Frayser Community Schools
Minutes
FCS Board Meeting - November 2021
Date and Time
Tuesday November 9, 2021 at 5:30 PM
Location
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 990 2081 9458
Passcode: xHj49e
Directors Present
A. Cathey (remote), J. Thornton (remote), K. Adams (remote), K. Tucker (remote), R. Dowell (remote)
Directors Absent
M. Shepherd, R. Hamilton
Ex Officio Members Present
B. White (remote)
Non Voting Members Present
B. White (remote)
Guests Present
B. Lawson (remote), G. Thompson (remote), L. Warren (remote)
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance and Guests
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
A. Cathey called a meeting of the board of directors of Frayser Community Schools to order on Tuesday Nov 9, 2021 at 5:30 PM.
C.
Approve Minutes
R. Dowell made a motion to approve the minutes from FCS Board Meeting - October 2021 on 10-19-21.
K. Adams seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
II. Academic Excellence
A.
Academic Excellence Committee Updates
Mr. Brett Lawson:
- We have COVID monitoring and updates. And I'll say that, until this week, we had not had cases for like three or four weeks. And all of a sudden, we've got several cases popping up at the high school. We haven't had them at the middle schools yet. But I do know from seeing the news, there is another surge going on in Europe. And you know, we don't want to let our guard down. So we'll continue to keep our guard up and continue to wear face masks in the school. I even bought some new equipment, some additional new sprayers to spray to disinfect.
- Last week the Commissioner of Education came to town, and they were holding town hall meetings concerning funding for schools. The BEP funding formula is 30 years old and they're considering revamping it. Instead of a flat per-pupil ratio or amount for each student in the BEP, they're looking at the funding structure. They're looking at funding each student according to their needs. So economically disadvantaged students would receive more funds, students who receive special ed services would receive more funds. And, there would be all sorts of metrics in there.
- Shelby County Schools rolled this out several years ago when Lynn Johnson was CFO. And Ms. Adams could certainly comment on whether or not it's brought her any benefits or not. But I know, even at Overton, looking at what was going to come down the pipe, it looked like it was going to be advantageous—knowing that we have a super high concentration of students who should receive extra funds and understanding how this process it's going to be necessary. So I went to the town hall meeting and it was not the typical session that the state rolled out. Typically, when they say a town hall meeting, it means we will tell you how we're about to do this and we might get you into groups and let you talk about it a little bit. But it's generally not what it was this night. You sign up if you want to give a two minute comment and they called names for people to give their remarks.
- In some cases, people, instead of giving a comment or telling what they thought about the idea, they would ask a question. And the Commissioner stopped and said, we're going to break the procedure. And I'm going to answer some of these questions. At the moment, she was pretty sharp about remembering the questions that people asked and really tried to speak to those questions. I'll tell you what I think the big question is, that this whole thing has not been answered in just a minute. I did go ahead and sign up. And I spoke for two minutes and talked about the special needs of communities like ours in schools like ours and how I thought the funding model needed to be adjusted for schools at super high concentrations, not just for the individual student multiplier. Still, I thought there should be something even beyond that for different communities.
- So the question that keeps rattling around, and what many people think is the impetus behind this whole movement, is vouchers. And failing that, if they can ramp up money, Number One ramp up the BEP a little bit, but at the same time, getting it up to where you can get tuition, almost for a private school. And this makes the voucher thing a lot more attractive. And they said that vouchers and BEP are two different things, but they are actually connected. I mean, that's what they said in the meeting that they're two different things. That's not what we're talking about, but everybody kind of looks through that and says, well, you can't really disassociate those two things. And anyway, it seems like there are some interesting sides of the aisle, and I think it's for very different reasons. I want to make sure that we get our slice of the pie.
Dr. Bobby White:
- We continue to enroll; some students are leaving on the other end, too. But our registration is staying pretty steady. I think it's encouraging that both Westside and MLK are above their projections. And although Hume's is below projection, we are at 97% towards our network goal for the year.
- That said, given how we budget, how we determine the budget, which is pretty conservative, and we always scale off 10% of what the projected enrollment will be as we create the budget. I feel like it will be pretty good even though we're short all of those students over at Humes. I think that's one of the things that I'll get Greg to forecast and bring us a little bit more about next month during our board meeting. About how we budget conservatively.
- So we're never looking for 100% of what our projections are. We always budget for like 90% of what our projections are. So we got 97%. That means we're still above what we budgeted.
III. Governance
A.
Governance Committee Updates
Mrs. Arlinda Cathey:
- I'm going to be checking in with everyone. If you haven't already informed me, check in with everyone individually to see where you are regarding your progress with board training through Board Smart. Our deadline is coming up on November the 15th, which is Monday. So we want to make sure that we have 100% completion by that point in time.
- If you haven't started, definitely set some time aside in the coming days to do so. And to also complete the evaluation forms on the back end of it to ensure that you can receive credit for completing each of those specific training sessions. We were able to meet the requirements last year. So we want to make sure that we can continue to do that this year. I know we've got a few newer board members that have some additional training requirements, so I want to make sure that everyone has either four or six hours, by the time midnight hits on Monday, or I should say Tuesday morning, the 16th.
- The other thing that I want to discuss is our next board meeting, which will be in December, as well as provide some insight into what our board meetings will look like for 2022.
- Back in August during our board meeting, we discussed the format in which worked best for us regarding our board meetings. It was at that time we shared that we were comfortable continuing our remote format but did want to have opportunities for in-person meetings throughout the year. So we figured that the best approach would be to look at things specifically from the perspective of what it will look like if we have quarterly in-person meetings.
- But regarding at least in-person meetings that we're looking at having, potentially for 2022. What I have tried to do is lay out specific months where we have our meetings in person, looking at doing it at least four times out of the calendar year, and the other months would still be held via Zoom. We still will have a zoom option if there's a reason why someone cannot join us physically for that given day. But I've made some suggestions around specific months and they are tied to essential functions that take place in our annual cycle as a board.
- Proposed In-Person Board Meetings & Retreats for 2022
- February 2022 - Board Meeting
- May 2022 - Board Meeting
- July 2022 - Board Retreat
- September 2022 - Board Meeting
- December 2022 - Board Meeting
- Given that we approve the budget during the May board meeting, I suggested that we hold an in-person meeting for May. Our retreat happens in July, so I've put down July, and we will work to always have our retreats in person if at all possible.
- September will be an in-person meeting and then suggesting December as an in-person meeting,as it will be a good way to wrap up the actual calendar year and do something festive for the holidays.
- So if I have any feedback from board members, FCS network team members, and staff about this, let me know. If there are any drawbacks or hesitation about these specific months, let me know that too.
- We were considering having a dinner outing for our December meeting to cap off the year and allow it to be a festive way for us to get together. We can still stick with the actual date for our board meeting in December, which is December the 14th. If everyone is comfortable with that, we already have time blocked out on our schedules for it. If so, then I will work with Dr. White as well as Ms. Warren to figure out where we will dine. Everybody on board for that? Please be on the lookout for details regarding the December board meeting and location details on where we'll meet.
- And just a few other things to wrap up governance. For the most part, everyone on this call right now has already committed to a specific committee. But I want us to begin to prepare as we enter into 2022 to reconvene our committees, as we've taken a little bit of hiatus from them. I know on this call right now; we've got folks that have already been participating with the academic excellence committee, as well as some people that have been participated on governance. But I am specifically thinking about our two new board members that we want to engage. And as we want to engage them, we need to go ahead and make sure that we are committing to regularly scheduled committee meetings that take place every month.
- This is something that I've let fall to the wayside but I will be more stern and structured with in the upcoming year.
- We have already received updates regarding the parent trigger petitioner for Westside.
- Lastly, we are moving back into doing some more targeted recruitment for board members, which will be something that Dr. White and I are working directly on. Other than that, it concludes things on the Governance aspect.
IV. Development
A.
Development Committee Updates
Mrs. Arlinda Cathey:
- I am reaching out to Ms. Williams regarding each board member's fundraising URL pages. So then, as we now are stepping into the space where we're making our contributions or soliciting donations on behalf FCS, people can make direct contributions that can't be counted towards your annual giving for FCS.
- So that will be coming to you very soon in preparation for Giving Tuesday. You may want to solicit some donations; you will have that to do so.
V. Network Updates from the CEO
A.
Pertinent Network Updates and Developments
No updates at this time.
VI. Closing Items
A.
Adjourn Meeting
There being no further business to be transacted, and upon motion duly made, seconded and approved, the meeting was adjourned at 6:46 PM.
Respectfully Submitted,
A. Cathey
Documents used during the meeting
None