001It is 5:00 pm. I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? >> I move to approve the agenda. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I do have a question before we vote. Can I ask a question about it? >> Sure. >> Okay. Um, I was just looking at the length of the documents and stuff and um, I was just wondering the strategic plan update looked really long and I'm assuming for the bond resolution we may have Miss Heiser here and I was just wondering is should we maybe consider reordering those just in the interest of people that are attending or or not? That might be a Dr. Ross question. I mean, it's it's it's up to the board to amend. Our our
002philosophy was that all of this was kind of guided under um why. So, the the why follows the how. And so, the funding piece was the how. But, um if you want to reorder it, uh what'll happen is typically we take questions on why are we issuing x number of dollars in in um bonds and for what purpose are we issuing these this debt. >> So we would have covered all of our needs in 14 and 15. So >> okay I mean I won't make the motion. I was just like I said I looked at the documents for 14 and they were really long and I was thinking about the guests that might be here. Um but no no worries. >> All those in favor and the motion carries. um five to zero. May I
003get a motion to enter into executive session? >> I move that we enter executive session to consider the following selected employment items exhibit Action. Selected employment items exhibit B information only. 2026 2027 reappoints exhibit C action contractual matter regarding professional development services exhibit D legal advice regarding C/ A number 2021-CP-4-03694 and legal advice regarding active lawsuits exhibit E. >> Second. All those in favor and the motion carries 5 to zero. will adjourn for executive session. Good evening. It is 6:03 p.m. So, I would like to officially call the March 23rd schoolboard meeting to order. And I'd like to thank all of you who are present with us this evening. the board members, superintendent, staff, so many of our students, families, and members of the community. Thank you for your time, being here, and your continued
004interest in the work of our school district. I'm excited to see what projects our students are doing tonight in the schoolboard spotlight. So, I'm going to go ahead and um turn it over to Trusty Bayum for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance. >> Let's pray. Dear Lord, as we gather together for this board meeting, we invite your presence among us. Grant us clarity of thought, unity of purpose, and wisdom in our decisions. May our discussions be guided by your truth and our actions reflect your will. Bless each member with strength and understanding. And may your peace fill this room. In your holy name we pray. Amen. Please stand for the pledge. board members, please join me up front for the schoolboard spotlight. All right, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Ross, good evening.
005One of our highlights every spring is to recognize the students who have received grants from our district 5 foundation. Um we so value our relationship with our foundation, all the great work that they do for our students and teachers. So we are always um excited to welcome them here to share with us. So tonight I'm going to invite Dr. Mary Kennerly from the foundation to come up to present the awards. Thank you all for including us on your agenda, Dr. Ross and our distinguished board members. Um we thank you for the support that you constantly give to the things that we do and it's great to be here with you tonight. Um we have 73 students who've been given over $15,000 this year from the district 5 foundation. And I wish that you all could
006read the grants. It is amazing to me. I have to use a dictionary when I read through them. They're our students are just outstanding in every way. and it takes a village for something like this to happen. So, I want to be sure to thank everybody who's been involved with this. Um, first of all, I want to say thank you to um the sponsors who have been extremely generous. Many of them year after year after year have given uh funding for this program and um without them we would not be able to do this. So, if you're a sponsor, stand up and let us thank you. The next group of people I want to thank are the parents of these students. They have given them a home environment that um promotes inquiry, a love for
007learning, lots of life experiences that help them be the kind of students that can write these grants and do the fabulous research projects that they're doing. All of these projects are designed to improve the quality of life for all of us and as a really really senior citizen I am extremely grateful and it gives me great hope for leadership in the future of our community and also for our country. Um and I I want to thank the district administrators for their constant support. Um and I want to thank especially the teachers the teachers who do these projects with the children are, and I call them children, they're grown. They're high school students. But, um, the work that the teachers do to provide the opportunities for this kind of research is really outstanding. I think there
008are few school districts in the United States that have the kind of teachers we do who can provide these kind of learning experiences. And these students um in most years and I know again this year they win a lot of the district awards. They win a lot of the state awards and many of them go on to win national awards for the work they're doing. So we are extremely grateful and and really grateful to be a part of this um event. So um what we're going to do is uh we'll um have their teachers come up to read their names. I'll introduce the teachers and Miss Kimberly is right here. She's the vice chair of our foundation. She's going to hand them their big checks and they will walk by and shake your hands and
009stand over here until all have gotten their checks. Then we'll have a group picture and then we'll all go out that door. And sponsors, we'd love for you to come and have a photograph made with your students. And parents, you also may come out there. We have a photographer out there and a nice So, we'd like to invite all of you um who've had a hand in this to be a part of taking the photos tonight. So, um the first teacher I want to introduce um is from Chapen High School, Lisa Mith, who teaches the advanced placement um research class. Good evening. Um, I'm gonna call the students name out. We're going to tell them what award or what uh who sponsored and a little bit about their project. Um, so Ansley Petro, if you
010want to come first. Um, she's getting the Harriet Ward Advanced Placement Research Grant and she studied the extent to which self-tanning project products containing DHA reacted with dead pig skin. The next student, Delaney McGrath, couldn't be with us, but she was awarded the Castle Travel Group Advanced Placement Research Grant. Um, she was also her category winner at region two, uh, which is a big deal, and she studied the extent to which nanoparticlebased treatment disrupt acne bofilm formation. Next student is Claire Sto. She's awarded the Edcon Advanced Placement Research Grant. and she studied the performance of natural versus synthetic adhesives in building. Next we have Greer Johnson. She's being awarded the Elizabeth Bag and David David Bishop advanced placement grant and she studied the extent to which doing word search puzzles um affect deep sleep in
011teens. The next student, Caroline Sin, could not be here, but she's being awarded the white and story advanced placement research grant. Um, and she looked at the teenage use of gel nails and contact dermatitis. The next student is Kaden Rogers. He's being awarded the Zachby's advanced placement research grant, and he looked at pharmaceutical filtration via Kudzu Biochar. The next student is Olivia Florzik and she's awarded the Lexington Health Advanced Placement Grant and she looked at permanent hair dye and cancer cell growth. Yeah, I know. Next student is Ansley Erie and she's being awarded the Dr. Carrie and Paula height advanced placement research grant and she looked at scrub color effect on pediatric emotional state. Um I'm Dr. Taylor from Chapen High School as well. Um my first student is Palin Lingren. She's awarded the music
012education grant in honor of Linda Montz Duffy. Um it's a gift from Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Her research was on the impact of musical difficulty on music performance. >> And and I just wanted to say this is the first time we've ever had a church in our community sponsor a student grant. And the woman there that this grant is um in honor of is um as you said, Linda Mont Stuffy. She could not be here tonight. Um but Ray White, who's the head of their church council, is here. And I just want to say thank you to Beth. is Bethlehem Lutheran Church on Broad Road. There's Mr. White. So, thank you so much. Second student is Sarah Wil. She got the Stacy Mullis National Safety Research Grant for her research on freshwater pH impact on anabina
013exposed to coated and uncoded nano zinc oxide. Next student, Lyanna Fernandez, cannot be with us tonight, but she has the coffee shelf research grant for her awareness of ACEK and diet soda consumption. Landon Mills also could not be here. A lot of these kids are in band and they have practice. Um he was awarded the Mary Beth Brandom um research grant and he studied how roof architecture affects thermal performance. Ameilia Leon, also banned, not coming here tonight, um got the Century Glass uh research grant for her research on bioengineered plastics made from seaweed, polysaccharides, root starches, and kitean versus HDPE plastics. And then we have Eric Sanchez. He was awarded the Jason Brandom Engineering Design Grant for his research on blue light blocking glasses and sleep quality in teens. And lastly, I have Elizabeth Kuyawa.
014She was awarded the Dr. J. and Lynn Collins Engineering Design Grant for her research on green synthesized versus chemically synthesized silver nano particles for the for the disintegration of dyes. Sherry Clap is here from the center and Patrick uh Smallwood could not make it tonight. He had to have some emergency surgery today so he's not here. But Sherry is also going to read out his students. All right. So, I am going to discuss um the internship program grants and also capstone grants for engineering um for the students with me first. So, first one we are going to recognize is Andrew Brandon with the being awarded the American floral engineering design grant. Um he is working with the fourth grade classes at Lee Park Elementary School designing mini green houses with them. And then our next
015intern is Heath Winger. He is being awarded the Dr. John and Kathy Hogan Engineering Design Award grant for the sustainable irrigation that goes with those mini green houses. Um again at Leapart Elementary with the fourth grade classes. Um for my capstone class, our next one is uh it's a team project. Our first member is Jason Cluadra and our second member is Evan Price. Um Jake Vulture was not able to attend this evening. Um they are awarded the David's Fine Jewelry Engineering Design Award grant for their project called Road which is the remote onroad anomaly detection system. Um and the next award is another one of my interns Drew Patrick. He is being awarded an engineering design grant for Mach 1 education where he is designing uh 3D printed rockets um and testing those out for
016something that would be easier to use within the a classroom of students. Um my next one is back to my capstone class and um this is a threeperson team. Samuel Riley and Logan Juel are not here tonight, but Jonah Lever is here to accept the award um for the Claire Thompson Engineering Design Grant. And their project is the Kids Safe Alert. So, an alert that can help detect temperature in motion um for pets in um and kids inside of a vehicle. Um, our next award is another team project for capstone students. Jaylen Tucker is not here tonight. David Martinez is. And then Aaron Zeruggoza is also unable to attend. They are awarded the Doctors Allen and Barbara Waldman engineering design grant for their project electrobolt uh designing a mini hydro electric system. Um and then
017our next capstone project um we have two members unable to attend tonight. Sabian White Oliver and William Webb Hampton Long is here to accept their award for their engineering design grant for tree fall protection or prevention rather um which is dealing with the soil moisture around trees and being able to alert um homeowners. And then my next capstone award is for a team um Jayla Weaver, Ava Culler are here tonight to accept the award and Janiah Whiting is unable to attend. Um their their engineering design grant award was for Sun Drive which is a solar phone charging system. And then I had one more research grant for Parker Kane who was unable to attend tonight. um his engineering design grant was for weights waste not so it's a combination scale and app system to help
018reduce food waste. Okay, so that's all of my class and I'm going to switch over to Mr. Smallwood's class now. Um so the first project um is a team project. McKenzie Mets um is here tonight. Uh Riley Omar is unable to attend and Isabella Guard is here tonight. They are being awarded the Lisa Gibbons Biomedical Research Grant. Um the next student was unable to attend tonight. Kamaya Paige awarded the Duff Freeman and Sbert Biomedical Research Grant. And then our next one was a team project. Caris Andeloro Alexandra Heelman. Um they were awarded the Midlands chiropra chiropractic biomedical research grant also unable to attend. Um Miley Waford awarded the Tim Gas Depot biomed grant. Myra or Amira Rivers is awarded the Terry Brock State Farm Biomedical Research Grant. And then our next team is here tonight.
019Olivia Olivia Somerville, Jenna Matthysse, and Meline Rutherford. They are awarded the Irma News Biomedical Research Grant. Um, let's see. Oh, Sean now is awarded the Todd and Joy Rambo biomedical research grant. Linda Lee and Con Latron was awarded the O'Neal Flooring Services Biomedical Research Grant. Caroline Patrusi Michaela Fry was awarded the Halligan Mahoney and Williams biomedical research grant. Ethan Trabuzu was awarded the First Community Bank biomedical research grant. Landon Derek Kaden Duke is awarded the Blue Cross Blue Shield biomedical research grant. Um Jaden Thompson Divine Thomas Fernandez awarded the Hermo Insurance biomedical research grant. Milan Townsen awarded the Valentine Foods biomedical research grant. And then the last one was Celia Contra Contave and Eliza Raymond awarded the Rhett and Lai Hasselen biomedical research grants. So that was all of Mr. Smallwood's students. And I do
020want to just again thank all of the um the sponsors that are able to be here tonight. You have no idea how valuable um the opportunities um that you are giving to our students by giving them the sponsorship to help our students um proceed with their their research projects. Truly appreciate it and I know all of our students do as well. Thank you so much. I am Dr. Martin Shakola and I will be presenting my students. Our first group is Aiden Knight, Erica Gonzalez, and Baga Patel and they are awarded the Shephard and Associates Engineering and Design and Development Grant. Next up is Christopher Nurano Miranda Jquaz Clifton and Anthony Spears. They are awarded the Honorable Nathan Ballentine Engineering Design and Development Grant. U Gregory Baron could not be with us this evening, but is
021awarded the Mayor Bill and Peggy Danseling Engineering Design and Development Grant. Hannah Brown, Payton Halligan, and Nate Stewart are awarded the Honorable Ronnie Krummer Engineering Design and Development Grant. Martin Hera Costido and M Hudo are awarded the Old South Iron Works Engineering Design and Development Grant. And my final group, Brandon Rogers and Joseph Mangin, are awarded the Rainbow Restoration Engineering Design and Development Grant. Thank you, sponsors. Thanks to everybody who made this possible for these students and um as Sher Clap said, everybody is extremely grateful and it does make a huge impact on their lives to be a part of this. And I think they want you all to come to the front right here so we can take a group picture and then we'll go right out that door for individual with your sponsors
022and your parents. Just All right. Any sparks? two. I'm All right, as y'all are settling back in, I have one more brief presentation for you. Um, Chapen Intermediate Principal Brent Davis wanted to be here tonight to share this with you himself. He um is under the weather. So, I am going to do my best to pinch hit for him tonight um and share with you the new logo um for the new old Chapen Middle School for next year. um with the changes that are happening next year, um they wanted to refresh their logo a little bit at Chapen Middle School, give it um a little new take for a new school. So, I'm excited to share that with you tonight. Um as as most of you know, the original Chapen Middle School was founded in
0231991 on Old Lexington Highway, which is the current Chapen Intermediate School. And as you can see here, this was their logo. Then Chapen Middle School 2.0 was started in 2015 at its current location on Broad River Road. And so they updated their their logo a bit there. And now in Chapen Intermediate School was formed in 2015 when Chapen Middle School moved to Broad River Road um holding serving fifth and sixth grade students there on Old Lexington Highway. So with the 2026 redistricting as we know um Chapen Middle School is going to return to Old Lexington Highway more in town at the current Chapen Intermediate location. and um will serve grades six through eight. So they decided, as I said, to refresh their logo a bit. They had a committee that they formed, a very wide-ranging
024um committee. It was their school leadership, two students from their student council, their current teacher of the year, their current support employee of the year, a PTO representative, and an SSC representative. So they had a a very diverse group of folks um to provide input on their new logo. So with no further ado, um this is Chapen Middle School 3.0 starting um July 1st this year. This will be the Chapen Middle School logo. So um I think it's great. I think it's a great um adaption of what they have had before. So looking forward to um the students and school family being able to use this next year and then that just a little variation there as well. So that is it. Thank you so much for letting me share that really quick. >> Thank
025you so much, Miss Taylor. And let's take a minute and just give our very talented students another round of applause. At this time, Dr. Ross, I'll turn it over to you for the superintendent report. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board, our community. It's awesome to recognize our students and teachers uh and the staff that associated with the program, but the foundation. We appreciate the work that they do uh tirelessly to support student grants, teacher grants, and the snack pack uh program. They also serve and work with our social workers uh as they address needs within our district. So, we really thank our our our foundation and the work they done they did to get the sponsors in for these projects. If you ever see these projects and uh it's just really cool
026the talented uh students that we have solving today's problems. As always, we're a system guided by three critical questions. Why do we do this work? How do we accomplish that? Why? And what are our outcomes? And uh tomorrow we have a opportunity to uh really engage our students, engage our our parents within our district. Uh and that's with our digital lunch and learn. Uh we have a new app uh district 5 app. You can download it. Uh it's an Android or on your iPhone on Apple. Uh so uh we encourage you you can see how to uh download our new app but register for our v virtual lunch and learn that's tomorrow Tuesday March 24th uh from 12 to 1. We want to get students involved in all of the things that we have in
027school district 5. I don't think anyone really understands all the opportunities to see what our students engaged in the classes that we have. We have a lot of opportunities and so we'll have representatives from the high schools to talk about clubs, athletics, and special programs. Uh so if uh you want your child involved, school district 5 has tons to offer and uh we ask that you can register. Uh our vision is that we love and grow our students. Our mission is that we're focused on academic, social, emotional growth and development and then our outcomes are guided by our strategic plan. These are 24 strategies that go to four performance goals so that one day every student feel loved in our school and has demonstrated academic growth in our schools. This is why we do the
028work and we measure our performance. We look at our data uh at each board meeting. I will show you the progress that we're making on some of these key factors uh in graduation rate. Our strategic plan has a goal of nine out of 10 of our students graduating within four years. Um we're getting ever so close to that that goal and thanks to our our teachers and staff, our high schools. Um I know um Miss Waters is here with every week uh working with those high schoolers uh in those schools to make sure that we are finding the names behind the numbers and the stories behind the names so that the students can be successful. Uh we're going to talk a lot about formative assessments. Uh, as you're aware, the South Carolina Education Accountability Act
029requires that we uh do uh three of these formative assessments each year. Every year, we must do three of these formative assessments by law. And uh we currently use measures of academic progress. And uh I show these at every meeting because I don't want us to forget the students in the red are not on grade level. This can't get lost. It can't be just another slide that we do. It must stay forefront in the work that we do. Uh there's going to be as we walk into budget season this should be the leading driver of why we make our decisions uh to ensure that our students are successful whether they're staffing or programs um software. We're addressing these students in the red and challenging those students in the blue. And so as we look at
030fall to winter, uh we can see the uh the progress that's made, but we still have work to do. And we can't be satisfied until um we're seeing growth in all our students. While we have growth in red, uh we are not satisfied until we can get all of those bars to blue. So we keep this forefront uh in our work. uh we are doing um uh we're making sure that as we work on our achievement, our academic achievement is the leading indicator of why we do the work that we do. Uh and so uh when we see that there are certain areas where um we can make improvements, uh district 5 and the majority of its measurements and the accountability act are onward and upward. And to keep this trend going, to keep all
031of those arrows going up and green, um we need to continue to look at ways to uh strengthen our strategic planning, strengthen our our resources, uh so that we can support our students in growth. And so, uh that's why our district took a really big step that we thank you for and investing in tier 2. This was just another opportunity to uh invest in our students. When you look uh week one um and to see where we are now at at week two. I'm just very proud of the work. Um we were able to uh get more teachers involved um as of last week to to see the number of teachers that are involved. Uh the number of counseling sessions that have increased. Uh this is great work and we thank the board for granting
032us this this time and this resource to invest in students. Uh Miss McCasco and I were discussing uh some good news we got and who would tell that story and I said Miss McCas be best to to really share but there are there's amazing growth that's happening because of uh the tier 2 intervention and so that's how we're turning I can't to I can. When you hear uh just just one of these stories of a child who went from I can't do this to I can do this, you can see um the amazing growth in why we do this. So we will uh forever show at every meeting those red bars and those blue bars so we never forget the why that brings us to this table. Uh last before I turn over the uh
033the presentation, I do want to make the community aware of an event that we're having uh regarding Irmmo High School. Uh the bomb referendum brought uh three new projects to High School's campus. Um phase 2 A, which is the new cafeteria student center. Phase 2B, which is the small business incubator, and phase 2 C. and that is the partial demolition of the east wing at Irmmo High School. Uh but uh before we engage in that, we want the community's input on that. Um this is a rendering of what that area would look like. You see the outline of the part of Irmo High School uh that would be part of that phase 2C that would come down on that building. Uh that would bring the parking uh out uh to replace that area and create
034a new plaza uh for uh formal high school. And so here is a a rendering of what that looks like. Uh you can see this from the perspective of St. Andrews with uh the small business incubator as those put outs as well as the entry plaza for for Armo. And so uh we want to hear from the community. Uh we have a community input meeting that will be Thursday, March 26 from 3 to 6. Uh we want to hear your thoughts um about the small business incubator, the entry plaza. Uh that will be in the uh center for the arts uh from on Thursday, March 26 from 3 to 3 to 6. Um before we move on to the academic report or any questions about this part of the presentation, >> Miss Hutle, >> um
035Dr. Ross, if you go back to the diagram that shows the that one, the east wing to remain, was that always going to remain? We had talked about options of demoing the entire building. Uh but looking at u an opportunity to do a freshman academy there, uh we selected that we would keep half of the remaining building. Well, not half, we'll keep that portion of the remaining building. that gives the administration some opportunities to do maybe a freshman academy and and um if there's ever future growth we would have that classroom space on that wing. >> And as a followup is that correct me if I'm wrong but um the east wing was originally a one-story school and at some point there was a second story added onto it. Is the part that will remain
036constructed the same way or is it different? MN. >> So, we're currently looking at making the separation at a um like an expansion joint or where you know a um let's say place where we can actually separate the building. So, the existing part will still be it'll it'll still be intact. We're just going to drop a portion of the wing. I think you're asking, correct me if I'm wrong, there's like a little mechanical space between the between the dude and floors. >> Yeah. I'm just asking, is the part that you're wanting to keep, was it constructed the same way as the part that we're going to demolish? >> I believe so. >> Okay. I mean, I'm just going to share. I didn't when we voted for the ad way back, I I didn't think that
037was going to happen. And one of the reasons that I wanted the new east wing is the old one um there's issues, you know, so I would just ask that we really like get an engineer in there and and look at it and stuff because there were cracks in the walls and there were there were just a lot of issues with that and um I just want to make sure we don't I understand the need for the space, but I just want to make sure we're not keeping something that is um not worth maintaining in the long run. >> So, and we're currently going through our due diligence with that. To that point though, it was very interesting construction of that wing. It was one story and then another story was just placed on top
038of it and so there is a little gap there where you can be on the roof of one story and see the floor of the second story there. Uh but we we know that um we want to be uh true to to um the community and to the alumni. Uh and so Uh we we do not want to go through any demolition without input from the community. Uh and want to talk about opportunities for people to tour it one last time, to purchase a brick um and to really see what's happening to their alma mada. So um again, we we appreciate the opportunity to to showcase this input meeting. At this time, I'll turn it over to Miss Tina McCascal for the academic report. >> Good evening, Madame Chair, Dr. Ross board. I would like
039to introduce to you Miss Walters, who is our secondary director. Miss Walters works tirelessly with your grad rate that you see every time and lots of other things, but she's going to highlight a special program for you tonight with some students. So, Miss Walters, >> thank you, Miss McCascal. Good evening, Dr. Ross, Madame Chair, and members of our board. We have a number of of amazing students and great instruction going around going on in um district 5 and secondary education. But tonight, I'd like to take a moment to spotlight the academic leadership academy at Chapen High School. Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to attend the research topic reveals and later see many of those students again at the district science fair where their projects come to life in impressive and meaningful
040ways. What stands out most to me is just not the quality of the work, but the growth, the confidence, the depth of thinking these students demonstrate from start to finish. Their research reflects curiosity, discipline, and a genuine commitment to learning. guided by teachers who clearly inspire and challenge them to do their very best. Tonight, you'll have the opportunity to hear from them about their work and their experiences. It is my pleasure to introduce students from the ALA program, junior J. K. Ham and senior Sarah Hogan. Here supporting them are their program deans, Mrs. Lisa Mith and Dr. Don Weathersby and principal Ed Davis. Good evening, Dr. Ross, members of the board, everyone in the audience. My name is Kate Ham >> and my name is Sarah Hogan, >> and we are honored to be here
041tonight to represent our other 200 colleagues and to talk about what ALA is. So ALA's mission statement, above all, the academic leadership academy has a faculty that is dedicated to educating academically gifted students who are invested in their learning in order to prepare them for a lifetime of situational leadership. So ALA is designed to create leaders. All ALA students are required to complete a CCL portfolio or center for creative leadership portfolio. And overall student engagement is heavily encouraged in ALA and ALA booster club. Representation is something that a lot of our students participate in. Additionally, situational leadership is something that is extremely impactful in ALA. So beyond chapen high school, in your sports, at home, in work. So beyond just CHS, how are we preparing our students to go and be leaders there? So ALA
042faculty is something that is very impactful in my experience in ALA. There is a heightened teacher student interaction and a close-knit community in the ALA community. So throughout the four our four years, we have the same home room teacher with the same group of 20 kids. So getting really close with those people as you're going through school, academics, and life together is something that's really important and special in ALA. So our teachers are all CCL certified, many are AP certified. They are all highly educated individuals that are overall dedicated to the learning and nurturing of their students. So like I said earlier, the center for creative leadership for CCL is a portfolio that each student who graduates in ALA is required to complete complete. So in our seven ALA required courses, the CCL lessons are
043integrated into each of those. So this is just a highlight of the leadership aspect of the academic leadership academy. So something that's very important to the program as a whole and all of our ALA teachers are CCL certified. So community service is another thing that puts our students above and beyond. And each student is required to do a total of 30 or 30 hours per year, grades 9 through 11. So for a total of 90 service hours and many ALA students, including myself, have gone beyond this, just 90 hours of service. And each week, our teachers and ALA faculty members all post different leadership opportunities for us to complete. So something that I found that is extremely striking in the ALA community is we all identify needs that we see in our community and we
044go out and seek to do things to change those or alter them or make them better. Okay. So AP capstone consists of the completion of AP seminar, AP research and then four other AP classes in ALA. We are the only program in the district that requires the completion of AP capstone. I will also say that AP seminar and AP research are incredibly impactful classes. In both you create your own new knowledge. You synthesize information and you're going out finding your passion and exploring that. Additionally, seminar and research both look really good on college applications and can help show a college what your interest is and that you're pursuing it. So for AP research, all of our AP research students compete in two science fairs. So some of these science fairs include ski jazz or the
045South Carolina assoc or the South Carolina academic >> junior >> the South Carolina junior association for sciences. Um then we have region 2. Um region 2 offers opportunities for placement at state levels and even national levels. And I know that recently we went to the district science fair. I was there and I think more than 10 of my classmates placed. Um it's really important to show initiative and to show that the work you're doing is important, impactful, and can place at state and national levels. So AP seminar and AP research, as I said, do show that students have a passion and that they're exploring that passion. So for me, I'm interested in the legal system and politics. So in AP Seminar and AP Research, I've honed in on those and done my project from a
046legal and political focus. So in AP seminar, I first did a project on how 911 impacted American politics. Then I studied how AI could be used in the courtroom. And now currently for my AP research project, I'm exploring legislator and citizen perceptions of democracy and comparing those. So this just goes to show that once you identify a passion and you have something you want to explore, these classes give you a very significant opportunity to demonstrate that. So, like I said, developing a narrative does allow you to stand out to colleges because an interest and a niche is incredibly impactful. Um, I know that I have been able to develop my narrative because of AP Seminar and AP Research. Um, our lovely teachers, Dr. Dr. Taylor, um, Dr. Weathersby and Miss Maf all have helped me
047hone that and have helped me explore that more thoroughly. Another important aspect of ALA is the community. So, you're going to be in these classes with the same students for all of high school. You're going to have the same teachers. We do a lot of community building exercises. We go on field trips. We go on college trips. And once a month, we have one event. So, like Halloween, Christmas, Halloween, we had a costume party. Christmas, we did fun activities and had hot cocoa. And it really just works um to build community. Additionally, being surrounded with academically minded students is really helpful to help you succeed because you are who you surround yourself with. Um, like I said, college preparation is obviously going to be important. I know that it gives you a lot of extracurricular
048opportunities. I'm in National Honor Society, ALA, Malt Trial. Sarah's in National Honor Society and dance. Um, it's just very important and can help you build that resume that's so necessary. And to close off, I think the best way I can summarize what ALA does and what seminar and research do is creating overconsuming. The I can probably explain this by in AP Lang I write an essay, right? So I synthesize information and I put together an argument based on that. In AP research, I make the sources a student would site in those papers. That's really impactful to me and creating new knowledge is really important. Um, additionally, by creating new things, you are becoming a leader and you are showing self-efficacy or independence. Thank you. Great job. If that doesn't put a smile on your face,
049nothing does, right? >> That's awesome. >> I think I need them to just go ahead and make the presentation for the rest of the evening. How about that? I think they could do that. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about formative assessments, but before we do that, I'm going to share the celebration from the tier 2 um tutoring that Dr. Ross sort of alluded to. He said, "I'm not going to take I'm not going to take the celebration from you." I tried to tell him he could, but anyway, eighth grade. This is from a middle school um eighth grade group. I'm gonna talk about the group of eighth graders that have been going to tutoring consistently first, then I'm going to tell you one specific success story. So, the group of eighth
050graders um that have been going to tutoring successfully, they started with a winter median con percentile of 25. They just took their winter or their spring map and that group has a 35 median percentile now. So they have grown 10 percentile points as a group which is pretty amazing to be quite honest. One of those students has until December had never been above the 10th percentile. December they had the 26th percentile. Remember that we targeted 20th to 30th percentile. So they made it into the tutoring. I have goosebumps saying this. Just took his SPAT test. He is at the 62nd percentile for spring. So that is that's a testament to initiative of the student motivation but our teachers and the staff and what they have done with this program. So what we can do for
051kids truly it's really up to us. It's up to us to make a decision what we can do for students. And as we make decisions, I think that's where we we focus ourselves is on our students. And so, as we talk about formative assessment, formative assessment is just what it says. It's formative assessment. It's supposed to inform our instruction. It's supposed to tell us where we need to go next and what what we've got, what what have we learned and what areas do we still need help in. It should be something that is correlated directly to our state standards to our state test so that we can ensure what we're doing along the way. It's like taking your temperature, right? So we take our temperature in the fall to see where we are and then
052we take our temperature again in December to see where we are. Then we take it again in the spring to see where we are and then you take the sumitative assessment first of May. So so all along the way the formative assessment is to help drive our instruction. You can't teach a textbook from the beginning to the end and just think that that's going to make sure the kids know and master everything. You've got to make sure that you're following that instruction along the way. And so, as we were looking at formative assessments, the state gives us a mandate that we have to do it. Um, it's part of the law. And then we have five options that we can choose from. And as we look at what we currently have, we get a list
053of skills that students know and what they need to know, but it's not standardsbased. It's not specific to standards. There's a difference in the types of tests. So our current assessment we take MAP is a norm referenced assessment. The the main point of a norm referenced assessment is to compare me to another student. So it's normed. So it's comparing how I do with other students. As we looked at other options, we had a committee and I'll go ahead and go here. We had a committee and it was comprised of lots of principles, assistant principles, coordinators from all levels because this is K through eight district office staff to look at what formative assessment would would work best for our students because we're hearing from teachers, we're hearing from schools that MAP's not really driving instruction.
054We're telling teachers, use your map data, but to use the map data is just not very user friendly. We've had we've had lots of professional development on it. It's very cumbersome. I've done it myself. It's just very cumbersome. So, the committee made a a proposal that we change and and we look at a different formative assessment. The five vendors that are on the approved list from the state are listed here on this slide. Um and so the committee recommendation was I Ready. Now whenever we look at I Ready again I just told you what a norm referenced assessment was. I Ready is a criterion referenced assessment. The difference is criterion means it's based on a criteria. It's based on standards. So what you're what you're assessing the student at is against standards. How do I
055do with standards? Do I know the standards or do I not know the standards? And your reports are going to be geared towards standards. And I'll show you some of those reports in just a few minutes. But as we were going through this process, we've we've I've talked to teachers, our principles are on there. We've talked to teachers. Our elementary students right now, kindergarten through fifth grade, are utilizing I Ready um as part of their math adoption. And for one year, they were given that diagnostic in the teacher toolbox for one year. Um we've seen lots of great information. teachers are learning how to utilize that information and it's making an impact on on how they're how they're forming their small groups for math. So, as we look to move to that for ELA and
056for math, there are pieces and parts to it that are needed to really help complete the package. So you could give a test and a teacher could take this the the information and they could sit and they could develop their own lessons to go along with it. They could group the students themselves. They can do all of that. It's very time inensive. Um you've seen the the desk with all the different levels that are in classrooms and everything. So if teachers have to create all of those lessons on their own, it's just too time inensive. So, what I Ready has is a separate piece to it that is aligned to their diagnostic that allows for what's called a teacher toolbox, which are lesson plans that um directly correlate to the needs of small groups of
057students. So, it's it's really for your small group instruction. They're teacher-led. So, that's that's the adult le. There's another part to it called my path that is adaptive instruction. So that's the that is the computer-based piece of the program. That recommendation from the company is three times 15 minutes each time for elementary kindergarten through fifth grade for 6 through 8. It's twice a week 20 minutes each time. That is replacing computer programs that we currently have. So it's not in addition to or not adding to time that is replacing things that we already have. Um the the quote that that we have right now we would not need to ask for additional funding of what the office of academics receives that we would not be asking for additional funding. our um title two funds would
058help with the professional development piece of it. And we are re-evaluating programs to be able to cut things that are not directly impacting student achievement to be able to really hone in on where what what this will do for students. So, I want to take a few minutes and we had teachers give input last week. Um, our principles have had already known about the I Ready. We had talked a lot about it. I asked principles last Tuesday to talk to to talk to teachers about it to let them know that I was coming to the board tonight um asking for approval for the professional development piece of it because that's part of policy that anything over $25,000 the board needs to give approval for that. And so these are the grade levels that were um
059surveyed kindergarten through 8th grade because that's who will be impacted with this. So over 500 responses. These were some of the things that they had to say. And what you'll see here is that 35 to 40% of the teachers were positive or excited about the program. 35 to 40% were neutral or cautiously optimistic. and 20 to 25% were concerned or frustrated. And the number one concern was a lack of training. That's because it's a brand new program. There's there we haven't had any training, but that means we need the professional development. It also dug in and asked when they would like the professional development. They very overwhelmingly said during their normal professional development time. you know, not before school, not after school, which is totally understandable. Um, and so the days of professional development would
060be we're hoping to be able to have the four trainers come during the professional development day in August and then the other day would be embedded during PLC time. So, it would be already dedicated time during the day for teachers. um parent reports. Something that parents have have really asked for is a report that truly tells me something about my child. How what is it that my child truly knows? We've done a lot of discussion around success criteria and the I can statements and asking parents to really be key on what those are and what their children should be learning. This particular report is about growth. This is a This is and is no no Furpa problems here. This is a demo account, so it's not a real student, but it's a fourth grader. Um,
061and this is a end of the year report. So, you'll see it explains what typical growth is and what stretch growth is. Typical growth means a child at this level, what would they typically grow? And so, that's showing what that is. A stretch growth is a child that's not quite on grade level yet, like they might be a half a year behind or maybe a little bit more than that, what it would take to get them to meeting grade level standards to be proficient. And so you'll see each of those lines. You'll also see over on the side, this is a fourth grader, and you'll see where some things are not assessed, some reading um pieces and parts that are not assessed because this fourth grader does not need funological awareness or phonics. They're they're
062already beyond that. So, their score is already beyond that. Therefore, that child doesn't need to have those assessed. There could be a fourth grader that there is a score there because they need to have that assessed, but this particular child did not. And then it goes through and it shows you'll see vocabulary is at grade five. The comprehension literature is a late fourth grade and the comprehension forformational text is is a early fourth grade. So you'll see those. The next report does give you a national norm. So you do get that norm like I told you that MAP gives you a norm reference. the so you do get a percentile on this but it's not the the focus of the report. This is the report that I really like. So these are the fourth grade
063standards and if you look at the top where it says reading then it says grade four to grade four and then the diagnostic is the third diagnostic that's the end of the year and then diagnostic one which is the beginning of the year. So we're comparing here beginning of the year and end of the year. So your far right is your um beginning of the year and then your column that you see the green check marks those are your end of the year diagnostic. So, it's showing you they didn't know it at the beginning of the year. End of the year, they do know that. The next slide drills down and you'll see. So each of those standards, you can click the little button to the side of it and it will drop down to
064all of those success criteria or I can individual skills that go along with that state with that standard and it tells you whether or not the student has um mastered those particular things. So it allows a teacher to know very specifically and parents very specifically which skills a student knows and does not know. And then these by class it actually drills down and and puts like these three students need this particular skill and these three students need this particular skill and here's a lesson plan that goes with this group and here's a lesson plan that goes with this group. Um so it's very very specific. um for tier one, what we're calling tier 1B almost because it's really digging in and really beefing up that tier one instruction and being able to intervene before we
065have to get into anything outside of the classroom. This is a link to some guided tours. That's what um teachers were given that that was there for anyone in the public that wants to see what it looks like. Elementary isaries at the top of the page, middle school's at the bottom of the page because it looks different as it should. Um and then um they gave us the feedback. After the feedback, I did take the feedback and gave each gave them a a FAQ of all of their questions and was able to provide some information for them just so that teachers have the vision of where where it's going. All right, we um will open the floor for questions, but Miss McCastle, um how long have we had map? Forever. >> A long time. I've
066been in this district for 16 years and it's been here pretty much that amount of time. >> So, I have a two-part question. And um why are we looking at I like are we just now looking at I Ready or have we considered it before it didn't make this change for some reason? >> Um I have never been a part of a conversation with changing formative assessments before. I can tell you personally, um, I've been in this position, this is my third year. Prior to that, I was director of elementary and I've been questioning it for five years now. I appreciate the honesty, Mrs. Satfield, I saw your hand first. Make sure I get the right button. Uh, before I ask my questions, I don't want any I know the teachers are still here, Miss
067May and Miss Weather to be. I want to say thank you and Dr. Ross, thank you for bringing all those very bright students in that we don't get enough chance to celebrate those kids. I mean, I went to the science fair and I told Dr. Ross, I was intimidated by some of their projects. They're very bright kids, but thanks to all the parents that came and all the sponsors and uh I asked Dr. Ross, how could I get involved as a sponsor? So, I'm I look forward to that next year. But thank you ladies for what you do. We got so many great teachers in this district. U these are two of the best, but we have a lot of great teachers. But thank you. And I just want to get that cleared up. Uh
068I had several questions actually, but I don't I'm kind of try to condense them so I don't take up too much time. Um I know with MAP they went through a they went through all this training. I mean, they went through training and training and data teams and all these meetings and they really didn't have time for planning, honestly. Um, they gave up so much of their planning because somebody had a new and better idea. And I can hear your passion in your voice. Um, I know you're and I like people who are progressive. If something's not working really well, then I do like to move forward. Um, how user friendly would this be? In other words, what you just showed us was it just a small image or a little aspect of it. How
069user friendly is this going to be for teachers? Is this going to consume all their time all the time? I mean, you got a class of 20 kids and you got five different levels of students. Um, how user friendly will this be for teachers? Can you That's one of my questions. >> Sure. What we're finding with the math right now is that it is very user friendly. Um, >> so even the demo account that that I have that I've been in as a student, I I haven't had any formal training on it myself, but it's very very easy to go in. I've pretended to be a student, put in some information, but it's very easy to to go about finding your way through the program. And and the best part about it is that it's
070it's literally a click and there's the lesson. And then once the kid takes the diagnostic, the adaptive piece of it, assigns the lessons based on the weaknesses for, you know, for the teacher and then the teacher can check the dashboard >> to then see how things are progressing. Now, didn't we just recently approve a program this year about this something similar to that where teachers could take the MAP scores and they were going to able to get lessons? I'm trying to remember the name of the program. >> AI. >> Now, Magic School AI does allow you to to to put some things in and get lessons, but it does not it's not an assessment based like you have to know you have to know which standards the child needs to be able to create the
071lessons for you. >> Okay. How about um how do you think this will affect our tier 2 tutoring? Thank you for bragging on that. Um and SE readiness. Have you talked to any of the other schools that are using this for SE readiness? >> Yes, >> you have. Yes. >> Um so 80% of the districts in South Carolina are using I Ready. And those districts I know um Dr. Ross has shown has shown this slide where districts like us and where we fall in the state those districts that are like us that are above us those are the districts that I've been talking with and visiting and and asking what's going on and they're using I ready that that is a tool that they are using. >> Okay. And other two things and this probably
072is more geared toward Dr. Ross. Uh, one is I hope that we're getting the message out very early to all the teachers that are going to be affected by this because we got a lot of changes going on. Next year, people begin moving all over the place and that in of itself creates anxiety. Uh but the other thing is probably all my years involved with education, the thing that I remember was a consistent concern, I use that word concern was that teachers just just didn't have enough time to get ready for the school year to start the year. I would encourage uh the your staff, Dr. Ross, and for you all to consider setting aside days where teachers could come in where it did not disturb or interfere with them getting ready for the school
073year because there's a lot to do to get ready for the school year and paying them for their efforts, not 100 bucks a day or whatever it is that we throw out there. I don't even know what the going rate is now, Dr. Ross, but >> I agree with you. But I will tell you that the state mandates that those 10 days that we have very specific guidelines how those 10 days have to be used. Four of those days have to be full of um professional development days, >> right? No, I understand that. >> And they have to be at the beginning of the year. And so I mean they're very specific how they have to be. >> Yeah, I understand that. One of the things that when I was a principal was I I
074wouldn't I would go to meetings and I wouldn't put something else on a some of teachers plate unless something else came off. And I just know that they're they're they're really pressed at the beginning of the school year. They're running around like chickens with their heads cut off. And if you're an elementary school teacher, all those bulletin boards and all the stuff that they do and all the copies and stuff. Um but that's just a a couple of suggestions. I do like the idea of the uh helping with the tier 2 and uh if it's very user friendly so that teachers can it's not something that they see as a challenge or something else they got to learn. So the you the sooner that we expose them and to that I think the easier it'll
075be for teachers. >> Thank you >> Miss Huddle. >> Um I have two questions. Um, one is, uh, what research do you have that you could share with the board that was compares, um, results on SC ready since 80% of schools use it with um, map and that's not paid for by the I Ready people because I looked and I I I looked nationally and I could only find one. So, I won't ask you to share it now, but if you could send the board copies of anything. And the other question I have is this is a massive change. Um, we're 16 years or more of using something and as as um Mr. Satderfield got into have we considered I know I noticed that some South Carolina's districts run MAP and I Ready and I'm
076not suggesting we do that districtwide but have we suggested picking and a school and doing a pilot before we go jump all feed in on this? >> We actually are doing that this year. We have all all of our K35 is taking MAP and I ready. >> So they are taking Ready. Okay. Do we have results from that? >> We will in the spring. >> Okay. Well, you know, and and I'm just going to go ahead and share some concerns I have. Let me be perfectly clear. I don't I don't have an allegiance to any of these. I just I want our kids to do the best that they can. And I trust our teachers immensely. Um, you know, my teachers went to Chapen and they didn't have LA ALA then, but they had these
077teachers and these were amazing teachers. Um, so just some of the things I've read and you had an example there of of of like child has trouble with metaphors, simileies, illusions, personification, and hyperbole. One of the things I've read is that the test will do that and it'll say that and then it'll retest on it'll scale up on those things. And that may be great if the child has problems with all of those things, but what if they only have problems with simileies? The child gets bored because and it's frustrating for them. This is just what I've read. I'm just telling you what I've read. Um also that the students can't pick their own texts, which you know in today's world, a teacher can say, "Hey, I think this would be a good story for
078you to read or pick out some choices and the child gets uh gets a choice." Um I've also read um I did look the South Carolina um oversight u for education they compared the um linking they did three linking studies they did to SC ready to map SC ready to ready SC ready to star and my reading of that is that they all three correlated very well to MAP and that there wasn't necessar I mean to ready and then there wasn't necessarily an advantage for any of them. And I'm going to end with um you said the path would take um 15 minutes a subject three times a week my path but what about the overall program because when I looked it up according to what I read it was um 45 minutes a week
079per subject. No, no, we are not. This is a this is not our core curriculum. So, we still have Sabbaths for ELA. So, whenever you're talking about choosing your passages, this is this is not your ELA instruction. So, this is the small group side of your of your instruction. This is not your total instruction of your day. So we still have with math in elementary what's unique is that I ready is the textbook that's that our teachers chose. So therefore the textbook is I ready as well as this piece is I ready. So that that's a little different but in the middle and middle school and then even in the ELA for elementary we have a different state adopted curriculum that we use. So that's that's different. And I think what you're seeing with that
08045 minutes is for that total program. So it's not 45 minutes from my path at all. >> But I mean, are are we will this mean that the average elementary school student is on their Chromebook doing this stuff? 45 minutes per subject per week. >> Uh possibly. Yes. Per week, not per day. >> I understand. But I just want to add that in here. I mean, we're it feels like we're adding more computer time at a time when we're hearing a lot of concerns and you know, I just have to express that because that's one of the reasons I'm here. >> And and so just remember that we've had Dreambox all along and that was actually a little bit less requirement than Dreambox was. Um so we're really just replacing we will no longer have
081Dreambox. So that will replace that. So, we're replacing time on the computers right now. Um, the other thing I think I heard you say you were talking about um the correlations between all of them, they are all very directly correlated to SC ready. So, as terms of the correlation in terms of like projected proficiencies, they are directly related. That's what I have here with I Ready as well. Um the difference is the instruction piece of it. So MAP does not have anything that would align directly to standards. They've got what they call a learning continuum. And the learning continuum is a list of skills that the kid knows what they don't know yet. But it is not standardsbased. And it doesn't tell you what grade level they would be on. It doesn't it does not
082differentiate that at all. So that is the difference between the two companies. Um and that is what we're trying desperately to try to get. If we focus on standards, we find the teacher clarity. We are finding great improvement. And that's that's what we're trying to align and trying to really just hone in and help teachers to be able to do that the most efficient and effective way. Like I said, in the 90s, I didn't I I didn't have I already and I had, you know, making stuff, putting things in folders here and there and trying to pull small groups. Teachers don't have time for that. They don't have time for that. Whenever there's tools and availability for for more efficiency, that's what we're trying to find for them. >> Before I take the next qu,
083um did you Okay. Um, let me go to Kevin first. Okay. So, >> Miss McCascal at the U I just want to I know it's a change and it's Would you It's been described as a massive change. Would you categorize this as a massive change? >> No, I really would. In fact, we're actually giving our elementary teachers some time back because like I said, they're doing two tests. They're doing NWA and they're doing I Ready. Um, and we have to do a beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of the year formative assessment. So, I I don't see this as a major change other than giving tools to make that assessment actionable. >> Right. Um, thank you. And I know um what what have you heard back feedbackwise from teachers as to this
084particular change? >> I have people teachers stopping saying that they're excited about it. I've used it another district and so now I'm so happy to have it. I was successful there. I've not heard anyone come to me and say, "Why in the world are you doing this?" I have not. And I I'm open to listening. In fact, in the 580 something that I read Tuesday night after they did the survey, there were two teachers that said, "I'm not sure why we're being asked about this right now. It sounds like the decision's been made." But that was two out of 580 something. I appreciated that because that actually is what pushed me towards the FAQ because I felt like, you know what, you I owe you the answers to what the questions that you had and
085I created that. >> Yeah. I'll give you one teacher feedback. Um, and this is a quote. It's literally just swapping out one test for another. It'll give us good information and help us more than maps will. And so, um, I'll give you three guesses as to who said that. Uh, but she's very excited about the change and, um, her her peers are as well. Um, one more point that I'll I'll make is, uh, you did say and confirm that it's really dream box that was digital and online as well. Um, so I I know we have heard some feedback from the community uh as to concerns about the usage of Chromebooks, but I I just want to reiterate that that's not the majority opinion. Um, and it's just one segment of the community that we've
086heard from. We just happen to have heard from. there's a large segment of the community such as me myself who would advocate for actually expanding use of of digital platforms. So, uh just want to keep that in mind for the sake of the community's benefit. Uh we are talking about the Chromebooks. I will advocate for expanding our access and use of Chromebooks. Um but it's there's a wide variety of opinions out there for that issue. But thank you. Thanks, Mr. McCascal, for the presentation. I'll just share with everyone that um I did a little digging myself, too, and heard from some teachers and principles in and out of our district. Um, one of them says, "The thing I don't like about MAP is that sometimes we don't get a good picture of what grade level
087standards students don't know because it won't test them if they haven't had a previous grade level mastered." I feel like we don't get a good picture of what our students know when they have gaps from previous grade levels. Another one said that they are really interested in how these tie very directly to the SC standards and um another advised that this program is really worth it as long as you invest in the uh instructional models that go with it. So it does seem like there is some excitement with this. Um I'll also say that you know we came to you and asked what we could do tier two and so far it looks like you've hit a home run. So, I'm inclined to to trust your judgment on this. >> Thank you, >> Mrs. Sfield.
088You got another question. Just one more question. Um I'm not sure which either Scott or um Kevin brought this up. Um the parent will h how will they be able to get on P school and access this information? how would they access the their child the the diagnostic tool and how they can monitor and check their child's progress because that's going to be an important part too. >> There's a parent dashboard that you can log into and you can see it at any time that you want to. So there your child will have a passcode and you'll be able to go into the parent dashboard and see it at any time that you want to see it. >> Okay. And one more question because I I lied. >> That's fine. um you mentioned earlier and
089I think that it's important that our community understands how this will be paid for. So this is not going to add to our budget or anything along these lines. >> I was going to ask that same question. So >> yes, could you please just reiterate that or I don't know if Dr. Ross wants to or >> So um so title two funds will pay for the professional development piece of it. Uh student services and planning pays for the MAP that comes out of accountabilities budget. they'll pay for the diagnostic piece of this. Um, there is a part of that that's reimburseable by the state. Um, just want to say that we'd never know exactly how much that is. I think two years ago, Miss Black, it was about $93,000 that was reimbursed from the state
090out of about 160 so thousand at that time. Um, so it was about half of it that was reimbursed by the state and the rest of it will come out of the academic budget that currently pays for software that we'll be taking some software away to um and it's things like fastbridge which is the kindergarten first grade um required uh universal screener. We will no longer have to pay that for everyone. We'll we'll pay that possibly for some tier 2 students, but that'll be very minimal. But that money will go towards that. Dreambox is going away. We're looking at some other pieces and parts of software that are just not necessarily specific to student achievement. They're nice tools to have, but they're not have to have kinds of things that we're going to have to
091make some decisions about. >> I know you said you surveyed um teachers. Did this go out to all teachers or how do y'all determine who would participate in the survey? So, um, kindergarten through 8th grade teachers, ELA and math. Some of our middle schools chose to do it for all of their teachers and not just ELA and math, which was up to them, but I asked that all ELA and math teachers for sure um participate. It was 583 total teachers that um submitted their survey Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Ba, >> I appreciate you working on, you know, kind of getting rid of ineffective software and combining to to help with the financing. That's great. And you've answered a lot of my questions already. As far as with our special education program, the adaptive testing, will that
092be kind of a seamless transition there? >> It is. In fact, our special ed students are already familiar with Ready. We've already used it some with with special ed students. Um, so and it has accommodations, it has all of that built into it. Um, so it's very very special ed friendly. >> And one question, so when parents are in like IEP meetings, will they be able to use some of this data as far as what placement? >> Yes, we're really excited about how it can really help drive the goals to be more standardsbased goals. >> More questions. >> If if the state mandates this, why does the state just not pay for it? I mean, they say we have to do we have to do this. Why does the state not pay for it? >>
093That's a great question. It really is. >> I mean, I know many teachers that think that there's too much testing already and would rather recapture that time for instruction. So, talk to your state representatives. >> Dr. Herring, just so you know, if you don't do it, they take away money. I'll go ahead and ask you, but the state does pay for a portion of MAP, right? >> That's what I said. They they they two years ago, we haven't gotten this year's reimbursement back yet. So last year, I think we got 93,000. Is that about right there? About about 93,000 that we got back. >> So they pay for a portion of MAP, but they don't pay for any of Ready. >> They will. They will, but we just don't know how much. Okay. >> It's
094it's every year it changes. It's not an exact amount that you're going to get back, but yes, we will get something back. When? I don't know. That's why we can't really like bank on that. But yes, we're supposed to get some back. >> Okay. And then this is my last question. Um, but it's um you when you do the survey results of the things that um teachers were concerned about and I I am asking a lot of questions, but it's so everybody can hear what's going on. And so, um, one of the things you mentioned was that the point of concern just was like lack of training, which is, you know, what you're wanting to do, which makes sense. Um, is there a specified amount of time that they recommend that is needed for the
095training? Um, and do we fit that window before we would have to start um, testing with this material? >> Right. So, um, I think I think I'm understanding your question, but what they would do in August, so in early August, we would have trainers that would come and we would do our training and they would that would train all of our teachers on how to administer the test to begin with and some initial reading of what what is their data going to look like and what should they do with it. And then shortly after that, Septemberish, after we kind of get started with school, each school would have a day where a trainer could come in and during their PLC time, they could meet with individual departments or individual grade levels and really dig in
096and say, "Okay, you've got your data now. This is what goes next." >> Do we have any other questions? All right. Thank you, Miss McCasco. Um, just to as a as a note, this was this is just up for discussion tonight so that the board had an opportunity to get all their questions out and for us to inform the community. So, if you have other questions, they can come back to us before we take a vote on this at our next meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss McCasco. As um Dr. Harris comes to the lecture and I just want to thank Miss McCascal and her team for for this work. Uh be informed. We're not bringing this just I don't know where the state law says we must do this uh by South Carolina
097code of 9 code of laws 5918 310 um in there we have to do PD we have to assess three times a year we must do this assessment and we're only given a five options of the five only four do K through eight the law says that we must measure student growth three times a year but this divi this tool. This tool not only lets us measure, but it measures against the standards and it gives teachers a tool to interact. Most importantly, where I stand behind um this recommendation, it gives parents something that they can use. You get a MAP score, if your child increases, everybody celebrates. We don't talk about the kids in the red, though. And I show that every meeting. Those kids in the red, we've been doing it for 16 17
098years as if those kids in the red, we got to make a change for them. And and to make that change is important. The kids in the red, those parents are asking us every day, what can we do? What information can I have? Here is a program that's going to give them specifics down to the standard on what those children in the red can do to improve. And uh I'm excited about it. And so we must do this by law. Here's an opportunity to make a change. And so I I fully stand behind and support it. With that, Dr. Harris. >> Certain. Thank you, Dr. Ross. Um members of the board, Ross community, I wanted to just stand before you for just a moment and share a bit of a an announcement. Um we've talked
099on several different occasions in reference to uh a an event, a communitywide event entitled Shatter the Myth. And uh we had great success in a fall session. Typically we would do two a year, one in the fall, one in the spring. And uh several persons turned out and had great success. A number of vendors as we have shared uh in previous meetings. Uh we were scheduled for Thursday, March 26th here uh at the Center Advanced Technical Studies for our second of two shatter the myth events. However, due to um I think just a number of different activities, events, um programs, um athletic events that are going on during the spring, we've opted to cancel our shatter the myth for this coming Thursday, March 26. Uh just a number of competing different events that have caused
100as uh uh resulted rather in um uh low registration. So, we're going to focus our efforts on our fall session, which is already has its own date of Tuesday, October 27th. Uh, Tuesday, October 27th, 2026. We're going to focus our time and attention, our energy, and our effort on the fall session, but due to low registration and a number of competing events for uh this coming spring, this coming Thursday actually, we're going to cancel the shattered myth. Wanted to share that with you, share that with our uh community so that all will be uh made aware. >> Thank you. >> Oh, sorry, Mr. B, Mr. Scully. Since we've started the um this program and a lot of the signage in the schools, have we tracked how suspensions and expulsions related to to vaping and other
101type of substances that have tracked up or down? Do we have any kind of data on that? There is a there is a mechanism in which to do that a simple simple entitled simple discipline that does track that I don't have that with me tonight but there is a mechanism that administrators are frequently looking at and our student services uh department is often meeting with them as well to review that information as well as other information uh that simple discipline tracks. Absolutely. >> Mr. Skully. >> Yeah, Dr. Harris, I'm so sad to hear that. Um I couldn't look at you. I'm sorry. >> My question I guess is okay so this is a district sponsored event. Is is there any consideration or or way and if I get out of my lane please let me
102know but for this to be considered for makeup time or like because it's a district event if a student needs to make up time can this apply a couple of hours if they attend this event would that apply to help them make up time or if not and if so and could we I'm just trying to think of ways to uh increase the enrollment in this. Obviously, yeah, >> I'm a huge fan of this program, but it's also the type of program that you don't really understand the impact unless you go to it. And it's word of mouth driven. Uh could could we could teachers possibly give extra credit or anything like that if the students come to this event? I >> I appreciate you sharing that. I think in the because seat time and
103instructional prime time is so focused on the teacher record. I don't know if it can be used for extra credit or seat time. >> However, um I I think with the fall the participation was so huge because there were just so many things not competing with it. And uh to your point, I think we can use those pictures and those testimonies to drive that. Um there could be sometimes in lie of a suspension or something like that. Uh but I think the the what we have to work on for October 27th is really sharing the testimonies that you have and others have of how powerful this is going to be for their families. I just think when spring we have so many things competing against each other. But um we'll we'll look for creative ways.
104But I think the biggest piece is once a family goes through it, I mean it is is transformative and it's just really communicating how this is. So we felt like what uh Harris um when we called and talked about it, we we we knew how tough a decision was, but so many vendors come out for this. We pulled so many resources from the community to put this g together together and even after a a you know publication we didn't have 20 folks was going to be there. So I think if we can focus on the that fall piece get more testimonials out about it um I think that would be huge. But I do want to share and I don't want to overstep out here. So if I'm wrong, please correct me. But when we
105look at discipline yeartoyear, it's down. And I know to a degree is down, but but but discipline is down. So we're driving it. Um we heard what you said about, you know, vaping. We heard what you said about alcoholism and substance use disorder and bullying and and and I I think we have a lot of handshakes and support to the administration. to the ground that we put there. Expectation coaches the shadow of the miss series um for driving that down. So, uh yeah, we we talked about uh but so many resources are pulled together for these nights. We want them to be uh uh well well attended. >> Absolutely, Grant. Thank you for sharing that and that that really is the heart and soul of it again with the couple with the low registration and
106um and and again I thank you for sharing about what's happening in our schools. Hats off to our administrators uh student services department for partnering and making this happen and to reduce the the number of incidents that are occurring in terms of suspensions and exposures. Absolutely. >> This had a question. >> Um well I just want to compliment you on the program. I went to one of them and it was fantastic >> and I think the most eyeopening thing was I went even though my kids are grown I went to the parent park >> and I don't know I just learned so much about how things have changed since I was a kid and what kids do to get away with stuff and anyway I was just going to compliment you but also maybe suggest
107that in addition to testimonials if there's a way to get a snippet from one of the vendors for some of the things that they teach the parents I think that might drive some interest too. Um because until you've done it, like you guys have said, you don't really get how powerful it is. But maybe that would be a little window into into how it's so powerful. >> Great idea. Thank you for that. >> Thank you so much, Dr. Harris. >> That concludes the superintendent's report. >> Do we have any additional questions for Dr. Ross? Thank you. Um can I get a motion to approve the minutes from the March 9th meeting? I make a motion to approve the minutes of the March 9 2026 board meeting. >> All in favor? >> Um, Miss Miss Snipes
108is a minor thing, but I have an amendment. Um, it shows me absent for the votes, but it doesn't show me absent at the top. So, I move to amend the minutes to put the word absent by Katherine Huddle. >> All right. All right. All those in favor? And the motion carries six to zero. Back to the original motion on the floor. All in favor? And the motion carries. Six to zero. That takes us to public participation. The board welcomes and encourages public participation. We respectfully ask that you adhere to the procedures provided in board policy behings. Your comments should be limited to three minutes and must remain on either the topic noted on your signin form or a listed agenda item. Questions asked during public participation will be handled in accordance with board policy
109beh. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. We have one speaker tonight. Kim Murphy is here to speak about decrease in enrollment and increase in expenditures. Good evening. I thought I'd rattle off some uh enrollment numbers which um are in your board packet um and show a trend that D5 district 5 is um continuing to decrease in enrollment. Much of the enrollment drop is due to students aging out of the schools. Some has to do with parents choosing to homeschool or send their children to private or charter charter schools after COVID. But much of the decrease is related to very little new home construction, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But this de decrease is alarming with the increase in expenditures, which equate to increased taxes. I only had time to go back to 2007, but
110this year, District 5 K through 12 has dropped below 16,000 students, the lowest since 2007. Of the 21 schools, only three increased in enrollment. Those three SC schools grew a total of 10 students. The other 19 decreased by 620 students. Six of the seven Chapen schools decreased. Chapen Middle School grew grew by two students. Six of the seven Dutch schools decreased. Uh River Springs dropped to 388 students um just down the road from the new elementary school. All um all high schools dropped in enrollment. None of the schools are at capacity. Elementary schools were built with core capacities to educate between 750 and a thousand students. None of the elementary schools u have an enrollment of 750 students or above. 11 out of the 13 elementary schools only have between 377 to 476 students. So
111far, um, you know, after hearing this, you can see that district 5 has a lot of capacity available, yet we continue to build new schools and facilities. Not only is it costly to build, but there are neverending operation and maintenance costs. Um, and it it also appears that the administration is um now making an effort to fill up available classroom capacity in a way that actually reduces the capacity of those schools to less than what they were designed to accommodate and what taxpayers paid for. By doing this, it creates a need to build even more schools. I know that some board members have requested from the administration capacity numbers and have also asked for information about the dollar spent and projected projected costs for new facilities but they have not they have been denied this
112information. Uh please provide the information and board members use this information to make better decisions that not only impact the students but also the taxpayers. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Murphy. That moves us to the action agenda. Do we have any motions from executive session? >> I make a motion to approve selected employment items in exhibit A. >> Second. All in favor. And the motion carries 6 to Z. >> And I make a motion to approve the 2026 2027 reappoints as seen in exhibit C. >> Favor. Um, >> oh yeah, sorry. >> Um, even though it's not required because we're doing a block vote on these appoint reappointments, my vote just for the sake of u avoiding an appearance of conflict of interest. My vote will be for everyone in that exhibit except
113for my wife. And um since my daughter Mary Wood is in that clump of employee reappointments, I will be recusing myself from that vote, but I will be voting for all the other employees. Thank you. >> Thank you. All in favor? And the motion carries six to zero. That moves us to um number 13 on the agenda of board requests. item from Mrs. Huttle. Do I have a motion? >> I move that the board request um my request for information on the McMalen McMillan Pasden Smith um identified items as poor and critical. >> Second. >> Okay. So, um, what this is is back in 2023, we contracted for about $200,000 with McMillan McMillan President Smith to go look at all of our facilities and they came back with a very extensive report and they rated
114items um, one of five categories, everything from excellent to poor or critical even, excuse me. So, we've approved a lot of money since then, and I just want to I I I kind of take it like a homeowner. If I paid a a um inspector to come in and look at the house before I bought it, and they said, "Well, the roof is leaking and the floor floor needs to be replaced and they gave me a list." Some of those are things, right, you're going to make sure get fixed and you want to track them. Others may not be that important. So, I'm only asking for the critical and the poor and One of the things I did is I created a spreadsheet and I went in and I typed them all in. There are
115333 of them, but the ma vast majority of them, my understanding is um are covered by the bond referendum because there were a number of schools that and Dr. Ross can correct me if I'm wrong, are um are the refurbishing for those schools from the MPS report. The critical and poor items are included. There was also a July 2024 special bond that was for ADA issues, HVAC. So, I believe those are included. So, I'm just looking for my own edification before I vote to spend more money on additional things. I feel like as a board, we need to know the status of the missing items, if you will. So, that's the purpose of this. I feel like I've done the leg work. Um, you know, I'm even willing if I go sit somewhere with somebody
116and just look at a list. I just, you know, there are 10 roofs on here and if a roof leaks, it causes a lot of problems. So, I just want to make sure that I'm doing my job, we're doing our job, that we know that these things are on the a list somewhere and what list they're on before we start spending more money. >> All right. Go ahead, Mr. Serville. >> Uh, yes. Uh, Mr. Knuts, I started to call you Alan. Sorry. Um, you gave a presentation at the last board meeting, correct? I know you weren't here at that. And you you Oh, you saw that. Okay. Was the information that Miss Huddle was requesting, was it it in that wide spans of information that you were offering, was any of that stuff covered in
117that? >> Yes, sir. >> Well, I watched that. I watched the video since I wasn't there and I realize a lot of information was covered, but what I didn't see were there, like I said, there's 10 roofs on here that aren't in the bond referendum, and I don't I don't I didn't see that where the status of, you know, are we getting these roofs fixed? >> So, would I think um maybe as of lunchtime today, everyone has access to the PowerBI information. Um, this right here has about 3,000 of the 11,000 occurrences and we've actually brought them down to about 400 different projects. Um, it would be extremely hard for us to have 400 little sticky notes or whatever else trying to manage this. So, we're using our technology that the district has to help
118us oversee and manage and kind of group these things together because if I want to go out and do a bunch of heating and air repairs, I'm able to go do that. So in there it has all the roofs as everything that was a um you know one two and three you know for those schools in the bond referendum >> of the listed schools. >> Miss Huddle um I know this is um on the board on the agenda for action. Um I didn't know until Mr. N said just now that we are that we have access to this as of today. um before we ask for a different document, would you be open to looking at what we what they just gave us access to to see if that answers the question first? And if
119not, we revisit >> Can I ask a question? >> Of course. >> Okay. So, I'll just pull an by the way, I want to put this in the minutes. Um so, let me just look. Okay. So for example on this list was questionable organic growth at Chapen High School. So if I sit down with you is every all these critical and poor items in your system that I could go see where is that resolved? >> Everything that was in in the NPS report for those for those items are in PowerBI. Okay. So, the answer is yes. If you if if you wouldn't mind if I sat down with you and I >> No, ma'am. No, ma'am. I I think we have to make sure administrative things stay administrative and policy things stay policy. We gave
120you access to what he has. He needs to work. He doesn't need to sit down with anybody and prove that he can do do that. I do his evaluations. That's what he needs to do. So I think um uh since we have access to it and again I haven't looked at it so I don't know anything about it but um uh is there a link or something that we already got or >> so you should have you can explain but in your email you received um the login so what Allan has done is he shared his dashboard >> you have when we deal with large uh data sets we have very large data sets and so if it's testing we use Tableau Well, uh library materials we use follic. Uh for uh maintenance issues we
121use uh PowerBI. It's a Microsoft product. >> We uh basically copied his dashboard. You have his dashboard. So you can go in there, you use your I think he sent each one of you a login uh email and Miss White has sent you instructions on how to log in. You can go in, you can look at all of the incidences, look at what um by school. You can look at it by project type. You can look at um uh and just see where we are on those things. But um that that should give you an idea of where we are in the process of this. >> Okay. So, we got that an email today that will let us do that. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Perfect. All right. >> Well, um I I will withdraw
122my motion then for >> now. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss KN. Right. That moves us to the discussion agenda. First up, the strategic plan updates. Is that black? >> Oh, Dr. Harris. Thank you so much. Again, uh members of board, superintendent Ross, and uh our community tonight. We wanted to uh have director of our planning and accountability, Miss Audrey Black, to share with us a couple of different things under this update. And that is an update regarding some amendments to the current 2022 through 2027 uh strategic plan immediately followed by some information, ideas, uh insight for you as board members regarding the next phase or the next five-year strategic plan 2027 through 2032. And uh so we have Mr. Black to do that at this time. So, good evening, Madame Chair, members
123of the board, Dr. Ross, and members of our community. Thank you for the opportunity to present a highle overview of our strategic plan and the recommended updates for the 2026 2027 school year. Before addressing any questions related to the proposed changes in your board packet, I will briefly review what a strategic plan is and why it is important. South Carolina state law requires all school districts to develop a five-year strategic plan with schools creating their own five-year renewal plans. Both are updated annually. These plans serve as blueprints that guide administration in supporting our district's mission and vision. Here in district 5, our schools and the Kate Center align their renewal plans with the district's strategic plan to ensure consistency and focus. These same regulations require that every district and school include goals in three key
124areas. Those are school climate, academic achievement, and teacher and administrator quality. Additional regulations require districts to set goals for gifted and talented education, integrating those plans into the broader strategic planning process. Our annual update to the district strategic plan follows the South Carolina continuous improvement model. The cyclical model guides us in reviewing the strategic plan while ensuring the plan remains relevant and responsive to the district's needs over time. So for consistency, I am capitalizing on one of Dr. Ross' slides. The strategic plan includes multiple components. These include a comprehensive needs assessment, performance goals, interim performance goals, strategies and action plans, evaluation of those strategies, evidence of comprehensive consensus building and asurances. As Dr. Ross often reminds us, our strategic plan includes four performance goals. Each goal is supported by six strategies, and those strategies are
125further supported by over 165 action steps. Together, these action steps serve as a practical guide for achieving our mission and vision. District 5 is committed to incorporating stakeholder input into its strategic planning process. Each of our 24 strategies is shaped by ongoing stakeholder input with dedicated leads engaging educators, families, and community members throughout the year to ensure our work reflects real needs and experiences. and all over 100 stakeholders provided a broad range of perspectives on current initiatives and future priorities. The next series of slides will dive deeper into each of the district's performance goal areas. Our goal for school climate asserts that we will maintain a safe and secure environment focused on the social and emotional growth of all students as measured by the perceptions of parents, teachers, and students. Like all of our goals,
126this is a smart goal, meaning it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. On the slide before you, you'll see our baseline data on the left, our target outcomes on the right, our annual interim benchmarks in between, and the latest data is highlighted in yellow. Parent satisfaction has met the target and student satisfaction continues to meet interim benchmarks, keeping the district on track toward the long-term goal. Teacher satisfaction is trending further from the target, although it does remain above the baseline year. Our second goal focuses on academics and establishes that we will provide challenging curricula that support academic growth and prepare students for college and career success as measured by the median student growth percentile map graduation rates and college career readiness. As with school climate, the slide before you outlines the target outcomes,
127the interim benchmarks and the latest data data highlighted in yellow. Our first two goals focus on the median student growth in math and reading for students grades K 2 through eight as measured by NWA MAP. A growth percentile of 50 indicates that on average students are growing at the same rate as their peers nationwide. A percentile above 50 means they are growing at a faster rate than their peers, while a percentile below 50 shows slower growth. Students in the district continue to demonstrate growth rates above the national average in both math and reading. Our focus on formative growth factors into the increase in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on SC ready in both areas. Graduation rates and college or career readiness rates have increased for the third consecutive year and remain above
128both Midlands and South Carolina rates. A district is only as strong as its educators. Our third goal ensures that we recruit, retain, and develop a highly effective and diverse team. We measure our progress through teacher retention rates, teacher satisfaction with working conditions, and teacher feed feedback on professional development. As with the other goals, our targets and interim benchmarks are on the slide before you. All three performance indicators declined from 2024. In alignment with this trend, teacher satisfaction data from the school climate goal also reflects a decrease. These results will be included in the district's upcoming comprehensive needs assessment for our new strategic plan. Our fourth and final goal focuses on challenging our highest achieving students by providing challenging instruction through an honors framework focused on the academic development of students in gifted programs and to
129provide equitable opportunities for participation in gifted programs. We measure our progress by analyzing median student growth percentiles in math, math, and reading, advanced placement passage rates, and participation rates of underrepresented students in highle courses. Since this goal contains multiple metrics, we have split them across slides. Once again, the district is growing its highest achievers in math and exceeding our target. In contrast, reading growth for high achieving students continued at a slower rate than their national peers and reflects a downward trend. Before you are the final two goals of our gifted and talented students, advanced placement passage rates are a remarkable 12.9 percentage points above our target. All the while increasing the number of AP courses taught and the number of tests taken. the district's strives to increase participation rates for underrepresented students in higher level
130courses. While interim benchmarks have not yet been met, both grades three through 5 and 6 through 8 show increases compared to the baseline year. The high school level experienced a slight decline of 1.1 percentage points. While progress in grades 9 through 12 remains slower than anticipated, the accelerated growth in lower grades is expected to yield improved outcomes as a secondary level over time. So, our strategic plan is a dynamic living document that guides decision-making across our district. This update marks the final year of the current five-year cycle. In your board packets, you'll find the administration's recommended updates for the 2026 2027 school year. Given the scope of the full strategic plan, these updates have been organized in a concise format along with the entire strategic plan. So now I would like to briefly share where
131we are with the development of the 2027 2020 excuse me 2032 strategic plan. Last year, we presented the timeline and process for developing our next strategic plan. At this time, we are concluding the initiation phase. During this phase, the district is aggregating data related to demographics, indicators of student learning, and stakeholder perceptions. Perception data is currently being collected through surveys, and input sessions. The South Carolina Department of Education climate survey is currently open to students, teachers, and parents through April 15th. Input sessions are also currently underway. The district has met with students, parents, faculty, principles, and district administration. Feedback from support staff will be gathered on March 31st, and outreach to the board of trustees will occur in the upcoming weeks. As the initiation phase concludes, the district will begin analyzing the collected data. Principal
132and district administration will review each strategy within the current strategic plan to examine levels of implementation. This same process will occur with strategy leads and stakeholder groups. The results of this review will inform decisions regarding which strategies are maintained, revised, or removed in the 2027 2032 strategic plan. New performance goals will be developed and presented to the public at the June 29th board meeting. The strategic plan provides a clear and actionable road map to the support the district's mission and vision. I thank you for your time and I stand for any questions. >> Thank you, Miss Miss Huddle. I couldn't help but notice um there are map scores in there and we just talked about. So are you allowed to change that um the measurement tool and if so would it move to I ready
133or would it move to SC ready? >> So um yes one you are allowed to change your goals. Um and that is not going to be an issue uh when we go through the 2027 2032 is where we will most likely make that change to either SC ready or if we have I ready we'll change to I ready. We could have both. It depends really on um what that stakeholder feedback comes with what the principles and administration and the strategy leads and the stakeholders agree upon. >> Okay. And another question, um the the state has a um what we used to call a hairy audacious audacious goal of is it 70% reading on grade level by third grade. Is that did I get that right? >> I know that they want 75% of all students
134to be >> um one or above grade level. >> Is that as measured by SC ready >> measured by uh the accountability? So it would be according to the state strategic plan, it's all accountability measures 75% at or above grade level. So I'm assuming that's SE ready that it would also be ELC. Correct. >> Okay. And one last question. If you go back to the G gifted and talented, if you don't mind slide, it's three or four slides back. Um one more. Okay. Yeah. Um the 90th percentile or more on the bottom one and um it's gone from 47 to 46 to 43 is I'm assuming you're not going to make the goal keep going down. So what's the thought there as far as like what is going on and what we may change to
135try to make the score start going back the other direction? Thank you, Miss McKascal. >> Sure. Um, I will tell you that there is a change that we've made this current year for one thing for middle schools. We've made a criteria for our honors classes um versus just waving students into honors classes. And that's been a request from teachers to be able to maintain the rigor within those classrooms and not um not maybe let that slip a little bit. Um, And I do think that that I'm seeing some changes with that. Um, another piece of that in my opinion is a way to um, effectively be able to increase accelerate students easily for teachers. Um, not to be a broken record, but I does allow you to go up a grade level. So, just like
136I showed you how you can toggle on that grade level and say which standards if like if it was a fourth grader, I could toggle to fifth grade to see which standards that student might already know and I could be able to give assignments that have lessons that would go right alongside that. So, really being able to provide resources to teachers that can realistically be able to to enhance that instruction. So, just as a followup because I'm curious, um the the map in your example like the map is is measuring against fourth grade other fourth graders, right? Um I already is it is it going to do that? Like is it going to measure against fourth grade standards and fifth grade standards or how will that work for the parents who may have the ex
137advanced accelerated students? >> So, you're going to get a percentile first of all. So that's going to give you, you know, if you're in the upper 90th percentile, that means that you're just like any you're still going to be compared to other students within the fourth grade. Um, but then whenever you look at your standards, that's where the standards report for fourth grade. If you're ex if you're excelling, you might have mastered your fourth grade standards, but then we can click to the fifth grade standards and see which of those standards because a test is adaptive. So it is going to adapt to know where the child needs to be assessed. >> Do we have Mr. Bum? >> Two brief questions. Under student achievement, it has some of the programs that you mentioned will be
138phased out. Will they will we just update the the goals once those are gone? And then something I didn't think about that I see here under student achievement um encouraging teachers to earn the multilingual endorsement. So that's maybe a teacher that doesn't teach a foreign language to assist with like atmo high school some of the multilingual students. Do they get any sort of like bonus or supplement for earning that or is it right now just kind of a benefit? There is no pay increase necessarily for an extra endorsement. Um it's really the professional development piece of it. Just knowing those strategies that work best for the multilingual learners. So that's an encouragement. And we do have a platform right now that they can get that endorsement um free of charge. Um there's a small fee
139for the graduate credit that goes along with it if you want to get the graduate credit that goes along with it, but it's minimal. >> Anybody else? Thank you. >> All right, that takes us to the discussion of the strategic capital plan. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Uh want to go over uh again our strategic capital plan. Uh this all started as a update. we've done uh in 200 I think 19 was the NBCON report and 2023 was the NPS report on annual capital maintenance and in that um that was uh May 2023 in which this report was issued uh to the community uh it gave the rankings at that time of what our scores were for our particular uh buildings and this was a a um a major part of
140the uh multiple assessments we did in preparation for a a referendum question. Uh when the report came back looking at 3.7 million square ft, it identified 11,137 total incidences, ranking those incidences from a level one to level five. What it gave us was um five different um categories in which to put these total incidences. Health uh safety and security, building envelope, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing or MEP, site conditions and interiors. I think what's important to note is that this is not static. The day released, we had issues. We had issues that this didn't accommodate. Uh and so one of the things that um we're trying to compile is the issues that we deal with every day, the things that um you know the community calls about or you may call us about and the issues
141that we have in in in NPS. I think it's fair to say that not all of our category ones are an NPS report. At the day that they left, we could have had another category one or roof leak. Uh so I want to give you an idea of since they left what what happens in school district 5. Uh we have a a a program in which um we library all of our or categorize all of our incidences uh within the school year. So you're looking at um a January to January snapshot of our incidents uh which will show you during that time 5600 uh items about 22 things that that break a day. You see that dip in June where it's very low. Uh it's not because nothing broke in June. It's because that was
142the the time of the uh data security incident. Uh but you see how once we came back online those things ramped back up. So uh what we wanted to give you is what we actually work with. This is a very dynamic process in which we do our maintenance. Um and it it toggles between a lot of different um people who have to touch this to get this going. Some items we can fix by with our staff. Some things that need to be put out for um outsourcing. Uh some things are handled by a um a warranty. A lot of our roots, for instance, they're under warranty and so we don't want to misuse taxpayer funds. So we we execute the warranty, which it's not a quick process, but um nonetheless uh we have to know
143those differences. So we are putting these items into uh uh processes and projects so that we can combine like items, get those things out to get them addressed. Uh, but I think it's important to say and that's why we ask you to look at what we're currently doing because our system takes in all of the things that we get each and every day uh to try to fix it. So, all maintenance requests are entered into what's called the master library work order system or ML work order system and our maintenance department has to address them. We average documented now this is documented 22 uh items every day. Now that's 365 days but we we only have our maintenance staff for 240 days. Um so that's 34 facility issues that they have to work on each
144day. We have 14 staff members in the maintenance. Um but not all of them handle all things right. So we have three electricians. We got two plumbers, one carpenter, four HV HVAC techs, two maintenance specialists, and uh we appreciate you adding that because they do PM hours and uh some of our items when we go into the classroom to try to fix something, it's an interruption to the instructional day and to so they prefer us to to wait for when when schools are closed. So we do have those two that uh try to get those things. We have one uh low voltage tech. Uh they handle uh items like key cards and and and and those things. And then uh someone for property services, maintaining trees and limbs and and those kind of things. So
145um those 14 staff people trying to handle those 34. This is and again even if it's 22 a day, you got 14 going after 22. the majority of the issues that we face are HVAC and and plumbing issues. Uh and so our goal is to try to get ahead of this. Um you know, we have two plumbers. We uh we have out try to hire two more. I don't know if you know the market in plumbing, but u make a lot more money outside of the district than than inside of it. So, uh, I wanted to share this because I think our maintenance people, um, they have what seems to be an impossible job. There's not one day where they get everything done. And so, every day they're they're they're beat up on because someone
146says they're not doing it or not doing it fast enough or not and they're working every single day to try to get this. So the goal was to talk to the the the the operations and facilities and the maintenance team and said what could we do? We love that question. What could we do to to help them? And I think um if we go to the MPS report and and give them funding sources in our annual capital uh in these we call buckets. We used to do this and then uh that process uh because there was no trust of that maintenance process. It was scaled back to we'll do this once a year. Once a year we would dole out um money and it had to be towards a specific broken issue and if it
147broke the next day um it was not allocated within that capital. um this is not sustainable. And so for a lot of our our plumbing situations, um you can get to a school and have two different um kind of plumbing systems on one site. One has parts available, one doesn't have parts available. Um but you have one plumber who handles from Dutk High School to Pinywoods and another one who handles Dutk Middle School to Seven Oaks. and every day they're getting beat up on because they're not getting all of it done. So what I ask is that give them the trust and the flexibility to fund these buckets and as the problems arise they have the funding and the ability to address these issues as they present themselves uh with with health and safety and
148security, building envelope, mechanical, electrical and plumbing, site conditions and interiors. and you can audit our work as we spend from the buckets that you allocate, audit us. We or we will present it every month to show you the work that we're doing. Um, but to think that we can micromanage it from this table will never get ahead of the game. And so the way we see facility maintenance, uh, we're blessed that we have a referendum right now. Uh, our referendum allows us to do reconditioning and um, and renovations. that allows us to get ahead of this. And so you'll see in the next uh presentation from Jay and Franny, an opportunity to fill these buckets up with bond and 8% funding. And by filling these buckets up, uh we can give them that flexibility to
149fix these things, repair these things. Some of these systems just need to be replaced uh and not patched up anymore. So um consider facility maintenance funding in two different parts. One bond referendum that will have the defined new construction from the bond question and the defined renovations and reconditioning as outlined. Those sites are outlined in the bond question. For the matters that are not in the bond question, you will still have uh the buckets of of funding for each one of these categories. And then uh based on our 8% uh position uh you would have special projects that would come to this body every year. The special projects we have that time to have that annual discussion about um uh uh do we move forward with those the prioritization but we need a more a
150a a faster more efficient way to address the ongoing maintenance. We want to one day get to the point where our maintenance is like the May Tag repair man where they they're just doing preventative maintenance, but right now um they have an impossible job and I we're trying to support them. We're trying to encourage them and uplift them uh to let them know that um help is on the way. So, um we heard from uh the board about uh its uh positionality. Nobody might have any questions, but I figured since we were sort of switching to something else, I just wanted to make sure nobody had questions about the first part. Miss Huddle. >> Yeah. Um I guess I'm and I might need um Miss Tucker to weigh in, but I'm kind of confused that
151we're talking about maintenance in the same words as capital. Um like capital, correct me if I'm wrong, can't be used to fix a plumbing issue at a school. It could be used to refurbish the whole Am I right? So, our $15 million our annual spring issuance is our essentially our our truly our our maintenance budget. We don't have that within our operations budget. We use that $15 million to outline all of the um repairs and reconditioning of the schools as far as the facilities reconditioning goes. >> I get recond but are I mean accounting wise are you allowed let's just be if I got >> not just a quick toilet fix but like if there's an issue in the bathroom. >> So what are what are the the highle rules of capital because usually it's
152a dollar amount and a and a useful life right? So, it's a a useful life over a year. Um, and it depends on which funds we use, too. If we're using federal funds, there's different there's different rules, but typically anything over a year useful life. And we have a a dollar threshold as well. So, $500 for the amount the item we're putting that in an inventory. So, >> okay. So, the 8% money, the capital, it those items need to be individual items over $800 and a useful life of greater than one year. >> Correct. >> Okay. Um, so I guess and and you know you guys get the bills and everything for this. So I guess I'm trying to understand why changing the categories will allow these to get addressed faster. How how does that
153>> If I can just finish the slide, I promise you. >> I thought we were >> No, we we were not. Yeah. >> No, you're fine. I'm I'm just uh it looks like a transitionary slide. It's the same presentation. No. Yeah. Um so what what you have here and and I think it's a it's a good piece. What we're doing is patching, right? And what we need to be doing is replacing the these are substantial life uh uh life going to be way beyond one year. Um when we think about let's take Dutk High School for example um that's no longer the new building right and so uh when we look at um where we're getting the most report from surprising enough you'll see that um I think Spring Hill and Dutch Fork High School
154and Valentine Elementary these are schools that are presenting the most uh high school they're presenting the the the most issues and why are they presenting the most issues issues. These are substantial issues that need to be changed. And I think uh so um here's how we would break down that proposed capital to address it. And I think if you look at these, you can see why they're over $800 and why they're uh a substantial uh life of that is past a year. Uh so uh with our 8% we do every year we do technology. We're increasing the technology this year. uh putting a little bit more towards security um uh and our um data center uh as we look at uh precautions that we want to take for data security in our security infrastructure. Uh
155if you look at transportation um we are having uh it's it's amazing you know we talk about the number of students but the activity level has increased um and so we we have a lot of requests for for for for travel um and athletics and so that has increased and then special projects um we talked about uh Chapen transportation bus depot the incub inclusive and middle school athletic fields. Uh replacement of the school boards at Chapen High School, Dut for Fork High School and Armo High School and press boxes for Dutk High School and Armo High School. So when you put all that together, uh if you go back to the category buckets in the gray, you see the bond referendum issuance. Um Miss Hower will come forth at the next part and talk about
156the hundred million that we want to issue for bond referendum. uh and that would be for uh new condi uh new construction and reconditioning. If you look at the uh projects by category, those bucket categories that we would do for reconditioning and renovations, you see $10 million uh projected for health, safety, and security. $5 million to address the building envelope, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. That's $8.5 million out of the bond money. Site improvements will be $9 million out of bond and interior and furnitureures would be uh seven million. To get a a better detail of uh how we address that, these are the areas in which uh they would go into for for those matters to address those things uh within the bond. Now on the other side of that you see maintenance u
157and again these are items that are not included in the bond referendum. The bond referendum is sight specific. So if you go on the other side of that you see under the maintenance column um what we're doing for health and safety health safety and security for nonbond related is about 300,000 150,000 for building envelope uh MEP uh will be uh over half a million site conditions 200,000 interiors 150,000 so we have a we're very fortunate um with the referendum we put a lot of money to addressing those things. To think that 11 million is going to cover all those things in the NPS report is a fallacy. So, I'm excited that we we have referendum funds um to be able to to address that. What that does is when we look at technology, you see
158the 4.2 there, transportation, and then what we call special projects. So that's a total of um everything uh in white is a total of 24 million. We're going to talk about that bond issuance there. And then in gray you have the 3 uh $39.5 million uh that's a part of the hund00 million issuance for the bond referendum. So, um, again, uh, the revenue that will, uh, and, and this kind of is a segue into Franny's presentation, but Heather, uh, we typically have 15 million plus an additional 8 million of 8% capacity, a 9 million of 8% capacity plus the 100 um, uh, million dollars for referendum debt, which gives us a total of 124 U million dollars uh for for these. So uh this is the uh kind of breakdown of of what that would
159address. But uh essentially uh because of the the conditionality of these facilities, a lot of this is replacing of these systems uh as outlined in the in the categories given to us by NPS. So we feel like this is a uh a a more structured, more efficient way to address uh funding our capital improvement. Um and we're we're just very blessed to have the the referendum funds to to to address a lot of these replacements. >> Thank you. Do we have any questions, Mrs. Satderfield? >> I I really have a comment. Uh, you know, somebody once told me that it's hard to talk your way out of something you behaved yourself into. And uh, this is where we are. I mean, if you look at the NPS report, I mean, look at all the the
160the number twos on there. I mean, look at the number twos and threes. We don't have very many blues on there. And the reason is is we continue to try to scratch and claw instead of making these these improvements when they need to be made and being more proactive. So I like the idea. U I my concern is will we ever be able to kind of catch up because you're taking a building that replace or improve within two to three years and you're going to do what we can. We're going to make it look a little bit better and try to fix and repair things, but it's still a school that's quite aged. And if any of you have been in this district as long as I have, I remember when most of these schools
161are brand new, opening up. Um, and I made the comment, I know you brought up High School. Um, I'm so excited about this new addition to Irma High School, but I'm going to tell you, walk in the back of the school, walk down the back hall, walk into the gym, walk in the other stairwells. There are areas that just it's just going to be like when I say I don't want to put lipstick on a pig. I mean that. I want that student that high school to be a place where students and teachers are proud to be. Every one of our schools should be that. there should be a place for the that that they're proud to be part of and be part of that school. And um I again I'm all in favor of
162being proactive and not reactive. So I'm I'm hoping that this action or this decision that the board does make puts us in a better situation for the for future boards when they're trying to um fix and repair some of these facilities. >> Mr. Bum >> just a few briefly with our maintenance staff I don't know Dr. Ross or Mr. Knuts when they are putting in work orders um do they have to come back to the maintenance office to sit at a table and do that? >> Um thank you for asking that. I I think one of the reasons that I need Allan to to really be able to focus is the only people who can update this there no second there's no assistance is the maintenance people. So once the plumber responds to a spot
163um he goes back to his truck and he clears the work order and I think people see that person and they say what are you working on? You need to you go fix this water fountain over here. So what they typically is they just work. They're trying to work, but they're also trying to update the system so that we can report out transparently what's happening. Uh so the same people who do the work have to go clear that ticket >> and but it's a manual. They do they have a tablet, a Chromebook, a desktop? I mean, >> I'll let Alan talk about it. >> So they they have several ways of inputting the data. It could be a phone, an iPad, or or a laptop. So, um there's m multiple ways for them to do
164that. And um you know, and this just keep in mind that the work order the information that comes through um ML um the work order system per se that does not capture all of the work because we get emails, text messages, phone calls, hey, this is stat or something. you know, somebody may not want to maybe they don't want to put the work order in and we're trying to deploy people, you know, um or reworking some of the technicians to go to those sites. >> So, I guess with people in the field, if there's ever an opportunity that, you know, y'all come upon that we can streamline that process, working with, you know, corporations and so on and so forth to make it go faster from y'all's perspective, whether it's a application, it's a device,
165if that would help speed it speed it up. I mean, >> and and and we are looking at that. So, we're I think our we're at the end of our fiveyear cycle with the current workhor system, and there there's several of them, but um and I've done several build work order builds throughout my career. Um they can all pretty much do the same thing. They all may have their little spin or flavor to it. Uh but, you know, all of them, you know, as long as you set them up the right way, they can handle whatever task. And then with technology um with the iPads and all that and the and the phones being wireless, it's um most of them have some sort of interface that they can go to and uh we just want
166to make it real simple um like click a button and then they can have um select a predetermined response and then populate their information. >> Thank you. And then Miss Tucker or Dr. G Ros help. So from the budget workshop, I know the figures may vary, but you know, the past couple years when we do our, you know, bond in the spring and sometimes in the fall, if there's remaining money from projects that are not completed, say it's, I don't know, 30, 40 million, I don't know the exact amount, could we not look at hiring a crew to come in in the summer and just knock everything out? >> That's one of the things that we talked about within our fiveyear cycle. So that's a good point. We are lining our strategic plan up with
167our capital plan and uh since la next year is the end we bring all of those five years forward and we can decide at that year what do we what we do with those. I think one of our realities is the timeline issue. Um there's a time to work and there's a time where we can't work. Um, and so when you're doing roofing or major plumbing issues or HVAC issues, we try to find long weekends, summers, breaks to do those because it's very disruptive to the um, so when you uh, so you'll see some of these projects, they're encumbered. Um, we issue the debt in the spring. Um, you'll hear from Franny about how that money comes in, but by the time we go out for bid, summer's over with. We got to wait till
168the next summer. I will say that um you know our two issues maintenance-wise are HVAC and plumbing. That's our that's our largest issues. Um you can see the staff that we have to address it but a lot of that work is happening now and uh so a credit to them. I think Valentine Elementary School uh I think we replaced all those aging HVAC items there. So I think with the while we look at capital a lot of this is just replacement of large systems and then the next is just going to be a huge push on plumbing systems. I can tell you that fork uh especially high school there's a lot of plumbing issues that we just we can't repair anymore. So, um, we we when we say knock it out, it is getting this
169the the the funding, prioritizing it so that we have the agility to hit things that we just didn't know about. And I think that's what the flexibility that the maintenance partner is asking for. >> Well, more referring to the everyday tasks that are, you know, kind of clogging up the system. So, painting the sign at the school, there's a couple that need it. you know, fixing door handles. There's just I know that list grows, you know, every day. So, just kind of coming in and getting us back on track, maybe. I mean, >> yeah. And I I appreciate you you've uh last year you approved two PM system, two PM groups. They're not assigned to any um any any campus and uh they we have one on one end of the district, one and that's
170kind of what they do. So while the the they help with a lot of Alan if you want to speak to kind of what they're doing. Um this is probably the most cost effective way we can do these. Um you can speak. >> So so right now we we have our our PM group and internally we call it the strike team where they just go in there and they just um kind of you go go gang busters in a sense um you know at a facility. Um, one of the things that was completed just recently was a lot of ceiling grid and lights. Um, um, they had to, I guess, change out a bunch of light bulbs over at Crossroads Intermediate. Um, and I had a chance to go take a look at that today
171actually. And, um, it looks fantastic. You know, is everything perfect in there? It's not perfect, but we we've made a lot of a lot of major strides. And by, you know, getting the lights functional, getting operational, it looks it's brighter. It's it's cleaner, has a cleaner look to it. Getting rid of all the the stained ceiling tiles. It it it goes a long way um in keeping our schools looking good and keeping everything healthy. >> Miss Huddle. Um so one question the you guys approved a budget calendar um last meeting and I'm assuming that was the operation oper operating budget whereas this is the capital. So will there be two readings on this? >> So we intend to do the readings in this on the capital budget in conjunction with the bond referendum or the
172um the resolution for the debt um readings to go in conjunction. So there'll be two readings and once the capital budget's passed, we'll input that into the resolution for the the day. >> Um so just um one request um which I know I'm just one board member. Um I understand you guys kind of want you have a lump there for the special projects, but $17.9 million is a lot of money. Can you guys estimate what those four buckets are? How you came up with the 17.9 million? Um that would be helpful. I was also curious um and this is a question for Mr. KN. I think my understanding is that um there's a life cycle to roofs and you know I feel like Allan Iverson in practice because for some reason tonight I'm talking about
173roofs but anyway um is that true? And if so um what's that range on the district buildings? So there's a life cycle for everything. You know, I know Dr. Ross was talking about plumbing. You know, most of our plumbing, I think um at most of the facilities I've been able to work at, after about uh 40 years, you're going to start having major failures of of plumbing. Uh with the roofing systems, typically you have a 20 30 year um warranty on roof. Um yeah, I'm not a roofing expert. Uh, but I know a lot of good roofing people that I've been able to uh rely on in the past. But, uh, you know, typically you you you want to keep it around the warranty period. Um, you know, the way that I think the district
174approached roofs when I first got to the district was they would do one roof a year, just one roof. So whether you know, yeah, they may address one roof, but you may have five other places that have leaks. And the the goal was to basically, you know, stop the bleeding with with all the leaks in in, you know, within the district and then start um looking at it in a different approach to where you're doing sections of roofs that that need that attention. >> Okay. Because um I guess the reason I was asking is because of what you what you really said is like you know the homeowner if you have 25 year shingles usually around 25 years we're like I don't want to wait till it actually leaks because that's when it gets really
175nasty and expensive. I want to go ahead and replace it. So that's essentially what you're saying we ought to be doing too is when the warranty is up we ought to be replacing or or replacing in sections. >> You can replace sections. You can look at reconditioning. There there's several things that you can look at and we're we're entertaining that. Now, I know we we had I think some um we have some capital signed for some roofs when I first got here, but that's not enough money to cover both roofs. So, um you know, but we can get at least a roof reconditioned or restored. And that that's the new approach um that a lot of places are are um moving towards. I think when you look at holistically, you look at the entire district
176and what it takes to maintain this. I know it sent Dr. some information. It's white paper information, some that I gathered when I first got here and then some that's just recent. And it just goes into how much it costs per square foot to, you know, to to maintain it. And, you know, for this district right here, it's it's a lot more than we're getting in capital. It is a lot more just to just to keep things running because you have these assets. You don't want them to fail. So, you have to invest those funds back into the district. Um maybe one day we'll we'll be able to show that. But there there's a lot of information out there throughout the throughout the country. You have some that are low as low as $5 per
177square foot a year to maintain the facility and then some are I think um up in New York it's I don't know maybe $100 a square foot. It's something crazy. >> Well, the reason I asked is because I also like the rest of us you we hear from people parents and teachers when the roofs are leaking. Yeah. You know, so I'm wondering is is 150 because the roof would come under building envelope, right? >> Ma'am, >> the building on the building envelope category is where roof roof refurbishment and replacement would come, right? >> That's where we would want under building envelope. >> Okay. So if if if you take all of our roofs that are at the end of their warranty is and and and and if we wanted to replace those because they're at
178the end of their warranty, is that enough money? >> I I don't have that information. You know, I know we have a book about Yay Thick has a bunch of information about warranties. I'm not sure what what we have. >> Well, I I'll just put it out there. I mean, I I'm concerned if we're going to spend this much money and we have roofs that are at the end of their useful life. I hope we're we're looking at that. Um, another question I had is actually probably for Miss Tucker, so I'll quit talking about roofs. um if you take out the bond the bond referendum and you go back se several years not this particular year because I know it's you know the the 2526 we haven't we're not at the end but how much
179money is still left that hasn't either been spent or had a purchase order I think that's how you guys encumber how how many millions have we not p actually spent or encumbered So that's one of the things I really looked at when I came into this job because there was capital funds that had money left over. And so we've been actively trying to spend down those old capital funds because we would love to be able to come to the board with the new strategic plan and say this is what's left and this is what we want to give back to the board to reallocate. Um so if you go back and look um FY21 um is the first year that there's really decent money left. There's a few thousand dollars in some previous funds, but
180there's about $400,000 in 21 and 22 um or 600,000 in 22. Um the majority of that is just interest we've earned on the money that was kind of sitting there. And so a lot of that um same for FY23. There's $3 million left in that fund and that is all interesting as that fund was sitting there. So that money is essentially sitting in a fund and we have finish the majority of those projects. So, we would have to come back to the board and say, "What would you like to do with this money?" Um, and for 24 and 25, there's another I think 24 has 8.5 million in it. About three and a half of that is contingency, but there are two big projects left in 24 that are roofs. I know Allan and I
181have talked about this. I think there's 2.5 each for two different roofs in that capital budget. Um, that's not enough to completely rip off the roofs, but it's enough to do some reconditioning. And Alan, correct me if I'm wrong. I we've had this conversation before in that that budget. So, those are projects that are still in kind of in the pipeline. Um, but there's probably around $20 million. Um, and again, some of that is projects that are in the pipeline but not necessarily encumbered yet, like those two roofs, that's about 5 million of that. Um, and then some of that is contingency that since we don't have projects remaining in those capital budgets, we would have to come back to the board and say, "This is how much money is left. what would you like
182for us to do with it? >> Thank you. And one last question. I was looking at the middle school fields and it occurred to me because I've had two parents ask me this. Um the new middle schools that are being created, Crossroads, which is now going to be Crossroads Middle and the old Well, we've got two middle schools in Chapen now. Anyway, the question I was asked is, are those kids going to at all at every single middle school, are we going to have all of our athletic programs for kids to participate in for 2627? >> Uh, no, we're not ready for 2627. uh we have to and we hope that in this budget we can get the uh supplements done with the supplement study to have the coaches set up uh so that we'll
183be in place for the 2728 school year. >> So just to follow up on that does that so let's take Crossroads Middle is that will those kids not be able to participate at all or will they be able to participate at either Irma Middle or Dutch Fort Middle? >> Yes. So right now what they'll do is they're basically staying in their same system. So, um the right now all the students are at one school participating for the same number of slots. They'll be at two different sites competing for the same number of slots. What we're going to ask is that uh the board this year expand those slots and then for the next year it'll be more opportunities for the participate. So, I think there's two things that we have to to do. One is
184out the fields for them to practice on. Uh because if you talk to the high school ads, there's barely enough room for the high schoolers to participate in those those fields. I know we talk about um you know, baseball, and I'll just pick on Dutch for example, just not a place to for baseball to practice uh at that site. So, we're trying to uh build the space for the middle schools to have their individual and then put the staffing in this year's budget. So, right now it's the same number of slots or spots that we have for the current year is what we'll be in for next year. >> And in Chapen is which school will have the on-site athletics will be the Spring Hill or >> Great question. So, according to the high school
185league, the member school uh is um is Chapen Middle. So, you you have to be a member of the high school league. Uh we'll be working on the applications for Spring Hill Middle and Crossroads Middle, but they're not they're not members yet. So, if you play for um if you remember that flowchart, you're going to follow your color. If you're green, you're at the Dutch Folk High program. If you're yellow, you're at the Hermal High program. If you're blue, you're at the Chapen High program. And then you'll play for Chapen Middle C team, uh Dutch Fork Middle C team, and then I middle C team. And that's important because right now your ads from varsity uh down to B team are all feeding in that level. Once we get the supplements right and then we
186can establish Spring Hill and Crossroads Middle as their own independent members, then we can staff those and have the fields where they could participate. So, our goal is to get more kids participating. Um, you know, and and and this this push us in this special project uh closer to that aim. >> Yeah. Real quickly, I won't take a bunch of time. Um, my understanding and just confirm the the methodology that you're recommending here. Um, It provides us the ability to basically streamline our processes so that we can operate more efficiently and enhance our ability to address those maintenance issues so that we can avoid hopefully uh or at least decrease our death by a thousand cuts that we've had in in the past. Uh I have no doubt that Part of the reason, if not
187most of the reason for why we are where we are today is probably due to inefficiencies of previous boards in fact or or administrations. And so to the extent that we can streamline and become more efficient, I do applaud you um Mr. Knots uh and Miss Tucker and Dr. Ross for for looking ways to to be more efficient. um and to operate more efficiently. So, um I appreciate the information and thank you. >> Thank you. Anybody else? >> All right, that moves us to number 16, discussion of the bond resolutions. >> All right, now that we have the the why, the how come. So, uh we have uh James Glover and Miss Franny Hower. Oh, I'm sorry. our CFO, Miss Tucker. >> Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Um, like Ros said, we
188have Jay Glover on the phone with PFM. Um, he is our financial adviser and Mr. Greenhouser is here, um, our, uh, bond attorney. Um, so we have before you uh, two resolutions for the 2026 series A and series B general obligation bonds. Um, obviously these will follow what the board approves as far as the capital budget, but we have set that they would not exceed hund00 million. Um that would be the second draw of our um of our bond referendum. Um last year we took out $60 million. We have spent 11 and encumbered about 35 of that. And we expect this next year to really ramp up as we get into the meat of those construction projects. And so want to do $100 million of referendum debt and then $24 million is what's in the
189proposed capital budget, which would be the series B um general obligation bond that we would put out for um essentially a competitive bid. Um take the lowest true interest cost of those um respondents. But um that's what we have for you. I'm standing for any questions. >> Um what's the term on each of the bonds? >> All right. Turn it over to Jay. >> Would you like me to address that? >> Yes, please. >> Uh good evening, uh chair, school board members, Dr. Ross. Apologize in advance for my voice. I am feeling a little bit under the weather but appreciate the opportunity to uh be here virtually. Uh the series 2026A which is the referendum debt will have the same final maturity as the first issuance that we had which would be uh March 1
190of 2045 which is your fiscal year 45. So the initial issuance we did was for 20 years and now this one will be you know one year less than that is the proposed final maturity. Um, and then the the 8% debt will be similar to prior deals. It will have a one-year maturity. So, it will be paid off on March 1 of 2027 and and still within the, you know, the 69 and.5 mil levy that that the district has targeted in in prior years. >> Thank you, Jay. >> Mr. If we've um thought through, I'm sure you have, how the changes at the state house are going to affect payback of all of this, anything from income tax reductions to votes to homestead exemptions. Is any of that factored in? >> So, we're following what's
191going on in the state house. Um but with the one year, we essentially will ensure that our tax collections for next year will be able to pay that back. Um and then for the longer term bonds, obviously, we we will be following that. but our millage rate calculations and I don't know if you remember um back when the bond referendum was out for um essential consideration there was kind of a bar chart that had our current millage rate and where we were and the payback of our bonds and so Jay makes sure that all of our calculations keep keep us um on track to to make sure that we pay those back um given the current economic conditions. >> Anybody else? >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, J. >> All right, that
192moves us to the discussion of the 2627 House general budget proposal. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'll be brief. Just wanted to, you know, the South Carolina House pass and this is just the House version. We have 15.4 four billion dollar spending proposal. Uh this came in on March 10th. Um it does uh to Mr. Boehner's point talk about the tax relief uh the the money that's for infrastructure uh oversight to the South Carolina High School League. Uh but things that um we're looking at is um the funds the you know does this come in to buy the defiills? Um looking at Alyssa's laws impact about the requirements for the safety equipment. So, we're looking at that. But I highlighted a 2% raise for all state employees. So, that's our bus
193drivers and a proposed minimum uh salary floor for for new teachers. Um, as we look at the priorities, we're trying to address the cost of living for our staff uh and our teachers. you look at our, you know, teacher pay raise has been the number one thing that has been our our issue about 11th in the state in the average teacher salary right now. Um, these two lines represent seven years ago if you look at uh the blue line which is the D5 teacher pay scale. You're looking at the minimum pay to the maximum pay. So uh that slope is just two points. The minimum pay to the maximum pay. And then the red scale is the state um minimum teacher the state teacher pay scale the state minimum to the maximum. So you can
194see we're closer at minimum we get further away at the at the maximum. Now when the state um this is where we are this year, right? You can see the the difference between um those slopes as they kind of narrow in. Uh but um there has been a significant push over seven years to increase uh the state's minimum pay scale and so we move up. Now the closer the lines are, the more funding we will get. The further the lines are away from each other, the less funing we have. So when there's a discussion that we're going to give every teacher $2,000, if that red line doesn't cross that blue line, we're not getting the $2,000. So you see that really only affects us at the lower end of that pay scale. So again, there's
195an assumption that a $2,000 check arrives to Miss Tucker and we just dole that out in our that is not the case. It is just on the impacts of where that red line is to push the the blue line. And so if the red line does not touch the blue line, there is no those funds are not there. This is kind of confusing, but I wanted to show the the the two different school years at once uh with the four different pay scales. So you're looking seven years ago uh where the red line is and seven years um and today where the red line is uh just how much that that line has increased uh over time and then the blue line is district 5's minimum and maximum how long how much that has uh
196been pushed up over time. So when you look at the percent change in teacher pay uh in district five from our minimums our our minimums we went from 343 uh to 50,900 as a 48% increase in the minimum teacher pay. The state did a 51% increase. Um but our staff um basically went up a $144 cents an hour which is which 12%. So, our goal uh this year is to really focus on um we want again we're going to do as much as we can for teachers and I I want that to be very clear. Uh but that support staff uh I just really want us to pay attention uh to a $144 over seven years is just not going to cut it for these uh for the staff. So, um, that's our budget, uh,
197that we're we're looking at. We just wanted to just share that, give the data where we were, uh, the progress we made over the seven years, last seven years. Um, but address cost of living crisis, support staff, supplemental pay, certified teachers, which are our teachers, uh, the associates degree pathway. Uh, continue with those tier 2 academic interventions. They're working. We appreciate that. and um increase our supervision. We see discipline down with expectation coaches and um and be robust as we saw in the capital with our cyber security monitoring. So again, next steps is our budget calendar. Uh we bring back with a budget book and discussion uh workshop on April the 20th. um we prioritize and have that um that first reading of our capital resolution and then the following uh will be first reading
198on the actual budget with June 8th uh being our public hearing. >> Do we have any questions? Mr. Satderfield. >> Again, I have a comment more than a question, but um well, I do have a question I think for Miss Tucker with regards to health care cost. Um the health care increase percentage-wise, was it a was it a base cost increase or was it percentage-wise? In other words, were our support folks getting paid even less because of the rise in the health care costs? >> Yes. >> And right now they're at below poverty level. A lot of them. Thank you, >> Miss Huddle. >> Um Dr. Ross, on that slide that you had that had the different positions on it, I was just curious that one. Yes. Where would um the typical teacher assistant fall
199on this? >> A good point. Um what we took is the lowest which is a class six. So a teacher assistant Dr. Turner don't let me lie but I think would be a class eight. I think six is our lowest which is the these are the um food service workers on the front line. Class seven would be our >> okay bus drivers and then class eight is your your your teacher assistant. Um and then there is another level above that for special ed assistant. They are on scale. >> Would would the trend be similar you think? >> Yes. So when we look at it um class seven is your custodian, class six is your food service u food service nutrition. Class seven is your um uh custodian and then class eight is your um uh
200teacher assistant. And so what we were trying to do is is as you can remember and I can I can tell you exactly why you're right. Uh you remember when we had a request to increase subpay and as we started to increase subpay, we were outpacing our teacher assistants per hour. And so that was a a big toggle that you could make more being a sub than you could from the district being a teacher assistant. So um there's no no funding piece. all of the funding comes in as a as the 11.2 um per teacher from the state and so we have to pick this up on local and so uh but when you look at a small percentage of a small number it just it just gets eaten up by right now a take
201a gas or a bag of groceries. So um that's that's the the focus that I think we we would look at. We have proposal. Um, again, that's on the operation side, uh, which we're we're trying to figure out. You know, we have some impacts. Like you said, um, the the we felt we heard that Lexon County alone with the with the boat piece, we'll lose over the next three years about $9 million. Uh, so we know that there's some local impact issues coming. Um but but we we're really trying to make a a huge dent into into staff. Um but their percent increase is nowhere near what we've done for the other categories. Anybody else? All right. That takes us to number 18, discussion of the Chromebook committee. Miss Huddle, >> I know everybody's tired,
202so I'll be brief. Um We had our our first meeting on March 17th. The committee is comprised of board members um Miss Snipes, Mr. Bayum, Mr. Scoly, and Mr. Herring. Although Mr. Herring um was unable to make that particular meeting, my understanding is that committees are always open to board members. So, if anybody changes their mind and wants to join um we can do that. We um we asked um the administration for some information that they're pulling together as far as what is the state required for testing on computers. What kind of training is provided to teachers and to parents on Chromebooks? Um do we have any data um studies on Chromebook usage and how it impacts academics, that kind of thing. Once we uh and we've got spring break coming up, but once we
203get that that information back, I'll poll everybody and um and we'll we'll do the next meeting and I'll send out a draft agenda. And this is supposed to be very collaborative and again this is not a decision makingaking committee. The committee is just looking at the issues and um we will make re we did look at the policies too. I don't want to ignore that. Um but any um recommendations and data that the committee gathers will be referred to the full board at the appropriate time and it may take a few meetings to get there but this is not going to go on forever. Thank you. Anybody else? Do I have a motion to adjurnn? >> I move we adjourn. Second in >> favor and the motion carries seven to zero. Y'all have a good
204night.