Dr. Bobby White:

• Thank you all for allowing me to continue leading this organization. I know I may have founded it eight years ago; most of the time, folks end up leaving when they found organizations. And so, I'm still here, and you all still provide me with the opportunity to continue to lead our organization. But the remember the vision for me is appreciating the opportunity to serve and lead and recognizing that you all have felt several challenges that we faced over the last couple of months with changes in leadership at the school level at both Westside and MLK. 
• The changes at MLK were necessary. But then we had another abrupt change, and we were not prepared or did not plan for that. And, of course, you can't ever plan for everything. I spoke with Mrs. Cathey about this, but I began to question whether or not I was the right person to continue in this seat with a number of the things that took place.
  One thing Mr. Lawson talks about a lot is "Don't embarrass me" and if you embarrass us and you are incompetent, you're not capable of allowing us to do what we said that we were going to do. Which is to be better than the district we came from and do this work differently, which means that we don't need to continue doing it. And for a brief moment there, I questioned whether or not the decisions that I've made were responsible for the challenges we faced. And I want to let you all know that I've been highly reflective about those things. And I'm ready, locked, and loaded to take the lessons learned from those things. And for us to be better prepared. Do a better job of hiring. 
• Pastor Floyd talked about the Five Dysfunctions of a Team when a leader is impatient and doesn't follow his gut many times when hiring. So there are many things that I have been impatient with, like the reasons at the time seemed right. But in the end, believing in our core values, being clear about our core values enough to where when we make decisions around hiring and anything that we do. If we stick with those core values, and if those folks that we're going to hire do not align with those core values, then we take a pause and figure it out until we can find the candidates that align with those core values. 

Mr. Brett Lawson:

• So let's talk about COVID for just a minute. In terms of COVID, I think you all probably saw in the news where Collierville had to take a step back and go virtual for a couple of days. And the state called last week, and the commissioner reiterated the process for requesting to go virtual if you needed to do that. It's a school-by-school situation, and it's limited to a week at the most right now. They decided to narrow that down due to the CDC recommendations for quarantine for five days. So when we returned from the break, we already communicated to the staff about the new CDC guidelines and how we would implement those. We also did surveys and took stock of how many folks were impacted over the holidays due to COVID and what that would mean on coming back on day one. 
• We thought we were ready for last Monday when we came back, and we started with the PD day adjusted our schedule. We were able to call that an inclement weather day. So that's not something we're going to make up. You remember how the temperature dropped way down? We thought we would have snow, so we used that day to do PD with all the teachers; they were virtual. 
• After we communicated that we weren't going virtual. Many of our staff started telling our principals that they were exposed to COVID. We went through the protocol with everybody who said they were exposed, took the number down, and informed them when they would need to be back at school unless something else happened. We move forward with that, and consequently, over the past week, we have had some situations, particularly at Westside, where we had a large percentage of the adults out of the building. They were able to run school with 44% of their adults out due to either COVID exposure or some of the reasons we had; we happen to have lots of other reasons that are going on right now. So that being said, kind of the approach that we used was in the case where we have a lot of people out, let's get the kids on something. So we've got lots of platforms for them to be on. If the teachers put in suitable lessons, we already have Study Island and Canvas. So there are lots of things for them to do. We may have to adjust how the adults monitor and move throughout the building to work with the kids. 
• So we went back to a little bit of what we were doing last year where the students would be learning, but they might not be learning with a teacher in front of them that teaches that subject because that teacher might be out. So that's an easy transition in middle school and high school. Thanks to Miss Perry and her team, they could monitor, adjust, and get through last week. They have fewer people out, and we hope that that will be the trend. So we're looking for the numbers of adults to come down in terms of how many folks are out. 
• We still have lots of students out. We are still trying to get them back in the building as well. Everybody is concerned right now, despite the science around Omicron and what we know about how it works, how it is transmitted, and the severity of the cases. We continue to watch that and watch what everybody else is doing.  
• Today, at Westside, Ms. Randolph did a fantastic fire drill, and I was there. I got to be in the fire drill. That may not sound exciting to any of you, but those of you who've been principals understand that when you're able to do a fire drill, school is still going on. If you can pull off a fire drill during a pandemic, you're okay. Thanks to the schools and their staff for continuing to carry on through this. 
• Mr. Colenberg is on the call. He saw a need for us to improve substitute management and fill vacancies. We are implementing a sub-binding system, Smartfind Express, which Shelby County used in the past. So it's the same system Shelby County uses, and we are rapidly implementing that. So that we can do a better job of managing getting those vacancies and outages covered quickly and automatically. For those of you who don't know, Mrs. Pearson has been doing that herself. Principals would call or email Mrs. Pearson, and she would get a sub to cover when they had a teacher out. Smartfind is a system where we were like recruiting and getting lots of substitutes into a system, and it would automatically call them, so I look forward to having that in place so we can do that back part of the work a lot more efficiently. 
• Enrollment updates,  we are still seeing students enroll. And we're seeing students kind of fall off the rolls. So it's a constant struggle to make sure that we have those numbers correct. And we're looking for students who are not attending and have not attended for an extended time. 
• Let me get into academic and curriculum updates. So we have some positive things going on in terms of accountability. And I want to connect this into everything that Dr. White was saying. "He said, we're getting better in real-time." And I'll tell you about one thing we've implemented. 
• We have Multi Classroom Leaders (MCL's) who have some responsibilities, including checking teacher lesson plans, giving feedback, doing walkthroughs in the classrooms, and giving teachers feedback on that. They step in and teach small groups of students, primarily targeted students trying to move across that line to proficiency. They also hold professional learning communities, meetings, and individual planning session meetings with each of the teachers they supervise. So that's the short version of what they do. 
• And so we have now stood up a power app to capture the lesson planning process and the IPG walkthroughs or the instructional planning guide walkthroughs in the classroom. We already have a system that captures their team evaluation walkers. Still, we did not have anything captured in real-time, allowing us to do some analytics on those other pieces. And as we were doing that, we realized there were some missing processes and systems to kind of our routine, especially around bringing in our new Principles. And so, in addition to creating this app, what we have begun is creating an FCS academics handbook that will be for teachers and administrators is not just administrator facing only. Still, it will include things that administrators do and teachers are responsible for, things that the MCL is responsible for in a clearly laid out process. So we have four at the high school, one for ELA one for math, one for science, one for social studies. We have to add each of the middle schools, those to cover two subjects, so ELA and social studies in science and math. So in the district we have a total of eight MCs.

Greg Thomas:

Financial Update:

Cash Balance: At 11-30-2021: $2.5M ~63 days of cash (trending toward a higher deficit due to lower enrollment). 
Enrollment: Projecting lower enrollment 1,089 vs. 1,155 original budget. FCS being funded at $10,029 per student currently.

BEP funding 
• Currently calculated at $10,029 (less 2.5% fee from ASD) or $9,778.28 per student. This is slightly higher than the number used for the board-approved budget ($9,457.50). 
• True-up calculations happen throughout the year (based on actual enrollment) 
• Enrollment is trending lower than numbers in the board-approved budget.

FY2021-2022 

Grants FCS will continue to receive significant funding in federal grants this year and over the next several fiscal years (for ESSER 2.0 and ESSER 3.0).

Mrs. Arlinda Cathey:

• I want to remind everyone that at our November meeting we decided that we would move forward with meeting in person once per quarter for our board meeting. So with that being said, February is slated to be an in-person board meeting for us. I am not necessarily saying we have to meet in person. It's just that it is slated for us to meet in person at Westside next month, which is generally where we would meet a person. I want to get feedback from everyone to see if this is something that we want to move forward with, given the uptick in Covid cases. 
• We definitely can remain flexible so if there are any comments and feedback around that, now would be the time to let me know. We'll take everyone's feelings and positions around risk; everyone has different health concerns.
• Given everyone's feedback, the February board meeting will be remote, and we will make plans for the March meeting in person.
• We plan to reconvene our monthly committee meetings with governance, academic excellence, and finance. You all generally have your set of meetings before every board meeting. I received a fantastic email earlier this evening where Kirby will be joining the governance team, so I'm super excited to have another member join the committee. 
• Rex will be looking to see if you would be open to potentially transitioning onto the Academic Excellence Committee. So I'll be connected with Governance and Academic Excellence to set up specific monthly dates set aside for each of those meetings before the board meeting. So be on the lookout for more information from me on that. But we're super happy to engage both of you guys as members of our committees moving forward.
• And the last thing on the governance side, on the agenda I added a link to the google form that we developed for recommendations for board membership. I've made a few adjustments because I also would like to open up recommendations and nominations to FCS staff. It has previously been a process where the board worked closely only with leadership to identify additional candidates willing to serve on the board. I have this form available where I'm also looking for recommendations from the network team. 
• One of our biggest goals for the first two quarters of 2022 is board recruitment. During this time of year, we generally would be planning some wonderful fundraising events. Since we don't have that on our plate this year, I instead want to prioritize that we're having conversations with everyone that potentially is coming up on their time to roll off; maybe we can have those conversations on whether or not you want to come on and stay on board. 
• We also want to ensure that we have appropriate candidates who have skill sets and insights that are needed for our board. So I'm hoping that everyone will look at that Google form. If you have any recommendations, don't be afraid if you don't think someone could be a good fit or not. Let us be the ones to have those conversations internally. 
• Our key dates of operation are always within the fiscal year. So knowing that the end of June is the end of the fiscal year, we want to have our board retreat with all of our new board members joining us at that time. And know that we're not only relying on these recommendations, we're also doing some headhunting of our own, but your recommendations are definitely appreciated along the way.