Below is my summary of the April 8 Collierville Schools Board meeting. This was a regular business meeting.

All of the board was in attendance. About two dozen of the public were present, as well as various Collierville Schools staff. There were no comments from the public.

After approval of the agenda, which included the removal from the agenda of the two interlocal agreements, and the approval of the minutes of the various March board meetings, the chair delivered his report.

Mr. Hansen commented on the positive results of the enrollment nights, and on the progress made towards the interlocal agreements which will allow the municipalities to band together on common services and thus have high quality services at a much lower cost than when set up individually. While the agreements weren’t ready to be voted on this week, they are nearing completion. Mr. Hansen also mentioned the Collierville Education Foundation fundraiser the board attended last week. This is a very highly commendable organization that provides grants directly to teachers. Finally, Mr Hansen touched upon the preliminary BEP funding estimate Collierville Schools got from the State Department of Education, with more detail to be provided by Mr. Aitken.

Mr Aitken, in his Superintendent’s report, addressed the BEP funding. This is the funding for the schools by the state, which is the largest part of funding for the schools. This is a set amount per enrolled student. The estimated amount, based on current enrollment numbers, was approximately $1M higher than the feasibility study had used.

Enrollment numbers from the enrollment period came out around 90-91% of the projected fall enrollment, which is, according to Mr Aitken, a very good result. The schools have continued to follow up with families who have not yet provided their intent, in order to get even more reliable enrollment projections for next year.

Mr Aitken also mentioned the new hires for Collierville Schools:

• Director of Student Services – Herchel Burton
• Head of nutrition – Marsha Landstreet
• Three Powerschool administrators – Karen Dew, Becky Kenley, Tabitha Barnes
• Director for Curriculum and Accountability, Louise Claney
• Pre-K through 5 Supervisor, Dr Andre Crafford

These all come with significant (legacy) SCS experience.

The nutrition and powerschools positions are shared services positions, which means their expense will be spread among the participating municipal school districts, which will be covered through interlocal agreements. Mr Aitken took the time to address some concerns from the public that he had heard about the phrase ‘shared services,’ especially in regard to nutrition. The bottom line, he explained, is that each school will have staff to prepare and serve the staff and students. The cafeteria at each school will operate independently, but will have the support of the planning, administration, purchasing and budgeting processes from the central office.

With the application deadline passed for non-resident enrollment at Collierville Schools, there are approximately 700 non-resident applications to be reviewed.

Finally, Mr Aitken asked the board to authorize him to initiate an RFSOQ process for a future school to be built. This process authorizes him to review the qualifications of architecture and planning firms to help select a future site and start the planning for a new building. The need for a new school was presented to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen last week, and met with approval. The Collierville School Board voted to authorize the RFSOQ process.

The next agenda item was a report by Mr. Simpson, the consultant. He updated the board on the progress made at the historic high school building (Poplar and Walnut) for the Collierville Schools central office. The work is being overseen by the Town, and the move-in date is projected for the second week of May. Secondly, the Town has engaged Ms Debra Rike as a consultant to select a bus routing and planning software package and prepare for its use. The package under consideration is called Versatrans, which includes GPS functionality, which may offer parents the ability to see the location of the bus, and the projected time at each stop. Routing staff will be hired soon. The final part of Mr. Simpson’s update addressed work with The Pool, a Tennessee Risk Management organization that is expected to provide insurance for Collierville Schools properties and liability.

Following these updates, the Superintendent presented the proposed policies for second reading. He highlighted a few adjustments made since the last reading. Mr Vaughan motioned to suspend the rules and vote to approve the policies on the consent agenda, rather than have them return for a third reading. The motion, and the policies, were approved. A summary and some comments on these policies from the working session two weeks ago can be found here.

Finally, in closing comments, Mr. Aitken indicated that immediately following the working session in two weeks, there would be a special called meeting to vote on the interlocal agreements that were dropped from the agenda today.

Tags: Citizen's Report, Collierville Schools, positive

Regularly scheduled board meeting. As I stated before… Please note this is from my notes and observations, and I will be sure to indicate when I am inserting my own opinion.

The board meeting opened with a demonstration some students from by Collierville High’s STEM class (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. They demonstrated a robot they built as part of a national competition. The students were in Murphreesboro earlier this month and qualified 11 students to compete in the national event at the end of June in Washington, DC. Interesting to note: this is the first year for Collierville to have a program and compete, and they performed exceptionally well at the state level. While using some less sophisticated equipment (hand tools rather than full-on machine shop), their entry in the robot competition, according to the University of Memphis, was the only entry from the western end of Tennessee that met all requirements, and did so at half the maximum weight. Great job for CHS and their STEM program.

Public comments came from one resident, who has her kids at Dogwood and who are in the current Houston Middle School zone. She expressed a desire to get clarity soon, so that her daughter can try out for the athletic program at the right school.

In the Chairman’s report, Mr Hansen remarked on the eventful week since the board last met (one week ago), namely the Germantown reversal on their tuition requirement for non-residents and the dismissal of the lawsuit that had been pending for so long. Based on the change in direction in Germantown, Mr Aitken and Mr Hansen reengaged in discussions around an interlocal agreement that would have current students at the Houston Middle and High schools (and probably Dogwood Elementary) attend their schools until the exit grade (5^th, 8^th or 12^th). No Collierville residents would be zoned to these schools, but the current students would have the choice to finish their time at those schools, or to attend their zoned school in the CMSD. In the agreement there would likely be some form of compensation to Germantown for the transportation costs for those Collierville residents in the form of services in kind by CMSD. Mr Hansen expressed being cautiously optimistic about the conclusion of this discussion, while Mr Aitken expressed even more optimism.

In the Superintendent’s report, Mr Aitken updated the board on the progress made in developing the interlocal agreements for shared services. The total employee count for the shared services will be 22, at a cost of $1.8M including salaries, office space, etc. Collierville is likely to have access to these services at a cost of  approximately $24k per employee. This is allocated on a per-pupil cost allocation among participating municipalities. These allocations are projected on current enrollment data and will be validated in the fall after final (40 day) enrollment numbers are in. In the plans underway, Bartlett will take on Planning, IT, Payroll/Benefits, Communications and Purchasing, and Collierville will be responsible for Nutrition, Transportation and Powerschool. Since there is likely a March 21 deadline for approval of certain communication services contracts, the board may be called into a special called meeting on 3/18.

Next on the agenda is the report by the consultant, Mr Simpson. He provided a brief update on the planning work being done for services like utilities, security, maintenance, insurance. He also updated the board on the progress being made at the old Collierville High building (most recently part of the middle school) for the CMSD Central Office. The work on the first floor conversion of classrooms into office space is nearing completion, and he expects the school district being able to move in by mid to late April. Mr Vaughan asked about ownership of that facility, and was informed the town will retain ownership. Any lease arrangement is to be worked out at a later time.

The following agenda item was the approval of proposed policies that were read two weeks ago at the working session, all around the establishment of financial processes and procedures. Ms Messerly appeared to be the only one who would get excited about these, due to her background as a CPA. All policies were approved as written, with minimal changes from previous readings.

On to the most anticipated part of the meeting – proposed attendance zones. This was led by Ms Jones, who is performing planning services for CMSD as part of the shared services agreement on the agenda. Ms Jones walked through the major changes to the attendance zones, which deal exclusively with the absorption of Collierville residents into the CSMD and the acknowledgement of non-residents being rezoned out of CMSD schools by Shelby County Schools. I expect the maps to be on the CMSD website soon.

Note: these are estimates based on current enrollment figures in the schools. These numbers reflect the zoning assigned, and does not address any agreements with Germantown to have students attend outside Collierville. More about that below…

A quick summary:

Elementary schools.
Non-resident students (which includes annexation reserves) rezoned by SCS to SCS schools: 87 from Tara Oaks (North of Wolf River); 4 from Sycamore in the southern annexation zone, and 52 in the area off the western side of Collierville; 164 from Bailey Station in the area east of Forest Hill Irene Road. Bailey Station is also gaining 40 students from the area within Collierville municipal lines just west of Houston Levee. All elementary schools will remain comfortably within their capacity numbers. Tara Oaks will be the lowest capacity, below 60%.

Middle schools.
Collierville Middle will lose 35 students; Schilling Farms will lose 27 from non-Collierville areas, and will gain 180 students who currently are zoned at Houston Middle. CMS will be near 77% capacity, and SFMS will be at 114% capacity. This does not account for the 8 portable classrooms in place, which would accommodate 160 students. While a rezoning of middle school students appears desirable soon, it would not be practical to do so before the 2014-15 school year, due to the elaborate public input process required for that. Approximately 90-100 students appear to have indicated their intent to stay at HMS if possible.

High school.
Collierville High will gain 922 students, all from Houston High. This would push CHS to 2869 students, or 143% of capacity. It should be noted that if current HHS students stay at HHS, CHS would go to around 2100 students. CHS enrollment would then go up by approximately 250 students each year for the next 3 years.

The following options, in order of most complex/undesirable to easiest/desirable can be used to address the space issues, primarily at CHS:

1. Split shifts, where part of the grades attend from early in the morning till early in the afternoon and the remaining grades attend from noon till late in the afternoon. This is complex and undesirable, but theoretically possible. At SCS, this was done for a short time after tornado damage to HHS in 1994.
2. Grade level configurations: making elementary run K-6, middle 7-9 and high 10-12. This would alleviate issues at CHS down to 95% capacity, increase utilization at the elementary schools, and have CHS at 95%, SFMS at 117%, basically putting all the pressure on the middle schools, while there would be no room for growth at the middle schools and high school.
3. Use of temporary space in the community – leasing (unused) commercial space that can be configured for classrooms.
4. Portable Classrooms: CHS would need 10-15 portable classrooms added to the two already in place. The cost of these, delivered and wired, is approximately $50k each. Logistically, there is no great likelihood of being able to get more than 4 new classrooms installed by the start of the school year.
5. Floating Teachers. These are teachers who move from classroom to classroom while the permanent teacher in that classroom has their planning hour. This has been done at CHS in the past, and allows CHS to accommodate approximately 2400 students in that format.

The board expects the anticipated Germantown interlocal agreement to allow current enrolled students to attend, which will alleviate capacity issues for the coming school year. However, it is clear from these numbers that plans need to be set into motion to address capacity for the 2015 and later school years.

As the final agenda item, Mr Hansen proposed that Evans and Petree be engaged as the school system’s ‘every day’ counsel, specifically Mike Marshall, who lives in Collierville and is a partner at the firm. For more complex, policy related issues, Mr Hansen asked to retain the regional firm of Adams and Reese, which incidentally counts State Senator Mark Morris as a partner. This proposal was approved.

Tags: Citizen's Report, Collierville Schools, positive