Thursday, May 11, 2023
School Board Work Session
The meeting lasted 4 hours
Josh Brown and Jay Galbreath were absent.
The meeting began with a review of the Board Member Conflict of Interest policy.
For some reason, Mr. Wimberly spoke out immediately and continued to expressed concern that the policy allows the board to dismiss a member from the board and they would be ineligible to serve in a similar position for ten years. He was also concerned that they would lose their compensation. Dana Ausbrooks informed the board that this is actually Tennessee law for any elected official and would be based on a decision from a local DA or judge, not the board itself. However, this item (along with the Code of Ethics policy) was still removed from the agenda for Monday night and has been sent back to the policy committee.
Superintendents Report:
Strategic Plan: The finalized version of the 5 year plan was presented to the board.
The board will review and approve at the June meeting.
As expected, everything in this plan are things which are already in place. No real value in paying to have this plan created.
Third Grade Retention
Much time was spent discussing the Third-grade retention law and the timeline for those who will be required to take summer school and/or repeat the grade.
Annual Superintendent Evaluation:
Just as most businesses have annual reviews of each employee, the board does the same. The goal is for the superintendent to review a 3 on a scale of 1-5. 1 being significantly below expectations and 5 being significantly above. Each board member rated Mr. Golden based on each of his 3 goals and his overall score this year is a 3.67 which was weighted at 80%. The other 20% were demonstrable characteristics related to student achievement, board and community relationships, staff and personnel relationships as well as facilities, finance and HR. In this area he received a 3.97.
Budget:
There are 12 budget related items moving funds from one account to another for end of year reconciliation.
The state did communicate the portion of funds that will be allocated to WCS for the next school year and they were higher than expected which means the $9 million deficit that was in the proposed budget is now removed and we actually should have a small surplus.
Red Flag Resolution
The red flag resolution that was proposed by Eric Welch begins at 2:42 in the livestream and lasted for one hour. As usual, Mr. Welch was rude and disrespectful to other board members during the discussion and said that anyone who disagreed with him must not care for the children. Based on the fact that some of the board members disagreed with him for various reasons, the chair sent this to a committee for review. As such, it won’t be on the agenda for this month but likely will return in June (along with the 5 books for reconsideration).
Kudos to board chair Angela Durham who reminded the board that they only have 4 areas of responsibility according to their own board policy. Those areas are: Policy Oversight, Educational Planning, Fiscal Planning and Promotion. She mentioned that she does not support this resolution since it infringes on our 2nd amendment.
In summary, while the books and the red flag items along with the Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics items were all removed from this agenda, I would still encourage you to sign up to speak on these items at the meeting on Monday if you are at all able.
