, definitely.
[2:11:27] It's just really, like you said, it's about accountability and not just, you know, going
[2:11:32] We went off of testimonials because they, we want to make sure everything align up and
[2:11:40] then to that like there is truly of movement which is why we're asking for data to show
[2:11:49] and improve that.
[2:11:51] So that's really what that's about, direct, direct the morning.
[2:11:56] Yes.
[2:11:57] So I'm actually a part of the city here.
[2:12:00] I had on the city of members when I was in real middle school, so I'm glad to see that
[2:12:05] the program is still relevant.
[2:12:07] I was in the AmeriCorps Member 2 in Dallas.
[2:12:09] I worked at Comstock Elementary and senior is truly a really great program and the training
[2:12:20] that they provide for the volunteers top tier.
[2:12:26] I still use some of the stuff that I learned in what I do today.
[2:12:29] So, at the bottom line, we know that City Year is a great program, something that I didn't want to add though, I know we're asking for data, but in addition to that, like there's, in no capacity can, grades depict the effectiveness of City Year, so, while we're asking for that kind of data, I actually disagree.
[2:12:55] I think testimony would be good to help measure the effectiveness of this because the value
[2:13:00] that they add, it goes really beyond whether or not a child improved in greeting or something
[2:13:09] like that because with the program you have volunteers who go into the classroom, they're
[2:13:15] in the classroom.
[2:13:16] And they actually are working side by side with the kids during the day.
[2:13:21] After school, if that school has an after school program in the morning time, we're getting
[2:13:25] them riled up.
[2:13:26] So that's socially emotional aspect of City Year.
[2:13:30] I think that's its greatest value.
[2:13:32] And I think we, especially during this pandemic, we can ignore that the mental health of our
[2:13:38] children, it has to be addressed because with this pandemic, it's caused more anxiety in
[2:13:44] our students' depression.
[2:13:46] And there's a lot that they're doing.
[2:13:47] so we have to be mindful of it and hey I think we actually need to go by gift
[2:13:56] for everybody that does the year because I can pay bless your heart whoever's
[2:14:02] doing that program because yeah oh so I did have some questions now with
[2:14:08] ill ill I what is this man for him is that training for math like could you
[2:14:13] If you find it, Mr.
[2:14:18] Smith, would you tackle that one?
[2:14:23] No, I'm not for me, and that would be a Jeremy Hill question.
[2:14:26] Okay, I thought.
[2:14:30] LLI is for the literacy, excuse me.
[2:14:32] Okay, so what is ill-ass standpoint?
[2:14:35] Do the math is, I'm sorry, do the math is the math portion.
[2:14:40] Okay, what is ill-ass standpoint?
[2:14:42] I'm going to get back to you, I just had an A slip.
[2:14:45] And I went to think and I was like, why because we didn't use it last year due to COVID
[2:14:54] and, you know, those restrictions in the classroom, so we'll get information to you.
[2:15:00] What do you tell about both curricula in general? The internet says that it's leveled literacy intervention, so I'm not sure if that is. Is that what you're using?
[2:15:14] You'll get back to the funny. And my second question was, with you all utilizing the laptops now, you said they'll be using two in part to provide home or kill.
[2:15:28] So are you saying that the city or people will be working outside of school hours, too?
[2:15:39] To ask your question in a nutshell, yes.
[2:15:42] So I'm going to give you a school.
[2:15:44] Our appointment was work at least 10 hours a day.
[2:15:46] I know.
[2:15:47] As we said before, they're at least 30 to 40 minutes before their schools start to get in place for car routers
[2:15:55] and bus routers to do what we call morning green and morning cheer.
[2:15:59] and when you're all day of course they get a lunch break and but there are
[2:16:05] so many evenings for after-school programming on some of the schools
[2:16:09] principals allow us to create after-school 2 programs or we jump in as a part
[2:16:15] of the after-school programs with monitor with you know Mr. Smith in the
[2:16:20] South you know creating a homework airline with you know for staffing and coordinators
[2:16:25] Yes, we will be a part of those evening health lines for students who don't have the help.
[2:16:31] We may not have the parental or the access to the proper health at home.
[2:16:37] And so yes, we will create a schedule and a calendar and shifts to ensure our core members
[2:16:42] are not burned out.
[2:16:43] Number one, but also to ensure our students are effectively supported during two hours.
[2:16:51] So would they need to take the laptops home or as a part of an after school initiative they would need to use them then like I was just wondering are they
[2:17:02] So with the district purchasing the laptops we would hopefully this will be a sad laptop like any teacher or student would get throughout the school year.
[2:17:16] And of course, we're turning back in once the school year is over.
[2:17:21] And of course, the main point was main progress of this district.
[2:17:25] And that talk is sort of to ensure that we are on the district network,
[2:17:30] our core membership access, the data that they need to access for
[2:17:34] their focusless students, their pull-outs who we call push-ins,
[2:17:38] at one and one and maybe two.
[2:17:40] And I believe we have access to district emails as well,
[2:17:44] because we can't do certain things without logins.
[2:17:48] So there's still your email accounts won't justify
[2:17:51] already able to log in to some additional wire
[2:17:54] initiatives and support systems.
[2:17:56] Okay, well that was all the questions I had.
[2:18:00] Thank you.
[2:18:02] Well, I said verify, so LLI,
[2:18:05] leveled literacy for the LLI inspection.
[2:18:11] Good deal. Well, you know, again,
[2:18:14] the data piece is not...
[2:18:18] We just want to make sure we're doing our due diligence.
[2:18:21] And then to almost get the sense of,
[2:18:26] we are going to have to almost weigh it if part fill
[2:18:30] that the social, emotional learning aspect
[2:18:35] is heavier weight over that academic.
[2:18:39] I just think that we need to see how we're going to do that.
[2:18:45] but I think that data will definitely help us make a decision whenever you get that data.
[2:18:55] Mr. Hill, I didn't realize that was you until you came on, until your face was big on the screen.
[2:19:03] How are you doing? It's good seeing you.
[2:19:08] Good to see you. Thank you.
[2:19:15] questions. Excuse me. Yo, I have a comment I want to share at the end of this is that I do want
[2:19:21] board and our community to understand that we didn't include this in the city or thing but
[2:19:26] the city or group does receive training from us on things like the science of reading.
[2:19:31] They do receive training on us on Mad Max. They do get to take part in social emotional learning
[2:19:36] training. They have their own as well. So they are included and then that allows them to align with
[2:19:44] the instructors in the classroom and then beyond in terms of tutoring and so forth.
[2:19:48] So we'll come back with a report and an updated report as well as a recommendation for
[2:19:56] you to look at and try to have that ready to go to be
[2:20:00] Next meeting, the following. Yes, we have.
[2:20:05] We have no problem. I'm
[2:20:07] gathering data, and we'll get that information to Mr. Smith to pass along. But to another point about the social part, so she
[2:20:15] motion brought and we cannot track. Just a few year alone, along with Laura and some of our sister sites, I believe one particular in Sacramento, you know,
[2:20:27] And therefore, as they have school,
[2:20:28] a core members are having to sit on the curb
[2:20:31] and hold students who were in tears
[2:20:36] and scared to go into class because they couldn't get vaccinated.
[2:20:40] And they were scared of it sick.
[2:20:42] And so the past and day that we can't measure
[2:20:45] and particularly in Little Rock,
[2:20:46] it's just a myth and super between the core and the test of it.
[2:20:50] City year was in school every day in the heart of the pandemic
[2:20:53] in the year in FY20 and we show it every day.
[2:20:58] Unvaccinated before vaccine was even created.
[2:21:01] We were there serving.
[2:21:03] But we will get the deal to you,
[2:21:05] but I also want to share that's the part
[2:21:07] about AmeriCorps and our core members that we can't,
[2:21:10] we can't track and how serious they take
[2:21:14] their service here for these two months there with us.
[2:21:18] So thank you.
[2:21:19] Thank you, Mr. Hill for adding
[2:21:21] that piece to it truly appreciate that my oldest child was also benefited
[2:21:33] from since the year back when we had J. Fair and McCullen so I as you know I I do
[2:21:41] have a place for it on a personal side so I did have a question but now it is it
[2:21:50] it has left me, so it wasn't that important,
[2:21:53] but I do appreciate, we all appreciate you guys
[2:21:57] no matter for coming on and taking some time out
[2:21:59] of your evening to present to us.
[2:22:02] And thank you.
[2:22:06] Thank you very much.
[2:22:07] We're happy to provide the data and the accountability.
[2:22:10] And we're just happy to be part of it
[2:22:12] with the little rest of the district.
[2:22:13] So we appreciate y'all.
[2:22:16] Thank you.
[2:22:17] And moving forward in our next agenda,
[2:22:22] What is it? It is the agenda, yeah. So, one second, let me find my agenda as I put it away. I guess. Oh, here we go.
[2:22:37] Oh, that's a different path. Yeah. So, it's the tentative, I'm sorry.
[2:22:44] Well, sorry for interrupting you. Ms. Nolan, I had on one of the drafts that you may have received.
[2:22:51] And we did put this into the board report that it showed that the discipline report was
[2:22:55] going to be covered.
[2:22:57] That actually, remember, got postponed back.
[2:23:00] I hope you saw that in the board report that Dr. Fields and I were not able to meet.
[2:23:05] And remember, you've asked us for a data and a report that would show where we stand on
[2:23:11] suspensions, arrest, all the different areas, what we've been trying to do proactively.
[2:23:17] So I do want to share that got postponed that may not have got somehow did not get eliminated off of the at least the draft agenda that I'm looking at, too.
[2:23:26] So apologize for that.
[2:23:28] Okay. Thank you for that.
[2:23:29] Oh, I did remember what I was going to say and I think Mr. Hill is probably off but with the social emotional and the anxiety of it all.
[2:23:42] We see conflicts in school buildings across central Arkansas and that I think has a large
[2:23:52] part to do with that is children have a level of anxiety going back into the school and
[2:24:00] jelling with their peers but that was a condemned version of what I was going to say.
[2:24:06] Okay, so you guys do you guys have the agenda, the tentative agenda that starts off with
[2:24:16] under D is this normal stuff, certified PPC and all that, and classified, okay.
[2:24:22] So you know how we do.
[2:24:24] So I'm just going to go chunk it, A through D. Do you guys have any thoughts?
[2:24:32] This is Heather. Can I just make a comment that we did add an item there that is for the
[2:24:37] first time principles round table. And that's actually a group that we've also included
[2:24:41] in our executive cabinet to allow the principal voice to come in. And so that's new this
[2:24:47] year for us. And it just allows all the employee groups then to have their voice as well.
[2:24:51] So, currently the president of the principals
[2:25:00] On the round table is Philip Carlock, so I just wanted to share that that is an extra item.
[2:25:06] And congratulations, Mr. Carlock. Well, that be a very, very wonderful. Yeah, I'm sorry. You cut me off. I am so sorry.
[2:25:16] No, that's right. I was just saying congratulations, Mr. Carlock. To my understanding, isn't that a monthly bill?
[2:25:25] So yes, to write to your question and through your current.
[2:25:30] And then D through H. Actually, I'm going to stop.
[2:25:35] Well, yeah. E through H. And there's a service contract in there.
[2:25:43] What is G? I'm sorry. Okay.
[2:25:47] Yes, ma'am. I was going to comment on that too. Thank you, Ms. Cowell.
[2:25:50] When what happened on that one is that we actually felt a little bit out of our own process
[2:25:55] And to try to write the process, we're trying to bring forth a contract for an art project
[2:26:02] that was done at J Fair that was done by one of our own staff members.
[2:26:08] That approval did not get done in the appropriate way as a prior approval.
[2:26:14] And so what we're trying to do is to bring it back in here to formally do it right because
[2:26:19] if we hadn't done it that way, we weren't in our own compliance.
[2:26:24] just to be honest with you. So we're trying to correct a wrong that we didn't realize was taking place.
[2:26:30] And so it's a good thing what happened and it's a good visual but we did not know that that art project was going on
[2:26:37] and that it was actually one of our own staff members that was expecting to get paid.
[2:26:41] Oh, okay, I see. But what did they do?
[2:26:45] They created a mural inside the school. And so that's what we're trying to end up then compensating them for.
[2:26:52] It's not made in the cover of the eagle, is it?
[2:26:55] No, ma'am.
[2:26:57] This, and I think there's two different art projects.
[2:27:00] The eagle.
[2:27:01] That nice big.
[2:27:03] You're not a big one, ma'am.
[2:27:04] Yeah.
[2:27:06] And then you will bring us supporting documents
[2:27:10] and pictures of what, I mean, and I guess maybe
[2:27:17] a little bit more.
[2:27:18] Can I bring up one other one?
[2:27:19] Go ahead.
[2:27:20] Ms. Hatter also found a situation that, to be honest with you, was kind of almost like a 10 or 15 year thing that's been going on
[2:27:29] where the board president is supposed to sign off that our personnel policies are up to date and then put on the website
[2:27:37] and that the board has voted to say that they understand that they're proving the salary structure for that year.
[2:27:45] So what has happened according to Mr. Robinson, and then also what happened with the commissioner was that just happened naturally, and there never was a real review or vote by the board on it.
[2:27:59] So in reality, and this is kind of a good thing to share, is one is it will be on your agenda to approve that you understand that what our salaries are for this coming year, which basically is the same salary that we had last year.
[2:28:12] but then you're going to have to approve it again when we go for a salary increase in October,
[2:28:19] you'll have to vote on another one, okay. So in essence, it's paperwork, it's trying to make compliance,
[2:28:26] and I applaud Ms. Hadter for her thoroughness in reading the document and saying, wait a minute,
[2:28:33] I need to bring this to all of the board. So if it's okay, our plan is to just keep that in the consent agenda,
[2:28:41] but to make the personnel recommendations have two parts to it, the overall manpower that
[2:28:47] we always provide of hires, resignations, but then also have this component of approval
[2:28:53] for what the salary schedule is as we start this year, which is the same salary schedule
[2:28:59] we had last year.
[2:29:03] I have one more thing that's not on here, but it is something that it's still with our
[2:29:10] are sped contract for is it pinnacle view or non pinnacle view there on my mind pinnacle
[2:29:21] point that was brought up and because we have to pay my for the education of our students
[2:29:33] in those facilities, those behavior facilities, but I haven't seen it come come back.
[2:29:40] to come before the board. Did they circulate that back around to you?
[2:29:46] That one's catching me off guard and I will go check on it with the
[2:29:49] and it may not be that.
[2:29:51] And Ms. Steel.
[2:29:52] Okay.
[2:29:56] The next thing is.
[2:29:58] And board members if.
[2:30:00] If it's all right, I just want to kind of pre-approved with all of you that if we need that contract to come forward, we would put it under, I imagine, I don't know if we'd burn to the fine answer, whether we'd put it into its own special category under student services, but if we need it, we may add that in, okay.
[2:30:19] Okay. Okay. And then the, does that fit Gio? I think so. Okay. So we'll go H through K.
[2:30:30] So with H, that is the budget approval. And then we'll get you guys that may be a little
[2:30:37] lengthy depending on how, you know, how we do with our discussion. I'm sure we'll have
[2:30:44] have something on some level of discussion about that and then the other ones are the policy reviews.
[2:30:54] So I had one thing on that too is just also we would be adding in the city or contract potentially to
[2:31:00] under that financial area so just to be another item that we would be adding on.
[2:31:07] Okay, I'm going to know.
[2:31:09] And
[2:31:12] so with that you guys, I guess we are looking for three things which will be the salary agreement, which will be what we know it is right now on the personnel and in this bed if that comes, comes, comes back to us to make sure we're taking care of our children and in different places and then the city year contract, so those would be the adjustments that I catch that correctly.
[2:31:38] Okay. All right. So you guys, uh, H2K. Oh, yes, sir. Uh, Mr. Dr., uh, yeah.
[2:31:49] That
[2:31:52] sounds like sort of when my mother was calling us for suffers, you can get her name
[2:31:55] right. So, uh, I'll do that now. So I have done, been communicating some of Mr. Porter and Dr.
[2:32:03] McGee, but I wanted to bring it up here, too. We voted, when we voted on the mass mandate,
[2:32:09] We also voted to get recommendations for incentives for students to be vaccinated and for that to be brought back to us this month.
[2:32:18] So can we have that report on that?
[2:32:21] Absolutely. It'll become part of the ESSA program report.
[2:32:24] And it's actually Dr. McGee's had not just won me, but multiple means on that.
[2:32:29] I think he has another one next week to hopefully finalize that.
[2:32:32] of looking at what the final recommendation would be
[2:32:35] and will be built into the report that would come to you Friday.
[2:32:39] Thank you.
[2:32:40] Okay.
[2:32:41] I want to end with those.
[2:32:42] Go ahead, director.
[2:32:43] Go ahead.
[2:32:46] I'm not going to push this if the timing isn't right,
[2:32:49] but if possible, could we have that discipline report
[2:32:52] that was supposed to be on this agenda?
[2:32:55] Could we potentially add it and get it at the next meeting?
[2:32:59] Or is that something that you are not going to be prepared?
[2:33:02] I honestly, you know, we've got all these, all the data and what we're trying to do is to package it so that it starts to make sense.
[2:33:10] And I just don't see how we can accomplish that next week and put it into a plan.
[2:33:16] So I'd like to try to do that if it's possible at the October, the first, the gym to mean in October.
[2:33:22] Okay. When we do that, can we include in there a look at physical altercations or finding
[2:33:31] that we've seen in schools this year and just see if that's, you know, look at the data
[2:33:36] on that as well and see if there are things we can do.
[2:33:39] Is it in that normally a part of it?
[2:33:41] Yeah, I think it is.
[2:33:42] Okay, that's our problem.
[2:33:44] That's kind of why I was pushing forward a little bit sooner but I understand we need to
[2:33:49] get all the data.
[2:33:50] Yes, so we also met with the SROs and they're going to also probably won't be until October but start coming before the board is giving a report to you all and so like you guys not only about and the report is going to be very broad about everything that that like they do within our school buildings because it's just not.
[2:34:21] arresting and conflict. And so until they'll be able to bring that to us and so we'll all know exactly what that is, right?
[2:34:32] So yeah, so we can all work together.
[2:34:39] You guys, is there anything else? I'm sorry, my energy just dropped. I don't know what's happening here.
[2:34:49] Thank you, Madam Chair, I have a couple topics that I'd like to bring up.
[2:34:54] I was wondering if we could hear a little bit about enrollment numbers at the September.
[2:35:07] We'll include that in the financial report. Okay. And then a topic with regard to, you know, the more competitive teacher salaries that we're going to be leaning into this fall and the, you know, the school consolidations that may go along with that. I think that probably, you know,
[2:35:27] It goes well with the enrollment number discussion.
[2:35:31] I feel both ways about the discussion about the teacher salaries and the school consolidations.
[2:35:36] Number one, I feel like we're missing a little bit of an opportunity by not addressing
[2:35:42] that in the September meeting and the October meeting to show fiscal responsibility to the
[2:35:49] city when we ask them to support the millage extension that we're going to ask them to vote
[2:35:55] for in early November. So I have some urgency about that and I don't know where you and
[2:36:01] the finance team are on the ability to start that conversation, you know, in two weeks
[2:36:08] so that we might could potentially take action in the month of October.
[2:36:13] First off, I'd tell you there's no way to take action. We would not be able to do it the
[2:36:17] right way in terms of community involvement. What Ms. Hattern I have talked about is in
[2:36:22] October, May, going back and revisiting what the blueprint has because there are things
[2:36:27] that have occurred in our past and then there's also things that are going to have to be considered
[2:36:32] for our future. And then that would set up the things that we're going to have to go do
[2:36:37] to work to execute that in with community involvement. Really, you're looking at multiple
[2:36:42] months there because if you look at anything that we've done that deals with either blueprint
[2:36:47] or in my first year when we had to make severe budget reductions that was
[2:36:53] always a three-month process. So that's what you're looking at but we will start
[2:36:57] that in October. So when would we what's the target for completing that? I mean
[2:37:03] student almonds in December right? Student I mean registration I'm sorry.
[2:37:09] Registration has gone in December in January we really had to bleed into January
[2:37:12] last two years? No I know but I mean to not have that figured out by the time
[2:37:19] student registration opens in December I think would be just another mistake
[2:37:26] on our part. Okay so that's that's the urgent side of that conversation.
[2:37:32] For the people watching depending on what the entry level point of them coming
[2:37:36] into the district and with the blueprint and so the blueprint started in 2017 and
[2:37:42] And then the final blueprint, I think it was the fall of 2018 and then that is that blueprint
[2:37:52] that it looked like it's colored, it made with no color pencils and grouping it together
[2:37:58] where I think it was like five or so buildings, six buildings.
[2:38:01] And so that is the blueprint that we're talking about that was approved and then we're still
[2:38:08] on that course, no matter from the last approval by the direction that district was under
[2:38:15] at the time.
[2:38:16] Director, what?
[2:38:16] So, the other side of that urgency on the, you know, teacher salaries and school
[2:38:21] consolidation topic is actually a point that Director Callaway brought out in the last
[2:38:27] month or six weeks that I didn't give enough credit to when I first heard her say it, but
[2:38:31] since then, I've actually had several people repeat the same thing that, where are we going
[2:38:36] to be financially as a district if the millage does not pass, and we have these must-do,
[2:38:44] not the list of want-to's physically, not the list of want-to's in new buildings and
[2:38:50] projects, but the must-do's, how will that impact and effect the effort to increase teacher
[2:38:58] salaries?
[2:38:59] I would really like to see an explanation from the finance team that the teacher salaries
[2:39:05] are not dependent on the knowledge campaign. I'm committed to that. I really want that
[2:39:12] to be the answer. I don't want it to be we can't vote for the teacher salaries until
[2:39:19] after we see how the community is going to vote on the knowledge extension. But at the
[2:39:25] same time, if we have 20, 30, 40 million dollars worth of physical improvements, we have
[2:39:32] have to do our buildings to keep them dry, warm and safe.
[2:39:37] I'm concerned about what all we're committing to this fall.
[2:39:41] So is there a possibility to have some...
[2:39:44] And I'm bringing it up in public because I've actually had several people from the public
[2:39:48] randomly bring that concern up to me.
[2:39:53] They are concerned that there's not a path to all the commitments we're making
[2:39:58] if the millage doesn't pass.
[2:40:00] We can also cover a little bit of that within how he'll present the budget approval and you know what are some of the things of how we've set aside money for salaries and what we've got money that would be available for projects, keep things warm safe and dry and what that looks like. But let's be really clear. First off, as board members, if you don't feel armed right now, to be able to say that we've been using our resources wisely.
[2:40:29] when it's been approved from everything from audits to the state, then somehow as a
[2:40:36] district as a leader, I'm missing a boat someplace. I'm not doing the job because you
[2:40:41] should have a level of confidence in my opinion. And again, if that's not the case, we need
[2:40:46] to talk individually or we need to bring it out in here because there have been over
[2:40:51] an over and over examples of fiscal stewardship that's solid.
[2:40:57] Now the other thing that has been hopefully really transparent is we also are razor thin
[2:41:04] right now and this is to Mr. Woods Point of facilities you know.
[2:41:09] So in some ways some of these things are trying to walk hand in hand and we've got to be in
[2:41:15] in my mind behind the effort for an extension in the election.
[2:41:21] But we also owe it to our employees because these folks have not got, sorry,
[2:41:25] and you guys have asked us, we've come up with a model to do these things.
[2:41:29] But we've got to go work on it all together right now.
[2:41:33] But the fiscal responsibility, we have, I think, really done an outstanding job of that
[2:41:39] over the past five years, everything from loss of students to loss of desegregation funds
[2:41:44] to come up with creative ways to, you know, enhance our learning environments with lights
[2:41:50] and air and new buildings. So, you know, the, when people throw out questions like how
[2:41:58] I heard that and maybe I'm defensive, but when I hear that people are asking about how
[2:42:04] we're handling things and are we doing the right thing, sometimes we can't allow people
[2:42:11] the contract from moving this district forward. And I agree we've got to be sound but I hope
[2:42:20] you're getting built up with foundations that show that we are being sound in our approach
[2:42:25] and that we are being wise. And we can add in this concept that you're talking about
[2:42:30] into the report that Mr. Bailey will provide next week is Ms. Hadter shared. It will be a pretty lengthy
[2:42:36] the discussion on the budget when we get in there two weeks from now.
[2:42:42] Did I miss something while I was taking notes? I'm sorry. I didn't hear that right as a criticism,
[2:42:50] and that could have been because I was jotting down notes, but then I heard it as,
[2:42:57] and this is for my own, and maybe anybody that's watching that was eating popcorn when I was listening,
[2:43:03] I mean, I didn't hear that as a criticism.
[2:43:07] I, that I heard it as clarity, as being responsive, as accountability, and that could just
[2:43:16] be me.
[2:43:18] However, I just thought I would point that out to where, you know, those that may want
[2:43:25] to go back and rewind the thing to listen.
[2:43:28] And then I didn't hear a criticism in that.
[2:43:33] And I think we all agree that Kelsey Bailey not having any findings
[2:43:41] as long as he'd been here, it speaks to that level.
[2:43:45] But okay, I just wanted to clear that up.
[2:43:48] Put a little peroxide on it to see if I missed something.
[2:43:51] Director Callaway.
[2:43:52] Okay.
[2:43:53] Thank you, Mr. Woods.
[2:43:55] We did bring that up.
[2:43:57] I didn't bring that up, so a week ago and they said what he said at that time was I'll
[2:44:03] get back to you and we haven't gotten back to it.
[2:44:07] I would work criticized and I just wanted to know and my constituents wanted to know
[2:44:12] plus other people I don't, you know, that I was history.
[2:44:17] would not have that effect if what if the military doesn't pass, because that was definitely
[2:44:26] if we can't find a way to fund that, that's going to really probably hurt us on recruitment
[2:44:36] for teachers or whatever, and everything that you know, and I appreciate you for acknowledging
[2:44:46] the fact that you asked the bachelor, but it's never been answered.
[2:44:51] You can tell, are you concluded, you yield the right to no one?
[2:45:00] So two things just, and they're actually kind of responses or comments based on what you just said. One is when it came up last time, I think what I said and what I'll say again is we would have some really tough decisions to make. I think that that's, I mean, I don't know that they can tell us exactly what would happen because we would have to choose between competing goals. You know, we're going to have things that we want to do and we're not going to have necessarily the funding to do all of it. So we would have to make some tough decisions.
[2:45:30] about which of those things we choose.
[2:45:33] And so that's, I think that ultimately,
[2:45:37] unfortunately, is the answer is that we would ultimately
[2:45:40] have to weigh different, you know,
[2:45:44] we want to increase teacher salaries,
[2:45:46] we want to renovate these buildings,
[2:45:48] we want to, you know, do all these things,
[2:45:50] we would have to probably pick some of those
[2:45:52] and not be able to do others.
[2:45:55] The other thing that I would mention
[2:45:56] and just kind of picking backing off of what Vicki said.
[2:46:01] I have also heard some of the same questions
[2:46:03] about fiscal responsibility.
[2:46:05] I have always understood those to be questions about us
[2:46:08] as a board and not about the district,
[2:46:11] but they just want to know and see that we as a board
[2:46:15] are going to make, you know, the right decisions
[2:46:17] and difficult decisions and make sure
[2:46:19] that we are fiscally responsible.
[2:46:21] And so that's what I heard, Mr. Wood,
[2:46:24] you know, your comments being about.
[2:46:26] And so I don't think it's really about, you know, Mr. Bailey's reports or what the district
[2:46:31] has been doing, but it's just the fact that we have a new board and people want to know
[2:46:34] how we are going to handle it.
[2:46:36] So I really disagree with that.
[2:46:39] Okay.
[2:46:39] And because like Mr. Lewis said, I did ask that question and they said that they would
[2:46:48] get back with us. It has happened. And like, if the millions fails, the teachers want
[2:46:58] to know, are we going to get that raise? And I can't tell them because I'm not going
[2:47:06] to tell a story in C. And that's all we were saying. It didn't have anything to do with
[2:47:13] what you see it. And I hope that's what the question was.
[2:47:24] I mean, I kind of agree with what Ellie said. I mean, the way I interpreted it was that's
[2:47:30] going to be a major cut into our budget. So then we are going to have to decide what that
[2:47:35] means. Does that mean closing schools? Does that mean firing people? Like we will have to
[2:47:40] decide I don't think that's for Mr. Bailey or his team to decide what happened.
[2:47:46] No, it was not for him to decide what it was was will we have the money if this does not
[2:47:54] pass for the raises I think that you know the whole thing was will we not be able to pay
[2:48:04] if it doesn't pay us. It might be a positive and a negative for the
[2:48:10] millions. And that was the only question. And my question was primarily for
[2:48:21] teacher salaries. And we need all these things that we're talking about. I don't
[2:48:28] agree with that but it had nothing to do with the original question you see you
[2:48:35] know I think that I will hold what I think director Adam thank you Miss
[2:48:43] Hadter a couple of comments on the question on the question of the you know for me
[2:48:52] that I think the issue is if we as a board vote to take this plan, then to me as a board
[2:49:00] we have made a promise and a commitment to the teachers to say we are going to do this.
[2:49:07] And that means if we have to make compromises somewhere else, we make compromises somewhere
[2:49:12] else because we have made a promise to do this, which and hopefully we're going to pass
[2:49:19] this Minutes Extension so that we do not have to make the thing kind of hard choices that
[2:49:24] we make otherwise. So the question I have for the agenda is about that Minutes Extension.
[2:49:32] I know that Ms. Porter, you've been talking to some of us individually about that. When we're
[2:49:37] less than two months away from the election, I'm wondering about do we need an update on where
[2:49:44] we are on any kind of campaign or organization or strategy that we have, you know, they hear
[2:49:54] because I don't want to wait until October to talk about that.
[2:50:00] And then before you respond to the other thing, I don't want to say to respond to Mr. Woods' comment, I have a different take on the right sizing discussions, because I think those really have to happen, but I don't want them to happen to rest, and I don't want them to happen distracted. And for me, if somebody came to me and asked about that, I would want to say, this is where I is on the ball right now, because this has to be the one of the biggest priorities.
[2:50:29] the next two months is to get this passed, and then we need to do that right-sizing
[2:50:33] and right, and we need to take our time and do all that.
[2:50:36] And we can't do both of those at the same time.
[2:50:40] And so this has to happen, and then the other thing has to happen.
[2:50:44] Even though I agree, it could impact the following school year,
[2:50:50] and that would be an unfortunate consequence if that happens.
[2:50:53] But I think that sequentially, this just has to be,
[2:50:57] We take all the energy that we have to spare, you know, as far as getting the community involved in things between now and November.
[2:51:07] I'm superintendant. Go ahead. I'm still holding my thoughts. Go ahead.
[2:51:12] First off, I appreciate all the discussions that's taking place right now and I will say that, you know, with the campaign itself.
[2:51:22] And
[2:51:25] I may need some advice just from all of you that have lived it.
[2:51:30] So having a campaign committee come in and share in front of the board, is that okay?
[2:51:40] Do we have to offer them the other side, the same opportunity?
[2:51:44] Does that happen away from the board setting?
[2:51:48] And obviously, anyone can speak in public comment, but if you set up to have someone,
[2:51:55] I don't know how that works, I don't think I've ever gone down that road before, usually
[2:52:00] all the meetings that occur on something that deals with the campaign happens away from
[2:52:05] the board setting.
[2:52:06] But that's been my experience and maybe you have a different one.
[2:52:12] I don't know, but just for me, it would make sense for us to get a report, there's a
[2:52:18] campaign committee for us to hear what that is and go ask questions and I don't, we have
[2:52:27] the public come an opportunity for people to make other way out, I don't feel like it's
[2:52:30] like a political debate where we have to invite in the opposition to make their presentation.
[2:52:35] Okay, because we voted to go down this road and and we were to get that decision
[2:52:41] Just Mr. Walker
[2:52:46] Would you would you I would assume then that your your preference would be to have that report in the September meeting
[2:52:56] Okay, and I'm assuming then by not ahead by board members that that's something everybody would want to do to add on that add on on the agenda
[2:53:06] All right, I'm going to move forward just because I was going to make some comments about
[2:53:20] what was said in the village and the teacher's salaries, but I think that one thing I definitely
[2:53:28] It's mindful is that I don't want to create further anxiety among staff and then I think
[2:53:39] it's premature to have that type of conversation on what would happen on a vote that we have
[2:53:46] not happened as far as that requires the public, the vote on the extension of the millage.
[2:53:51] I thought that them teacher salary would happen regardless, but I could be mistaken in
[2:53:57] the other thing as far as the consolidation of schools naturally with the K-8 model
[2:54:04] that will happen.
[2:54:05] But, too, I do want to say, because I was looking at the blueprint that I had from 2018,
[2:54:14] team, this is like a piece of paper that big.
[2:54:20] I would like for the district to provide
[2:54:24] the board with that blueprint and so the board could see that that blueprint is pretty
[2:54:31] much completed. The consolidation of hall to the height, you know, the idea of the West
[2:54:40] school of innovation, pinnacle view, looking at all of those things, and so that would,
[2:54:48] I think, would give people a better idea depending on what their entry point was re-engaging
[2:54:56] or engaging the district business.
[2:55:00] That's all I got on that, you guys. Sorry for the low energy, but that's what I got right now. Okay. Okay, so I think I'm going to do this again just so unclear. H through K. I know we spent some time already talking about this. Are there any further information or ideas or thoughts or add-ons that's needed? Because we kind of already did our board comments.
[2:55:29] in our discussion, we just had.
[2:55:32] Just that we've now added a fourth item onto the agenda
[2:55:35] from what the three you've already previously mentioned
[2:55:37] should be election efforts.
[2:55:39] Election efforts.
[2:55:42] Okay, you guys.
[2:55:45] So that's what we have.
[2:55:48] We're going to get some information on the enrollment numbers.
[2:55:53] And two, you guys.
[2:55:55] I think this is worth saying.
[2:55:58] Enrollment numbers are enrollment numbers.
[2:56:00] The
[2:56:04] public listens to not only just board but they also listen to the staff, right?
[2:56:11] And so the driving of our enrollment can either go either direction based on how what the
[2:56:22] public perceives based on experience, the student experience, the family experience,
[2:56:28] or overall experience.
[2:56:31] And so I just think that everybody should be mindful of that.
[2:56:37] That doesn't mean that you, that improvements, voice, shouldn't be voice, but they should,
[2:56:44] those, they should be voice, and they should be voice at the right levels to where we can
[2:56:51] and have an opportunity to improve whatever areas of concern.
[2:57:00] And then I just want to say to the folks that reach out to me both staff and non staff,
[2:57:07] continue to do that.
[2:57:10] And so like we can facilitate getting some of these things, taking care of.
[2:57:15] and then for those that, I would say it's always better for the individual that have
[2:57:25] the concern to voice that concern instead of going through different mediums because
[2:57:35] then it's kind of harder to gauge what the actual concern is.
[2:57:40] And so that's what I wanted to say is that I continue to use your resources and see
[2:57:48] us as a resource.
[2:57:50] You guys, that's all I have on the next meeting on the 23rd agenda.
[2:57:59] Do y'all got anything else?
[2:58:02] Hey, man.
[2:58:03] All right, so at this time, if there's nothing else, I would entertain a motion.
[2:58:10] or have I jumped ahead hold on I mean because you know I would jump ahead
[2:58:17] board comments adjournment so I would move that we adjourn our board
[2:58:23] adjourn a meeting okay all right any discussion okay it's signaled by
[2:58:30] saying aye for those that in favor of adjournment aye in any opposed may
[2:58:37] little rock and beyond thank you for joining us for the last few hours we appreciate
[2:58:41] you stay in touch and we'll see you later.