December 8, 2020 at 6:00 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

Rationale:  In attendance:  Chair Butch Campbell, Vice Chair David Settles, Wes Ballard, Roseann Barton, Amanda Moore, Becky Goff and Jimmy Richardson.

Staff:  Ralph Ringstaff, Michael Smith, Joe Marlin, Angela Fairchild, Trey Duke, Cherrye Robertson, Tammy Garrett, Greg Lyles, Sandy Scheele, Lisa Trail, Sara Walker, and Kimberly Osborne.

Assistant City Attorney Elizabeth Taylor and City Liaison Bill Shacklett

 

Rationale:  The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Board member Amanda Moore.

Rationale:  Murfreesboro City Schools Community Outreach would like to thank Amazon in partnership with Feed The Children for providing food and hygiene boxes to 300 Mitchell-Neilson families. We would also like to thank A.J. Nelson, former MCS student, for donating 1,000 face masks for students across the district which was a part of his Eagle Scout Project.

Thank you to North Boulevard Youth Group for hosting a holiday celebration for over 400 of our students.

Excellence in Education is being moved to the Spring and will be an outdoor event this year.

The City Schools Foundation will provide teacher grants again this year. The Foundation received 67 grant requests totally over $200,000 this year.

Mitchell-Neilson Schools would like to thank the generous folks at Tasty Table for donating breakfast to the Primary campus! 

Mitchell-Neilson Primary would like to thank James Vanderbloom, MCS Bus Driver 567 for donating hats and gloves to our Leaders! 

Rationale:  Dr. Tammy Grissom presented the top five candidates for Director of Schools.  They include Trey Duke, Dr. Tammy Garrett, Dr. Christina Harris, Dr. Kimberly Osborne, and Dr. Christopher Treadway.  She supplied the Board with a notebook that included the top five applications and resumes', interview questions, and a sample interview schedule. 

Chair Campbell and VIce-Chair David Settles thanked Dr. Grissom for her work and patience in this search process.

Interviews are scheduled for each day during the week of January 11-15. 

Rationale:  There was much discussion regarding the policy.  Vice-Chair Settles asked that line 15 be changed to read "property of Murfreesboro City Schools," not property of the board.

Rationale:  On second reading, Ms. Taylor will clarify line 2 regarding suspensions.

Rationale:  Mr. Ringstaff explained the difference between synchronous and asynchronous days.  He explained that our COVID numbers have been higher than expected lately. He explained to the Board that he was requesting two additional asynchronous days, one on January 27 and one on February 24.  He was hoping that would help alleviate the high number of COVID cases.

After the board packet was posted, Mr. Ringstaff made the decision to ask for approval of the week of December 14-December 18 to also be asynchronous days. The reason for this request was to reduce the possibility of students being quarantined during the winter break. He explained that the reason for not making that week a distance learning week was that our system is at a 2-1 computer ratio. Along with the fact that about 3000 of our students do not have internet access.  With asynchronous learning days, teachers provide work to be sent home with students to be done during the asynchronous days.

Mr. Ringstaff added that we hope to have more computers in by January or February. 

ESP will still be offered on asynchronous days from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Rationale:  Mr. Ringstaff was requesting approval that nurses and nutrition staff be considered part of the critical infrastructure.  They would not be quarantined unless they showed symptoms and would continue to work with a heightened protocol.

Rationale:  Mr. Ringstaff explained to the Board the process for deciding when a school needed to be closed during the pandemic. He said that several surrounding systems were having to close due to staff being quarantined and not having enough substitutes, but we are not at that point. 

The Board thanked Mr. Ringstaff and his administration team for their hard work to keep things running as smoothly as possible during this time.

 

Rationale:  The meeting adjourned at 7:34 p.m.