The Williamson County School Board met on Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 6pm for their monthly work session. The meeting lasted a bit over 2 hours. Before we dive into the content of the work session, I want to quickly explain the monthly board process. The board has 3 meetings per month at a minimum. The board policy meeting, the work session and the board meeting. Board members have the ability to send items to the board chair and the superintendent who ultimately decided on what gets placed on the agenda. We must keep pressure on the administration to address issues that are critical for our students. One of those is the lack of importance placed on the Code of Conduct and Student Discrimination, Harassment, Bullying, Cyber-bullying and Intimidation. These are WCS policy 6.300 and 6.304 which a board member asked to be added to the policy agenda (thankfully) but there was little appetite for discussion. The superintendent did agree to come back to the board by the end of this semester with suggested changes to make it a more effective policy. However, this was not discussed at the work session so it will be interesting to see if anything actually happens.
Superintendent’s Report:
Strategic Planning Update – Lipscomb university suggested to use a Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results analysis instead of a SWOT analysis. They said we can’t use the terms weaknesses and threats. Wow. And we paid $100k for this? And guess what their top recommendation was? To pay our teachers more which likely means higher taxes instead of trimming all of the waste at the admin office. The final proposal will come to the board in May.
Board Chair Report:
Angela Durham told the board that “best practice” for amendments to items on the agenda is to email them ahead of the meeting. Wow, everything has to be scripted and planned? If the administration doesn’t like it, they will make sure it doesn’t make it to the agenda. This was in direct reference to the amendments that were made on the library books motions. The reason given was so that the attorney can make sure it is legal.
Deliberation via email was another topic. Angela told the board to not email the entire board if they wanted an item on the agenda but instead to only email it to Jason. Again, no transparency. If he shuts it down, it won’t be on the agenda. What is odd is that the board is Jason’s boss, not the other way around. Totally backwards and zero accountability to the voters.
2023-2024 Budget:
It’s no surprise, they are asking for $37 million more in the General Purpose budget than the prior year which is a 7.7% increase. It never ends.
$2.3 million or 6% of the increase is going to Interventionists which were being paid by the ESSER (COVID) funds. On the current careers page, there are 361 open positions. Why can’t we just take some of the existing open roles and convert them to these without increasing the budget? $3.8 million or 10% for new staff at the new schools being built. Again, why wouldn’t we just collapse some of the current open roles? The administration claims that we have added 700 additional students so for them, we need new positions costing $5 million or 14%. They are asking for 13 additional school counselors and 2 additional psychologists.
They are asking for a $3.7 million increase in the capital budget for an increase of 30%.
86% of the budget is for payroll and benefits.
They are asking for $9.8 million more than the district is expected to receive from state and local revenue.
Math Textbook Adoption:
Reveal Math by McGraw Hill is what has been recommended for K-5. Florida rejected this curriculum due to having social emotional learning. Questions such as “What are some ways you can connect with your classmates?”, “What behaviors show that you respect your classmates?” and asking students how they feel about solving these problems. Nothing to do with math. This was even addressed during the work session, the administration admits it is full of SEL but said this is what the teachers overwhelmingly selected. The publisher calls this Notice and Wonder. This is the definition from the publisher: “When we ask math students to notice and wonder, we shift the focus from teachers’ explanations to students’ ideas. Observing (noticing) and questioning (wondering) are simple, powerful habits that enliven and enrich every aspect of instruction.” They even mentioned in the presentation that this doesn’t align with state standards but that they will just tell teachers not to focus on this. Sound familiar to the ELA discussion a few years ago?
SAVVAS Envision Math was selected for Algebra and Geometry and this too was rejected in Florida for SEL.
Finally, they are still planning to use SchoolKIT for training the teachers on the new math curriculum. SchoolKIT focuses on Common Core and other woke ideologies.
The board meeting will be held on Monday, March 27, 2023 at 6:30pm in the Admin Complex Auditorium. To speak at public comment, just email [email protected] by noon on Monday with the following information:
Your First and Last Name
Complete Address Your Topic of Comment Any Organization You Represent
