001It's 4:30. I would like to call to order the meeting of the board of trustees for school district 5 of Lexon and Richland counties. School district 5 of Lexon Richland counties has complied with the requirements of the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act and notifying the meeting and the public of this evening's meeting. The agenda has not been amended within a 24-hour minimum notice period. Pursuant to board policy BD, the superintendent will preside and act as temporary chair at the meeting until such a time as the chair is elected. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? >> I make a motion that we approve the agenda. >> Second. >> All in favor? That passes 6. Do have a motion to enter executive session. >> I move that we enter executive session to consider
002the following. Selected employment items exhibit A. Action. Selected employment items. Exhibit B information only. Contractual matter regarding classroom walls. Harbison West Elementary School and Nursery Road Elementary School. Exhibit C. Contractual matter regarding the administrative and professional development building district office, exhibit D. Contractual matter regarding the purchase of property, exhibit E. Contractual matter regarding Chapen High School Eagle Booster Club, exhibit F. And legal advice regarding KEC-e parent complaint form regarding district issued Chromebooks in K through five, exhibit J. >> Motion properly second. Any discussion? All in favor that passes 6. At this time we are dismissed to executive session. It is 5:42. Do I have a motion to exit executive session and enter the finance 101 workshop? >> I move that we exit executive session and convene convene our finance 101 workshop. Second. Any discussion? All
003in favor? That passes unanimously. All right. At this time, I would like to call to order our 530, I know it's 5:42 uh workshop, our finance 101 workshop. And I want to thank coming back again for part two of our finance 101, Missy Campbell of Spartansburg 7, our CFO, also an esteemed member of SCASBO, which is a state organization of school business officials. Uh we are in the presence of a very knowledgeable uh expert in school finance and as we deal with budgeting, state aid classrooms, and EFA, we're in good hands uh with our presentation. So, at this time, I give the floor to Missy Campbell. >> Um, thank you, sir. Um, it is good to be with y'all again. Let me go ahead and apologize for sitting as opposed to standing. I normally always
004like to stand because I can get kind of animated, but um I'm acting um older than I should and apparently moved around too much. So, my back has not been cooperating with me for the last couple of days. Um, so I reached out to him today and I said I didn't want to miss the opportunity because it always feels nice to sit in that seat warmer that makes the back feel better. Um, but I do apologize for sitting. Um, but I wanted to be here with you and I knew that was the best way I could deliver. So apologize for that. Um, so remember last time we met, we talked about a lot of information and we did a deep dive on a lot of different funds and funding sources and we needed to get
005that foundation out of the way before we move towards um, budgeting. And I told you last time budgeting is my favorite thing to talk about um, but I'll try to contain myself um, to my hour. Um, but we're also going to talk about debt, different types of debt instruments and debt management. And then we'll talk about a few um, best practices and really best practices. That's really, you know, that's been overlaid in a lot of what the conversations that we've had so far. Um, so to begin with, um, when we think about building a budget, the first thing I always say, and let me also say this, I'm really focused on general fund at this point. I mean, we build all different kinds of budgets, but the one that gets a lot of attention obviously
006is the general fund budget. So, that's sort of the the best practices that we're going to talk about related to that. So on building a budget, the one of the things when I when I teach others about budgets is it really should reflect your goals, your values, and your priorities in your district. The numbers really just tell a story. Um for my district, um we we believe in class size and and you can tell that in the amount of money that we spend for FTEES, um for our salary and our benefits for our people. So, you know, if my budget were to tell a story, it would be that we believe first and foremost to get the most qualified teacher in that classroom and have the least possible students um with that teacher. So, um
007a budget can also be a tool for monitoring your results. You know, when I when I look at a budget, I've usually got about three years open at any given time. So, this past year, I mean, this past month, I started looking at how did we finish the prior year. So, how did we finish for 24 25? What lessons can I learn from that to see how we're doing in 25 26 and my brain's already started moving to 26 27. So I've sort of got three fiscal years and I'm looking at data now to see you know how we did. When you think about it, you'll start a budget process in January if you haven't even if your finance staff hasn't even already started thinking about it and you're trying to decide in January of
0082026 how your assumptions will pan out June 30th, 2027. So, it's at least an 18 to 20 monthth window that you're you're trying to look at. So, um it's important to remember it's just a projection. you know, we we don't know all the pieces of the puzzle and sometimes it takes us months, if not a year, to understand all those pieces. Um, I said earlier, it should align to your goals and it should be reviewed monthly. I tell my board, our budget is a living, breathing, working document. It's not something that you build and you get to sit on a shelf. I wish that would make it a lot easier. But we spend a tremendous amount of time, you know, the when the first payroll hits, I'm already looking at, you know, salaries and benefits
009and see how did how did what we thought would happen once those get encumbered for the rest of the year, you know, what were our assumptions and did they work. So again, the budget is really just a plan for your fiscal year and and for what your goals and your priorities should be. School budgets are driven primarily by allocation formula. And what do I mean by that? So you have a staffing standard. So for my district, um you know, we may have 18 to one. Our goal is to have 18 students to one teacher in a first grade class. Um sometimes we may have classroom assistants that go in with that even in first grade. But we start off with that staffing standard because you'll hear me say this over and over and over again.
010It >> No, no, you're fine. Um, you'll hear me say over and over again, salaries and benefits are 85 to 90 85 to 90% of our budget. So, it's like I told somebody the other day, you know, 85 to 90, that's B and an A. That's B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B plus level A A level. So, if I can get 85 to 90% of the budget right, then I've almost got an A in, you know, and we're doing pretty good. So, you know, the allocation formula that you would have, you'll have your staffing standards. So, that's a big component of your budget. The other thing that you're going to have and most school districts have is a like a
011school supply budget. You know, things for the schools where it's classroom supplies and materials. It could be nurse supplies and materials, guidance counselor supplies and materials, but those dollars that are coming from the general fund that support what's going on in those schools. And they're usually driven by the number of students enrolled. So, it might be you might do $75 a child for the number of kids that are enrolled in in in that school and in that grade level. Um, those are the two biggest pieces of the puzzle when we think about how do we allocate when you look at all your big dollars in the general fund, how are you getting that down to the school level. The other thing, the second part is contractual obligations. So, you know, the state provides some SRO's,
012you may have SRO's um above and beyond that. that. So you've got the contractual obligations um in my instance with city of Spartanberg, with county of Spartanberg. Um your utilities are contractual obligations. So your power bill, your water bill, any type of fees, that's another big component. So you got to figure out your staffing, you got to figure out those dollars going to the classroom, but you also need to look at what are the contractual obligations that you have in place. Some school districts have um contract maintenance or contract custodial. So those things need to be built into the budget before you go too far. The other thing would be district-wide policies and practices. So your fund balance policy would be one thing that's important to you during the budget process. You've got a district
013policy on fund balance. And if your goal is to not go below that, then that's got to be an important component that you're keeping in the back of your mind as you're building the budget. Are we going to as a result of the budget, are we going to stay within that board policy? are we going to have to suspend that board policy? You know, how does that impact um how we build the budget? And then the last thing um when you really talk about the dollars going to the school level would be school-based initiatives. Now, what do I mean by that? So, we have our formula that says this is the amount of money that's going to a school based on their enrollment. But sometimes you have things that that don't have anything to do
014with enrollment. If you have a school that is an international balorate school, there are things that you have to do for that school and put budgets in place so that they can have the required staff, pay the required dues and fees. Um, you could have other initiatives like a school for the arts and you might have an arts grant, but that doesn't necessarily support it in total. So, the fourth prong of that really becomes past your staffing formulas, past your contractual, past any board policies or procedures. then what are the things that are school-based initiatives that we need to make sure that we build into the budget. So, I tried to give you a snapshot of of just good general best budgeting practices and um the I guess the overarching framework of this comes not
015necessarily this isn't Missy Campbell's opinion although I I subscribe to it but this comes from Government Finance Officers Association and you're going to hear me talk about that group again when we get to um fund balance. So, GFOA is you know absence of authoritative literature. That's the place that we go for best practices. And this is just an overview of what they believe to be best practices in bu building a budget. And I already talked about the first bullet. It says you got to review what happened in the prior year. I've got to know how I did based on assumptions of last year before I can know um how I need to build next year. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail. You got to plan and prepare. And a lot
016of this is starting um in either in December or in January or February, talking to your schools, talking to your division leaders, talking to the board, and finding out what are everyone's goals and objectives and priorities um with the upcoming budget. It's that information gathering. Now, there's multiple ways that you can gather that. Some of it's formally, some of it's informally. Um, I started something a couple of years ago where we really took our goals for the district. We had four focus areas that we were very um particular about that we thought would move the needle on student achievement. And um, superintendent and I talked about let's base the budget on that. If these four focus areas are that critical and so much time and and study went into that, then let's build the budget
017on that. So, as we met with department heads, as we met with school principles, I gave them a template and okay, as you begin to put your budgets together and what you know what your asks are, think about it in terms of the four. So, when they actually filled out their budget request, there was a drop-own box and you had to tell me which of the four goals that it met. Um, it was um a laborsome u process. Um, but it caused everyone to really sit back and think, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Can we support? And I'm not going to say that nothing got that everything had to be attached to that. But as I recall from that year, 99% of the things that we talked about got funded and
018they got attached to one of those four focus areas. And that's something, like I said, I've been doing this 36 years. And that was something that two years ago I thought, you know, I go around and I talk to folks all the time about your budget should be your priority. Put your money where your mouth is. So, um, the principles and the division leaders did a great job. But again, it was so thorough. They came in when they met with us. They had data that supported what they were doing, why they needed that, and it made for some very rich conversations. But again, that stuff has to start well before you know what kind of revenue that you're going to have. Um, the third prong is really again just setting your instructional priorities. We've we've
019talked about that and just making sure the budget is aligning with what your goals and priorities are. Um the next prong is really to calculate what kind of revenue are are we dealing with before we can start doing out how we're going to spend the dollars. We need to know to the best of our ability where's the revenue coming from. Um the local revenue side is a little bit easier early on um just because you can control that. You you know what your collections are. Um you know what you set your millillage at. You get uh monthly reports from the county and you can track that information. The state side not so easy for reasons we just talked about. Um with the state aided classroom and and how that's being funded. You can be given
020numbers um in February. um they may or may not be the same numbers that you get in May when you're trying to fine-tune the budget. They may or may not be the same numbers that you see um after the 45th day. Again, we talked last time about that proportionate share concept and that you know as the ADM changes at the 45th and the 135th day, so does the slices of the pie. The pie didn't change, but the slices did. So I will argue it has become very diff difficult to accurately budget your state revenues on state aided classroom. Um so um I think there will be probably more conversations about that in the future. Um there was a report that was released that spoke to um possible solutions to that um by revenue and fiscal
021affairs, but that's still just still very fresh on everyone's brain. But again, um, you got to know how much you're going to get before you can know what to spend. But for whatever reason, the local tends to be a lot easier to talk about than the state. And again, the state's just volatile right now. We talked earlier, you got to calculate those mandatory fixed costs. What are your utilities going up? Any contractual obligation? Usually there's a CPI factor in it that you can raise that by consumer price index. Um, but just knowing that and talking with those vendors so that you have that piece of the puzzle. And then um I think my favorite part of this whole flowchart is u monitor Colombia for impact. Um I always tell folks if more than 50% of
022your general fund revenues come from the state you need to be monitoring what's happening at the state house. Um the state budget it really kind of starts back in October, November when state super uh state superintendent will give her budget and what her budget requests are. Um the governor will come along in January and usually through the state of the state around that time talk about his budget request. Um but really where you start getting a glimmer of what the legislature may do is when we start getting uh House Ways and Means projections um sometime in the February range. So it's got to start with House Ways and Means goes through subcommittee meetings there. It's passed to the House. Uh meanwhile, Senate Finance is over here working on their version of the budget, going through
023their committee meetings that has to be passed to the Senate. And then normally those two don't match. So, um you may go to a House 2 version, but either way you look at it, you end up in a conference committee. And that's where three members of the House, three members of the Senate come together, get in a room, and by the time they get out of the room, you have a budget that will go to the governor. Um all of that, again, the governor starts talking about his budget usually in January, but sometimes it's June before we know what that conference committee is going to be. So, think that's June before you know what a large portion of your general fund budget is. Um, there used to be times where I could say, you know,
024one body versus another. Usually, you know, Houseways and Means was usually the conservative and if I at least built my budget on House Ways and Means, then if Senate came along and gave more, it was great. But again, with that new funding formula, it it it doesn't really matter. It is that debt gets reshuffled um at the 45th and the 135th day. So, I spend a lot of time from February to June listening to a lot of testimony and and at least trying to go back and read journals of the House and the Senate to try to figure out what's happening at the state house and how that impacts me. That that almost can become a full-time job. Um once you have the budget, it's time to implement the plan. Implement the plan is just
025roll those items out. Make sure that the things you said you were going to budget um you know you fully rolled out and are happening at the school or department level. And then the last thing I would say um is so important is just ensure sustainability. The hardest thing is when you budget for something and I said all along ESSER was so stressful because we wanted to do a really good job with that significant amount of money and my concern became what if the things that we did with that significant amount of money worked. How are we going to in you know sustain that? So, you know, as you're working through the budget, especially if you're funding things with one-time money, we've all done it at some point in time, but trying to it's it's
026almost like the the ink's not dry on that budget before I'm turning around going, if this really worked, how am I going to work that in? How does it fit into the priorities? And then I put it down at the bottom, but it really it doesn't necessarily need to be on the right hand side of the slide. It's really pervasive through the whole thing. It's just trying to communicate it clearly. you know, numbers and budgets and all that that that gets tough for folks. But I try and I work really hard and I work with others really hard to get stuff in in terms that that the citizens citizens can understand it. Taxpayers can understand it. People in the district can understand it. And my role has always been with my board. I need you
027to be able to cast a vote with fidelity. We may not necessarily agree on which way you vote, but my job is to make sure that you have the information in the manner that you need it to cast the vote you need to cast. So again, this comes from GFOA. I've tweaked it a lot for for us in South Carolina, but it's just a good overview of pulling a budget together. So 10 things you let's assume you've got that budget um well underway. 10 things you can do wrong in developing in a budget. And these are just things that I've seen over time from my career. um making sure that you hold a public hearing um as required by law. I mean, we have a lot of new people in the state. We have a
028lot of new CFOs. We have a lot of new superintendents. Um we've got a lot of folks and I'm trying to constantly remind, you know, we have to post and um notify that we have a public hearing 15 days in advance of that hearing. That's a critical element. And there's actually a prescribed format that we use for what we put in in with the media um using fund balance that you really don't have to build the budget. A lot of times folks will try to, well, we're going to plug the budget. We got it kind of close. We got it within a million or two. We're just going to plug it to fund balance and call it a day. Um, but you may really not have that fund balance because you don't know what's just
029happened in the year you're working in. Using one-time revenues more than once, that that sounds like that wouldn't you no one would do that. But a lot of the struggles that some school districts are having right now is because they kept using one-time revenues over and over and over and over and that caused them some serious budget problems. Um overlooking something that's small now but could get big um later. So again, I've told you I'm living in at least three budget years. The truth of the matter is I'm usually living in four or five. So if I think there's something that I might hear of now that might not impact me for two or three budget cycles, I make sure that you know that is archived somewhere and whether I'm there or not, somebody's going
030to know to keep up with something that could that could get us later. Um so number five and number six, I always underestimate revenues and try to overestimate my expenditures. My theory is I had rather come to you at the end of the year with reason and tell you that we've got a little bit left over that could go to fund balance or could go somewhere else as opposed to coming to you and telling you that you're short. Now, sometimes it's things that are beyond your control, but I do try to build a cushion into the budget. Um because again, we there are things we just don't know. And I don't want to say it's all in the state. You can have things happen to your local tax base. Um, I woke up one morning
031and found out that something that was um a not for-profit was becoming a not for-profit. That cost me $1.4 million overnight in my budget. Um, so I try to I try to build in a little bit of cushion for for, you know, life events that happen. I always recommend that you adopt a budget um with some form of a contingency. I don't care if it's $100,000, but just knowing that you've got a contingency. before either put that contingency on a line item where everybody could see it or sometimes my contingency might be in how I budget and um you know balance for vacancies is you may have a master's 30 teacher with 30 years of experience leave well how are you going to budget for that vacancy are you going to budget a bachelor 10
032or a bachelor zero or a master's 10 um so I usually have a lot of contingency in my budget built in I leave the salary for whoever was there And that way when the new person comes in, if you end up with a bachelor's zero, great. If you don't and you end up with another tenure experienced teacher, wonderful. You're not upside down at that point. Um the other thing is a lot of um different counties handle it differently, but making sure that you certify your mill levy with your county, that's something that can can cause your budgets to go south because I've seen in times in the past if you didn't certify, then they would use the number that was there the prior year. So, I I try to remind folks to make sure you
033certify. And then number nine, I I love this one. It's it's, you know, using enrollment forecast from somebody who didn't have to live with the results. So, there have been plenty of times when I'm working on enrollment projections and I'm meeting with principal or district staff and they say, "But but but more are coming." And I'm like, "Well, you know, let's talk about your data. Let's talk about my data. You know, why why is there a difference?" The last thing I want to do is have a a classroom um that already day one is overcrowded. So, I'm going to give a little bit of grace. It's, you know, everything is not hard and fast numbers, but you know, my theory is we have a staffing standard and I like to sit just a little bit
034below it because we are a growing district. You're a growing district, but it's very difficult to find those teachers in August when a lot of the kids show up that may maybe didn't know they were coming. So, I live by my enrollment forecast, but there also there there's some contingency and flexibility in there because I want to make sure we're fully staffed. And then the last thing is, and this is true, you know, failing to ask questions and challenge the process. Every time I get a question from a principal, from another administrator, from my board, I learn throughout this process. Um, it may be, you know, we all look at things from a different lens and you may think of something from a different lens than I did. So, I always say um I like
035to have the answer. That's always my first goal. But if I don't have the answer, then I'm always willing to go back and look and say maybe you saw something in that that I didn't. Again, because we all bring a different lens. So, um you know, challenging and questioning is is is a good healthy thing for everybody involved. Um the other thing again on a budget is just know what your key issues are and and be able to communicate them. So, we've talked about enrollment. Enrollment's big. Enrollment's going to drive your staffing. You know, where are we staffing wise? Are we in a situation that we're needing to add staff? Are we in a situation where we need to reduce staff? Um I used to do a very hard and fast um and let me
036say I say I obviously my my my superintendent that that is where I report to. Um so I work in concert with him. But we used to have a very hard and fast staffing. If third grade's the place that needed the the additional teacher, then I we would authorize third grade. We've kind of changed up a little bit now, given our principles a little bit more flexibility. Something else we tried a couple of years ago, said if it worked, great. If it didn't, we'd try something else. But we take staffing in totality. So, I may run numbers on individual uh schools and grade levels, but at the end of the day, it may be that a school needs to lose a teacher or gain a teacher. We're not as much anymore. telling them you need
037to gain it or lose it at this grade. We're going to supply you with this number of teachers. You know your students, you know where you may can afford a little bit higher class size and where you need a little bit lower. So, we try to give them the flexibility on that. Um, and then the only other thing on this slide that we haven't really already touched on is just special education support. So, you know, the services that we're we're um giving to these students, it is growing and growing and growing. But your federal funding by which to do that is not um so the challenge really becomes how you can meet those services and meet those IEPs. Um but but with a general fund budget that just may not be increasing um at a
038large rate. So um I'm constantly I probably spend more time now with my special ed director than I have in the past because you know, it's no longer we set the staff and that and that's good for the year. I think we've already added four positions and and we're just at the beginning of November because of needs that have come about. So, I'm constantly in communication with her. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What can we do? What options do we have? Because that's a growing population and and it it's very expensive to start making changes mid year, but obviously we need to provide the services, but federal funds aren't going to be there to do that. So again, I try to stay um very close with her. So what should you know
039about your budget? Um and I'm trying to think from the lens of of a board member and administration. You got to know your local tax base. You got to know what your tax base is doing. You know, are your assessed values increasing? Are they decreasing? What's happening to your collection rate? I do multi-year trends on not only assessed value, but my collection rate. And I'll do like a rolling two-year average, threeyear average. I don't know nowadays that 5 year average is that beneficial just from what we've seen what the housing market has done the last um few years. So I'm constantly trying to look at for me I'm very interested in what is my collectible value of meal. It's not that I'm not concerned with what the the the bills that were sent out. I'm
040concerned with what was paid. So, I spend a lot of time on how much did we receive divided by the number of meals and that becomes my collectible value of a meal and I track that over multi-year because outside of appeals and and other things, that's the one I can kind of hang my hat on. I also kind of track what's going on with the different classes of property, what's going on with my vehicles. So, don't do just revenue in total. I'm looking at the details as well because um sometimes vehicles can be up and down. we can have good years. We have years that not everybody's buying a new car and they're just all getting depreciated. Um, so I'm I'm trying to track that. And even though 4% doesn't necessarily for that 4% homeowner
041is not necessarily in your general fund budget, I'm still trying to stay keenly aware with what's happening with that population because as we'll talk about in just a minute, that affects your debt service. Um, I also like to talk and I don't mind sharing, you know, what my budget assumptions are. So I like to say what increase or decrease in a mill value happened in assessed value. How am I budgeting for vacancies? Am I budgeting based on the person that left or am I budgeting based on a master's 10 or 12 or something like that? You know, what are my areas of conservativism? And again, I spend a lot of time on what my enrollment projections are and continuing. I make it sound like I do that at the beginning and then I'm kind of
042done with the budget process, but I'm tracking that all the way through to the end. The other thing about a budget, I I love to do a budget calendar. I love to share that with my board. Um because to me, that's the roadmap for where you're going. And I start with, okay, this is the date that we anticipate approving this budget in June. And then I back up and I try to show all the different um board workshops, work sessions, number of readings, all the things that we've got to do. Get those dates in place, but also include like when are contracts going out. Um because that's key. We we know when contracts are coming back because that's one of the first things I want to see, especially if we're in a situation where we're
043reducing staff. I want to know how can I handle that through attrition because that's always the first goal. you know, we put on the calendar like when when are we sending intent forms? Well, that's not legally binding. Um, by the time I get back from Christmas break, I know, you know, not it's not 100% science, but these are the positions I already know that I have. An important point of that is, especially if it's special ed and you've got intent forms, you know, I want to be able to tell our HR department, go ahead and get those contracts ready. I know we may not have formally done the budget, but if you find a special ed teacher, I want them to be able to have that contract in place as soon as they find that
044person. Uh, we talked about sustainability. It's important to know, you know, what is and is not sustainable. The other thing, I don't want to leave this out because I think this is important. We talk a lot about the general fund, but as I told you last time, special revenue still is very important. So, how, especially when you're digging into those goals and things you want to fund, how can those special revenue dollars help us get to that point? And those are in-depth conversations with your federal programs and your special revenue people to say, what are we doing? Do we want to continue doing that? And how might those precious dollars help us achieve the goals that we have? And then we've talked before, again, I can't say enough, staffing, staffing, staffing. because if you can
045get that right, you got the majority of your budget right. Um, I felt like it was important to share this. A lot of times you hear comparisons and especially y'all like me are in a multi-dist county. So, you know, a lot of times you're getting compared to your neighbors. Um, I think it's important when you're comparing, you know, district X spends this per pupil, but district Y spends this per pupil. I think these are just some things that are very helpful to remember as I talk about that in my own county. If you're talking about salaries and benefits, we've already said 80 85 to 90% of your budget. Well, but I may spend more per pupil based on what my salary schedule is based on the tenure of my teachers. A lot of my teachers
046are to the far right and to the bottom of the salary schedule. That's where a good number of mine. So, they're they're expensive teachers. So, that's going to make my pupil, even outside of my pupil teacher ratio, um I'm going to look different. Um I think the other thing that I would share from this slide is again when you're looking at your fixed overhead cost and you know your maintenance and your utilities and all that, it can have a lot to do with the size of your school. It can have a lot to do with the age of your school. Older schools cost more to to no matter what to heat and to cool and to fix. Um, so that's just a slide that I like to give out that just says when you start
047comparing yourself and and comparison is not unhealthy, but just know that there are some reasons behind why you may look different than a similarly sized school district. This slide I used to talk about um it's had various iterations um and then when ESSER funding came along I hid the slide because nobody was saying I don't have enough money. um we had to be careful how we spent it, but but we didn't have that. So, it's time to dust the slide off. I made a few changes to it and just say these are just some ideas that I've seen over my tenure working in different districts and and working with other districts is what to do when you're trying to balance that budget and it's out of balance. Everybody's is um so again, we will we
048will we love our class sizes, but we will stretch them. And you heard me say in a perfect scenario, I like to stay under the staffing standard a little bit, but I might have to stretch it and go over it. And that might be situational depending on the school. Um, we also I've been known to dig into P school and look at class loads and see, especially at the middle or high level, how many kids are in a specific class. Now, if it's a class that it is it's it's the board and superintendent, it's the goal to have that class. There might not be 20 students in that class. It might be your goal to have this special AP class. That's fine. That's that's your decision. But I try to look at some of the
049others and dig and say, can we at least have a conversation? Because at the end of the day, I don't make the decision. But I think part of my job is to raise the awareness and to ask the questions um with the superintendent and the principles and the board. Um, one other thing because I'm not going to read all of these. I've already bragged on you about your food service program. Um, but one of the things that I think is becoming more and more important is to look and see how you can share services. So, in in our county, we have a countywide special ed facility, a countywide um alternative education facility, and a countywide adult ed. I happen to be my district is um fiscal agent of those. So, I handle all the accounting
050for that, the budgeting. I build like four general fund budgets. Um we do the hiring, the staffing, and all of that. Now, um we it's it's a cost sharing agreement. So all seven school districts participate in this and they also pay a fee because obviously we've got to have the people by which to run the administration of those programs. But, you know, I've talked to districts about I think at some point we're going to have to get even smarter about crossing those district lines and saying, "How can how can we share how can we share the services?" And obviously, you got to compensate the district that's taking the bulk of it, but how can we get more creative um with those dollars? And I think we're just skimming the surface of that. It's easy again
051for a district like us where we've got, you know, seven districts and and coming into that one county, but I've even told county districts, look and see how you might be able to share a ser, you know, a food service program, maybe one district share and even across a county line, not necessarily um a district line. I think the other thing that we've had some um success in in the past is just looking at custodial analysis and really trying to dig into that. But I also say that you have to be careful. Sometimes when you cut there are unintended consequences of that cut and then you find yourself when you when you cut too much and too deep and too long then it's going to come back and get you somewhere else and you may
052have increased maintenance. So these aren't necessarily one-sizefits-all fixes. Um we've also looked at our bus routes and tried to figure out how we could optimize um some of the bus routes. anything, you know, um, used to, um, we're better than this now. Um, but in the past, the value of a brand new teacher and the benefits was $50,000. That was that was back in the day. And I'm glad that the value of a teacher or brand new teacher is more than 50,000 now. But I used to tell um my folks, I'm like, if you can find me five instances of $10,000, then we've just saved a teacher or we've been able to add a teacher. don't necessarily take it into the negative. And when you're in um you know when you're in a situation where
053your budget's over a hundred million, over a 200 million, a lot of times people don't think, well, you know, 50,000 isn't going to do anything. Yeah, it will. you know, now we need more like 75 $80,000. But if you can find me 10 places or you that we can save $8,000 and I try to break it down into to mechanisms because when you try to go to folks and say in order to do everything we need to do, we need to come up with a half a million dollars or or you know a million dollars that that seems large but little matters as well. Miss, before we go on to debt service, are there any questions about the budget slides that we give you a chance to get some more today? >> Thank you so
054much, >> y'all. I talk fast. Hang on. All right. Um, so again, those are just best budgeting practices and things that I've learned over a number of years and working with a number of districts. The other thing that I think when we were surveying and things that you wanted to talk a little bit more about was debt service um debt service management um you know just financing equipment. So let's talk first about a bond. All right. So the bond um it has to start with the lender the person that's got the money and we're down here the issuer. We're the one seeking the money. And just remember, the lender's giving us the bond proceeds and we're in turn taking those taxes that we get from our debt service collections because remember you've got a second
055millage. You've got a different millage number on that and it's cyclical. They're providing the money, you're paying the money back through your debt service millage. So, I just kind of wanted to go over a few types of financing that are available to districts. Um, this isn't all-incclusive, but these are the ones that either I've worked with or um, you know, um, I know other districts are working with. And I guess the caveat to this is all of these start rather with a resolution with you. So, the board, it doesn't matter which one of these, it starts with a resolution that the board approves. Um, and these aren't in any particular order. Um, and we're going to break down each most of these in a future slides. This just gives you a couple of different ways
056that you can fund your necessary equipment and capital. Probably the one that gets um a lot of attention outside of a referendum um and I'm not going to talk much about a referendum um would be just general obligation bonds and specifically your 8%. All right. So 8% money can truly be a lifeline to a district when you're needing to tackle um again nonreferendum type things. I say smaller capital, but smaller capital might be uh an HVAC, a roof, um you know, buying technology. Um state school bond act, article 10 of the state school um that the state constitution says that you can um have indebtedness outside of a referendum up to 8% of your assessed value. This is when your assessed value becomes very important. Um, and this 8% just really gives you the ability
057to react um rather quickly um to needs that come in the district. The one thing nice about a general obligation bond in general is it usually carries a lower interest rate um because it's got a lower risk of of default. Now, why is that? Um, in the state of South Carolina, we have something called um the state intercept program, which means that a school district really cannot default on um your bond payments. If a district looks that they're going to be in default, state's going to come in, intercept that, pay that bill, and then the monies would be held from your probably your state aid classroom. I I don't know that I've ever personally known that State Intercept had to kick in to make a debt payment, but that's one of the reasons that we
058enjoy the credit rating that we have in the state of South Carolina for that um underlying Intercept program. So, what is 8% money mean? You hear a lot of people say, "Well, we're going to use our 8% money." What does that really mean at the end of the day? Again, that's the amount of money that you can use without having to go to the voters. So, the power is is within this board. Um we talked about the constitution. Um, so I'll give you an example. If your district's assessed value is $500 million, 8% of that is 40 million. So that means you can have 40 million in outstanding indebtedness before you have to look um to your community for a referendum. And again, it's usually smaller items um that are a part of your capital
059improvement plan. So um I want to scoot forward. I want to talk about this and then I'll back up because at the end of the day it really only it begins with a plan. You got to have a capital improvement plan and know what you need before you can decide what are the things we want to finance and what are the mechanisms because there's multiple ways that you can finance things on your capital improvement plan. Um, a capital improvement plan can be very sophisticated, doesn't have to be, but it it, you know, if anything, it needs to be a spreadsheet that just says these, you know, these are my roofs and these are the age of my roofs and what's the useful life of a roof and when is that roof going to, you know,
060be to the end of its useful life. Sometimes they don't make it to the end of their useful life. They start getting leaks and other things. you you start spending a ton of money on patching and and then you start having to say, are my patches worth the patch or am I going to go ahead and just replace the roof? Um, but the plan identifies what the needs are and I always say everything starts with the needs. You have to agree on the needs first and then you can talk about how you might want to um finance it. So again, plan is it's consistent plan for um the maintenance um and the repair and the replacement of those, you know, large ticket items. It ensures that plan makes sure that the board's vision is met
061for what you want for your your buildings, your facilities, your technology. Um it provides a basis to fund your needs. If you take your bonds to a rating agency and and get them, you know, uh rated by Moody's or Standard Pors, that's one of the first things they're going to ask you. They're going to say, "What, you know, can I see a copy of your capital improvement plan?" Um, and then the other thing is it's got to be updated. It's not It's like a budget. Can't do it sit it on a shelf. You've got to constantly work with it. And I think the other thing is um we do ours in priority rank. So, we've got the of all the needs. We all agree there are needs, but we try to say these are our
062top 10 or these are our top 20. And we not only try to put a dollar figure to those needs, but we try to say, you know, our goal is to fund this with a bond issue in spring of 26, in fall of 26, and spring of 27. But then sometimes life happens and something that was a 10 for some whatever reason, maybe a safety security issue, it moves up to a one. So that thing is constantly in flux. But I say all that to say before you can really spend a lot of time talking about, you know, what are our financing mechanisms, you got to know what are the needs and and agree to what those needs are. Um, so I just showed you an 8% just a sample calculation of an 8% um
063for a district. So if an had if a district had an assessed value of $3 billion, you multiply that by 8% constitutional debt limits 246 million. But maybe you already have some debt outstanding. You take that off, you subtract that, and then that leaves you with a little over 225 million if you're looking at, you know, u major repair and replacement. Um, so that's 8% debt. Um, another form that has become very popular is an equipment acquisition agreement. Um, and you see school districts utilizing this to fund technology, um, energy performance contracts, um, the and, and I've even used one to do like a a major, um, HVAC unit at, um, a high school, which is, you know, multi-million dollars. The nice thing about this is it doesn't affect your 8% debt limit. So, it's
064just a different wrinkle that allows you to either use capital funds um that you could use. Maybe you choose to take leftover savings from a general fund and transfer it to capital at the end of the year. You could either pay back this equipment acquisition through capital funds or you can pay for through your operating funds. A lot of district will use some of their general fund dollars to pay for these. um it's typically placed with a bank um as oppo as opposed to think of um you know a major bond market bidding on these but they have I can say in my district and other districts they have been a nice bridge for things like again roofs HVAC's um and and we use it for our equipment refresh so you know back when we
065decided to go one to one back in 2014 we used an equipment acquisition agreement to buy the first installment of our 1:1 technology and all of our new Prometheian boards. And I said then, I don't know what we're going to be doing in four years, but I got to have a way to redo. I I knew enough to know we weren't going to back away from that technology. And I didn't know what device we were going to buy, but I made sure that an equipment acquisition agreement every four years was in my long short term, whatever you call it, short-term or long term. I'm beginning to think there's really nothing longterm. all of our needs seemingly are shortterm these days, you know, within the next 5 to 10 years. So, we made sure that that
066that was in my ongoing debt program so that regardless of what device we bought, we had the money set aside and ready to go. Um, bond anticipation notes. So, bond anticipation notes are just that. They are notes in anticipation of a bond, a permanent bond, a geo bond. Um, they are short-term in nature. So, you can only have a bond anticipation note out for one year at a time. That doesn't mean you can't have rolling bond anticipation notes or bands as we call them. You know, we would just keep rolling those along for a year until we got to the point we needed to issue permanent debt. Um, the biggest benefit that I can see from this, when you're in an unknown or volatile interest rate environment, these can become truly cost savings for the
067district. um you may you may pass a referendum and you don't need $200 $200 million immediately. Um and you know, you've got a draw schedule that says how you your contractor thinks they're going to need the money to move forward. Um but it it can be um beneficial to put that money in a bond anticipation note and roll it, especially if you think over time those rates might come down. Wait and go permanent debt. sell that general obligation bond when the rates are coming down. So, it's just it's another tool that you can use to to try to help um put a little extra money um during the bond program. Um while this isn't really related to debt, it's certainly another financing mechanism that's available to schools. So, just as you had bond anticipation notes
068were notes in anticipation of bonds, you can have tax anticipation notes which are notes in advance of of taxes rolling in. So remember, we talked a good bit last time about timing of money, right? So we may not get good collections on our local revenue till six months in the year, but you're paying people starting in July. Okay? And if your fund balance is is not high enough, it may be that you need to do a tax anticipation note in the fall. It's just a short-term measure to make sure that you're, you know, I call it an insurance policy to make sure I don't get in a situation where um the money gets tight um for payroll purposes. Um you don't see them as much. Again, once ESSER came along, they were became a new
069normal, but I think as those funds are winding down and people are using their general fund budget um and their fund balance, then you may see these kind of come back in popularity. So I showed you just a slide you know impact to taxpayer for debt service millage you know again we've decided the plan we've decided to finance the plan three things are need to be involved in order to to to pay um for any millillage that you put on as a result of of capital you got to know the valuation of the property. Okay so you got to know what that property is worth. What's the assessed value for the property? You got to know what assessment ratio that you're using. you know, is this a 10 and a half percent property? Is it
070a 6% property? Is it a 4% property? Um, the different classes and then you got to know the millillage. So, I gave to the bottom right just an example of if you had a a home with a fair market value of $300,000 and it was their only home that they had assessed at 4% and their assessed value was 12,000. Well, if you put an additional 25 mills on, then that would be an incremental $300 to the taxpayer per year. So, um, just an example of that calculation. Um, the process, I'd been asked about the process for selling the bond. So, on the left hand side, you can see the step-by-step process for what happens when you decide you want to sell the bond. You again start the process authorizing the resolution. um your bond attorney
071starts working on all the documents um that need to be prepared. You receive bids, you award bids, and then you close and receive the funds. And that can take anywhere from 75 to 90 days once you get started. And then I just gave you um on the right hand side just who are the key participants in that process um of going through. I had been asked um you know what is the dollar value increment that you can you can issue bonds. Well, you can do a bond in $1,000 increments. What you mostly see in the state of South Carolina is bonds in the $5,000 because that aligns more to the national um bond market, but but you can do them in thousand increments. Okay, that was the end of the debt service. >> Any questions
072regarding debt service? Um, if you issue 8% debt, how does it affect your debt service millage rate? >> If you so that's part of your debt service plan. So if you're issuing 8% debt, you've got to have a debt management co plan. That's a that's a great question. And that debt management plan talks about what what is my 8%. So we start from there. What is my 8% of my assessed value and what is that to the overall plan? So, you could have a a plan, a debt service um millage plan that looks flat. You could have some that rise based on an 8% issuance. Um don't know that I've ever seen any fall based on an 8% issuance. But that's a good question because you can't take it just one piece of the puzzle.
073So, you've got referendum debt that you may be looking at. You've got 8% debt. In my district, we've got special obligation bond debt. We've got equipment acquisition uh agreement debt that we've got. and I've got one master plan that speaks in terms of if I move any of these needles then it could have an impact on my millillage. So it's a good point to say you can't look at it as one piece. You've got to look at it as a whole. What is your we talk about your overall capital improvement plan. You got to have an overall debt management plan that again any one of those factors change by any amount of money. It can change what happens to the taxpayer and the money that comes into the district. And to me that I would
074say this to me that that plan is just as critical. I mean those go hand in hand. What what is your what does your overall um debt management plan look like? What is your overall capital and building management plan? And those two have to work in concert so that they're you know no surprises. >> All right. >> And then I'm going to leave you because I know I'm getting close on time. I'm going to leave you with two things. It's not that that's they only have two things to talk about for best practices. There's lots of best practices, but we've talked about a lot of that so far. Um I would be remiss if I didn't talk to you about fund balance. Um and just knowing that fund balance is core. When I told you
075that the bond rating agency would ask what your capital improvement plan is, if they ask that first, their second question is usually going to be what's your fund balance? What is it? What's your district's policy? What's been your track record over time? So, I always say I I try to protect fund balance with every fiber of my being. Um, we've talked that, you know, about timing. One of the reasons you have fund balance, and I feel like I'm preaching to the choir, but one of the reasons you have the fund balance is because you don't know the timing of those revenues. You don't know what 45th day will do to you. And just because 45th day has happened, we won't know the impact of that until January. So, I'm six months into the fiscal year
076before I know how to react. I've got to have a stop gap measure and fund balance is a part of it. So I alluded to earlier government finance officers association. Um again in in absence of law or statute or authoritative literature they become our authoritative literature. So it's not what Missy's opinion of fund balance would be. This is what GFOA says and it speaks to um a minimum twomonth level. Um, I won't read that to you word for word, but I think the goal of that is this is lifted straight from their um, fund balance best practices, not just for school districts. This would be for counties, for cities, for special purpose districts. This is everybody that comes under that umbrella. And at the end of the day, strong fund balance is certainly a prudent
077measure of of good financial management. and and my this I guess where my opinion comes in that amount is a local board matter because one board may feel differently than another. Um the last thing that I would share with you again when I think of best practices um fund balance is important to me but it seems I can't go a day without reading about something in the news about procurement. So, one of the things I I I was about to say preach to, yes, I preach to it a lot is just procurement and best procurement practices. So, I tried to give you the five top procurement issues in the state of South Carolina and just maybe what a board focus could be because you've got an administration to handle that, but obviously that's something that
078we all need to be concerned about because my theory is when one of us looks bad, it's it's very diff difficult for any of us to recover from that. So, just weak internal controls and segregation of duties. So what does that mean? Um I think I read recently where there was embezzlement and that person had total control. Nobody needs to have total control. There need to be benchmarks and segregation in your processes along the way um to make sure that you've got these stop gap measures. You know no one should as I've said purchase approve and pay it. That needs to be split amongst different people. So just making sure that that a district has good internal controls and segregation of duties. That's hard in a smaller district. But then you can have things such
079as compensating controls, PEC cards, procurement cards. Um we read a lot about misuse of that um and lack of oversight on that. One of the things that I'll tell you I did in my district a year or two ago um we significantly revisited our PECARD program. decided we had too many PE cards outstanding and the more cards we had outstanding equated to more risk and finance folks tend to be risk averse. So it was time to revisit who got one, what were the controls on those and making sure that multiple layers of eyes got on what was spent and when it was spent and and really following through with if somebody made a mistake, it wasn't just sending a ratification letter and saying you messed up, but saying, "Okay, how can we keep that from
080happening?" you know, put that in writing to me how you believe you can keep that from happening. And then the onus becomes on me is to do some follow through and make sure that they really did put the procedures in place or if it continues to happen, what are we going to do with next level? And I'm real big on the person that approves the card is not the one that was using the card. Um, non-competitive or improper purchasing practices. It's just, you know, making sure that we're following the bid specs and that our our people, not only at the district level, but at the school level, know those rules related to to PECards, not PECards, purchase orders and purchasing, making sure we're not splitting purchases, making sure we're working within our procurement code with
081fidelity. And that is a constant. As people change, you know, you get in a good groove, you realize you've got to retrain and continue and continue and continue. So that that circle keeps going. Um contract oversight or change order abuse is another thing that we see. Sometimes we know what we've approved, but it seems like that that just that creep effect happens and those change orders can sometimes happen and then we're beyond the scope of what we said we were going to do. So, that's something that we're constantly monitoring and looking at um not only on, you know, construction projects, but also, you know, I've got one person that spends a lot of time on why are we doing these change orders and have we really changed the scope and would that have made that
082procurement deemed not fair? Whether anybody knows it or not, you you got to look at it whether you know the general public don't know about your change orders. Um and then the last thing is like anything else, you you got to test it. you got to go through and when someone's made a mistake, they might they'll get documentation from me. It's called a ratification form. It describes the circumstances, but then what can we do to fix it? And sometimes it's just a human error. That that happens. But if we start seeing repeated offenses, then that's when I start working in diving a little bit deeper and they may lose some of their purchasing privileges. Um, you know, again, as I said in that closing comment, procurement problems are rarely about one purchase, somebody making a
083mistake. You It's about weak oversight. So, we that we're in constant motion to try to make sure that, you know, we're spending those dollars appropriately and being good stewards of the taxpayer money. >> And that that was close. >> Miss, thank you so much. Uh, we stand for any questions from Miss Campbell. >> Miss, >> I don't have a I just I know you're done and everybody's ready, but I just want to thank you. That was very comprehensive and um I really appreciate you taking the time to come down here and do this for us. >> Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I know finance isn't always everybody's favorite thing to talk about. Um, but I applaud I applaud you for having this because you know we can if we again I told you the
084first time if you learned one thing or learned more in depth about one thing I think it's worth both of our time. So thank you very much for the district. We want to thank you so much for giving your expertise. Uh we know you travel the state doing this. Uh when the South Carolina Association of School Administrators wants to train its superintendent, they call in Miss Campbell. Um the SCASAB has also uh created a mentoringship program for CFOs. And just want to thank Miss Tucker for being a part of that mentoringship program to be able to lean on the expertise that you bring to not only the state but our district. We're always looking for ways to improve uh to be better stewards of the taxpayers's trust. And so we thank you for this. You
085gave us a lot of information that we'll go over. Uh but as we start our budget process, you'll see some of these things reflected in our work. So thank you so much. >> Well, thank you. I I would say, you know, I've been doing this a long time, but this is truly what you know, you get to the point where it's mentoring because great people mentored me, and that's that's what brings me a lot of joy. >> Amen. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. I'm sorry for the three claps over there. Uh, do I have a motion to adjourn the finance 101 workshop? >> I'll move that we adjourn the finance 101 workshop. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion and properly second. Any discussion? All in favor? That passes unanimously. I'd
086like to call a regular meeting to order. Pursuant to uh board policy uh BD, the superintendent will preside and act as temporary chair at the meeting of the election of the board officers until such time a chair is elected. Uh before we begin the welcome, I would just like to say that uh tomorrow as we represent our veterans, uh Lex Richland 5 is hosting a series of recommend recognitions for our veterans on Wednesday, uh November the 12th. We'll have a community uh the community is invited to a breakfast right here. It's going to be at the Center for Advanced Technical Studies. See them already setting up. It'll be from 7:30 to 8:30. Um, and so we want all those uh if you're able to attend to come out. Um, also we have uh a special
087honor that we would like to share. Um, if you watch the Clemson football game, our own retired Lieutenant Colonel Reggie Salazar was of Chapen Middle School. He was recognized as a hero of the game during the halftime of the Clemson University game on Saturday. his daughter who attends Clemson University wrote a letter of nominating him for this honor and his family was there to receive it. So, we're certainly proud of Mr. Salazar. Even received a Clemson jersey number 25 uh on the field. So, very proud of that. And then those who are seeking the opportunity to join our services, our armed services are invited to attend. the military recruiters for all branches will be available uh here on Wednesday, November the 12th uh from 6:00 p. p.m. to 7:30 p.m. here at the Center for
088Advanced Technical Studies. So again, salute to all of our veterans or those who are committed to serving our country. Uh at this time, uh the floor goes to Dr. Scott Hearing for the invocation and the pledge. >> Thank you. Dear God, we thank you for bringing us together this evening to serve our community. We are especially grateful for our teachers whose dedication shapes young minds and for our students whose curiosity and hope inspire us all. We ask you grant us wisdom, fairness, and unity in our decisions that all we may do lift up those we serve. I'd also like to ask everyone to please say a special prayer for Mr. Satderfield's family. Amen. Please stand for the pledge. Pursuant to board policy BD, the officers of the board of trustees are chair, vice chair, and
089secretary. The officers are elected annually at the board's organizational meeting in November. Board policy BD requires vote by secret ballot unless the board a board member requires a request a voice vote. Is there a motion for a voice vote at this time? >> I move that we have a voice vote. >> We have a motion. Is there a second? >> A second. >> Has been properly second. Any discussion? All those in favor of a voice vote signify raise or oppose. And that passes unanimously. Pursuant to board policy be our meetings are governed by the 12th edition of Robert's rules of order. As a result, nominations are made and do not require a second or discussion. At this time, I accept any nominations for chair. Mr. Southfield. >> Miss Snipes has been nominated. Are there any
090other nominations? Seeing none, nominations are close. Um, this does require a a vote. All in favor, Miss Snipes to serve as chair, please signify by raising your hand. Any oppose? That passes unanimously. Congratulations, Mr. Chairman Snipes. Thank you. That moves us to the nomination for vice chair. At this time, I'll take nominations for vice chair. Miss Barnhart. I'd like to nominate Miss Kathy Hill. >> Do we have other nomine speak up? Miss >> Miss Huddle. She nominated Miss Huddle. I'd like to nominate um Scott Herring. >> I nominate myself. Are there any nominations? All right, we will start with Miss Huddle. All those in favor of Miss Huddle for vice chair. All oppose. What? >> We don't have to do that. I'm sorry. All those in favor of Scott Herring for chair. All those in
091favor of Mrs. Sny. All right. So, we have a tie between Miss Huddle and Mr. Herring. Another vote, right? Or do we have to do another nomination or do we just break the tie? I'm asking. >> Okay. It says, "If no candidate receives a maj majority, balloting continues retaining as candidates all who do not voluntarily withdraw. Another round of nomin. >> I don't think you nominate again. I think you just take take another vote, >> right? >> Okay. I just repeat everybody all over again. All right. Um taking a second vote. Um all those in favor of Miss Huddle, Mr. Herring, Mr. Scully. Check with the rules again. Um, Miss Magazine. >> Okay, I'm going to read this. It says, "If no candidate receives a majority, Valentine continues retaining as candidates all who do not
092voluntarily withdraw. An election becomes final when the chair announces the result if the candidate is present and does not decline or is absent but has previously consented to serve. Otherwise, it becomes final when an absent candidate is notified and does not immediately decline. If the one elected declined balloting continues until someone is willing to accept receiving a majority, if there is no different provision in the bylaws, a candidate takes office as soon as his or her election becomes final. Organizations often prefer to provide for new officers to assume office at the close of the meeting. Unless there are going to do this again. >> Yeah. Unless there's no withdrawals, we would we would continue the motion. Okay. >> Deciding to do it all over again. That is what I'm reading. It says that rece if
093no candidate receives a majority balloting continues um retaining all candidates and all who do not voluntarily withdraw. So either I guess somebody could withdraw change a vote that could change the results. taking this for the third time. All those in favor of Miss Huddle, Dr. Herring, Mr. Scully. No. And it doesn't help us. It seems we're at an impass. Maybe Ward should have stayed. Do you have help for us, Amy? >> Do I move to the next? >> Miss Mavine, does it allow to move to another office or do you must handle it in order. >> I don't see anything on here that says that we can't move to the next one. >> At least that way we can continue with the meeting and then circle back. Amy's going to try to get Amy's going
094to try to get um us a different a different answer from Miss Hold on. What does board policy say? because it would override Robert's rules of order. >> I think our board policy says we follow Robert's rules 12th edition >> For this? Yes. >> Miss Mine, you said there's nothing stopping us from moving to the next office. At least for now. >> Not that I can tell. I'm going through real quick, but I have not seen anything that says we can't move to the next office. and circle back. Okay. >> And I think before let's just reference uh board policy be which kind of governs uh the procedures that we take. It says that our meetings should be in line with the 12th edition of Robert's rules of order. And so the nominations therefore would
095would be under Robert's rules 12. >> Okay. All righty. Well, um, in that case, I will move to taking nominations for the position of secretary. Do I have any nominations? >> I'll nominate Jason Bum. >> Do we have any other nominations for secretary? >> I'd like to nominate Mr. Skully. >> Nominate Mr. Hering. >> All right. Um, we're going to open the floor um for a vote for secretary. All those in favor of Mr. Bayum. And Mr. Bum with the vote of five, you are the secretary. Do I just keep going for now? >> Miss Mavine, um, you're up. Right. Perfect. Uh, the Bright Ideas program grant provides funding to teachers who have demonstrated innovative ideas for classroom projects. School District 5 received a little over $2,300 in grants. School District 5 recipients include Chris
096Austin from Leapart Elementary, Dr. Martin Koala from the center for advanced technical studies and Jill Sullivan from Chapen Middle. As we are every year, we are very thankful to our friends at Mid Carolina for their generosity and support of our district. Next, some exciting news for Irmo High School student council. They recently welcomed over 700 students, advisors, and chaperones for the South Carolina Association of Student Councils. uh district three rally and this happened on October 23rd at the school. More than 20 schools across seven South Carolina counties attended. So it was a very busy day at Irmo High School. This year's rally themed the magic of leadership featured interactive workshops, leadership sessions, and activities designed to inspire students to make a difference in their schools and communities. District 3 includes uh schools from Edgefield, Aken,
097Lexington, Barnwwell, Calhoun, Selena, Saluda, and McCormack counties. And some schools as far as Clover attended this uh conference. The SCASA uh SCASC district rally is an annual gathering that connects student leaders from across the region to share ideas, build connections, and strengthen leadership programs statewide. So, we congratulate Irmo High School for representing our district so well at this large event. And last, I just want to mention the A that 64 Lexington Richland School District 5 students have earned the AP Capstone diploma and an additional 23 students have earned the AP seminar and research certificate during the 2425 school year. So, the 64 that received the um diploma did so by earning scores of three or higher in AP seminar, AP research, and on four additional AP exams. And then the 23 that were awarded the
098AP Seminar and research certificate did so by earning scores of three or higher in AP seminar and AP research. And then we also had 274 students who are awarded the AP Scholar with distinction by earning scores at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken and scores of three or higher three or higher on five or more of these exams. So the AP Capstone Diploma helps students develop critical thinking, research, collaboration, and presentation skills that are crucial for academic success. and of these students we are very proud of them because it's hard work to achieve such a momentous task. So that is our celebrations for tonight. Thank you so much. >> Um Miss Snut, can I ask a question? Usually when we have celebrations, we have people coming down front. >> Correct. and we give a
099big round of applause. If we have any students, AP students or AP teachers, I know we have some of those in the air. Could they could we recognize them at this time because they are those that are responsible for a lot of this. Is that okay? >> Sure. >> Would you all stand up, please? If you're an AP student or an AP teacher, would you mind standing up so we can give you some recognition and a round of applause? Okay. Right. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Ross for the school board spotlight. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. As we um as always, we're a system guided by three critical questions. Why do we do this work? Uh that's our vision. How do we accomplish that? Why? That's our mission. And what are our
100outcomes? Uh that's what we're all about. And meetings like today are the opportunity to get feedback to ensure that our vision aligns with our outcomes. 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 our strategic plan outcomes. We heard Missy Campbell talk about what is guiding our budget. Our our budget is guided by the four performance goals that we have, the 24 strategies that are facing these uh two objectives that every student feels loved in our schools and every school student has demonstrated academic growth in our schools. Our state has put forth a strategic plan goal that by 2030 75% or more of our students will be at or above grade level. As we measure this on our uh MAP
101scores, a measure of academic progress, we can see the difference from last year to this year in terms of fall. We have two more mandatory assessments of of this uh to see if we can grow those blue bars. Each and every day we're working uh diligently to ensure that we can meet the needs of those students that are not on grade level to make sure that we can get them to be successful. And for those students who are above grade level, how do we extend the learning uh so that they can maximize their potential. We also track our graduation rate, the students that are on track to graduate uh each and every day. Uh and we report this out weekly. uh very proud to see while we have not crossed that 90% goal, uh we're
102making tremendous strides to that each and every day. There's a name behind each of those numbers and a story and I want to thank our our high schools, secondary schools, their hard work to meet the needs of those students uh in the gap. Um how do we address this as a district? How do we improve? Well, every student is entitled to what we call tier one of the multi-tered support services or MTSS interventions. Those are the universal interventions. But for some of our students, they're not successful at that level. And therefore, we must have some targeted interventions uh for them. And so we're going to be working really hard uh with the board uh to approve a a new suite of targeted interventions uh to ensure that all students have the opportunity to be successful.
103This includes academics, behavior, attendance, mental health, and college and career planning. The college and career planning is a result of the superintendent student advisory as well as the parent advisory uh that shared that we wanted uh additional targeted resources around that area. Our goal is to turn all the students that say I can't do this work into I can do this work. Those I can statements that are posted for parents review on our website uh allows parents to see these are the success indicators that we put before all of our our students and we know that together transformation begins in the with the heart and that with that uh we can turn these I can't I can part of our I would say tier 2 interventions regarding behavior uh was an opportunity that was present
104it to our community called shatter the myth. Uh coming to the lect turn to share a little bit about this amazing program is our chief of student services and planning Dr. Mike Harris uh to talk about the work on shatter the myth. Dr. Harris, >> thank you so much um Dr. Ross and members of the board in our community. They had a great uh affair on um just a few weeks ago, a couple weeks ago, October 28th in time to shatter the myth. And we've asked tonight uh Mr. Marlo Wright, who's our school council director at Dutch Middle School, and Mr. Whit Mormon the third, who is a school social worker in the Dutch cluster of schools to come who are both the leaders, primary leaders, if you will, of the shatter the myth. We've
105asked them to come and just to give us some closeout statements and report regarding the most recent shadow the myth activity. Um I could speak if I spoke freely on this I would probably speak for 101 15 minutes and then it would be Marlo's turn and we'd be up here for a very long time. So I prepared a statement so I can be concise and to the point and would be happy to answer any questions at the end. Good evening. My name is Whit Mormon. I'm the social worker at Dutch Middle and Dutch Fork High School. I have been invited to share a little bit about the district event recently held called Shatter the Myth. This event was the fourth annual iteration and was born in 2022 when I was tasked with leading a parent
106education event on behalf of the social work services department and partnered with Marlo Wright, Dutch Middle School counseling director, who was already providing a substance education night to parents and students of Dutch Middle School. As we discussed expanding this to a district event, we wanted to find a way to engage students in a non-traditional way. This seemed like an opportunity to bring an event from my previous experience called a teen maze. The premise of the teams is to engage students by allowing them to draw scripts from a basket that determine life decisions around substance use and be engaged by community professionals who can educate them about the real life consequences of their decisions. At the most recent event, we had community partnerships with Midlands Tech uh respiratory therapy program, the Department of Juvenile Justice, Richland
107County Sheriff's Office, Laredac, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, Smokefree South Carolina, DHECK, and countless departments within our district. Each of these community partners brings a wealth of knowledge and real life experiences around the effects of substance use. The amaze allows each of the students grades 12 6 through 12 to have a unique experience and learn from their choices. In addition, the shatter the myth event reaches childrens of all ages. Elementary social workers engage students in grades one through five with activities and lessons centered on the dangers of vaping. While children ages two through kindergarten are provided child- centered activities by our ready by five program. Miss Wright's going to share about the parent event and a little more information. >> So, like Mr. Mormon said, we've got programming for our young kids. We've got programming for
108our middle and high school students that are age appropriate, but we also have parenting programming. Um, we start with goals. So, I've partnered with a lot of people over the years, and I feel like we have kind of hit a really good sweet spot, if you would, with a with some of our partners that keep things very current in terms of our trends for our community in general. Um, so we start with our goals of making sure that our parents are educated on the current trends and things that we need to keep um a breast of uh that's affecting our young people. Um, we partner with Laredac, we partner with the DEA, we partner with, um, MAD, the Palmetto Foundation for Hope and Recovery, we partner with the Courage Center. Um, and together they not
109only talk about the current trends and things that we need, some of the warning signs that we need to look for, but we also talk about how do you have those candid conversations with our young people? Where does that age start? Those are some difficult conversations and this is a difficult topic and a lot of our kids are really really good kids but if we look at not just our data for like what I I do a needs assessment for our middle school kids and I would say between 70 and 80% over consistently over the years are telling me that they need they either agree or strongly agree that they need additional information on vaping drugs and alcohol use. It is a very complicated problem, but a 100% of our young people are going to
110have to make that decision about what they're going to do. And if you look at national data and you look at the data from our colleges and universities, you have good good kids who self-refer and say they're having problems. They're having problems with dealing with stress. They're having problems with mental health issues and they don't know what to do. And so through this event, we're hoping to equip our families, the parents, and our kids with the necessary information to know what steps they need to take. So, not only do we give our parents that information, and we hope to give our kids that information, then we bring them back together and we ask them to have a conversation about what it is that they're learning. So, our parents are getting information on how do you
111have that breaking it down. How do you have those conversations with your kids, but then they get to practice those skills with their students that come to this event and they can do it over a madeup scenario of the maze that they have just gone through. So the maze is helping them to understand what are the possible consequences if I were to use but then they can talk about it with their parents because at the end of the day I know I'm running out of time. At the end of the day we want our families to be and remain their parents to remain the crucial par person. We want you to have the information and know that your kids can come and talk to you about this and you have the current all of the
112information, right? But to also be the safe, non-judgmental person that they need in their life to see them through as they get older. >> And I'll I'll close with saying this. Um I think that uh Mr. Skully and Dr. Ross can attri attest to the fact that us sitting up here talking about it or a flyer does not do justice that night. So, we're actually going to host another event in the spring March 26. Brought some flyers for you guys to pass out. I'll give them to Dr. Harris that we're going to host right here at the Kate Center for the for round two of this. And we've already got a lot of our partners that have agreed to come back and I would strongly recommend come see it for yourself. the experience is way
113better than anything that we can do to explain it to you. If you have questions, we'll be happy to answer. And what I I'll say this, our uh agent Tulie from DEA told us he said um he said this the flyer doesn't do it justice. And so the the big key we have now is education. So hopefully this gives us an opportunity to educate the community about what's going on. But we would ask that y'all educate the community about this opportunity too because the more it grows, we'll be ready for it. So, thank y'all for your time. >> Thank you, Mar. We certainly appreciate this. Um, and do appreciate Mr. Kelly for being there. Uh, this is what the maze looked like. Uh, when you you go in uh to get the real life experiences
114that you put around those students was just tremendous. I was very impressed with the the amount of students that came, the parents that attended. Um I think this is a model for the state. We hear a lot about what are districts doing about vaping, what are they doing about alcoholism and substance use disorder. Well, you all did a lot for these families and it's really about educating the family. Um, even the the simulations you took them through like the the sample of your MRI system here. I think my favorite is in the see that top picture uh there on the right of putting on the impairment goggles for students to drive through the cones. That poor young lady hit every cone we had out there. But it was good that they could see uh just
115those impacts. Those were real lungs. um to simulate what what it feels like and to see a non-smoker's lung versus a smoker's lung. Um you know, so that made it very real for them. Real animal loans, not human loss. But I think the the best was uh working with the school counselors at the end of the session to hear those students talk in those groups about their experiences. They're forever changed. I was So again, thank you for putting this on and look forward to what we see in the spring here at the center. At this time, we'll move on to our academics report for our chief academic officer, Miss Tina McCascal. >> Good evening, Madam Chair, board members, Dr. Ross. I want to introduce first of all Mr. Priy. He is our CTE director, and
116he's going to talk about some celebrations that CTE had this past year. Good evening, uh, Madame Chair, board members, Dr. Ross, Miss McCascal, I got to say thank you for allowing me to come up and brag on some of our, uh, student organization students and we'll get right into it. Okay, there we go. All right. Uh our CT programs continue to shine both at the state and national levels. This year our students advisor and advisors achieve some really good things. We had 33 state winners across multiple CTE student organizations and that total that competed that state was approximately 231. So that gives us about 14% winning at the state level. We had one national winner representing excellence at the national stage and that was in our family and consumer sciences program at Irma High School.
117Now we have different organizations. Currently, we have 10 different student organizations across the district, but our FCCLA, which is Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America, they won and received the National Spirit of Advising Advising Award. Our Future Farmers of America earned National Gold Chapter award. Skills USA, they did a really outstanding job. National Outstanding Chapter Award, National Outstanding Career and Technical Educator Award, which was uh pictured right here. Uh Mr. Chapman, the advisor from here at the center, has always dedicated himself to Skills USA and our students. We had one national officer for 2425 and that was Miss Avery Smith from our law enforcement program here at the center. She is now graduated of course. She was a senior and she is continuing with Skills USA at the college level. We have three state
118officers. We had the CTE technology champion of the year from the center that represented the Midlands region, our workbased learning student of the year who also represented the Midlands region. And our scholarship winner from SC Deca, Cassidy Jones French uh scholarship program. And of course, this represents the dedication of our students and our CTE instructors and advisors. And thank you very much. So, I'm going to talk a little bit um just another update and integrate several things into this update. classroom tools which you see on the screen there. The uh middle are tools that probably a lot of us remember from our kindergarten days whenever we use crayons and pencils and scissors and all kinds of things in the classroom. They're still there. We still use those same tools. Um we also have added to
119those tools. Um we we have our sports balls. We have uh smartboards uh interactive boards. We still have the library with our books and of course we have computers as well. So all of those are important tools that we use within our classrooms today. And recently I've been able to have lots of conversations about classroom tools and how they impact um what happens in the classroom. And it's just really been brought to my attention that we go to school and we think that people just know what we do. like we don't really advertise what we do. We don't we don't talk about what happens in the classroom so much a lot of times. In fact, our coordinator sat down and we went through social media from all of our schools. What we advertise are things
120like what we just heard, which is fantastic from the Kate Center. Um we advertise what's happening in our sports. We advertise our family events that we're having and we're really celebrating those things. What we're not celebrating as much are the things that are happening in the classroom. And so we want to make sure that we're doing that. I'm going to share with you in a little bit how we're going how we're going to do that. One celebration of the classroom is with our report card summaries. So, just as a summary, and I know that Miss Black's going to be talking more detail about this, but in summary, we had five excellent ratings. That's two more than we had last year. We had eight good ratings. That was one school increase to excellent and two schools
121dropped to average. So, that's where we that's where you'll see that there's a little difference between that rating. We had seven average ratings, which are two more than what we had in 23 24. and we had two below average ratings which is one less than we had last year. Um so so that overall summary is showing an increase in student achievement overall. One thing that we dig into is the why behind. So why did a school drop or even within maybe they remained excellent but you have categories within that excellent and we look at how many points schools got within each category. We have conversations about that and we check to see where is it that we did well and why did we do well? What can we replicate there? And then why did we
122lose a point or two or three or whatever it might be and what did we do with that? And one area that we see is is a is a major area that we need to focus in is student progress. That is an area that we have to make sure that we have resources and tools for differentiation of students and to ensure that our teachers have the resources necessary to meet to meet those resources. So one thing that I want to talk a little bit about that Dr. Ross has already mentioned to you um is a proposal when we come back for our budget amendment I've come up with or not me a team of us have come together with a proposal for a tier 2 intervention for after school and in that there's tutoring for
123grades really K 1 through 12 we see kindergarten as an intervention in and of itself um and so we thought about afterchool um tutoring beginning in first grade. Um and it's different. And so what we've looked at to give us preliminary numbers for this are students who are ranging between the 20th and 30th percentile. Typically what we find in schools that below the 20th percentile get served in some form or fashion, whether it's with special ed, whether it's with our reading intervention or intervention that's within the school. That 20 to 30th percentile are those students that tend to not receive quite as much during the school day that could that could benefit from additional interventions um during that one thing that we will need when you look at that you think 20 to 30th percentile
124that's only 10 percentile points that's a lot of students that is a lot of students um looking at just kindergarten or first grade through fifth grade alone. If we try to keep our small groups up to like five students in a group for tutoring, you're looking at about 150 teachers needed to serve that population. So, we're going to need a lot of cooperation overall. We're going to need to make sure that that is something that teachers will want to do. We're going to need to make sure that we are compensating them for that time. The proposal will include transportation um 6 through 8, 9 through 12. They look different because their students are different, right? The needs are different for the for those. And so those schools have given us some input um as to
125what they think might would work best for their students. And so we we've gained that input. Counselors counselors have given us input on the types of sessions that they might would be able to offer both for families as well as for students. our mental health workers, what they can provide for students as well as for families. So, this total package will help to address some of those tier 2 needs. And I say some because it's some, but I do think it would make a huge impact for that. Another thing that I want to call attention to, I had talked about this before, but um when we look at secondary and and we talked a lot about scheduling and and that's been a hot topic as well. So I want to talk a little bit about
126that. When I came before, we were looking at the middle um like the semester number of failure rate the failure rate um from the semester. So, we went back and we looked at what the failure rate at the end of 2425 was for ELA, math, science, and social studies. Um, at the end of the year for the district, there were a total of 345 failure rates in ELA. That's 67 less than at the semester. Uh, for math, there were 596 at the end of the year. That's 141 less than there was at this semester. For science, there were 444 failures. That's 11 less than at this semester. And for social studies, there were 387. That's 51 less than at the at the semester. So, it improved from semester to the end of the year. Overall,
127math showed our greatest improvement. And as I said before, we really want the scheduling to be what's best for all schools. And every school has an individual need. Um those numbers are district-wide numbers. I have individual school numbers as well. Every school has has a population of students that are failing ELA, math, science, andor social studies that need to have a type of intervention. So what we've done is we've looked at how can we maintain the AB option and incorporate 4x4 at the same time. And so we've been able to look at the the center schedule to maintain that as being an AB schedule. And then each school is working. Miss Walters and I are going to be meeting with schools and looking to see how they might can incorporate the needed 4x4 for what's
128needed at their site. So again, it could be that one school might have multiple 4x4 um classes and and opportunities. another school may have a very limited and it might be that we can utilize our Edenum program um so that we are um not necessarily having to have a specific class but Edmondum allows us to use that within say maybe a department chairs might a department chair may have a specific block where the Edmondum students would come in and they would be able to do their their class within a 4x4. So, a little flexibility there and able to really work through what this looks like. I feel like what I said before was exactly what we meant. Every school will get to make a decision for what their schedule will look like. So, um, just
129wanted to reiterate that again to make sure that everybody understood that. Are there any questions before I move on? Just have a quick video at the end. >> Miss Holland. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I looked at the ratings and by the way, kudos. Um, overall they all went up. I know a few didn't, but overall, um, three, if elementary schools had doubledigit improvements, um, Seven Oaks, Chapen Elementary, and Dutch Fork Elementary, um, and I know they probably did a lot of things, but what are the top two or three things that you think help those schools improve? >> Actually, I'll use one word, intentionality. Those three schools were very intentional with looking at their data. They didn't make big decisions. They made small decisions based on what they saw with their students,
130but they were very intentional with what they were doing. >> And I have a follow-up question. It most of the impro improvements were at the elementary school level. What is it about high school that may be different or more challenging to to move the needle? >> One thing that we've one thing that we've uncovered that's really sort of unusually been an eye openener. We had a lot of students that didn't take the EOC. So by not taking the EOC hurts because that that counts greatly against you. And so we're making sure now that students take the EOCC if they're if they're in if they're anywhere around, we're going to go get them and take the EOC. I know Miss Black just met with a school recently and really helped them dig into their data to
131see how many of their students that was impacting. Um, but that's a big piece of the report card for our high schools and I'm really excited. I mean, the numbers with grad rate are are higher than what we've seen. I'm hesitate to say that. I don't want to knock on something really quick, but um I'm excited to see the interventions, the MTSS meetings that are taking place in our secondary schools are very intentional and the conversations that they're having. They're no longer looking at big groups. They're singling in on individual students and talking about what can that student do and how can we help that student. So, I'm really excited about the things that they're doing and hope that that's going to help I wanted to ask you a question. I visited uh Chapman Middle
132School and I'll give a shout out to Chapen Middle School. Um and from the time that I was in administration until last week when I visited, I learned a lot about how they're addressing some of these students, uh they have this MTSS. Did I get that right, Dr. Ross? I sat through a session and I was absolutely amazed because in the old days we didn't do that. Um, but I know that there's a tie with attendance and discipline and grades there. You know, you can try to separate them, but in in the end, they all kind of coincide or run together. Are or what are we doing? I know if we're looking at adjusting or adopting a schedule to help the kids that are not doing well, um, are what are we doing with those
133things with the attendance and the discipline to try to help pull them through? I may look over to Dr. Harris, but I know that his team is working um very diligently. They they have attendance meetings with families. They have discipline meetings with families, but I'm going to have to look to him for that. >> Absolutely. Of course. U Mr. Sandfield and others, you may be aware we still continue with the the attendance improvement plans uh for students that we engage our families with. Uh as Miss um Mallister indicated um Macascal I'm sorry indicated that we are continue to work with students individually and with their families. We have somewhat of a um uh truency court if you will that we have which is a direct impact a direct communication direct connection with uh those families.
134We've also incorporated over the past year or so uh attendance support persons who are able to assist schools and u with uh attendance related matters. Again, when we take those things related to attendance, we can also multiply that by saying on the discipline side, we continue uh those things those efforts as well are very similar to the report we heard just uh just just the board meeting or so ago. So there are initiatives in place that that that address specifically and target specifically discipline and or attendance or both uh that that we implore on a regular routine basis. Okay. Thank the reason I asked that is because again I can speak about the old days. Um, we just when we had attendance issues, we just added more makeup days, seat recovery. Um, because that's required
135for a Carnegie unit is you got to have certain amount of seat time. But the problem was is we just kept adding days and kids kept high school kids, they didn't know how to do the math and so they would cut and they would because we would keep adding more days and it became sort of a nightmare to be honest with you. So, um, but like I say, when I visited Shape and Middle, that sort of and I know that involves a lot of folks and a lot of time, but I was thoroughly impressed with the fact that they addressed all every area imaginable with that team to try to help students. So, thank you. >> Thanks, Miss McCascal. And I'm so happy to hear that the transportation part of this would be figured in
136because I've always been a little skeptical of afterchool intervention knowing that many of our students that need it are the very ones that depend on that. So I think that's great. Would it be a situation where students would be able to be enrolled in multiple of these intervention areas because I figures some of them may be struggling in both reading, math or social studies? >> Absolutely. Yes. and and especially in the secondary world, they'll be content area specific so they can get involved in the areas that they need. >> Anybody else? >> All right. Thank you, Miss McCasco. >> One video, >> one more thing. This is just an example of um some marketing that academics team is going to be doing. So, I hope you'll enjoy this. This is some joy of the day.
137every lesson, every classroom, every student. Learning comes alive when students are challenged, supported, and inspired. That's what academic excellence looks like. From classrooms to innovation labs, students are exploring, creating, and leading their own learning. Every student's growth tells our story. Every success reflects the heart of our schools. The Office of Academics. Inspiring learning for every student every day. >> Thank you, M. McCascal. At this time, we've talked about the report card. So, I'm going to invite to turn our chief of student services and planning, Dr. Harris uh to go over uh our school report card update. >> Absolutely. Again, uh Superintendent Ross and um board and community. We uh we heard just that uh M. McCasc touched just a little bit on the school report card and uh for the longest time those as you
138know that information is is embargoed um until uh I think it was November 3rd when it was released uh publicly by the state. And so we want to take just a little bit of a deeper dive in terms of what that means and what it says to us and what it u sh what it was shared on November 3rd and thought tonight would be a great opportunity to to do that with you. We have Miss Audrey Black, our director of planning and accountability to kind of give us that rundown of school report cards by way of an update. >> Good evening, Madam Chairman, members of the board. Dr. Ross and members of the community, thank you for allowing me to share a brief overview of the district 5's 2025 school report cards and graduation results.
139The state assigns schools an overall rating on a 100point scale based on several indicators that measure progress towards the profile of a South Carolina graduate. Each indicator contribute points towards a school's total score, which translates into one of five ratings: excellent, good, average, below average, or unsatisfactory. This chart shows how the state weights each indicator across grade spans. The first indicator, academic achievement, measures how well students meet state standards in English language arts and math. For elementary and middle schools, it is based on SC ready and SC ALT in grades three through eight. And at the high school level, it includes end of course exams in English 2 and algebra 1 and their corresponding ALT assessments. This indicator reflects how effectively schools are supporting students in mastering core academic skills. The student progress indicator focuses
140on how much students grow from one year to the next in English language arts and math. It measures whether students are making ex expected or accelerated growth based on their prior performance. This gives schools credit not only for where students end up but for how far they've come. Preparing for success measures student performance on SE ready and SE alt science academic achievement test for students in grades levels four and six. It also includes the end of course exams for biology 1 and US history and the constitution at the high school level. School climate captures how students and teachers perceive their learning and working environment while the multilingual learner progress measures growth for those students towards English language proficiency within five years. On the next slide, let's take a closer look at the indicators that apply
141specifically to our high schools. Here you see the percentage of students graduating within four years of starting high school. District 5's graduation rate has cont continued its upward trend, increasing by two points over the past five years and reaching 89.7% in 2025. This chart shows how District 5 compares with the Midlands in the state on key high school outcomes. District 5 continues to lead the Midlands in the state in high school student success, college and career readiness, and on-time graduation. In short, more of our students are on track, graduating on time, and prepared for success in whatever path they choose after high school. Before you are each school's overall rating for 2024 and 2025, two additional schools earned an excellent rating this year, bringing our total to five, and many others increase their overall point
142totals, a sign of steady systemwide growth. If the district itself were to receive a report card, you'd see growth in every single indicator from 24 to 2025 with only school climate dipping by less than 210 of a point. It is a clear sign that our commitment to continuous improvement is producing real measurable results. Every school in our district has something to celebrate on their report cards. I'd like to highlight a few that really stood out this past year. Spring Hill High earned an excellent rating in every single indicator and ranks among the top 20 high schools statewide. Seven Oaks Elementary Global Magnet, a title one school, increased its total report card points by 11 points and moved its overall rating up to average. Chapen Elementary, Chapen Middle, Dutch Fork Middle, excuse me, Dutch Fork Elementary,
143Lake Murray Elementary, and Pineywoods Elementary all moved up one full rating level this year. And as was pointed out earlier, Chapen Elementary posted the largest point gain in the district, 14 points in a single year. At the district level, we continue to see steady and meaningful progress. Our on-time graduation rate is nearing 90% exceeding both the Midlands and the state averages. Across all schools, 20 earned ratings of average or higher, including five excellent and eight good. Our rate for students who are college or career ready rose to 82.5% with district 5 ranked number one in the Midlands for students who are both college and career ready. So, thank you for your time and attention. I'm happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions? >> All right. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Miss
144Black. We certainly appreciate the breakdown and the systematic growth that we're seeing. It's a testament to our students, our teachers and staff, administrators for their hard work and commitment. And to that, November 17th through 21st is American Education Week. And so we appreciate the board in this budget uh has presented uh an opportunity for permanent employees and permanent positions as of the 1st of November to receive a onetime payment of $1,000. That payment will be issued on November 21st. Uh again, we thank the board for approving this within the budget and we look forward to issuing these out on American Education Week. be mindful that while we paid FICA out of this, Miss Tucker, we we can't pay all the withholdings. That's very different. And so, I know people will look for a 1,000 uh
145in their bank account, but the withholdings has to come out. Uh we did pay the FICA uh but whatever people's individuals withholdings that that still has to come out. So, nonetheless, uh with cost of living increases, we do appreciate uh that this is issued to our employees on November 21st. That is uh the superintendent's report and I stand for any questions. >> Do we have any questions for Dr. Ross? >> Right. Thank you, Dr. Ross. That moves us to the approval of the minutes from the October 27th meeting. >> I move that we approve the minutes of the October 27th, 2025 board meeting. All in favor? And the motion carries six to zero. That moves us to um public participation. The board welcomes and encourages public participation. We respectfully ask that you adhere to the
146procedures provided in board policy vehic. 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 behav. Thank you. Miss Snipes Anna Fergosce is here to talk about web browsers and Google search. >> Hi, good evening. I'm Anna Fosce and I have two elementary school students in this district. Our libraries at school contain curated collections of books to educate and inspire our children. We trust the schools to maintain age appropriate and valuable materials. A process exists to address concerns parents may have with the books in our schools. However, while at school, all children have access to Google search and web browsers on their Chromebooks. Google search results are
147not curated by a trusted adult. Today, using my child's Chromebook on the school Wi-Fi network, I Googled how babies are made and found image results of stick figures answering this question. The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, is accessible and it's full of inappropriate headlines, articles, and images. What can we do to bridge the gap between vetting printed material in our schools and online materials available to our children at school? I believe there are ways to improve this situation, but I'm still learning. It is the district's responsibility to ensure our children are safe while using their Chromebooks. Parents and teachers can work, and I do, to teach and discourage our children from venturing to harmful and inappropriate websites. But only the district has the ability to block these sites and this content. Can we evaluate the
148risks of allowing Google search and web browsers against our academic goals? Can we find better solutions that equip our teachers with valuable online tools, but that still protect our children? In the future, Google may make changes that push us to compromise on our policies for protecting our children, like the recent implementation of the suggested search feature. If this happens, our response cannot be, "We are committed to using the Google Suite, so we must allow this risk." Instead, there must be a point where we draw the line. We cannot let our policies bend to Google's business model. Finally, is the district willing to invest in technology to make the internet filters on the Chromebooks the same at home as they are at school? It is my understanding that this is possible. Thank you. >> Thank you,
149Adam. Aaron Haggard is here to speak about Chapen Eagle Club scoreboard. Good evening, Dr. Ross and members of the board. My name is Aaron Haggard, and I am honored to be the current president of the Chapen Eagle Club. I am also a proud parent of two Chapen High School students. Reagan, a senior who plays basketball, softball, and golf, and Brewer, a junior who plays baseball. For more than 40 years, the Chapen Eagle Club has proudly supported all student athletes at Chapen High School. Through generous community partnerships, business sponsorships, and family memberships, we are able to contribute significant resources each year to assist our athletic director and supplement the district's budget in support of our 131 student athletes who com who up who make up over 50 middle and high school teams. We are here this
150evening to discuss the condition of the scoreboard at our stadium. Simply put, it is no longer functional and has become problematic for the many students and fans who depend on it. The scoreboard is not just a football feature. It serves our JV and varsity soccer and lacrosse teams, our band, our JOTC, and our CSN student broadcasting team. 12 years ago, the Chapen Eagle Club worked in partnership with the district to purchase the current scoreboard, which has allowed us to meet this community need without using taxpayer funds. Similar arrangements have taken place more recently at other local schools. Those collaborations are a wonderful example of how our community and the district can work together for the benefit of the students. Our current board has now exceeded its 10-year life expectancy and we are asking for your
151approval to move forward with a similar partnership which will allow us to replace it. Members of our executive board are here with me tonight in full support of our request which I know was discussed earlier in your executive session. We respectfully ask the district to again allow the Chapen Eagle Club to purchase and install the new scoreboard at Chapen High School. Thank you for your time this evening. We appreciate your consideration of this request and we deeply appreciate your partnership, your leadership, and your continued unwavering support of Chapen High School and all of the students across Lexington Richland School District 5. Thank you. >> Thank you, Aaron. Grace Abbott is here to talk about 4x4 scheduling. >> Good evening, board members. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Today, I am borrowing a
152page from Dr. Ross's book and using a rhyme to explain why 4x4 scheduling needs a second look. The thought is that the new schedule may work as well as what we have now, but we shouldn't change for change's sake without asking why and how. Operation transformation took years to plan and teachers were asked. Share your thoughts if you can. We gave ideas, voted, participated, and were heard. This is not the same with the scheduling process as you will still learn. When it comes to change, we are naturally resistant. Given our school's success, you too would be hesitant. Asking for data or a reason why has been met with tepid and confusing replies. So out we went in search of data to explain the impetus for what would cause our courses to rearrange. What we found
153locally gave us a surprise. Scheduling has no impact on the top schools to our eyes. However, as we looked at the bottom schools, we found 4x4 was prevalent, making this move seem unsound. We have been working hard to help our students who we love and grow. Please refer to the one pager that our concerns will show. We would like to thank Dr. Ross who spoke with our leadership today in order to say AB scheduling does not have to go away and such hope means more to us than we can say. Thank you. Thank you. Joshua Rosenthal is here to talk about Chromebook use in school. Thank you everyone for your service and the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm a D5 parent. I was also a middle school teacher before entering into healthcare. Last meeting we
154heard from many on how Chromebooks are essential in K5 education, allowing for adaptive and equitable learning. After hearing this, one would think that edtech has improved learning outcomes or decreased learning gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. The evidence does not support these assumptions. Since digital devices were introduced in classrooms around 2012, proficiency rates for reading and math have steadily declined. A recent edtech review states that free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language, they have not had an impact on learners general computer skills. To date, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. Instead, children comprehend, retain more, and process more deeply when reading from books versus screens. Another review states that students who use computers frequently
155at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social backgrounds and student demographics. Perhaps the most disappointing finding was in the report that technology was of little help in bridging the gap skills between advantaged and disadvantaged students. ensuring that every child attains a base level of proficiency in reading and mathematics did more to create equal opportunities than that could be achieved by expanding or subsidizing access to high-tech devices. It's noteworthy that the very tech executives who designed these products send their children to tech-free schools in K through8. This should all give us pause and should spur reflection on K5 Chromebook usage as these individuals are aware of the intentional addictive design of these products and are actively avoiding exposure for their own children. Many of our learning games are embedded
156with features intentionally designed to trigger dopamine releases in children to keep them playing. It is unwise to expose young minds to products that reinforce addictive neuropathways. As a result of these findings, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Sweden, Spain, and Finland are rethinking Chromebook policies with some returning to pen, paper, and textbooks. A recent Swedish government policy statement urged schools to limit screen time and to only use devices at an age when they fostered not hinder learning even if that meant that they should be used and they absolutely should be used selectively and based on clear scientific support and documented education added value. These are the drawbacks observed with proper monitored use and not Chromebook misuse at our child's school until we recently shared our concerns. Children were rewarded with good behavior with Chromebook time at
157the end of their related arts classes. Online games were neither educational nor relevant to subject matter that was being taught. Kids could use their PBIS money to play online games. I can recall a dystopian scene of walking into my daughter's after school program on a rainy day and seeing kids lined up with rows and rows of computers instead of playing games or doing crafts with one another. My point is that many parents have become more intentional about limiting screen time at home and we are being undermined at school. There's a great world out there for our children to explore, but once we put a screen in front of them, they will have little interest in it. Wherever you land on this issue, I think we can all agree that more intentional and evidence-based policies are
158needed. My wife and I have sent all each of you an email with wellressearched ideas and proposed solutions to these problems. And I hope that each of you will read through it thoroughly and consider the suggestions that we've made. Thank you. >> Thank you, Joshua. Lysa Huffsetler is here to talk about county concurrency. My name is Lysia Huffetler and I live in Chapen, South Carolina. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for all the work that you do. Um, I'm here tonight to support posting school capacity and enrollment um, numbers on the district's website. This might sound like a little thing, but it makes a big difference in our community. Our county is growing fast and new neighborhoods are being processed all the time. The county needs accurate upto-date
159um school capacity data to make smart decision about these developments. When we parents, neighbors, uh planners and trustees can see clearly which schools are near capacity and we all know more development means more capacity at the schools, right? It crowds schools. It keeps growth balanced with concurrency. It's also about trust and transparency. We families deserve to know whether the schools near us have space for the added developments. The community deserves to see the data that drives these important decisions. The district already tracks this information. This is not going to accumulate work. Y'all already have it. We're just asking it to be shared openly on the website so everyone can stay informed and work together. Posting this data publicly, like I said, is free. Um, it says that you guys are willing to be open, transparent,
160and work and help plan ahead. I urge you to approve this proposal and make this information accessible to all of us. taxpayers who support the school district. Um, it's a simple step that can make a real difference for family, students, and future of our community. With every development that comes, it overcrowds our schools. We have higher teacher, you know, more students. We're not getting more teachers. Okay, please post this. This would be a great asset for you guys. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Charlie Wessinger is here to speak about county concurrency issues. Hi guys, it's good to see you. Charlie Wessinger, L City County Council and a citizen. Um, as you know, some of my peers have voted to remove the school questionnaire from concurrency issues when um, development becomes in front of
161planning commission and county council. Um, so I am asking if you would please consider posting this information um, because with it's it's so important for us to know. Our school districts operate independently from local governments yet are deeply affected by county level land use decisions. Making this information publicly available is critical in supporting transparency, intergovernmental coordination, and responsible growth management. The county council and planning commissions rely on accurate capacity data to make concurrency decisions without overburden overburdening existing schools and other services. Publicly displaying capacity and enrollment by school ensures the district, county, and the community are all operating on the same accurate data. This transparency also strengthens public confidence. Families, taxpayers deserve to understand the current state of our schools. Where is the room for growth? Where is the investment or relief needed? This data
162can help the district build support for capital projects and long-term facility planning. When unc uncoordinated growth overwhelms local schools, residents perceive that developers are being prioritized over community needs. This fuels public opposition to new development and undermines responsible growth management practices. Most importantly, this initiative requires minimal effort and minimal cost. The district already collects this information. You already know the numbers that are available at your school capacity and enrollment. All you have to do is publish this quarterly. It's very simple. I encourage the board to vote in favor of this proposal. I believe it's item number 17 on your agenda. This is a practical, lowcost step that promotes accountability, supports concurrency planning, and helps ensure our schools grow in step with our communities. I would love to stay for the vote. It's freezing tonight, and
163we have a greenhouse emergency on the farm. All the plastic got ripped off today. So, thank you so much. I appreciate everything you do. I've got to run away, so I'll see you later. Bye. >> Thank you, Charlotte. That's all we have. Thank you, Miss Michael. That moves us to our action agenda. First up, action is necessary on matters discussed in executive session. >> Make a motion to approve selected employment items in exhibit A for action. >> Do I have a second? All in favor? And the motion carries seven to zero. Make a motion for Thompson Turner Construction to be awarded the contract for construction manager at risk for the Harpson West Elementary and Nursery Road Elementary renovations shown in exhibit C. >> Second. >> All in favor? And the motion carries seven to zero.
164Make a motion for MBcon Construction LLC to be awarded the contract for construction manager at risk for the construction of the administrative and professional development building district office shown in exhibit D. >> Have a second. >> Second. >> All in favor? The motion carries. Seven to zero. Make a motion that persuant to board policy FE, the board make final approval for the closing for the purchase of property located at 1709 Hollingsshed Road, Hermo, TMS number R052000- 01- Z15 for $50,000 as part of the new Dutch Fork Elementary School project shown in exhibit E. >> Have a second. >> Second. >> All in favor? And the motion carries seven to zero. >> Move that the board of trustees approve the gift and acceptance agreement with the Chap and Eagle Eagle Club with the understanding that the
165proposed changes discussed in executive session will be made before the agreement is signed and shown in exhibit F. Second. >> Miss Snipes. I move that we defer this item until we can get the questions that were asked in executive session answered. >> Right. We have an amendment to the motion. Is there any other discussion or questions? Right. Um, all those in favor of the amendment to defer until the questions have been answered that were raised previously. >> Can I ask a question? >> Absolutely. >> U, what does that mean exactly? I mean, I know that Dr. Ross on the agenda there's something he's going to have the discussion on with regards to some of the other schools and and all that. was since I made it >> I went we asked the lawyer a question
166that he didn't have the answer to. >> I I and I agree. I remember that discussion so that was a concern as well. Um but um I know that there's folks here that are looking for some sort of resolution. Any idea would would that be put on the agenda the next meeting or how would that go? Or is that a question too tough a question to ask? >> You're asking me. I thought he I thought he said he could answer it. He just wasn't. He didn't have he didn't know the answer right then. That's what I heard. >> Well, I I know the question was an important one. I do remember. So, I there are some concerns there. So, thank you. >> Sorry. We have an amendment um to the motion on the floor to
167defer assuming to the next meeting. Um all those in favor and abstain. So the motion carries to defer to the next meeting. I move that the board approve and adopt the redline written findings drafted by the board attorney in compliance with 43-174C shown in exhibit H. Uh I'm sorry, exhibit J. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Miss Snipes? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Can um just for the benefit of the public, I just want to clarify that what we are um we are not voting again on this um parent complaint forum. We are just voting to approve the written response. Correct? >> Yes, ma'am. All those in favor? And the motion carries seven to zero. And that bring us to the end of the act. Well, I'm sorry to
168item number 15. That moves us to the first reading of proposed revisions to board policy K public concerns and complaints. Do we have a motion before the discussion? >> Uh, make a motion to approve the first reading of proposed revisions to board policy K, public concerns and complaints shown in exhibit G. >> Second. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Dr. Ross. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Board policy K we've discussed twice in the discussion of our previous meetings. Uh basically our current policy takes complaints from no uh November 2013 and basically says that uh the public concerns and complaints are are handled by the superintendent. Uh you may not be aware but there are a lot more now and for the superintendent to address this we need to
169update our policy uh to a more uh efficient methodology. Uh to do this, we need to understand the differences between concerns, complaints, and grievances. A concern is a a worry that may not be substantiated by evidence. A complaint is a worry that has evidence that can be researched for fact. And a grievance is a violation of where there's evidence of violation of law or policy. uh we are to ensure that these matters are resolved satisfactorily uh without uh retaliatory methods. How do we accomplish that? We accomplish that with level systems to address the matter as close to the incident as possible. uh to do that. Uh we believe that the uh best course of action is that if this is a matter that can be addressed with the teacher or staff, we will handle that
170at level one. Uh if it's not met satisfactorily there, the principal or director of that particular department or school can address it at level two. uh we find that if the matter is not addressed by the school principal uh meeting with the principles we felt that it would be best if we formalize that complaint uh to the district office sometimes you hear the word I told the district office and uh who is that and so at level three we differentiate the different levels in which that complaint can go and that's formally uh presented by the the public member to that level. Uh if not resolved at that level, it goes to the superintendent and then it can be properly brought before the board. Uh we have devised this off of the model policy uh code
171K public concerns and complaints. Uh this also is in compliance with the non-discrimination and equal opportunity uh policy uh as well as policy GBK staff concerns, complaints and grievances. So this aligns sometimes you do with one policy and it has strings and other policies. This aligns all three together. Uh and so uh with that u we recommend uh the approval of the model policy for public concerns and complaints. Do you have any questions or comments, Miss Huddle? Um, I do have a question about um, obviously if it's a a student specific, this makes tons of sense, but what happens if a member of the community comes to one of us, for example, and says, um, I'm concerned that, um, the grass isn't getting cut at Irma Elementary. things that are broad or even more maybe
172security type issues that are not specific to they might not even have a student in the district. Um does this impact how that would work? >> A great question. I think all uh trust all trustees are wards of the public um and your electorate and so those will come to you at all times. you can always funnel those as your uh board policy says your board conduct policy says you will funnel those to the superintendent uh to address. Now at that point uh then I will either a recommend that it handled by the staff member. So let's say we have a policy that that's that's supposed to be addressed and the grass is not cut. I can either a go to level one or b uh handle it at level three. But I think um
173in terms of your uh you have two board policies on conduct and uh ethics that you could refer those to the superintendent. The majority of the public concerns that we receive do not come to the board though. Uh they are handled by the thousands uh at the school level. And so I think this formalizes how um the majority of our concerns and complaints will will never reach you. And so this organizes how we handle those uh much better. >> Do you have any other questions? All right. We have a motion on the floor that's been properly seconded. All those in favor of um approving the first reading and the motion carries seven to zero. That takes us to number 17 on the action agenda. Um the board request from Miss Huddle. Miss Huddle, would you
174like to speak to your request? >> Sure. Um and I'll just make a motion that's consistent with my request. I move that the district post student enrollment and capacity by school on the district's website and update the capacity in conjunction with I'm sorry, update the enrollment in conjunction with u the required timing of enrollment updates to the South Carolina Department of Education. >> Second, >> um we heard from a couple people um just a kind of backstory on this Lexington C. I don't know what Richland County does, but Lexon County has a concurrency ordinance that the planning commission is supposed to look at schools, fire, ambulance, all these things when they're looking at develop new developments of um a large number of homes. And there used to be a form that had to come to
175the school district. The county did away with that form. So, that's not come. So, every time a new development that met the criteria was in the works, the county would send a form to our school district and they would have to fill it out based on the location. And that's a little tedious, but this would actually um the county did away with the form. They kept the ordinance. So, they're still still supposed to look at capacity, but they did away with the form. So, posting this information on our website would um still allow the county to have the information and and anyone else um down as having to um do the form. I I will say I I printed a I did it myself. It wasn't hard. I I printed it and I forgot to
176bring it with me, so I've emailed it to Miss White and copied everybody, but I did an example of this and it it took no time at all. The capacity never changes or rarely changes. The prior enrollment obviously doesn't change and I just screen scraped what we reported to Department of Ed to drop it in there. So, I don't think it would be a hardship to do this and certainly less time than what we've been doing with the form that they sent used to send. >> Um Mr. Satderfield and Mr. Herring um Miss Huddle, do you know how the count how the county is using this? I mean, apparently they're not helping our schools in any way, shape, or form. I mean, we're chaping the area just in Spring Hill just busting at the seams.
177Um they have our 45day count and they have our 135 day count. Um what I mean I I I wish that when Miss Westing was here she would say we'd like to look so that we can say no you cannot develop but they don't say that. So I'm just curious what would be and I'm not against the idea. I'm just curious how would they use that and would they use that in such a manner that would prevent us from getting overcrowded and scrambling to find how to add to schools and pass bond referendums and things. >> I think that's a very good point. I I will say they don't have our enrollment. They could go get it, but that doesn't show capacity. So, while anyone can go to the Department of Ed and get the
178enrollment, I don't I couldn't find the capacity anywhere. You know, it's a really good question how they're going to use it, but I kind of look at it like this. If we don't show them, then we can't very well complain when they drop a 300 home starter home neighborhood right next to Chapen Elementary. Just using that as an example. So that you're right, we can't control how they use it, but I think that we could at least put it out there, make sure they know it's out there, and then if they elect not to use it, at least we try. >> Well, I I agree with that. ex I guess my concern is and maybe this is directed more towards Lakeland County um there's no evidence that they're using anything. I mean, if they were
179the ones that required the form, why did they stop requiring the form? If it was an important thing for them for planning and all, I mean, look at the roads. Look, try to get down 76 in the afternoon or in the morning. It's it's a nightmare. But, uh, if it was an important thing, why would they stop requiring? >> Well, maybe because not enough people cared. I mean, I again, I think this is a simple thing to do. I'll volunteer to do it, okay? It's not hard. I'll I'll do it every time. I have three more years. But I mean, we did a we did a COVID dashboard that, you know, I was on the board then. It was nashing of teeth and it was far it was updated every single day and we're not
180doing that anymore. So, I I just think we have to make an effort. Um, if they choose not to use it, we can't control that, but we can put it out there. We can direct them to it and maybe they will use it. >> Doc, Dr. Go ahead. I was going to ask you a question. How how difficult a charge is this? And uh have they ever requested this information from our school district? >> Uh this was uh Lexon County uh will request it on a case-byase basis. Uh I I think what's important, we heard that we wanted accuracy with this and as long as we stick to the we have reported days. Uh that is I'm looking at Dr. Harris Dr. There's the 10th day, the 45th day, the 90th day, the 135th day,
181and and 180th day. So those are five state reporting cycles that we go through. Attendance changes every day. So on the 10th day, if you ask what's the attendance, it takes us three four days to go verify that. So, uh, what we get accused of is giving, if we give the wrong number, we get accused of misleading. Our goal, if we're going to do this is not to do it quarterly, uh, but when that reporting cycle comes out, um, uploading it in our current capacity. We've only done that upon request. We don't do it regularly. So, that is the the ask. And then the second thing, it is a question of clarification. um prominently posted on the website. Uh there's a lot on our website and I know we just want clarification of what does
182that does that mean? >> May I clarify? Um I I actually I don't think I said prominently. Y'all I wrote it down so I did there but I think when I made the motion I I did not use the word prominently. And I did say in um conjunction with the time frames that we update um the department of education. >> So although your request um in the email said quarterly, we could because that was the question that I actually was going to ask as a result of what Dr. Ross said is could we update it when we're already having to do it anyway was going to be my question. >> Yes, ma'am. That's why I changed the motion to say um in conjunction with the state reporting. >> Okay. U Mr. Herring and then I'll
183get to you and get them Kevin. >> Okay. >> Uh so the motion is >> because you you adjusted it right >> post it um post it on the district website. I didn't say prominently so they can bury it if they want to. >> So there's information you wouldn't but um and then to and update the actual enrollment counts in conjunction with the same schedule as the department of ed. So the 45day the 90. So, that's something we're already doing, right, Dr. Ross? Okay. >> Um, yeah, I this is just not an efficient process or or request. Um, Miss Huddle, in your email on October 31st, the first sentence of your second paragraph says, I am happy to see this administrative burden lifted from our district. End quote. And now you're asking exactly for the
184administrative burden to be put back on the district. It just doesn't make sense from an efficiency standpoint. From a transparency standpoint, there is no the data is publicly available first of all from the SEDOE website. It's also available upon request at any point. If anybody in the public requested it from us, we could always at that time go and provide the data to require our staff to continually prepare and provide this data and track it. It just takes resources. It seems small, but it's you even I mean I am happy to see this administrative burden lifted from our district. It it's just not a good idea. It's not efficient. we can't just because somebody may use the information. It's just not a good idea to do that. So, I I object uh to the request
185and will not support it for that reason. Again, any party at any time, if they wanted the information, they could ask for it specifically. I assume based on past history and the fact that the county is no longer requesting it that they simply didn't use it enough to request it to to have it continue. That should give us a good feeling that it's probably not very uh in need or important to them. So I I just don't agree with it for that reason. It's not an efficient way to do business and not a good use of our staff time and resources. Miss Snipes, may I clarify the email he read from the the burden I was talking about was every time there's a neighborhood, the form was being sent. So that was what I was
186talking about. And as far as the time, like I said, none of these the old the capacity doesn't change, the history doesn't change. You literally can do a screen scrape off the Department of Ed's website in less than a minute. I realize it still has to be updated to the website, but I just I think it's a very small amount of time compared to the good and the transparency that it would do. >> Mr. Hearing, >> I'm not aware and haven't looked. But do other districts do this? Dr. Ross, you know the answer to that or any of your team? >> I I'm not aware of that. I know concurrency was only something in Lexington. We never had to do it on the Richland County side. So that's all I know. >> Mr. Satderfield, >>
187but Dr. Ross, this is already information we're providing. >> Uh, we don't update it at five reporting periods, but uh, you can find that data. And Dr. Harris, you want to speak to what we do provide? >> Certainly. We do provide the the the five milestone dates that you just shared. We do provide that. Make that available under our Tableau dashboard. uh once it's reported to the state. So that information is already there in terms of the enrollment. Uh as you say, the capacity doesn't really change unless there's a program capacity change within a particular school. Um but the information regarding enrollment that you talked about that goes directly to the state that's already there under a tablet dashboard that's already readily available under the district website. um that we currently do and again we
188monitor that and keep that updated once those milestone dates are are shared with the state department. >> So I guess my point is if we're already doing it, do we even need a motion? Can't we just tell them how to find it on our dashboard? >> To clarify where the capacity is not listed though. >> So that's the whole point. The whole point is they've got 700 kids at Chapen Elementary and the capacity is 500. But the capac capacity I I understand what you're saying and I'm not disagreeing but the capacity doesn't change unless we build a bigger school. Right. >> Right. >> Dr. Ross. >> But they don't know that. They don't know what the capacity is. That's not published. So could that one thing about each school's capacity be added to the dashboard
189so that somebody can I mean it sounds like we're making a a mountain out of a molehill >> if it's something that we're already providing if that's suitable and if somebody asked what our school capacities we would certainly share that with them. So I mean you I think we're again trying to pass something that is a pretty easy problem to solve. That's just my opinion. Right. Do we have any other questions or comments? All right. We have a motion on the floor and it's been properly second. All those in favor of Miss Huddle's motion to post this information on the website in line with when we pull together the report the five times a year. All those in favor? And the motion carries five to two. All right. That moves us to the discussion agenda.
190Start with the discussion of functional behavior assessment and behavioral intervention intervention plan. >> Uh thank you madam chair. Coming to the lectern is our chief of academics miss tascal to introduce mayor sever from dove freeman and sebert. Miss >> good evening again. I am here um I've got director of special education um Jenny friend as well as the attorney Meredith Sebert from Duff Freeman and Sebert and they are going to share with you some information about special education that I believe you've requested and then have some time for questions. >> Thank you. I'm going to put my water here guys. I'm so sorry. I am recovering from pneumonia. So, I apologize for all the coughing that is going on. So, I'm here to talk to you about fun. Can you hear me if I if
191I move around? Okay, perfect. So, I'm here to talk to you about functional behavior assessments, positive behavior supports, and manifestation determinations. And really, what we're talking about is behavior and discipline for students with disabilities. That's what underlies this topic. And so, I'm going to start with the foundation, right, which is y'all y'all know this, but Our students with disabilities are protected by federal law and that's the IDA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. So, our students with disabilities have additional rights and we have additional obligations to those students. And when we talk about behavior and discipline for students with disability, I feel like sometimes that's an issue where we get pressed. On one side, people think we're being too lenient. On the other side, people think that we are
192not being lenient enough. First thing I'm going to talk to you or we're going to look at is the removal days. So, when we are talking about disciplining students with disabilities under the idea, the general the general thought process that you need to follow is that you've got 10 days to treat students with disabilities the same as you do students without disabilities as their non-disabled peers. So for no more than 10 days per year, you can suspend or exclude a student, a special education student without having to go back to an IEP meeting, without having to do a functional behavior assessment, without coming together as a team to look at a manifestation determination, without providing them educational services. So we've got 10 days that we're working with for our students with disabilities before we have
193to do something different. And I say that though if you I put that similar to dealing with any regular education student for 10 days. That's what that's what we're working with. However, it's 10 days. And so what are you going to do? What are our administrators going to do when they get to 10 days? And so the the obligation that is behind those 10 days is that you have to be proactively addressing those interfering behaviors as well. So, we've got 10 days, but we can't just sit and be like, "We're not going to deal with this until day 10." But what I want you to take away from this is you've got 10 days. And we don't have a lot of leeway. So there's what the regulations say about a disciplinary removal, what that looks
194like, but the reality is is what the regulations say and what we have to report to the state department are a little different. So while the regulations talk about cumulative removals that constitute a pattern where we may be looking at maybe we've got vaping over here, we've got some sort of skipping class over here. They're not related to each other, right? But they're not really a pattern of behavior. The state department doesn't let us look at that. The state department is looking at, have you removed this child for 10 days? And if you've removed that child for 10 days, they're looking at, all right, what have you done to address the behaviors? And have you done the manifestation determination? So, I say all that to start off with. We got 10 days to treat them
195the same as other students. Once you hit those 10 days, it's considered a disciplinary change in placement. And there's two ways to trigger a disciplinary change in placement. One is through cumulative removals of more than 10 days. The other is a consecutive removal of more than 10 days. So if you're looking at more than 10 consecutive days, that's going to be your traditional expulsive recommendation. That's going to be your recommendation that a student goes to the alternative school for 45 days. Those are going to be considered a disciplinary change in placement because it's more than 10 consecutive days. And the second way to trigger this manifestation determination to trigger the disciplinary protections is more than 10 cumulative day of short-term removals. So a day here, two days here, three days here. Once you get to
19610, there's certain rights that our students with disabilities have. And what I think is important to remember and what your principles have to balance is that when we talk about a day or removal, we're not just talking about an expulsion that goes into powers school. So when we are talking about a removal that's going to count against y'all in terms of hey are we marching toward this manifestation determination when we're looking at that that's going to be your traditional suspension or suspension recommendation that is also if our administration unilaterally that means outside of a outside of team meeting they say you know what one o'clock seems like a good time to end your day that's going to be considered a removal that counts towards for these days. We call them the unofficial removals. I like
197to call them Timmy's having a bad day. I need you to come pick him up. That counts toward our days of removal. And I like to remind our principles that parents, it's not a problem till it's a problem and they're watching, right? So those days are being counted. Bus transportation. If we suspend a student off the bus and transportation is a component of their IEP and they don't come to school, that's going to be a day of removal. ISS generally does not count against your day of removal as long as they still have access to their non-disabled peers. So if your ISS room is both disabled and non-disabled students and they still get their services. So there's a lot of days that are going to start to count toward those 10. And once we get
198to 10 days, again, there are additional rights that come into play. Once we get to those 10 days, what your IEP teams have to do is they have to come together and they have to have what we call a manifestation determination review, an MDR. Have y'all heard your your staff talk about that? That is an MDR. It's a manifestation determination review. And what they're there to do is to determine, hey, based on all the information we have as a team, we have to look at whether that behavior is related to the disability or not. And whether it's related determines what can happen to the child in terms of discipline. So the question that the teams have to look at when we're looking at this manifestation determination review and I've got it up here for they
199answer two questions. Was the conduct or the misconduct that led to the discipline was it caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship to the student's disability or was it a direct result of the district's failure to implement the student's IEP? That is what that team is coming together to look at. And this is one component of the of the discipline process, but it's the one that applies only to students with disabilities. So your team gets together, they talk about this, and they make a decision. If the answer to both of those questions, and again, those questions are, was it caused by or had a direct or substantial relationship to to the child's disability, or was it a direct failure to implement the IEP? If the answer to both of those questions is no,
200then the district can discipline the student to the same extent as we can non-disabled peers with a with a little I'm going put a little aster there though. Okay, we still have to look at whether we're going to do some sort of behavioral assessment or look at behavior interventions as we look at that. And what I also want to point out is although I'm going to tell you, hey, we can discipline the to the same there is still an obligation to serve those students just in a different location. So if I have a student with a disability who is expelled, we go through the manifestation determination. We find it's not related, wasn't directly or substantially related to the disability. There wasn't a violation, an implementation issue that caused the behavior to occur. Okay, we're going
201to go forward with discipline. They have the same discipline rights to go to a hearing in front of Mr. Harris as a as any other student would have. But as we go through that process, important to remember they still have a right to services just somewhere else. Now if the question to to either not both but either is yes. So if it's substantially related direct to substantial relationship or this behavior happened because the district was not correctly implementing the IEP. If the answer to either of those questions is yes, what happens then is that the student cannot be disciplined any further and the student is returned or the presumption is they return to the placement that they came from. So as that team gets together they look at it and they Okay, that behavior was
202related. We go through the process. The answer is yes. It was a substantial relationship to the disability. We stop the discipline process and the child goes back to that setting. There only two ways to change that. And one is if the team gets together and says, "Okay, we've looked at this, but this isn't an appropriate placement. We got to look at something different." and we as a team together say we need to look at some different services, different placement, different programming. But that's an IEP team decision. That's not discipline at that point. That's looking at what do we need to do to make sure the child is getting the services and the education that they're entitled to. So if it's related one, they go back. The only way to change the one of the two
203ways to change that is through an IEP team decision saying, "Hey, not for discipline, but because we need to better address your needs, we're making some changes." The other way to change, even if it's related, there is an exception and that's the we call that the big three. I'm move to that section right here. And in those cases, behavior or misconduct is related to the disability. There's an exception that students to what they call an interim alternative educational setting for up to 45. Sorry, I move around. We call those the big three for a reason because they are carrying a weapon to school or to a school function. It's knowingly possessing or using illegal drugs at school or a school function or inflicting serious bodily injury on another person while at school or a school
204function. And you're thinking, "Oh, bodily injury. That's if you listen to Barbara Drayton from the state department of education, she'll tell you that's blood and guts. It's it's organs. It's a very high standard for us to reach." And so that's again that's I'm telling you so you know that that's one way that we move to interum alternative educational setting but a huge part of my practice is is special ed and we only use IS so so often. I'm going to go back to that MDR. So we have the MDR we've returned the child to their placement. The other thing that has to happen if we find that a behavior is related is we have to conduct a behavioral assessment and develop a BIP unless the child already has one. The other thing that the IEP
205team has to look at, we have to look at okay if we found it was not rel we found it was related because we have failed to implement the IEP then we got to look at how do we fix that? How do we fix that moving forward? And an example of that may be when we talk about properly implementing. Let's say for example, I have a child with an emotional disability and there's a particular step or process that we go through to help a child process his emotions and we don't do that and that's what leads to the to the misconduct. That might be one way that they say, "Okay, you failed to implement and that led to the behavior." But what I want to get across to you when we're looking at our students
206with our disabilities, every time that we're past 10 days, we have to have an MDR. If we're going to remove a child after 10 days, the team has to reconvene. And so that's a balancing act, right? And so when we look at that, if I when I talk to principles, I tell them, you got to be thoughtful about how you're using those days because if you use all your days in September and October, what are you going to do? What are you going to do later on in the year? So, you have to be really thoughtful about how you're using those days. Because the other thing you have to think about is if I have a child with serious behaviors and I think that there's going to be a need for those MDRs, there's there's
207time that's involved in that as well. Because again, if I use all my days in October, for example, and there are multiple removals throughout the year, that team still has to meet multiple times. Every time that we look to remove them, the team has got to reconvene and meet. So, this is a balancing act that your teams are are having to look at. Now, I I've talked to you about the MDR and if it's related, we have to do what they again, if it's related, one of the things we have to look at is to do a functional behavior assessment. And I mean, as we talk about this, how many of you are like, y'all heard people talk about functional behavior assessments? Y'all heard that phrase bandied about? So, and I think a lot of
208people when we look at that, they think it's a very specific particular form and it's not. It is a particular type of assessment and what that assessment is intended to do is to take an interfering behavior and we have to look take information and say what is the function of that behavior the functional behavior assessment and that can be done a different a number of different ways. Sometimes that's observations some that times that's rating scales that's interviews that's records review. It's not done one specific way, but what we are looking at when we're looking at a functional behavior assessment, it's considered an evaluation, but then it's an evaluation where we're looking at what is the function of that behavior, what's driving that behavior, so that then as an IEP team, we can come back together
209and appropriately address the behavior. And again, we get lots of requests for functional behavior assessments. What I do want to point out is that the only time in the regulations that a functional behavior assessment is required is when an MDR team comes together and says, "Hey, this is related to the disability. You got to go together. You have to do a functional behavior assessment." And then we come back and we develop a BIP. But functional behavior assessments aren't just discipline related because it really drives back to one of the obligations we have when we're looking at students with disabilities is we have to address interfering behaviors and we have to consider positive behavior supports. So it's not when we're looking at our students with disabilities, it's not just a matter of hey here are the
210discipline rules that we have to follow. we have to come back and do MDRs, but there is an affirmative obligation that we have even before we get to that MDR to look at positive behavior supports. So, I pulled this here from the regulations, the IDEIDA regulations, when the team comes together, the IEP team, we're looking at the whole child, right? The academic, the developmental, the functional needs of the child. And one of the things that the IEP team is charged to do is we have to say, "Hey, is there a way we can use positive behavior supports and interventions to address the behavior that impedes the learning of the child or impedes the learning of others? What do we do to fix that?" And there's a wide array of ways that we can do that
211as an IEP team. Sometimes that's with instruction. That's behavior goal. That's with goals. That's with instruction. Sometimes it's supports, sometimes it's strategies, sometimes it's a behavior intervention plan, a very specific plan that goes into play. But what we have to remember as we look at what our obligations are, I said you can treat them the same right at the front. You can treat them the same for 10 days. But the reality is throughout this whole process we are looking at what strategies, what supports, how are we addressing the interfering behaviors or the interfering behaviors of others. And this has been a big topic for years upon years upon years for our students with disabilities. Right? And there's a I'm gonna address right here. So there's a couple of different people who are watching y'all. Um
212IDEA due process hearing officers are out there. There's the Office of Civil Rights. There's state level complaints. And as we defend these, what they are looking for is they're saying, "Okay, I've got this discipline that's out there. I've got these behaviors out there." And they're not looking just at how did you handle that from a discipline standpoint, but they're also saying, "What did you do as an IEP team to address those behaviors before it became a discipline issue?" And so that's something that your teams are working on, working together, looking at. And again, there's a balance out there, right? Because if something's not working, the expectation is that your team comes back together. And so there's times if if we have a child who's got behaviors, who's got misconduct, and it's interfering with their learning
213or it's interfering with the learning of others, we got to say, what are we doing? How are we fixing this? how are we addressing this? And sometimes that's your team's coming back multiple times. But really, when we look at our students with disabilities, when we're looking at those behaviors and we're looking at the discipline, you know, they're they're intertwined. But what when we're looking at defending that, what we're looking at is are your teams are they creating an IEP that considers those behaviors? Are we trying to address those behaviors within the IEP in some form or fashion? Can we document that we've done that? Because that's the expectation. And as we do that, the intent behind that is that those positive behavior supports that those instruct that instruction that the behavior intervention plans, those particular
214plans that we develop for students that that should or it's intended to prevent the discipline or to reduce the discipline and that's what the expectation is. But again, once we get to a certain point, once we get to the 10 days, it's important to remember we come back as a team. And if it's related, the child goes back. And so that causes a lot of a lot of conflict for a lot of people, right? Like how do what's the learning of others, the learning of the student, how do we balance that? But if you're looking at the Office of Civil Rights, if you're looking at the State Department, what they're going to say is be before you bring that to me, they're going to say, "What have you done to address this behavior with this
215particular child? How are you addressing that? I think that gets me to like my base level. I could talk about this for forever and ever. Um, it's a huge part of my practice. It's what we do. Um, but what I want you to take away from this is that our students with disabilities, they have additional rights and and we have additional obligations to them when it comes to discipline and when it comes to behaviors and That's that's where that's what we're working with. So, questions for me about what this looks like, what this means. I know I think I'm like one of your last people for the evening, but >> Mr. Hering, >> may I throw a hypothetical at you? >> I'm sorry. >> May I throw a hypothetical at you? >> Yes. >> Okay.
216My daughter, who has a 504, >> has been out of school 10 times. 10 days. >> 10 days. >> Okay. and on Monday afternoon she and another student get in a fight. They both are found at fault. So the next day you're saying she can come back to school because she's already had the 10 days. >> So what would happen in that case? Your child's let's say the child's already been removed for 10 days, right? And they get in a fight. Now 504 is a little bit different because they don't they have some protections but not as many protections. Can we just use it for 504 anything? So what would happen at that point? So let's say she got in a fight, she has to go home and they make a two or three day
217recommendation. So that's going to be day 11, 12, and 13. Yes, she's out, but at that point, you have to start providing services to her. And we got to get a move on on that MDR because if it's related, she's entitled to come back. So, but what's going to happen where that 10 days triggers is the state department is looking at you're at 10 days now. Did you do the MDR? Did you start providing services? How are you addressing that need? >> And how long does that process normally take >> if it's an to get how long do what's your how long do you normally take to get your MDRs? I mean, a lot of our districts, they try to get them like within a couple of days because you're you're losing days at that
218point. >> We do them within a couple days because we know every day that they're out are services that we have to make up. >> And what I'm getting at is you can see how a parent could think, okay, my child who has not been disciplined or been out of school at all has to be out for 5 days, but this one has reached the maximum and so they're back in. So it appears to apparent that there's an unfair application. And we hear we hear this we hear this that you know that things aren't being applied evenly or discipline's not being enforced. And I think it's often misunderstood that we can't share that information with parents because of the protections for those kids with the disabilities. >> And I'm, as I stated when we started
219off, I think this is one of the ones we get pressed from both sides. Right? You've got parents who are saying, "This kid's already back. My kid's out. What are you doing?" But I can also tell you on the other side, what Miss Friend is hearing is, "You're being too harsh for my kid. This is related to their disability. You're keeping them out. They don't get instruction." So it is It is this is not this is not the one where we make any friends. But what we're looking at is once they hit 10 days that again we're providing services. We're rushing to get that MDR done because again those are days that are counting against us and that are being monitored by the state department. This is never the topic everyone loves. >> I have
220another hypothetical. Okay. >> Um I was a placement chair for two years, but I never ran into this scenario, but you just brought it up. Um if a child is removed from the bus and the mom refuses to carry them to school, it counts as a day out. So Mr. Harris, what would you do? Do we have to send a van out there to pick them up if that happens or have we ever we've never encountered that and I shouldn't have even brought that up. >> Well, I think that's going to be the determines whether or not it's a function of that student's IEP and I think that would be a decision that the IP team would make in terms of transportation needs. Um uh so that we'd start there is actually what would happen.
221>> Well, I I I'm the child's not been suspended from school. Let's say they've been a knucklehead on the bus. >> Same applies. >> They've been removed from the bus. So, we don't want to tamper with the 10 days >> because we know where where our limitations are and the mom says, "I'm not bringing them to school." So, that counts against the 10 days. >> If transportation is a related service in the IEP, then yes, because what we have said they've said as an IEP team is the child needs specialized transportation in order to get to school. They don't have that specialized transportation. they don't get to school, it's it's going to count against us. >> Well, I mean, but the 10 days religious doesn't matter until you get to that deadline, right? So, it
222count still counts toward their 10 days. >> It counts towards your 10. And so, really the the thought process is do you want to use do you want to use one of your days for that? >> Yeah, that was my question. Thank you. >> Do we have any Miss and then U Mr. B? Um, and I have a several, but I'll just do one at a time. Um, >> so you said you have to be thought, I'm paraphrasing, thoughtful about the use of those 10 days to get suspended. Um, those are usually fairly serious. And this may not, this may be a question for the district at large because we have all these schools, but is there a consistent approach to that throughout the district? In other words, is um if it's a level two
223or three offense, are they automatically suspended even if they do have an IEP versus if it's a level one or if it's the third time versus the first time? And that's part A. Part B to my question is if we're not suspending a student that would otherwise be suspended, are we doing something else so that the child still understands this was unacceptable behavior? >> I think that's a two-part I will say. So I'm I'm going to address part of that which is when we look at what we're doing and being thoughtful. I mean when I speak to principles across the state I tell them you need to look sometimes we go into vote mode, right? And just what's the next one? What's the next one? And at some point, we have to say, let me
224look at my matrix, what actually applies here, which one is applicable for both students, right? Am I automatically going for the the 7-day or does this fall into a three-day? You know, is there something else that it it categorizes as? Because you you you want to be thoughtful. And when I say thoughtful as well, I think we have to look at when we talked about the functional behavior assessment, right? We talk about function like what's the function of behavior and I want to go back to that a little bit because it's to determine it's to determine what is the function. So a lot of times that's going to be an escape or that's going to be attention. So if a child is acting out and the function of that behavior is escape and I am
225sending them home I am unintentionally reinforcing that behavior. somewhat similar to be thoughtful and I don't know that this district has that but when we suspend children for tardies generally kids are tardy because they don't want to be there right well then I suspend them I just gave them what they wanted in a lot of ways and so I think some of that's to be thoughtful >> yeah I may not let me give an example since since they did that and not with something like that let's say a a student yelling at a teacher >> um and I if that even qualifies for a suspension, but let's say, you know, they slap the teacher. Okay. I guess I'm just asking, are we consistent? It and and maybe you can't answer that because you're not with
226the district, but do we kind of have a roadmap that if a child does that that has an IEP and we want to save these days that here's where we draw the line, you know, you can can't slap. And and is it consistent throughout the district? it's not consistent throughout the district because they're individualized decisions for individualized students, which is why they have the IEP. So, what we look at um we work with administrators to look at that specific student and how to deal with that specific situation. And we work really closely with student services to again look at the discipline code book and figure out where does that fit in here. And it it depends for all students, right? If it's the first time that I've yelled at a teacher, it might be one
227day. If it's the third time I've yelled at a teacher, maybe it's five days out. I'm not looking at the code book, so I don't know. Just an example. So, it's individualized decisions based on the situation and where the student is. >> And I'll just share. I think that that may be at the root of a lot of teachers upset about this. I mean, I've heard from a lot of teachers and they say this saving days causes problems because it it almost kind of reinforces the behavior because no, they don't get suspended. Um, and so I I'm just sharing, you know, I'm not in the classroom, but >> and I don't know what if anything we can do different. It sounds like the federal government has really tied our hands here, but there's, you know,
228and that's and my follow-up question, I'll go ahead and ask it because it's related. Is there a limit on gened classes? How many 504 and IEP students a teacher can have like a percentage? >> There's there's not at some there's not. Now, at some point, if you look at it, if if it's all students with disabilities in one general ed class, is it is it really a general ed class? But and the initial answer to your question is no. There's not a limit to how many 504 or students with with IEPs can go into a particular class. But I think I mean we hear the parent we hear teachers concerns about that like you know what are we going to do saving days and I'm when we say when I say save days I I
229I don't mean oh don't use them I think again it's be thoughtful do I use one day versus like what is appropriate under the circumstances to get the message across to this particular student but I'll also what also happens is if we remove a child and use the 10 days without going through a process then they're it's it's February and they're like what what's going on? What why can't you do something about this? And so it's this balancing act of again how do we use those 10 days but also are we coming back as a team and looking at what else do we need to do? What changes need to happen? Because our again our obligation and I want to make sure it's clear that not all interfering behaviors are related behaviors, right? They're they're
230not always the same, but the expectation is even if it's not related, what are you doing to try to fix it? >> And I just want to add to to my response. Um even though the student may not have the discipline, there are consequences. So it may be going and visiting with their case manager to walk through a scenario. It may be an IEP goal that they have. So while it may not be a suspension or it may not be ISS, there are consequences or lessons that we can teach that are aligned to their specific disability and to their IEP that would make um hopefully some gains in their behavior. >> So special needs is definitely one of my areas that I'm passionate about. And you know, y'all know we have over 2600, I think,
231now students that range from severely disabled up to, you know, the 504s. So, I understand it's a difficult process. It's a tricky process and every student has a a varied, you know, degree of response that we're going to have to take into account, but I just want to say I appreciate the the work that we all do. I try to visit um at least one self-contained class every school visit. I go on to see kind of the interaction and it takes a special group of teachers to work with these students and um a degree of patience and understanding. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> I had one more. >> Yes. Um um what I'll ask both at the same time since nobody else seems to have a question. Can a teacher
232request an IEP meeting? >> Okay. Yes. >> And does a bip and I would be very if they're like, "We need to be doing something different," and they have ideas. Yes. Because they're the they're boots on the ground. They're the ones who see it. And so, yes, we want them to to go to the the special ed um >> case manager to the administr the LEA and say, "Here's my concern." Now, now sometimes, again, depending on timelines, they're like, "Let's combine it with this one." But yes, they can request an IEP meeting. >> And does a BIP require um anything on the part of the child and or their parents. >> So when we look at any kind of services that we're doing in an IEP or a behavior intervention plan, it's what the district
233is doing. So a lot of times when we when we we look at accommodations or we look at the behavior intervention plan, we can't require the parents to do anything as part of that. It's what we as the district are offering um or setting up to do. and your behavior intervention plan. You know, that's really we've looked at the function. We've looked at what's the interfering behavior and what steps and strategies are we going to put in place to keep this behavior from happening, from limiting this behavior. But it's going to be what we as a district are agreeing to do. And I would just add the parent action on that is just in order to get a to have a BIP, you do have to um consent to the evaluation for the functional behavior
234assessment that creates the BIP. So there is parent action in that part. >> All right. Thank you so much. >> That brings us to discussion regarding& services for Dutch High School and Armo High School. Press box and scoreboard. Dr. Ross. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board and our community. Uh this is a discussion on proceeding with architectural and engineering uh plans for high school press box and digital school boards. Uh some background on this. On January 24th, 2022, the board of trustees approved the renovation of the Chapenhe Stadium uh to host 5A athletic events. Uh Chapman High School is one of the few schools in the state of South Carolina to grow from a 2A class 2A to a class 5A school. Uh and so as a result the stadium CISA Woolbright
235Stadium was uh expanded to incorporate those events. As part of that expansion uh there was a new uh press box was included as a part of that expansion project. Um right now we are looking at the conditions of our current press box and school boards and within the district. Uh you can see the completion of the chapen high school uh expansion process with their school board. I mean with their press box uh and the current condition of the the scoreboard as you heard tonight. That was uh I believe uh over 10 years ago, 2012 I believe when that was provided uh to the to the school. Uh if you look at the other uh schools, you can see the conditions of uh their press boxes and their school boards. Um the administration was asked at
236the officers meeting that if you what options do we have uh to upgrade the press box and school boards at uh Dut Fork and Irma high schools. Uh and so uh we looked at um the funding overview of what we could possibly do with the assumption that a school board would be provided at Chapen. Uh we only looked at options for Dutch Fork and for Irma. Um, and now I think to full disclosure, the um Dutch Fork Silver Fox School Board was also provided by the Touchdown Club um as well. Um, and so if we look at our 8% and Missy at the beginning of the meeting uh talked about what 8% is, these are our general obligation bonds. These are the bonds that we sell uh that we can use for um capital projects.
237Uh because we are spending referendum debt now on our capital facilities. Uh we do have some opportunity within our spring issuance uh to look at taking care of the the Dutch Fork and Irmo uh pressar schoolboard combination. uh but be reminded that this is also with our additional um request for capital to address the middle school uh fields. Uh so we had brought that to the board earlier. We were asked to go back and do a study of fifth grade um interest. Uh, and so I wanted to kind of go over uh what our 8% referendum debt outline since uh I have been um serving as superintendent. Uh first started off with the spring 22 issuance. This was all 8% funds. Remember 8% the school bond act of 1953 limits a district to 8% of
238its total assessed value. Um so we use % debt. We put $49 million out in bonds and that was mainly for the Irmal High School uh east wing expansion or west wing expansion. Uh we came back in 2023 and did another uh $25 million of 8% debt. Um and because we were really capped at our 8% I'm looking over make sure I'm saying this right. um we had to pay that off. We went 15 the next year. Uh with the passes of the referendum in fall of 24, uh we were able to put out a I'm sorry, we able to put another 15 million to address nonreferendum projects. These are projects that were not in the referendum but did show up on the the McMillan Pas and Smith report that needed to be addressed. So
239that 15 million of debt went out. Uh in addition in the spring, uh now that we're able to pay off the 8% money, we can spend referendum debt. We issued 60 million in referendum debt and uh about 15 million in in 8%. Um we are uh in the position of next year uh to issue with our referendum debt and I think this is a big issuance that we have a referendum debt over $120 million of that we can do an additional uh 22 maybe I think safely 2122 million and 8% debt with that 202 we wanted uh because a lot of our our structural improvement things are already on the ground with referendum debt. Um, we wanted to address the middle school athletic facilities. Um, we talked about a a facility for special needs athletics.
240Um, but we felt like we could present maybe two press box schoolboard combinations in this this issuance. We're estimating those at about $4 million each. Um, And uh our goal was just to basically show you you have this uh with Irmo High School's debt coming off of our our amortization schedule. We have this opportunity in spring 26 to uh to address that. And and I'm just looking at a don't hold me to it, but we need to give our our financial advisor, but I think a conservative um 2122 Heather, what do you say? And not to put you on the spot, but conservative estimate of issuance for the spring. >> Um I would looking at asmo rolls off, I think we have the capacity to do somewhere between 20 and 22. Um we will have
241an updated assessed value as we get our audit. Um but our our total 8% right now based on our assessed values from last audit is a little over 52 million. So we'll see what rolls off from and around 20 to 22. >> Thank you. So uh with that that was just discussion of uh ways that we could go about of of getting parody. I know it wouldn't be the same uh in terms of um what was uh if allowed to donate would be donated uh but we would have um the ability to have parody in terms of the press box and school boards at the other two high schools. >> We have any questions or comments? Miss Huddle? >> Um Dr. Ross, is that 21 to 22 million um in addition to the 15 million
242that we typically do with the budget every year? >> That is including that. That's correct. >> So it'd be six to 7 million more than what we typically >> correct. Anybody else? All right, that moves us to the last item on the discussion agenda, which is the discussion of the strategic plan for 2027 2031. >> And uh coming to the lecture black All right. So, good evening once again everyone. Thank you for allowing me to share some of the objectives we have in mind for the initial phase for the developing of our 2027 2028 to 2031 to 2032 strategic plan. As a brief reminder, South Carolina state law requires all school districts to develop a five-year strategic plan with schools creating their own five-year renewal plans. These plans serve as blueprints that guide administration in
243supporting our districts and schools mission and vision. Our district strategic plan development will follow the South Carolina continuous improvement model. Each phase of our planning process incorporates elements of this model. Because it's cyclical, the model not only guides us in creating a strong strategic plan, but also ensures the plan remains relevant and responsive to the district's needs over time. We still plan on kicking off the initiation phase starting in January. Phase one of our strategic planning process is all about the initiation and that begins with stakeholder feedback. As a reminder, there are four measures of data. Demographics, perceptions, student learning, and school processes. Analysis of this data will give us a picture of the district. So during the initial phase, we will begin to gather perception data from across all stakeholder groups in our district.
244This is done through input sessions and surveys. You may ask why both? Input sessions allow us to go deep, explore ideas, and build relationships, giving us rich qualitative insights, while surveys give us broad quantifiable trends efficiently and anonymously. Inbut sessions are flexible, engaging, and exploratory, excuse me, letting us uncover nuances where as surveys are structured and surface level, providing a clear overview of patterns across our community. We already collect survey data through the South Carolina Department of Education's annual school climate survey, which provides us data on nine different factors across our three main stakeholder groups. To complement this data, we plan to host input sessions with the following groups. The board of trustees, principles, and district administration, and members of our listed advisory groups. We feel these groups will provide a great represent great representative
245voice of the district's needs. Through our input sessions, we aim to identify our district strengths, understand current challenges, clarify priorities for the future, uncover supports and needs, and strengthen voice, belonging, and community partnerships. So, thank you for your time and attention, and I'm happy to stand for any questions. >> Do we have any Miss Huddle? Um so the questionnaires component of it who will that go to will it be those same groups or will it go to like all teachers? >> Um if I go back to here so what we'll do is we will go through the advisory groups because it already has a really great representation of for example the faculty one of um across the district. So these are these input sessions which are basically focus groups is targeted. Unfortunately we can't talk
246to every teacher in the district but um we do have that climate survey that does go out to all the teachers in the district and uh we have a typically a really good response rate on those. So um will an input session for example for faculty will that be um the faculty advisory group for the entire district or will it be at the school level or at the great you know elementary versus I'm just trying to get an idea of how many teachers will be involved in this. >> So it is the district advisory faculty group is what we are looking at. >> Okay. >> Is there any in doing surveys that get to a wider group when you get to that point. >> The survey goes to all teachers, correct? >> Yes, this is
247the climate survey. >> The climate survey does go to all teachers. >> Are you saying what input sessions with all teachers? >> No, I'm saying if you go back a slide. >> Okay, that's just the climate survey. I don't know. I was just thinking like I know we have these really um big goals at the state level and they're very much reliant on teachers particularly K through three four five teachers. So I don't know I was just wondering if at least when it came to the academic goals that um hopefully will match up with the state goals that we get. I know you can't talk to every teacher but as much input as possible from those teachers that are most heavily affected just suggestion I guess. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> Thank
248you so much, Miss Audrey. >> Thank you. >> Um after discussion with um both our board attorney and Amy, I was able to um connect with a lawyer at the school boards association right after our chat outside as well with Ward. Um we've been advised on both ends to table the vote for vice chair to the next meeting. So that's what we'll do. Um do I have a motion to adjurnn? >> Move that we turn. >> Second. Anybody second? Thank you. All those in favor y'all have a good night.