Mr. Brett Lawson:

• I want to say thank you to Mrs. Dowell for allowing us to walk the walk a little bit last Saturday. She called and wanted to open up a warming center. And so I was able to get Mr. Brown, our facilities person. He and I were able to open up the building and open it for some of the families in the community. And then pastor Caswell his church was without power too, and they were going to set up an evening warming station overnight for people to come in and sleep. He had some connections, the sleeping bags, and everything from TVA. So, nobody took advantage of it. But we were able to offer that to the community. And I just wanted to bring that forward as a part of living out our mission. 
• And we're going to talk about our charter application here in this segment. As we talk about our plans and things that we say that we are and who we are and what we do, I think it's essential to call out those times when we get to live that vision out. And even though nobody came to the warming center, I think the organization standing ready at any time to support and help out the community is part of who we are, as part of what we do. We want to continue to do that and ask the board always to help us as Ms. Dowell did in having that opportunity to serve.
• I'll transition to the academic update section here. The COVID monitoring is going well; obviously, we only had 200 new cases, I think, in Shelby County today. So COVID cases are down. We have a good system going right now with Ms. Maya Malone, checking in with the principals daily and asking about their new COVID cases. She's doing the contact tracing for them, asking them to answer some questions, and then she comes in and works on actually running all of that down. So she runs all that down and makes sure that it gets into our spreadsheets and our reports for the state. And so, I greatly appreciate her work on that. I hope the principals appreciate her assistance there as well. 
• And speaking of principals, I did want to say we have Miss. Perry on the call and Mr. Cooper, one of our assistant principals. Not to put you on the spot or anything, Greg, but they sent an email out this morning and said they needed to know more about local finance and things that were changing in the state right now and how things are going and how COVID has affected finances. So that's why you better be sure to be on the call this evening. So you can hear from the experts about how all that is working out.
• I'll move on to enrollment updates, and not a lot to report there. We are looking carefully at attendance and attendance practices at the high school, making sure we are doing a good job. They're looking at any students who may have wholly stopped attending. We want to make sure that we follow up on those situations and know where that student is precise. So that's a big part of the work going on right now. 
• I'm not hearing or seeing any drastic changes in academic and curricular updates at any of the three schools. We have a walkthrough tomorrow with instruction partners at MLK, and this is going to be our first one at MLK. We were scheduled for a walkthrough at Westside and Humes on Monday and Tuesday. And we postponed those for a variety of reasons. But we're going to have those a little later in about six weeks. So it will be MLK's second walkthrough in six weeks. And just as a reminder, when we do a walkthrough with instructional partners, they come through and use the Instructional Practice Guide tool. I think we talked about this guide a little bit last year, but it's an accurate, transparent view into the level of instruction our kids are getting daily and content-specific ways. So there's a specific IPG for ELA, there's one for math and one for science. They don't have a perfect one for social studies. And some of our teachers have recognized that. And we are trying to be one of the first organizations to craft a better IPG for social studies. So we'd like to be first on all sorts of things. So we'd like to be first on having an IPG for social studies that fit Tennessee well. So that's going on. 
• We are finishing a little makeup work on our second round of diagnostics in IReady. And we have started tutoring with Varsity Tutors. So some big things are going on right now in terms of academics. We're excited about technical issues around the varsity tutoring piece because it's virtual to a small group of students for each tutor. Getting that up and running consistently has been a little bit of a struggle. The ice certainly didn't help anything. So we're looking forward to getting that completely stood up. 

Greg Thompson:

Financial Update:

FY2022 Cash Flow Projections:

     Cash Balance: At 12-31-2021: $2.5M ~63 days of cash (trending toward a higher deficit due to lower enrollment). 

*There was a delay in January BEP funding (dropping cash to $1.3M at 2/7/2022). $1.03M will hit the bank from BEP ~2/8/2022. 

Enrollment: Projecting lower enrollment1,089 vs. 1,155 original budget. FCS being funded at $10,029 per student currently.

     BEP funding (Trend same as January 2022 board meeting) • 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 a significant amount of funding in federal grants this year and over next several fiscal years (for ESSER 2.0 and ESSER 3.0).

Mrs. Arlinda Cathey:

• Let me first start with FCS board recruitment updates. I had a chance to meet with Joia Thorton, our board vice-chair, and Dr. White in January to discuss a few things tied to board recruitment and strategy issues regarding who we want to target as board candidates and how we envision ourselves as Frayser Community Schools with an emphasis on community. For everyone's knowledge, I detailed some of the strategies we've developed to ensure adequate representation on the board leading into the new fiscal year in July 2022. 
• We have several seats on board that we would like to have filled by individuals who have different affiliations. I will talk through these so there is a clear understanding around those affiliations and the continuity we hope to build that we haven't necessarily had in previous years. 
• We've benefited a lot from having Pastor Floyd in previous years. And, of course, with Pastor Floyd, his church also being very close partners with FCS. We want to ensure that we will always have reflected on the board that is a part of the local faith-based community moving forward. Our first attempt will be to go to Pastor Floyd and see if someone a part of his senior administration is interested in providing service to Frayser Community Schools by potentially serving on the board. With that being said, I do not see Pursuit of God Church as the only church or institution that can have a seat on the board. I would welcome other churches and clergies from the Frayser area to the board. 
• Also, having a representative from the Frayser CDC. Granted we did have Steve Lockwood, as a member of the board several years back.
• While he's, of course, retired from his position and needed to roll off the board, we definitely would like to have a representative from the Frayser CDC on the board, whether that's the new executive director or by chance someone else that's a part of their senior leadership team, to have a seat on our board. So we will be doing some outreach to the CDC specifically to see who may be interested in engaging with us.
• Also, most importantly, the Frayser PTSA. While we have benefited from having Mrs. Dowell on the board, I think we see that there is a need to always have a member from the Frayser PTSA as a member of the FCS board of directors. I believe Mrs. Dowell, in the last meeting, you did reference the Advisory Council and advisory committee. I think now is a perfect opportunity if there is someone that's a part of Frayser PTSA that you could see joining the board, we should invite them to some of the academic excellence committee meetings so they can become acclimated of the different topics and things that we discuss.
• And then lastly, the FCS Parent Advisory Council is still a new entity moving through its first year. We haven't necessarily had distinctive parent representation on our board. And it would be an excellent connection if, by chance, a representative from the Parent Advisory Council also sits on the board. Then there's always a clear connection between what's being discussed with the Parent Advisory Council. So that's something we'll be working with Mr. King and Ms. Williams to see who potentially we can start working with. 
• We would like to see individuals from these specific organizations and/or with at least these affiliations a part of the board. So we'll be working on these four seats entirely this spring. There are also other board seats that we will still attempt to fill in our immediate needs. We're aware of additional individuals who could provide legal insight, facilities management, and governance.
• Something that I mentioned at the board meeting last month was that we do have an option for everyone to submit nominations. I would heavily recommend that if you are thinking of someone and would like to submit their names to the board, and that's not just board members, that is also includes network staff. Please feel free to take advantage of this opportunity because it will be beneficial to ensure that this board represents the community. So thank you guys for your attention to this, and more updates in this area will be coming.
• I want to transition into the reconvening of the Governance and Academic Excellence Committee meetings as well. Specifically for Academic Excellence, we will begin those meetings again starting this month. And I want you all to mark your calendars for the fourth Thursday of each month at 5 pm as we're going to have Academic Excellence get together at that time before our next board meeting. Ms. Adams, Mrs. Dowell, and I will be on the call. Everyone is welcome to join the call. We will be getting together on the third Wednesday of each month at 5 pm for the Governance meeting. So our next committee meeting will be on February the sixteenth. And just for everyone else that may not necessarily be aware of the finance meetings, I believe that may be the seconf Monday of every month. It's typically right before the Tuesday going into the board meeting, which is the second Tuesday. So they generally get together on those Mondays at noon. So if you have an interest in being able to join the finance call, just let us know. We'll make sure that you have the proper credentials for it. 
• And then, lastly, to wrap up, we will be once again revisiting the quarterly board meetings. So initially, February was supposed to be in a person board meeting, but due to the uptick in COVID cases, we decided to keep February in a virtual format. So then, of course, March now is our next opportunity to meet and convene as a board in person on March the eighth. I think we're going to go ahead and attempt to commit to that meeting being in person. Although it's in person, we still have a zoom option for everyone. So anyone that can join us in person, you are more than welcome to. If, by chance, for any reason, you can't attend in person, you have to join us via Zoom; that is perfectly fine as well. We want to make sure that we're committing to an in-person meeting at least once a quarter. So I'll send out a reminder to everyone, and with that reminder, they'll also be a link that you can use to join, and you'll be able to participate in that way too.