001first of all we'd like to say thank you lord for another day and in your infinite wisdom you gave us an opportunity to assemble one more time and for this we say thank you in this world of our lord with wars and rumors of wars who stand by us when family members and our family bonds have been broken you continue to stand by us heavenly father this evening we ask that you go to the families who are being touched by covenant for those lord who who made it through copenhagen heavenly father we continue to give you thanks can't give you good and this evening lord help us to be guided by your principles help us to do whatever we do to be tempted with love and civility help us lord to be guided by not
002by our own understandings but let you guide what we say and what we do and in all of this we'll give you all honor and glory that is through you and in the matchless name of jesus we pray amen amen call the church up tennis school board of trustees the order from may the 3rd 2022 [Music] uh board meeting april 19 special call board meeting 26 financial facility as well as facility waiver requests properly motion violence concerning and discussion even knowing all the dependents that you know about racism and that's your numbers we want to thank each and every one for coming out tonight we are thankful for this westfield at this time we will move down to our student recognition yeah thank you and this is always a fun time and i want to
003thank you guys for being here tonight to be recognized we've tried to make you social media wonders and plaster pictures all over the place we're so proud of you but tonight we're excited to honor our award-winning culinary arts team from the willard technology center who won the state championship in the third annual south carolina department of education's farm to school junior chef competition the program the culinary arts program is instructed by mr brian cato who's here with us tonight and team members i don't want to mess your name up is it not yet yes i got it all right um colin humphries olivia cato and they worked with our kershaw county school district nutrition department and we also have gordon morris our loyal technology center director here as well the team members were judged on
004recipe preparation and presentation along with food safety and sanitation they were also interviewed about usda commodities and south carolina grown fruits and vegetables wwtc's recipe for apple cranberry chicken includes two commodity foods and seven south carolina grown foods wtc's team members each received a 10 000 scholarship to solomon university's culinary arts school they will represent south carolina in the southeast region competition in louisville kentucky later this month with a chance to earn additional scholarship money so i'd like to invite mr cato mr morris and the students forward we have some certificates we'd like to present you with and do a couple of photos but thank you again and congratulations they followed instructions which is so i'm gonna have to make that stupid [Music] make sure uh um mr superintendent trustees staff those independents first of
005all i want to say thank you for allowing us to be here for just a minute to talk about um the feelings that our united way has with the kershaw county school district the partnership that we have enjoyed over the years is fantastic um we have spent the last month and a half and we have six more schools to visit three this week and three next week um and we would have completed providing breakfast for every teacher in kershaw county from chick-fil-a and if you talk to a teacher and you say breakfast and you stay chick-fil-a their eyes light up because they love it and we love being able to go in first of all and say thank you for what you do every day and we mean that and of course we thank them
006as well for supporting our united way you try to tell them a couple of stories about what their donations are doing uh in the lives of people right here in kershaw county and we just wanted to come here tonight and say that to you all and to say thank you very much for for allowing the district uh to support our united way so that we can support those in the in our county okay and then we'll turn it over to donnie and he's got more to say he's got the rest of them the fact that on wednesday mornings they had a planning time i think this credit to shane's idea of y'all deciding that that's an okay thing and so that gives them time to have breakfast without students so i thank you for that
007but the major reason i'm here is to thank mary ann burke so and have left and have not we have not done what we're doing right now so um part of it has to do with uh dr morgan uh spent six years on the board and i think shane will agree with this if if uh he spent six years on board marianne so follow that up follow that up with another six years on our board and ending with her being chair of our board and doing all kinds of other things in the process which included the jake watson award which is our highest honor went to the school district a few years back and natalie your pictures on here as well it was in the newspaper uh and mary ann byrd and dr morgan and
008so we thank them for that another year 2015 the students raised 67 and one of the few pictures that i can find of marianne in the newspaper because she's already behind the camera uh is that uh where they presented us with 67 thousand dollars and marianne made sure that both schools were thanked so uh it was the combined effort and uh and truly that that really is appreciated and then the last picture is her and her team of folks which uh she of course she really loves and support it so uh that among other things we say thank you thank you so i just simply say y'all got some big shoes to film uh and a couple of folks uh dr robins as you know is you've announced though we so appreciate the uh the
009support of the school district from uh from the employees to the students to to you at this table and uh i'd be in this time to say thank you to you for many years of service as well matt who was also one of my board chairs so i hope i forget another board chair but we uh we so much appreciate our partnership the school district is the largest donor we have in kershaw county uh when i started it was in this or dupont back then uh they had 3000 employees at the time they went down to around 700 i think they're back up to maybe over a thousand now but uh y'all are our supreme supporters and we so appreciate it and marianne again for all your years thank you thank [Music] good evening thank
010you for allowing me to attend this meeting i have a short window of time please excuse my brevity and speed with which i will make these comments i'm willing to answer any questions tonight or in the future my name is craig thompson i'm the father of four students in our district i'm also the pastor of melbourne hill baptist church as a result of that position i represent another 100 or so students along with multiple faculty members administrators staff and parents i come before you today to propose that kershaw county school district trustees update the school district's policies to make them easier to access more specific and better suited to create accountability for students faculty staff administration i'm concerned about our policies because of the culture that exists in some of our schools to justify the
011needs for better policies i will read a selected list of offenses that have come from our district schools this year a science teacher in one school is giving critical race theory assignments to his students allowing students to play mature video games a fight in one school results in 11 students being suspended girls in one middle school report they are afraid to go to the bathroom a teacher is habitually late to school and often leaves his homeland class unattended the course teacher referred to his entire class as aholds an elementary school teacher in our district recently said she would move out of our district before she allowed her child to attend camden middle school a teacher referred to one of our schools as toxic and is moving her child to a different school in our district
012another teacher told me personally i'm so glad my child has finished cms it was the worst experience of my school life a district employee is moving their child to a private school to avoid one of our middle schools a parent one of our schools recently asked me is it worth even trying to call someone at our school or is the whole situation so bad that is a waste of time to even try and see it made better parents repeatedly speak of not receiving return phone calls and emails from district employees and school board members teachers are intimidated and afraid to speak out parents feel intimidated by administrators students report feeling afraid to speak out to administrators while this list of offenses is non-specific and while i have provided very specific details of these offenses to
013members of both the school and district administration i am more than willing to provide name states additional details including the channels i've exhausted seeking remedies the lack of specificity in current student employee policies opens the door to charges of discrimination abuse of power and spiraling decline in teacher and student ground as it relates to student discipline policies the consequences for breaking rules in any school in our district should not depend upon the attitude of an administrator the personality of a student or the desires of a teacher student discipline policies should be codified across the district so that an offense at lugof belgium high school receives the same consequences as the same offensive north central high school or canada further a district-wide code of conduct that includes consequences for specific actions also creates accountability for administrators
014and gives faculty and staff confidence the student discipline will be handled in accordance with board policies in one family for instance a middle school child is picked on a school literally drug around by his ankles in the grass and dirt left with physical abrasions on his back his bully received one day of iss an elementary age sibling in the same family was written up for horseplay in the bathroom and hallway and received two days to suspension the parents were left confused and questioning one school confiscates food outside food from students i've not been able to find a policy stating that outside food is not allowed in that school parents should have access to policies that clearly communicate the consequences for student misbehavior those policies should be specific so the student's discipline is not contingent upon
015the whim of administrator increased visibility of these policies can help to create trust and partnership between parents in the school community as it relates to employee policies employees and school districts should be guaranteed the same kind of confidence in their policies that parents and students enjoy a teacher in one of our schools recently cussed out another teacher in front of students and was suspended for two days students have personally asked me why their teacher received a lot of discipline they would have the same offense without concrete policies there's no real way to appeal these decisions the appeal process would be shrouded in vague confusion but with concrete policies the teacher who experienced abuse could appeal the decision of administration further with concrete policies that hold faculty and staff to the same or higher standard as
016students student moral and discipline could increase i propose new policies for the purpose of encrypting teach increasing teachers staff and student morale for creating real accountability and for creating greater trust and transparency between parents and school district i request the school board review and update current student conduct policies before the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year and those policies be published in pdf format student handbooks or agendas that are made easily available to students faculty and staff sir yes sir um further i propose the updated policies receive input from parents students teachers and administration ultimately is the responsibility and privilege of this board to create policies it is the responsibility of the district to adhere to those policies related to personnel policies i proposed an ad hoc committee be formed to board members along with
017district personnel to review current policies and recommend potential changes soon further our request written answered my proposal no later than 48 hours after the next scheduled school board meeting i've included several links to school or district handbooks or codes of conduct for reference around our state below also posts a few examples of codes of conduct created in table format that i found especially helpful for communicating clearly with students parents faculty and administration the board's benefit i've also included field adoption documents in that paperwork and i'm happy to answer any questions anytime that you have see fit i appreciate your time i do hope and pray with all diligence that you will review your policies and create a situation that creates greater accountability so the students of kernel county can not be left behind thank you
018so much procurement thank you dr smith robbins and members of the school board tonight we have two uh board policies that are before you for information for revision and just as a reminder all of our policies are available on our district website and this is part of the ongoing means of as we get through these just to treat them and to kind of adjust them as we see needed as a reminder we did just review your entire war policy manual from start to finish we did a lot of work to look those over and so i appreciate that work and appreciate your continued review of this the first policy that we're bringing tonight is because of the state updating their procurement code and so in order to to be in line with some of the
019revisions they've made then we are showing you free attachments for this the first one is a summary of those highlights that happen at the state level and then how we would incorporate those into our kcsc procurement code you'll see sometimes there's an allowable amount from the state code and then how we're going to incorporate that into ours maybe not take the full amount of state but would allow for it the second attachment is the exceptions to our procurement code and the third attachment here is the actual policy that changes the 500 threshold to a thousand dollars for our purchase orders we do have our procurement officer al morant here and i'm sure aaron boyce or cfo is also here but both of them have been heavily involved in making these recommendations to you this would
020be for the next school year to go into effect uh july 1 but hoping to get on the books now and so certainly if you have any questions tonight we're just presenting as information not looking for a vote tonight that would come here next for me if you have any questions on that and now yeah i was very glad to show you some rant answer them for you and then the second policy that we're bringing you tonight is j i cj possession use of electronic communication devices and just a small tweak on this one to add to the student on the first offense for um clarification that purposes some of the other offenses report where the phone may be going back to the parent i want to make sure it's clear that on that first
021one going back to the students or recommend adding that language in there thank you for the answer and that's coming to you from uh mr pate people services director and and evolving from the principles as they walk through just on um like this is just during um uh school function operational hours right not for sports related practices because it blocks for locker rooms and things like that so i just didn't know if we were just during the school day [Music] thank you chairman fellow board members um uh coach blackman and mark surry and i are part of the ad hoc committee to study growth with three members from county council the chamber um uh several members from our community as far as elected officials from municipalities a local builder one of the things we've been
022tasked to do is to stun growth in our area not just uh houses uh and development but uh residential growth and taxes and infrastructure and everything and one of the things that um just like the ad hoc committee that matt and mark and i whenever you put uh different people with different ideas at the table great ideas come out like our entire mental health thing right now and that follows the outpouring of our ad hoc in our discussion we were looking at where growth is and one of the things that came up was growth follows where sewer infrastructure is and so we started looking at those studies and we started talking about our roads and one of the things that came out was that kershaw county is one of maybe only one or two counties
023in south carolina split between two council of governors or cottons so from the bridge backwards up to the north central area east camden is all part of santee lynch's cod or kershaw county has two board seats on that and they kind of put money for road transportation where projects are needed so they vote on for software and lee county kershaw county the west lottery is part of the columbia area cod and has been for the past 10 years and over the past 10 years hasn't received a dime of road infrastructure we have no seats at the table so one of the things that came up was an idea to push for all of kershaw county to be under one council of government to be under the santee lynches and we found out for that to
024happen of course the new census has taken place it's done by the state but it has to be approved by the federal legislature so our congressmen and our senators so county council has proposed this resolution they signed last week they asked for the municipalities to sign and they're asking the school board to sign this resolution as a unified unified front that all of kershaw county uh elected bodies are requesting that kershaw county be under one council of of government so that we can control our infrastructure for road funding that's not taking place right now so uh the proposal uh before us tonight mr chairman is that we adopt this resolution to uh to request that our federal delegation make us one county near one copy and i'm opening questions thank you mr mcdonald and the
025other that worked on this ad hoc to me anyone have any questions or comments in the comments that's that's that's the request yes sir is that we adopt a resolution if so [Music] so so resolution number yes resolution number 2022 is before us as a whole are there more questions thank you yes is that motion okay great now it's before us properly in the discussion hearing none almost in favor of being known by racism and that scenarios thank you report this evening we move to the superintendent academy report update on not just high school and i'll start off with a few things before we get to a couple of the other reports but first of all just wanted for you to if you don't have those dates but put these dates in your calendar for
026graduation because it's going to sneak up on us really quick we will stick with the friday night at north central saturday morning at camden high school on saturday night at blue belgium high school i didn't include the rain dates in here but i'll send you out those rain dates if you could email either myself or wendy and let us know which ones you're coming to you're welcome to come all over but i know that's probably not possible let us know also as a reminder we have your cap and gowns uh wendy has those in a closet and we'll bring those to graduation for you you don't have to wear the hat next slide the second thing i wanted to present on tonight uh members of the board is something that we have taken a lead
027on in terms of a school district and that's school-based mental health services today i had the opportunity to set at the governor's cabinet meeting as they presented on cyber security and they presented on school-based mental health services and the changes that they're they're trying to make and make it better for us to increase some of these pain and services the governor made the statement that he knew it was a need at his state of the state and so he's followed through on that and there's money that's been placed into the budget to expand that through south carolina's health and human services department afterwards we fielded questions and i i actually had the opportunity to to answer a couple questions but for your benefit i have a diagram on here that really shows you know one
028of the things that they're trying to do they're trying to create a hybrid system and remove some of the barriers that typically have occurred for school districts and you know in essence it really for us from us there are three main bullet points that i shared and i'll share with you all but what this does by them infusing more money in the mental health services directly into the school district it provides additional funds for us so that we're able to sustain the mental health service program we've put together using money because that will sunset in two years and we're not going to be in the current format we're not going to be able to accumulate enough funds to medicaid billing to do that so that's one more point the second thing is it gives us
029more latitude not just kershaw county but all school districts more latitude to initiate relationships with other private mental health providers as needed due to a more attractive rate i didn't mention but right now schools are are the rate for reimbursement for schools is half of what dmh receives so they're going to level that out so it's a level reimbursement rate which will make it more attractive you know because it's not just the fact that we can't pay for we also don't have enough counselors and part of the reason we don't have enough councils because we can't pay well and then the third piece was and i think probably most important we're in the business of educating kids and what they'll do is that will help us simplify the administrative aspect of billing for mental health
030services and so you know those are kind of big ticket bullet points but what they're trying to do is make sure that it's sustainable for schools going forward and then we can actually serve as kids because if the rates are going we're farther falling farther spoken at the state house in front of you know the chamber and we've had pmh in our district to meet with our social workers and our staff to discuss some of the challenges that we think so one of the things we're doing right now is probably the most innovative is a no-cost contract with a company that will provide services and they get what they get through building and so it goes across the district because again the number of mental health counselors you have in the district is not enough
031alpha center and they would build the state directly not the district we try to okay and it's going to take you know i did appreciate they said approach it's going to take using a private you know providers such as the alpha center our own you know district-based counselors as well you just you're not going to be able to rest on one side and the billing has been a challenge for us removing restrictions okay the next thing i have which will lead into billy and billy and i are trying to tag team this but um you know we've talked for about a year on uh looking for property in the west lottery area we know the growth that's taking place in the line with the ad hoc committee we are also meeting with the county administrators
032at our level as well to see the number of permits and houses that are going in all across the entire county however we know that the lions share even though we're starting to grow in camden again and we're starting to see some housing in north central the lion's share is still in the west watery area where we have the most students so we have looked for over two years for a suitable beach piece of property we found a piece that we thought was suitable before we would ever bring that recommendation to the board to purchase we knew there are some things that we needed to work through and so the first thing that we did is we met with billy and i met with the south carolina d.o.t and osf on the 29th so just
033last week we reviewed you know the land with david meakins who is the traffic engineering professional for sc eot and david blackwell who is the scpe osf representative was um was 22 acres of property you know they looked at traffic flow patterns uh they looked to access it and off the property you know to see if it was even suitable from that aspect before we even look at the quality of soil on the land that exists they gave us a really good turnaround on their report and basically said yes it is a suitable piece of property there'll be some traffic flow um scenarios that will need to take place and i'll let billy speak a little bit more of that before you know we would get too far along the line but we have money
034in a building bus sell of properties in the past that we can use to start a process to evaluate the soil and do some of that you know preliminary work before we even make it off to purchase a property so it's 22 acres it will definitely house in elementary schools and um it gives us a start so believe in that it just um one of one of the stipulations we have to do a traffic study and so we have to hire a company that will do that uh we would also need to do our due diligence and do some site soil boring analysis to make sure there wasn't a landfill there or no gas station there at one time and make sure there's not any hazardous materials or issues there and then we've also got
035to look at the delay of the land and how the storm water uh would drain off of that property uh making sure we're not uh if we put a school there with all the asphalt everything that comes with the stool and the roof and everything that we're not causing problems to our neighbors downstream uh and so we're going to begin doing all that uh stuff at some point in time here soon i did put it in your packet a copy of the psych survey recommendations you know that you can read through so you all should have a copy of this any questions i don't want to say specifically where the property's at simply because we haven't bought it yet i want somebody to buy it you know but it is a good location it's going
036to help us balance our enrollment population um north central uh high school construction is going along very well uh as we spoke last week at the uh fnf meeting um thanks just halley's prayers and my prayers and anybody else has been praying for good weather it's it's working uh we're moving right along i was out there today uh and uh you can see on that far left end of the building is not lighted out yet but half of that gym is now the auxiliary gym and all of the other components there the related arts rooms are dried in down on the far right end these wings already have uh you can see on the far right picture that the ceiling grid is going in and we're making real good progress uh that middle picture uh
037shows the uh hvac units being set uh on the roof um you actually see them in the far left picture down on the ground uh there we're gonna bolt those down real good if the tornado does come again they won't be as likely to fly into our buses hopefully uh and uh we uh i'm real pleased with uh with pmh our architect and our design team our engineers and what they've done and how well hood uh is um it just is doing there uh the intersection right up the road that has come along course when we do these things just like we talked about with this new property that we're looking at in the west watery area we did traffic studies uh and just like we had to do out at wtc you had to
038put a whole road in uh or they would have not allowed us to put that school there and so the improvements to the keys lane and lockhart road intersection are coming along very well uh we uh our neighbors there won't say happy but they're not as mad as they were when we first started they uh they you know again hood and we did a good job of talking to him explaining to what we were being made to do last year to osf and so that's come along with all that construction going on there and us having two schools come in and out of their traffic we haven't had any issues thank you lord and uh we pray to continue not to have any issues um real quick i i don't know if that's part of
039this but i wanted to say that we're having our on pre-construction on our esser fund projects of camden high school two-story school and the uh lehs annex tomorrow afternoon and we plan to start that work on june 1st and we've got everything in the osf we've already had it had a table top meeting with them so that's that's going well so also and we're also moving forward the other project big project we got more on this summer is the upgrade to the fellaini uh cafeteria and to the italy high end scavenger and all of that be glad to answer any questions i do want to update on our three small school properties if i could real quick uh again uh had a real good transition uh kirkland uh community folks at bearing dekalb uh that's
040going real well uh i did hear back from the mayor of bethune mayor holly said it's on their agenda next week uh for them to vote uh i'll bring it to a vote to take that property within elementary high school property and um i talked to chad dixon who was just got to talking with tom gardner and they are trying to get that on county councils uh taking mount puss to elementary school county council's agenda for their next meeting i know that the adventist county administrator and the buying zoning guy have are legion that may have slowed them down a little bit they still feel real positive about that happening so for right now we're keeping the power on there uh and i hope we within the next week turning the thing over and getting
041real close to county taking over my pistol that's all i have mr chairman any questions for mr smith thank you thank you [Music] is there a motion to go into executive session to discuss resumes and retirement certified and classified in discussion all the things let me know by saying um they'll mostly turn into open session second in the discussion the second section is recommendations mr chairman motion we accept the superintendent's administration's recommendations for employment matters except for employee a possessed second second we're probably the most in this second okay um [Music] recommendations mr chairman i make a recommendation that uh make a promotion that we accept the administration's recommendation with regards to employees we thank or will you find your name as we leave you today but never from your divine presence we ask that
042you need to save your back home and find all this work and we'll give you all honor in the master name of jesus christ