Minutes 04-28-2022 School Boards

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17 Chair Price said they have been considering ways to retain teachers and one of the ways is making sure teachers and staff can live in the communities. She said that for students, it is important to make sure they have safe home environments. She sid that from the county side, they have good partnerships with non-profits to provide some degree of workforce housing. She said that gentrification is continuing to happen and they need to figure out a way to have an inclusive community. She said that food is also an issue that the county partners with organizations for. She said there were teachers that went to children's homes during COVID just to make sure they had enough food at home. She said these situations still exist. She invited other commissioners to speak on the work of the county on these topics. Commissioner Bedford said she is liaison on the Board of Social Services. She said that in July a lot of federally funded benefits for food an dother services will go back to pre- pandemic levels. She said that is for all ages. She said that the county is trying to plan for that and use ARPA funding. She said that there will be some planning to stretch those dollars and meet those needs but this is bad news. She said that some families may also become ineligible for benefits upon recertification. Commissioner McKee said he made an information request a couple of weeks ago to both Boards of Education. He said that he does not believe it proper for an elected official to ask management of schools for information directly and that he did not feel it proper to ask his chair to make that request for him without going through a board vote. He said that what bothers him even more than not having the information relayed back to him was the implication that there was a racial undertone associated with his request. He said that his request was specific because of the concern of performance of the low performing and low wealth groups of students. He said that there was no racial overtone to it and there will not be. He said he doesn't understand why the information wasn't provided, other than it may take time to respond, because it is important. Ashton Powell asked if the racial overtone was that he has not received a response yet. Commissioner McKee said no that it was implied that he did not go through his chair, who is African American, to get the information. Rani Dasi said that she can't respond to the racial overtone but that they have been speaking to the issues in school and the shortages and with respect to that there are often delays in even the school board receiving data that they are looking for. She said they were told that county staff could provide it and she did not realize that there was still the expectation for the schools to provide that information Commissioner McKee said he would not have asked for the information if he did not feel like it's important. Carrie Doyle said there is a time component on their end and that it is not data that is readily available the way it was requested, so it will take time to compile. Commissioner McKee said his concern is performance of the school. He said that everyone knows that the performance of the schools is nothing they can brag about, especially for low wealth and certain categories of students. He said they can talk about teacher pay and teacher retention but that will not change the life outcome of students with poor performance. He said that the only thing that will change their life outcomes is changing their proficiency. He said he does not know how to do it but he knows the outcomes. He said that he knows someone that graduated as non-proficient and that he struggles collecting and interpreting data. He said he will probably make it but a lot probably wont. He said you can't work at McDonalds or a $10 job and make a living. He said that he has no illusion that everyone can go to Harvard or be an A student. He said that every student should come out performing at the best of their ability and he does not think that they are. Rani Dasi said that respectfully, that is the work that they are doing. She said it feels a little disingenuous for him to ask for inforamtion that takes them away from the work, without a