July 21, 2025 School Board Meeting

001They can do it. I just have to reset all their It is 4:30 and I'm going to call the July 21st uh meeting to order. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? Make a motion to approve the agenda. Second. All in favor? All opposed? And the motion carries uh 4 zero. Can I get a motion to enter executive session? Make a motion to enter executive session to consider the following. Selected employment items exhibit A for action. Selected employment items exhibit B. Information only. Contractual matter regarding the purchase of property. Exhibit C. Contractual matter regarding Chapen Elementary School and Lake Murray Elementary School classroom wings. Exhibit D. Contractual matter regarding ESS substitute services. Exhibit E, contractual matter regarding Tyler Technologies. Exhibit F, legal advice relating to a security a data security incident and contractual

002matter regarding the development of security personnel or devices. Exhibit G uh and evaluation of superintendent exhibit H. Have a sec. All in favor? All oppose? And a motion carries. Five. Yes. Six zero. testing. Testing one, two It was my senior year of high school and I just was realizing that school wasn't for me. I mentally was in Good evening. It is 6:07 and so I'm going to call the regular scheduled meet July 21st board meeting to order. Want to thank you all for being with us this evening. At this time, Dr. Herren will give us the invocation and the pledge. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, tonight, in lie of a traditional invocation, I'd like to request that we all observe a moment of individual prayer and silence and reflection to honor the victims of the

003floods, the horrible floods in and around the Kurville, Texas area. Thank you. Stand for the pledge, please. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Miss Taylor. We could have schoolboard spotlight. Okay, Madame Chair, members of the board, Dr. Ross, good evening. We have a real live school board spotlight tonight. So, do y'all want to join at the front to do that tonight? Okay, offic. We have with us tonight officer Todd Minamir, the SRO at Lake Murray Elementary. If you've been to Lake Murray, this is a very familiar face. Um, Officer Minameir has been with Lake Murray for 12 years, but this year he was named the 2025 law enforcement officer of the

004year by American Legion Post 6. Um, every year this American Legion post u selects a well-rounded law enforcement officer who has exceeded the duty requirements expected of his or her position and has demonstrated a distinct pattern of community service coupled with his professional achievement. Check check all boxes. Um, Officer Minameir was nominated for this honor by his supervisors at the Richland County Sheriff's Department. So, uh, in addition to being SRO, Officer Minimir serves as the DARE instructor at Lake Murray and the coordinator of the awardwinning safety patrol at the school. So, um, we are so proud to have you in school district 5. Thank you for your service and for what you do for our students every day. So, One, two, three, four, two, At this time, I'll turn it over to Dr. Ross for

005this um district spotlight. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board, and our community. Such an honor to represent those who serve us bravely uh in our law enforcement area, our SRO's. If you've never seen the uh safety patrol at Lake Murray Elementary, the traffic there is very complicated. Uh doing pickup and drop off is like running Atlanta airport. So they have done an amazing job uh with those students and and that operation. So very proud of his work. Uh also, you know, we're excited as we get ready to ramp up the school year. We are looking forward to moving forward with our children and their future. This is an exciting opportunity that we have to move forward. [Music] our groundbreings. We have two groundbreings uh right before school starts. The first one will be

006at Chapen Elementary School and the second one will be at Lake Murray Elementary School and so the community is invited. We'll have these out very soon uh to show the additional wings that we have for the referendum project. So again, very excited to get ready to break ground for these really cool entions uh get the students out of the portables and into the buildings. So those groundbreings are August 5th and August 6 respectively. Again, Chapen Elementary School and Lake Murray Elementary School. Uh as always, we are a district answering three critical questions as a system. Why do we do this work? How do we accomplish that? Why? And then what are our outcomes? Our why is that we love and grow our students? Our mission is that we're focused on academic, social, emotional growth and

007development and that our what is our strategic plan outcomes. These are the 24 strategies that are facing the four performance goals towards that vision where every student will feel loved in our schools and have demonstrated academic growth in our schools. It's important at the beginning of the year that we start to look at what are these strategies and we we show the six, but it's important to understand what they are. And so as we look at the school climate, we're looking at the safety and social emotional health of our students. Uh safety is always our number one priority. Looking for opportunities to increase the span of safety and security. Why do we talk about social needs? Well, that's looking at the interaction of our students, bullying prevention and intervention strategies and then the emotional health

008as we deal with mental health issues uh within our schools. So, uh, these strategies are super important. As we look on the growth side, uh, we're looking at, uh, what we're doing for student achievement. You're going to have the academics report by M T Macowas, our chief of of academics, uh, who's going to talk about the researchbased instructional practices that we put in. You can actually measure the impact of the work that's happening in our classroom with effect size. looking at the work that we do for college and career readiness and uh the amazing programs that we have over 17 different programs in our cake center but um almost 3x that throughout our district. Uh the adult education as well as our magnet and choice programs all are incorporated within these strategies. Look back at

009love. We're looking at how do we recruit, retain, and develop highly effective faculty and staff. I showed you that as we look at the teacher shortage, it's really a workforce shortage. As our generation X uh teachers begin to retire, filling those with millennial and generation Z teachers, that's our new challenge. So, we want a highly effective faculty and staff, but we're also looking at different pathways to alternative education. I just want to applaud uh one of the programs in in human resources uh that takes our our classified staff and transform them into certified staff. And I think uh Dr. We had 20 we had 14 vacancies uh just this year where we moved uh folks from classified or support staff and they were able to become certified teachers for the 25 26 school year. So

010that's another way that we're addressing the teacher shortage. And lastly in grow as we look at increasing our offerings and AGP or academically gifted programs, our honors, advanced placement, IB, do enrollment, all of these are strategies that we put in place to not only improve these offerings but increase the number of students who are in these classes. Uh we want everyone to reach to their highest heights, maximize their potential and that happens through gifted and talented uh and honors programming. It's important for this uh board to understand that we look at our strategic plan every year, but we have every five years where we uh need to do a major overhaul of that. And so this plan takes us out to the 20 6 27 school year. Uh and so we don't wait until the

01127 28th school year to begin. We actually uh start through the student services and planning and accountability. We start that earlier about two years early. Uh so with that uh we will begin that process of the 27 fall 27 Spring 32, just think about that. Spring 32 strategic plan. Uh, and so Dr. Harris and Miss Audrey Black from accountability will lead us through an outline of that. We won't go into too much detail, but an outline of what that proposal looks like at our next board meeting. Uh, so with that, uh, that's the the how that's the work that we do. This represents over 166 individual strategies that is engaged with uh each and every day to ensure that every student feels loved in our schools and every student has academic growth demonstrated academic growth

012in our schools. Uh so with that I'd like to move uh and give an update on the data security incident and I have found that when we have an incident of any kind that there's three questions that folks want us to answer. One what happened? two, they want to know how did it happen? And three, what does this mean for me? What are those next steps? So, I sent out a video to try to educate our community about this. And I just wanted to put this on the record for us uh this evening. Uh but what happened on June 3rd? Uh our staff detected that we were been impacted uh in our network, our operability has been impacted in our network environment. Uh as soon as our uh staff discovered this uh they immediately called

013the law enforcement and then started our our protocols. Uh our technology team have been working with law enforcement and a third party uh forensics team uh to fully investigate this this matter. Now this uh the full investigation report has not been completed and so we're waiting on that to be completed as we start to look at um how we move forward. But we have learned from the initial investigation uh that we're a victim of malicious actors that were inside the district's environment. Uh these threat actors attempted to extort us for money. Uh so in response, we did not pay any extortion money or anything like that, but um we did work with law enforcement and the third party to put some threat defense software uh on on our network and in our system. And uh

014we're seeing that this is increasing of school districts across the nation. I've seen reports of almost a 69% increase in the amount of educational institutions that has been hit in the first quarter alone of this year. So, we're working with that third party forensic specialist uh to investigate and determine the full impact of of what happened in in this event. Uh so, the investigation is still ongoing and when we are finalized, we'll we'll come out do another report. What does this mean for me? Well, I think it's important to understand that um we do not store the social security information of our students and families uh within our network. Uh however, um we are looking through the the data that has been accessed to determine if there's any personal identification information. This will take some

015mining to find out, but once our expert forensics does that and we do find that anyone was impacted, we'll work with our legal counsel to to do those steps necessary for those. Uh but um right now we don't have any reason to believe that any sensitive data is misused until we can confirm that all of those files have been reviewed. So what are the next steps for us? Well, I do want to applaud our staff. Our technology team went right into action. We were fully restored uh to be operational on June 26. And so I have in here now we're putting advanced software on. I would like to hold the confidence of executive session what that is. I have found out that any um any protection that you can put in can be defeated if

016you know more about it. And so the safest thing that we can do is turn the internet off. Other than that is to if we're going to have an outward press through our internet uh we need to hold certain security limitations uh within the technology department. For us, this uh advanced software will help us not only defend our system, but also give us early war alerts if someone is trying to get into the environment. We have over 5,000 devices that our team is um putting new images on and this advanced threat software on. Teachers when they come back, they a sticker, a little dot on their on their laptop that means it's it's good to use. Uh if it is a Chromebook, those are not subject to the uh attacks and those are safest to

017to use. So that's the indication that you're clear and ready to go. We've had multiple reiming sites throughout the district uh so that uh we are we're up and running when students return on August the 7th. So, I would like to say that um the district is committed to the protection of of not only the physical safety, but also the the data of our students and our staff and the community we have. And so, we're going to be working with this third party for for quite some time until the this matter is resolved. Uh but so, I think the for their time and attention with this. We're again moving our systems back online. We met with our principles about operational flows, but I've been very impressed with our staff from the technology team that never

018had an opportunity to rest. They have been 247 365, our finance team that uh moved the earth to make sure that we didn't not miss a payroll, got out the the additional bonuses, the safety team, the instruction team that really had to pivot with summer school planning. It was HR that make sure that we could get our benefits and all the packets in. Uh there was just a huge push from all parties. Um and it showed the resilience of of our district and our community. There were a lot that came to us and asked for what they could do to help or uh sending us words of appreciation. You know, school districts are under attack whether it's foreign or domestic. We we receive a lot of attacks, but we're resilient and we're stronger after those.

019And and our district is stronger. I am very proud of scooter survive and I'm very proud of of where we are. We're stronger for it. So again, once we have the completed investigation, we'll bring back to this body what we have found and what we learned, but I appreciate the resilience of the the staff and the strength of the district. Are there any questions on that before we move to the academic report? reporting to the lecture is our chief financial I'm sorry our chief of academics chief of acade I'm sorry Miss Tina McCascal right good evening madam chair board Dr. Ross. First of all, I have two rock stars with me from academics that I have to make sure that they are introduced. So, right behind me, Mr. Michael Giuliano is our elementary director and

020Miss Walters is our secondary director. And without them, no, I couldn't be standing here. So, just want you to know how amazing they are and how much I appreciate them. Um, and what we're going to talk about tonight really is a part of their work, a part of the entire academic staff's work. it's their passion for students and curriculum and instruction that makes any of this happen. So, I just really want to to make sure I give them the shout out for that. So, we're going to start off with summer programs. Um, we have just ended our summer reading camp last uh Thursday. Actually, we had 141 students who score does not meet on SC ready reading. And I just want to make sure that I say that that's reading because when we get the

021final scores, it's ELA scores and that includes writing. And so, um, this particular number is not one of those. It's an embargoed number because it's not the full score. So, I just want to make sure that I clarify that. But this is the reading scores. 25 students were required to attend camp. So, that means that the rest of those students had good cause exemptions. and 53 students um accepted invitations. So even though they had a good cause exemption, they were in they were invited and we had 53 that accepted the invitations. Of the 25 who were required to attend, 17 of those students um will have to be retained in third grade um this year. Middle school summer school, we had 164 that qualified, 139 attended and were promoted as a result of the summer

022school. High school summer school, um we do not offer initial credit in our high school summer school. It's um content recovery um that that we have and credit recovery going on in that particular part of of summer school. There were 127 that attended. There were 146 credits recovered. Nine are tenative summer graduates. We do know at this moment when this slide was made, we didn't, but we do know we actually have five summer graduates. So, I do have to um update that a little bit. Um virtual SC, we had 552 courses for initial credit taken. There was by 391 students. um for credit recovery there were 56 classes and 47 students that um that use virtual SC for that. Um MCO if you don't mind if we just ask questions as we go for the

023um just with the third graders the 17 students that were retained is that like an average number is it more than normal less? It's much higher. If we look at last year, um, now I will tell you this, it's a new test. So this year was a different test than last year. Um, so the test changed a little bit as well. So we're not really comparing apples to apples. Um, but just so you'll know numbers, last year we were also looking at does not meet one versus this year we're looking at all does not meet. So there's a little difference there. does not meet one. Last year there were 80 students that does not meet one. In does not meet one and two there were 266 students. So last year there were 266 students that

024were potentially in the same category as what the 141 would have been. We had um only one student retained last year in third grade. So that gives you a little bit of a comparison but again it is the test did change and we had new standards this year as well. Go ahead. Uh I'm just curious the test change. Is that something that'll happen every year? Is it was this just because of the law? It No, it was because of the new standards because we were testing new standards. So we had we had new standards this past school year. Okay. Thank you. So are the standards the same for next year? So like will the test Right. So the test how often does that theoretically should happen to be the same? And I get that. So

025we had a new test because of the standards. Um so is our position that these students just struggled with the new standard or does that make sense? So, it's a higher standard. Um, so we had a does not meet one and a does not meet two in the previous years. This past school year, so the one we just finished, the does not meet ones and the does not meet two have to be retained if they don't meet the criteria of summer reading camp. In the past, only does not meet ones had to be retained. So if you think about the 2024 scores, there were 80 does not meet ones, but there were a total of 266 that were in that does not meet one and two category. So how did we get from 266 to

026only 141 does not meet? I really I I applaud our our staff. I applaud all of the interventions, all of the tier one instruction that has taken place. I really think our letters um PD has been a huge piece of that. The phonics phmic awareness, all of that focus on reading instruction has been a huge part of that. To me, it's not surprising that 17 17 students didn't make it or retained. I actually thought it would be higher being that they were going to have to go through the does not meet one and two. When we look at the numbers, we would anticipate that our numbers would have been much higher. And whenever we think of one thing I do want to say is of the we had one student that that dropped off of

027the 25 pretty quickly, like they just decided not to come to camp. So we had 24 students that really came to camp. And of those 24, 22 of the students made improvements on their MAP test for the end of the summer. So improvements were made. They just didn't quite make it to the 186 that they had to make it to. Miss, so um excuse me. Summer reading camp. Is it only for third graders? It is. Um typically we invite second and third graders. Um this year we were afraid we wouldn't have the space and so we stayed with third grade. Ended up having probably had a little space but it was just too late to make that shift. Starting next year, we'll have to include first grade as well. That's part of the law. And

028then the year after that, we'll have to include second grade. Awesome. Um and the the students I believe I asked this before, but um I could not find it in my notes. Um the majority of the reasons that um students were got exemptions. Can you like what are the top three? Well, the the the ESOL students, so if they've not been in the country more than two years, if they have an IEP for more than for two years or more with reading goals in them, and if they've been retained for at least one year prior to this, and that would that would be the the top three. So, a follow-up question. Um, a lot of that makes sense except to me personally, the IEP. So, I mean, that's the state's rules, right? That's right. That's

029the state rules, but we still invite all of them. Absolutely. Just because they have an IEP does not mean that they cannot be invited to camp. Correct. Thank you, Mr. Satderfield. Yeah, just to piggyback on what Miss Huddle said, so students with IEPs are still held to the same standard. Correct. Um, any idea how we did in the with other districts and or is this just new data that's just coming out? This is new data that's just coming out. Like I said, Thursday morning, uh, we found Wednesday the packet was due. Amy was waiting on me until about two o'clock Wednesday because we had we had some students testing on Wednesday. That literally took all day. They It broke my heart because they just and the first thing they said when they finished was, "Did

030I make the score?" Like that's all that they had to stop and go to lunch because they they were taking their time reading the test. Well, I'll tell you, I I applaud our third grade teachers. I really like Mr. Herring. I thought the number was going to be higher. I honestly did. And um uh I I'm excited that we're going to offer it to first and second grade because it's hard to make such a gains in just that one year. It just is. But um anyway, I applaud those teachers. Thank you. I agree with you. And just one more question before we go to the next slide. The people that are participating in the U five program, those numbers are just included. They are in these. All right. Thank you. All right. So, we will

031go ahead and go to dual enrollment. This is a big positive for us. We had 26 students that participated in summer dual enrollment courses. They took the following classes. They took intro to psychology, intro to sociology. Um then they took art appreciation, music appreciation, and contemporary moral issues. There were eight Chapen High School students, five Springfield High School students, three Irmo high school students, 10 Dutch Fork High School students, and then as you see, there were two classes each that they would have to take because of the six credit hours. That's how the lottery pays for this is you take two classes at a time. And that really is an estimation of about $78,000 in college credit savings. So really excited for those students to have been able to do that this summer. So now

032let's look at how we love and grow all students. And of course we have our whole child continuum that we use and our umbrella. And we've seen this slide many times before. But really this is reality and it's the purpose behind why the high effect sizes are so important and why we need to make sure that we're looking at all students and utilizing what's best for all students. And we do that through our MTSS model. And if you look at this, it's it's very similar to a lot of things that we talk about, but the very base of this triangle is tier one. And that's what's most important for our students is that when they're what they get in their regular classroom, you can have intervention that's pulled out for 30 minutes. You can have

033special ed that's pulled out for whatever amount of time the IEP might call might call for. But if they're a regular ed student, they are in that tier one classroom the majority of their day. And that's where we have to really ensure that that instruction is solid and that we are providing professional development. We're providing resources that can assist teachers in that area. There's always going to be that next tier of tier 2 students. That's where our intervention pullouts happen. um not special ed yet, but intervention where we have our reading interventionist, our title one schools have some math intervention, but that's that's for our tier 2 students. In high school, whenever we're talking about tier 2, we're talking about things in like um where they could get after school tutoring or they may end

034up um being having time for the teachers to help them outside of the regular classroom. there's not as much focus on the pull out model there. We do have some pushin models at the high school level. Tier three, that's the most intensive intervention. That is where you find your special ed. And we're going to be talking about a program tonight with graduation alliance that um can help us with the tier three as well. Um so that's just kind of a a a model to look at and think about for instructional initiatives. Uh this is where um over the past couple years we've developed as an academic team what we want to focus on for our initiatives and we um graciously got some help with Courtney Morbido to help us with this graphic but with our

035PLC's our professional learning communities the researchbased practices that will talk about classroom mosaic which is the way that we measure um our observations in our classrooms our content area standards which our I can statements that you'll hear about and then our MTSS as well. There's a link there to the instructional expectations that we share with our staff. Um I'm not going to go there tonight, but a lot of what you'll see from the slides are actually slides from that, but you have a link that you're you're welcome to look at. When we look at PLC's, we've got the four questions. What do we want all students to know and be able to do? That's where we talk about the standards. That's where we we need to dig into the standards and know the rigor of

036the standards and know what's happening there. How will we know if they learn it? That's where we ensure that our assessments are matched to those standards. And then how will we respond if they do not learn it? That's where our MTSS comes in. And then what will we do if we extend the learning when they do already know it. So those are the areas that um our PLC's will help us cover. The next thing is our success criteria. Again, there's links there um for those that you can you can see, but I've also got some slides that'll show you what they look like. I do want to call attention to the fact that planning and prediction when we talk about John Hattie, John Hattie is uh he has put together a lot of research um

037around he it's a metaanalysis of research and so he's pulled all the research and he tells us what the high effect sizes of various strategies are and whenever we look at John Hattie's work planning and prediction is one of those pieces that has a 083 effect size. Now what that means is 04 is one year's growth. So anything over 04 adds additional growth is an expected outcome. So you want to find things that are above 04 that you're using for your high effect sizes. Planning and prediction talks about that the planning strategies include developing learning intentions and allocating resources with specific attention to deciding upon the amount of time to spend on activities, choosing the optimal order of teaching the content and concepts. And then success criteria in and of itself has an effect size

038of 64. So that's what we're looking at to be able to focus on and talk about. And these are some examples of what that looks like. This is third grade ELA. So you've got your standard over on the far left and then on the right you've got your I can statements. This is where students can understand what exactly they need to be able to do. We'll talk about in a few minutes that student self-reporting is also a very high effect size. And that's what this allows you to be able to do. Students can report on themselves if they know specifically what it is that they are supposed to be doing. If you read one of those standards at the top, students wouldn't understand that. But when we break it down into I can statements, it's

039almost like a checklist. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. And so that's what that's what these look like. So I gave you an elementary. This is a middle school math. And then there's a high school biology. Um, just to give you an example of what those look like. The rest of this is going to focus a lot on elementary um and middle school ELA and math. I know there was some questions with the board about that. So, we want to talk a little bit about what elementary um and middle school are doing in those um areas. So, when we look at ELA, we had a new adopted a curriculum last year. We had SAVIS and there was a reading and writing curriculum. It was based on the South Carolina

040state standards. We use fastbridge which is a formative assessment that's required as a universal screener through the state. We have to test our kindergarten, first and second graders with that. But it's also it is science of reading. It's very um phonics phmic awareness based. But that also gives like a personalized learning type pathway some some assessments that that help teachers know exactly what what students need and give some lesson plans for that as well. Uh progress learning is also a individualized pathway. We have reading coaches in every elementary school. We have reading interventionists. We have two reading interventionists per school that's paid out of the general fund. And then our title one funds add to that. So they add some reading interventionists, some math interventionists, some math tutors, some reading tutors, different things that um

041title one schools use their funding for. In elementary math, we've just recently adopted a new curriculum. Um the I Ready um from Curriculum Associates. We use Dreambox math in our kindergarten through fifth grade. We also have some really cool PD taking place um building thinking classrooms. We were able to bring those in back in January for our elementary teachers as well as a couple of our middle school teachers. Uh this summer we have two of our instructional coaches who are being trained to be trainers for this particular program. And we're also hoping to bring in um some specific professional development for our middle school math teachers. I'll talk about that later, but hoping that that particular um program will be able to be brought in what that does. And I go ahead, Miss Snipes. I

042was going to ask about the reading coaches in the elementary schools. I was curious as to whether or not there's um like a timeline for that, like a a plan to move out of needing a reading coach. Let's say if you started in first grade, like is there some kind of measure as to progress and should they eventually be working their way out of it? Shoot. Or do they just have one the entire time? Right. So our reading coaches work directly with our teachers. So they coach teachers and then our interventionists work directly with our students. And so there is a plan to try to work the the whole goal is to work your way out of intervention. That is the goal. Um and so what we try to do is we try to have

043a very specific goal for that student. It could simp it could be that I don't I can't I can't do my long e sounds. I don't know my long e sounds. And so I'm going to work directly on long E. And once I get to that, then I may test out and I can go back into the regular classroom and then I may have to come back in. So it really is a fluid in and out should be. We do have some students that stay in intervention longer than we anticipate them staying there. Um but the goal is always to move out of intervention. Do we have a a district-wide I don't know what the right word is recommendation on small reading groups at the elementary school level? Um you mean an expectation? Yeah, an

044expect well I mean I'm older and when I was growing up they were very common in the classroom and I've read that that kind of fell out of favor. And then there's also been um discussion about whether they should be leveled or not and whether students should help each other or not. So I'm just kind of curious is is that left up to the teacher, the school or the district and what are the what is if it is the districtwide what what do we do districtwide? Sure. So it it is an expectation that it happens. Um, and in those instructional expectations document, that's one of the things that that are addressed in that expectation is that we do have small groupoup instruction. Um, as far as whether you level the groups or not, quite honestly,

045from my elementary background, the way I'm going to give you this answer, okay? Uh, I think you have to do both. I think there are times when you do leveled groups and then there's times whenever you do strategy groups. And so you might have a high, medium, and a low student that all need this particular comprehension strategy. So therefore, I'm gonna I'm gonna teach to this small group on this strategy for comprehension. But then there may be other times that it's really important that I have the same level text and I'm going to use that same level. So they're all going to be on the same level. But that keeps your kids guessing as well and then they don't ever feel like they're the red birds or the blue birds like you and I probably

046were taught with. Um, so, so you have to be, in my opinion, you have to really stress the importance of the flexible grouping and doing it in lots of different ways. And that is a lot of the PD that we do um, for for our students, our teachers, excuse me. And I know you just got the ELA data for the SE ready. So, could you go back to the MTSS slide for a second? And then also kind of comparing this to the previous slide with the classroom setup. I don't know if your red, yellows, and greens are supposed to coordinate or be, you know, attributable to each other in those two slides. But do we know what percentage of those 141 students come from the red and yellow level? I can't tell you right this

047second, but I could look into that. Okay. This sort of goes along with what Miss Huddle was saying, you know, some like really targeted focus on those. And I mean I have heard you know incidental data that stagnant classes and times like that with you know homogeneous grouping students would possibly be a really good you know um sort of strategy to help bring them up some level. So I do know that there's a spreadsheet Mr. Jul's right behind me so I can't look him in the face but I know that there's a spreadsheet that they use and they put all of those students on there and our schools actually talk about whether they've been in reading intervention or not. And so there's a there's a tracking of that. So, I do know that that's there.

048I just can't tell you off the top of my head what that is. Um, also I was wondering um for the students that were um the third graders that needed help this summer um with reading because they didn't do well in the testing. Um is there a plan? Do we track them like the next year to make sure that then they don't basically just repeat the repeat the cycle? Right. So, we've been meeting with schools really started in December probably Miss Julian you can speak up if you like but we started meeting with schools back in December um really talking about just that like the students that we knew were at risk what are we going to do with them differently and it was amazing the change in the number that we thought we would

049have in December versus what we ended up with even when even when app testing happened in March because of the intentional plans that schools put in place for those students, but looking ahead, we've got 17 students that are looking to be retained. We can't put them through the same thing that they just had. And so, really talking about what that's going to look like and and what what options there may be for students. Um, and I don't want to say a whole lot more than that simply because there's a lot of discussion that's taking place and if I say it, then somebody's going to hold me to it. So, I don't want to do that. Um, I'm jumping to high school now and I may pick on Dr. Ross and Mr. Satderfield. Um, I know

050there was a program at Chapen High School at one time where after school the there were students that helped other students and I don't remember it had a name. Um, I guess was it effective and do we still do that and do we do it at all our high schools? Yeah. And kind of argue your administration, I do mine. Well, um, first thing I want to say, we had a program called enrichment where we had 30 minutes at the end of the day and all teachers stayed and it would be math, English, reading, whatever it might be they needed help in. Um, but one of the things I wanted to point out, this is a third grade assessment. And third grade is like the toughest grade in elementary school. At least that's what I my

051experience was because all of a sudden they're exposed to a lot of more subject material. Um, but the thing is is um, and I again I said I applaud you for looking at first and second grade to get them there. But we can't forget that once these kids meet whatever minimal score there is, they are going to eventually end up in high school like you were talking about. And I can tell you and Dr. Ross and Mr. Gary, anybody who's been with high school kids that um a lot of the reason those kids are not having success is because of poor reading comprehension. So, you see, we don't teach reading at the high school level. It's not a subject. Now, you take English, well, you have to read. Um but um um a lot of

052when we look at our graduation numbers and things like that, most of that is going to come back to struggling with math, but a lot of it comes back to reading comprehension. So, uh, I again I applaud I I wish they were testing second grade honestly. Um, but I do applaud what y'all are trying to do. And the final thing I want to say is um when you I think Miss Huddle asked this question about do teachers converse and talk that's called vertical planning when they can talk. If I'm if I'm the fifth grade teacher and you're the fourth grade teacher and you get I get one of your students, then you and I can communicate and going through this redistricting program is going to allow for a lot more of this because you're going

053to have a true feeder system where they can talk about the strengths and weaknesses be it math or or reading or whatever it might be. So that part I think is going to be super advantageous for our school district. Just really briefly Mr. Satderfield uh let me uh take a chance and put a program in called sale where we would do um peer tutoring with AP students to to to the students in the fourth quartile. Uh but enrichment was was really where you hit scale. You hit the masses with tutoring. And so some of our high schools have moved that to the day and uh where I think it's power hour at Chapman where you get that free tutoring during the day from the the teacher. I think Spring Hill has it where they have

054a whole school model for extra help. Uh so these are are some of the programs but all of our schools offer tutoring services. Those are kind. Any other questions? All right, let's go to middle level. So, middle level ELA, we do have a lit lab um for students who are struggling um based on their test scores that they can go and get additional reading assistance. And that is Mr. set where you're talking about that is actually where we do reading instruction in the middle level which a lot of times we don't have reading instruction because it is English based as far as like reading and writing but it's not not the how to read it's the reading for comprehension um piece of it. So we do in the lit lab have reading instruction. Um and

055then we have a new curriculum this past year. Um we still use progress learning there. We have PR assess which is just another program that allows them help track standards and and which standards are being um mastered and not mastered and gives a lot of data for teachers to be able to use for their instruction. Teacher led small group instruction. That is where um we just met about Weston Kishnik having a um professional development with our middle school teachers to be able to talk to them about 90minute classes coming up for the 26 27 school year and how to utilize that time to utilize small groupoup instruction and what that looks like and what types of strategies they can use in the middle school for that. Um, and intervention time. We have different intervention times

056built in. Den time, Irise, the nest. Those are all different in various schools, but they operate very similar, but yet different to each school. And what's what's unique to each school as well. Middle level math we've talked a little bit about already. We do have a new curriculum this year and new math standards starting um this school year as well. Um, and there's some list of programs that are that are there as well. high school. We just talked a lot about high school. It's all on this slide. Um we just talked about with the MTSS our our high schools whenever they're meeting with their triage teams. It is amazing the work that they sit there and talk about individual students one at a time, where that student is, what they're doing, why they're not on

057track to graduate, what are we doing to try to get them on track to graduate, where are they? We can't find them. all of these conversations and there's somebody in the room that knows each of these students and it's a large number of students and they they really do a great job of that. It's pretty amazing the way that they the spreadsheets, the elaborate pieces of data that they have and know which students they need to make sure going to that intervention time, that power hour, that inter that um tutoring time, they they're constantly knowing to make sure they follow up with that student. your APs are calling in students, sitting down with them oneon-one, saying, "You're not passing this class. What are you going to do next?" So, just a lot of followup with

058students and following to see what's happening with them. We've had different types of PD that are listed there. We have the content recovery, Apex, and Edmondum. We're looking at the 4x4 schedules. There are some 4x4s that are already in place. Moving into the 26 27 school year, we're looking at going into that more. For those of you that aren't really sure, I'm seeing a little little bit of not knowing on that. So, I want to make sure I make make you understand what 4x4 is. Right now, we're on an AB block schedule, which means every other day you have this the class you don't meet every day, but you meet four set four classes on A day and four classes on Bday and then you do A day again and then B day again. A

0594x4 allows you to have four classes for a semester. So you meet that class every single day and then the next semester you would have four additional classes. And and what that does, it lightens the amount of work or the amount of content that a child's trying to grasp. But it also gives you a chance if you're not successful in the first semester. It gives you a chance to take that class again in the second semester versus waiting until you get to May and you can't take that class again until the next year. So there's a lot of benefits to that and we are looking at that for 2627. Um and then this last thing that's listed there is proficiency based application. I could spend a lot of time here. I won't but I'm going

060to give you just an overview of that. We have been diligently looking to see what we can do for students that are far behind and are not on track to graduate. And as part of that tier 2 intervention, um it is something that we had to get approval from the state for. But Edenum is a program that where we can use so that it's it's based on proficiency instead of having to say go for a semester in a 4x4 class. A child can take a test to see where they are. Maybe they've already taken the class and they didn't pass it. So, but they got some content, right? They know something. And so they can take a test, a proficiency test to see where they are and then the coursework would pick them up at

061that point and allow them to finish the course. Might not take them a full semester to complete that course and then we could put them in another course after they've taken that course. So it allows us to um expedite some some coursework for students and that's um a part of what you're going to hear a little bit about in a little bit too. So, um, anyway, so that's a big piece of what we're doing. All right. Now, the fun happens with the researchbased strategies. Um, and I talked to you already about John Hattie and what we all we are doing with with him. This is a list of some very uh high effect size strategies. Collective teacher efficacy, that's what our PLC's are based on. And you'll see that that has a 1.34 effect size.

062Self-reported grades. We talked about the I can statements and the importance of those. That has a 0.96 effect size. Teacher estimates of achievement. This is something Dr. Ross and I have talked a lot about. Um it has a point. It's a 1.29 effect size. I bet if you asked anybody, do you believe all students can learn? They're going to say yes. My challenge this year whenever teachers come back and a part that I get to say to them in their PD session is do we believe that? And if we do believe it, how do we exude that? How what what we say, what our body language, the assignments that we give, everything about that. Do we portray that we believe all students can learn at the level of rigor that the standards say that they

063are? because students pick up on that. I learned that the really hard way from a student about my fifth year of teaching. I had a teach I had a student that was very disruptive. She didn't want to do um and I finally got a chance to sit down with her and she said, "You didn't you didn't believe in me." I said, "What do you mean? Of course I do." She said, "No, you don't." She said, "Because this is not seventh grade work." And I said, "But it's work you can be successful on." She said, "I can do the other work if you give it to me." And right then and there, I realized that it was up to me what that child was going to do. If I didn't push that child that she was

064never going to be able to do it. And so that was the learning point for me where a student helped me learn what was important for me as a teacher. And I do believe that what we expect and what we show students is what they will do. Um, and so I do that 1.29 29 to me is pretty personal. I think that's definitely a high effect size. Um, cognitive task analysis, that's what we do with our PLC. Whenever we look at standards and see what the rigor is, we talk about that. The response intervention, that's what we've talked a lot about tonight. It has a 73 effect size. Jigsaw is something that we use a lot, so I put it on here. It's where we can have various pieces being read, but then you have

065students come together and they talk about what they've read and really they're educating each other so that everybody doesn't read the same thing, but they're educating each other and having that conversation. It's a lot of metacognitive um thinking strategies that are taking place there, which adds another layer of a high effect size as well. But that's a piece that you'll see in our classroom mosaic data. That is an area we want to work on is students being engaged with other students and teacher clarity. That's our I can statements. It also has a high effect size of 0.85. So classroom mosaic is the way that we monitor um our classrooms. And you'll see that um the total number is in that bottom right hand corner. Uh I think it's like 4,866. I can't really read it

066from here, but I think that's what it says. Um, and then you'll see the top five strategies that have been observed in our classrooms with the effect sizes that are of those strategies. And then the rigor and relevance quadrant, what that means, quad A is basic knowledge, just factual kinds of things. And then it goes down to quad D to where you're really incorporating real life um learning. And so it's a it's a gradient of that. So from just basic skills, basic knowledge all the way down to quad D which is where you're doing your real life what meaning learning and then you see the percentage of students that are engaged with content engage with the teacher and engage with each other and like I said engage with each other is an area that we

067want to work on because that's that's where kids really that's the function in society right whenever they go into jobs they're going to have to engage with each other they're going to have to be able to socialize they're going to have to be able to talk about what they're what they're doing. So, I think that's important that that we focus on that. All right. Before I go into the e-learning plan, any questions about that? All right, let's get into e-learning. All right, so the state has made a few changes for e-learning. Um, and you'll see that outlined on this um slide, the two links there. You see there's a link to the D5 e-learning plan and a link to the state e-learning handbook. Um so those are there for your um information but the changes

068are that instruction must be provided in the form of online meetings and or provided videos and audio. A lot of times we have done asynchronous work um but the state is saying that we are to do online meetings with either provided videos or with audio. Um lessons are provided should require so we should just close school. So we know hurricane's coming. um we're likely to be without power, that type of thing. We should close school for that. When the next makeup day comes, we can choose whether or not that's going to be a day that's coming in person and we're just going to have another, you know, regular day of school or whether that could be an e-learning day. I have one question. Um because I had the same thought about internet, not just because

069of storms, but just in general. Um I know that they have five days to to make up the work, that's always been um a part of the policy, but now since there's a requirement for the live piece is it used to be that you got attendance for the day as long as you turn in the work in the five days. But now is the attendance based on the ability to be available during the live instruction? No, it'll still be the five as long as you turn in your assignments. So what's the motivation for people to log in for the live instruction? I won't answer that. Miss Snipes. Um so the requirement is instruction must be provided in the form of online meetings and or so or provided videos and audio. How is a provided video

070or audio different from asynchronous? It's still asynchronous but it's not just work. It it has to it has to have the instructional piece behind it. So it's it's still asynchronous. So I apologize that probably did come across wrong. That that answers my question. Um, and then has there been any thought as a result of this that because the standards are the same presumably by grade level, so they should should transfer from one school to the next based on the grade level, right? Has the district or the do the schools have you considered banking pre-recorded lessons and having those available in the event of a e-learning day? that way this maybe it takes a a little bit of the lift off the teachers. So we do well yes and no. Okay. So, not pre-recorded by one

071of our staff members, but we do have uh lot we have it's called the learning hub through the state and there are lots of videos that are standardsbased. Like if you type in your standard and you say this is the standard that I need something on, it'll give you lesson plans, it'll give you videos, it'll give you everything based on that. And I'm speaking from a teacher right now. I don't want somebody to give me something to do. I want to give my kids what I know my kids need and where I'm at. And that's the autonomy of the teacher. I I I feel like our teachers would feel that way. Um I don't feel like they would want us to say on today I want you to do this or that. Um but I

072also know that within schools they do exactly what you're talking about. Like one teacher might um do a video on this particular topic and another teacher might do a video on another topic and they share that with each other. Um, and so I think within the school they probably know the needs of those students, but to go from Seven Oaks to Chapen and have the same videos, I'm just unsure that they would even use that. So, um, for the benefit of like the parents that are maybe watching, it sounds like if we have an event that could result in loss of internet, weather, you know, a power outage or something like that, we would probably close the schools depending. It might not be the whole district and then use the makeup days. But then we

073could for the makeup days instead of the children having to come in person we could use the e-learning for the makeup days. That that's probably what's going to happen. I would say probably we give you know each event it stands on its own but I can foresee more school closures um with the clarity that was provided in the e-learning memos you know with this and so we don't want to put a situation where if half the district is out then all the districts be out. So to follow up to it, what happens if we if we use all three days? So we use all three days and now something happens. So if you use all your makeup days and correct me if I'm wrong and I know man that works on our calendar, you have

074your your three days that you must exalt exhaust. And once that's done, then you have two days that this body can grant. Once that is exhausted, then this body can appeal to the state board for additional days. Uh, and that has been in very catastrophic situations. We saw some very intense impacts in the Greenville area with the last storm, flooding in Orangeburg. Uh, so those would be very high intensity pieces. Uh, but with that, the state is you will get your 180 days of instruction in and uh, Uh that's the flexibility that we have but we must work through our our our days first before applying to the state. Okay. And the last slide is about professional development and these are just some of the um key pieces of professional development that we like that

075we are providing for our teachers with instructional rounds in classrooms. the building thinking classrooms that we've already talked about, our letters, our multi-tered support system, leadership development for PD for our principles and our administrators, instructional strategies, we've talked a lot about that tonight, professional learning communities, and then curriculum base. So, our new curriculums, we always want to provide professional development on those as well. And with that, I will end unless there are other questions. Thank you, Miss McCasco. And I want also want to thank our director of elementary education, Mr. Michael Giuliano, and our director of secondary education, Mr. Nonda Wallace. Thank you so much for your support. At this time, coming to the lecture for our monthly financial for March, April, and May, our chief financial officer, Miss Heather Tucker. Good evening, Madam Chair,

076Dr. Ross, members of the board. Um, we have three months to report today. Uh, thank you for bearing with us last uh board meeting because we our financial system was down and we pull reports. So, um, just to go through March, April, and May, and we are actually working on year end now. So, um, we're always a little bit behind reporting this data, but there's a trend that I want you to notice as we work through these couple of months. Um, first starting off looking at March's revenue. Um, we ended March's revenue with about 82% of our revenues collected. Um, you can see in the local sources, we are over on property taxes. Um, obviously, we collected more than what we had budgeted for. um this should be chewed up as we move through our

077next budget year now that we are projecting our property taxes collection at a higher percentage rate than we have done in the past. So, but you can see that our local sources are higher, but our state sources are lower. And you'll see that trend as we work through all three of these months. And so, just want you to take in consideration that um our expenditure summary for March, we were right on track with where we were in 2024. uh we are expended uh 67% so slightly higher than uh March of 2024 at 66%. As we get into April again very similar situation our property tax collection is higher than what we had originally budgeted but our state aid to classroom is the second line under the state sources is what I want you to take

078a look at. So in April our state aid to classroom we had collected 72% and it goes up by about 8% each month. So as we end this year our state aid to class is actually going to be under where we budgeted. We're making up that difference in the local sources. So, we're seeing that shift of what the state had projected we were going to receive in our budget being lower than what we're actually collecting versus our local sources being higher. So, we're seeing that that actual shift which we talked about in the budget this year of moving from additional resources from the state to additional resources from the local. And as far as our expenditures in April, we were again a little higher than we were the prior year. where we are seeing um

079increases increase in cost in some things. Um specifically, we had a we have an issue with um some of the band instruments we ordered. Um we received the majority of them. Um there's a a few instruments that came in um essentially embargoed with some tariffs in California. They were a little bit delayed and so a couple thousand dollars additional for some band instruments, but thankfully we were able to receive the majority of that before the tariffs took place. Um and then finally, our May um revenue summary. Again, we are over on our property taxes, over on our local sources. Um, but under on our state aid to classroom. Again, we're at 88% through the month of May. Um, anticipate to end this year with state classroom at about 95 to 96% of where we were

080budgeted. Um, and again, just being over on our local sources. Um, but our expenditures for May again also slightly higher than we were last year. We were at 83% expended through the month of May. And um last year uh in 2024 we were 82% expended. Um we will see our expenditures go up for the month of June as we acrew things back that we received before uh June 30th. So we will see our expenditures closer to our budget. Um but that is our financial report and I'll stand for any questions. Another neat miss. Um on the the state is the are we receiving the the amount we expected per weighted pupil unit um or is that down? I mean I know the enrollment projection the actual enrollment is lower than the projected. So I know

081that's one cause is but is the amount per weighted pupil unit also down or did it stay the same? It is relatively the same. Um we are looking at that. um the the way the state um actually does the revenue projections they they made some changes to the report from last year. So we are but it is it is pretty close to on on track with what we what what had been budgeted in the previous year per pupil unit. Um, but we are just seeing that shift and again we talked about in the budget process this year that the state gives us really that kind of this is this is the maximum that you'll get but we don't really have that minimum and so we saw a change in our state projection five days in

082this year and so those the budget was based on a different number. Um, and so we're seeing those those revenues from the state come in lower. So we're just seeing that shift. Is it still is it still based on weighted pupil units though? So it's because the enrollment any questions stay here for this. All right. Uh thank you. We wanted to give an update. I know we we have been hearing about some funding that has been withheld from states uh from the elementary and secondary education act. Uh just as a uh update there, I believe like seven titles within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We receive funding from four of the titles. And so uh you see this kind of the rough end estimates of of allocations that we receive uh for each title.

083Title one uh which is for disadvantaged students uh those students in poverty and title two which is our professional development of our teachers and principles. Uh title three uh are for the students with learning English. Uh and title four is our supports that we uh we have for uh our school programs mainly after school. Uh we did receive a memo from the state department I think at the beginning of the fiscal year about um coming up with some contingency plans uh for title one part C title two part A, title three part A and title four part A and B. Um this is uh active and ongoing as we look at this this formula here. Uh in terms of it, we do have an exposure of about $682,000. Uh that that could be withheld from

084our district from from these holdbacks. We heard as early as today that um some in title 4 may be coming back but may be coming back to the enduser or the after school programs not necessarily to the uh to the district. Uh we have carryover funds and uh essentially that is uh the district uh fiscal year is July 1 through June 30th but the federal year is October 1st through September. 30th. So, we do have some carryover funds that we believe can uh uh get us through, but we're going to ask to move up the date of our our budget amendment. We would like the board to take that up in October 27th. Uh two reasons. We do want to see the impact of our state funding as you just heard from our CFO. We're

085going to be looking at enrollment in and the WP uh weighted people unit report uh for the 45th day. Um we get our max, but we don't know what the min is. And so, um, our budget is based on our our best case estimate. We'll have more data when the 45th day is. The 45th day of school will be October the 9th. We're going to give Dr. Harris and his team some time to pull that report together. Uh, and then, uh, we want to have discussion at the preliminaries at the next meeting and then by the last meeting in October, move forward with that. So uh within your budget uh we have contingency we we have uh but we have to look at uh all matters on the general side with the state funding as

086well as federal. There is a issue that we have uh and I just want to put this out to people watching are title one uh employees. The majority of title one are employee positions and uh those are we haven't heard anything about title one. So I don't want them to be alarmed right now. Uh but uh what we are talking about are these areas here on the screen. So but when we would like at the office meeting I'm just going to ask if we can schedule the October 27th meeting for budget amendment and preceding meetings to just kind of give updates but we won't have the final update and giving Dr. Harris as much time as possible. uh October 9th is that day when we would we would would know that 45th day. So uh

087our contingency planning is to use carryover uh and then wait to see the full impact of of state and federal funds uh by October 9th to be prepared for amendment at October 27th. Do we have any questions? All right. Thank you. All right. Last part of the superintendent's report is graduation alliance and uh I'm excited uh uh for this uh this new opportunity and I just wanted to to share that at every board meeting we track our graduation rate and Mr. Shondaanda Walers who is is here is uh the the magic behind the screen of this number pulling all of the high schools together going student by student condition by condition name by name to to get us these numbers for these reports but you know we we haven't crossed the 90 threshold is in

088our is in our strategic plan and so when you dive deeper into the issue we need help and the administration is calling on the board for help. Today I want to use the same uh model that Miss McCascal brought up with the MTSS or multi-ter supports because we do the same thing with uh our graduation, but we would like a tier three intervention. Some of our students need another tier. Uh we feel like we have tier one and two, but we would like to institute a tier three to help us cross that 90% threshold. Uh that tier that uh the team will bring to us today is called graduation alliance. That's that tier three intervention. Uh it does not require increase to the budget. Uh will be in our purchase services. Uh but wanted to

089give Miss McCascal and and graduation last an opportunity to share with us uh this uh this uh this program. Before they do, I just want to give a kind of a preamble of when Miss Walters and her team when they're when they're doing a deep dive, I understand what they're looking at. Um, this is a very unique representation of the data that I appreciate Miss Black and the accountability team coming together to show us this. But, uh, what we look at is when students enter the ninth grade, you go four years ago, there were ninth graders that enter into our schools and they are are immediately I say stamp district 5 they give what's called a 9GR and that is the cohort that we must keep and graduate four years later on time over time

090that number starts to to whittle down to graduated if you look at how many did graduate it was 1347 of that that graduated. Eight of those students are are not receiving diplomas. They receive what's called eligibility employability credentials. So, um this is to make sure that they're career ready. We have 56 of those students that are in external supports are working with Dr. Harris's team and our adult ed program. Uh we have 55 students that they're in the building. We're behind them. We're working with them in those tier 2 interventions. Um just trying to get them across the line. But it's that orange uh slide that's the 49 students that they're missing. They're no longer in our schools. Uh we label them as disconnected and don't know where they are. And so, um, we can

091have another tier, if we had another opportunity, another tier of intervention to work with these students, the impact that that would have, uh, on our district would be tremendous. Um, there's no one shaping these students around and and with the transientness that we're seeing, um, this could help us along go a long way. Years ago, we brought Dr. Harris an opportunity for, uh, our, uh, used to look at how many times a counselor would have to call someone to get them uh residential services and I think it was like 45 calls to get someone to a bed. When you look at how many calls it takes to get a student who's disconnected back in school, uh that that's a lot of time that our our staff does not have as they're working with the students

092are in the building. Uh and so to have another group that that could help us with that would be easy would be huge um support. Dr. Herren, you asked a question when it meets that if what would the graduation rate be for the students who who are coming to school who stayed with us from 9th grade to to 12th grade? And so Dr. Harris asked Miss Audrey Black to run those numbers and the answer is 95.5%. So to those are watching who are in our schools who who working with students every day that's really the impact but for the students who are not here that that are missing that need to be tracked down that's what what keeps us from getting past that line. And so, um, at this time, um, to just kind of

093introduce this tier three intervention that, uh, we would hope you would support, I'm going to ask our chief of academics, Miss Tina McCass, come back to the lecture to talk about Graduation Alliance. You won't get to hear me very long. I'm very happy to introduce Dr. Todd Kushkin, who's the chief revenue officer at Graduation Alliance. Todd spent 30 years in public education in Pennsylvania as a superintendent, assistant superintendent, high school principal, and teacher. He now works with school districts and superintendents all across the country supporting Graduation Alliance's mission to partner with school districts to help the most atrisisk students. So, I'm going to ask Todd if he'll come forward and talk to you today. Good evening, Dr. Ross and and the school board. Uh, thanks for having me here tonight. Um, you know, I was

094I was listening to Dr. Ross talk about a strategic plan from 2027 to 2032 and it feels like yesterday we were talking about Y2K and trying to figure that out in schools and uh where does the time go? You know, I work with schools all across the country and I was just in Texas where they were dealing with a uh data um security issue. So, every school's dealing with that. So, as I listen to to, you know, some of the things that you guys are talking about at the board here tonight, um it's it's relevant all across the country. I do want to just give you as a former superintendent, um I'm just so impressed sitting here for for the last hour or so, just listening to your instruction, things are happening in your schools.

095Just blown away with your MTSS model, your chief academic officer. Uh I love the success criteria I can statements. I know I'm not here to talk about this, but I I just from another from an outside perspective sitting here, I just just so impressed using Dreambox uh as personalized learning, the the 4x4 scheduling, just top-notch. I just want to I just want to say that as an educator for 30 years, I'm very very impressed uh sitting here and listening to this. So, um let me go to why you have me here. Um is Graduation Alliance. Um Graduation Alliance has been around for about 13 years now. We work with uh schools all across the country. We don't work in every state. We're in about 16 states for dropout recovery because our goal is to try

096to keep this cost neutral. We want to u re-engage students. I'll talk about how we do that. Um and then trigger state funding and then we take a percentage of that. So that's kind of what we look at when we uh work with dropout recovery across the country. Uh we have a whole team. So I'm here some people say I have a face for radio, not TV, but uh um they're not too nice. But um there's a whole team behind us from compliance, our curriculum team. We have a special ed director, a whole special ed team, student services, uh marketing and recruitment. So we're here to help support you uh in your students uh as we uh move forward as a possible partner. Uh we are accredited from Cogna. We are a certified BC corporation

097and we have a quality matters uh score uh and quality matters uh uh uh and measure uh mission measurement. uh they looked at school uh companies that work with dropout recoveries uh uh programs all across the country. Uh and we were rated one of the highest across the country. As a former superintendent, I didn't have uh this last safety net to go and find kids and and kids who have dropped out. But really what our goal is to engage students, engage funding, reclaim funding, and increase graduation rate. So we're going to try to increase your graduation rate. It's not going to cost you anything in a sense. Um, and we're going to re-engage kids. And we'll talk a little bit about what that uh what that looks like. We have experts that find the students.

098Um, if you ever Googled somebody's name and asked for a paid service, we have national ba databases that we're able to find kids. We're able to find the aunt, the uncle, uh, somebody that knows where the kiddo is and try to track them down. We have accounts through Facebook, Instagram. If they add added a new email address, we're able to find these kids and we do a really good job of finding them. We scrub data um and we look at zip codes of where kids have been, lived in, and we'll we'll track them down for you. Once we track the data down, we'll actually give you that data mobility back. It's just part of what we do. So, you're actually able to clean your your uh your um uh codes up, your withdrawal codes. If

099maybe a kid moved out or went to a private school, you're not aware of this, we're able to give you all this data back. Uh we work with districts, large districts like Miami Dade, um to all the way up in Seattle, Washington, Texas schools. We also work in very small districts in Michigan, in Ohio, uh, and in Pennsylvania. When a student goes into our program, our program is truly a, uh, you know, mo, we know we're dealing with the most at risk kiddos. And so, we have state certified teachers. We have a local advocate that's going to be talking with the kids, maybe do meetups with the students, um, at a local Starbucks, all those things. We have 247 tutoring. While we're all asleep, these kids are logging on at 3:00 a.m. asking for help

100in algebra. Um it's amazing to look at some of the data that that we have. Uh we will pass out laptops to the students. Um and your IT department does not touch that. We we take care of that. We take the heavy lift from from every uh from each of the school districts we work with. And then the academic coach is the one that's uh that that person that's uh every student will be assigned an academic coach and that person is contacting the kids. are contacting the parents positive negative uh keeping making sure that kids keeps this the pace and progress of each student or for the week uh for the progress. So it's pretty amazing the 360 degree support that we put around kids. Please stop me at any time as we we go

101through this. Here's just an example that I wanted to share with you in in Arizona. We just started in October of 2024. Um and we started with three students enrolling in our program. Um, and really within that first month, we had kids earning uh their first credit. Um, and then in January, we had uh the first student return because we know the best education is in front of your teachers in in your classroom. So, we monitor maybe there's a junior that dropped out and and we get them caught up. Maybe their senior year, they come back to your school. We monitor that. We take pride in that of getting the kids back into your schools uh and engaging them. Um and by February this this school in Arizona we got uh almost hund actually surpassed

102a hundred students enrolled in our program. Uh they actually went back and gave us lists of students for the last three years have dropped out and we try to re-engage them. So you have a lot of flexibility within the program. Um and then by April so we started this program in October. By April we had our first high school graduate from that school district. Um so we're really proud of our work that we do and try to engage students and try to get them a high school diploma. this this example here of just kind of when we implemented it and just kind of how it worked. Um, this district realized that 85% of the kids leaving their high school stay in their community after after leaving high school. Not with a with a diploma, just

103they 85% of the kids stay within that community. And they thought with a 75 80% graduation rate, what is our community going to look like five years, 10 years, 20 years from now? That's the reason why we got to make sure we try to engage these kiddos and get them a high school diploma. So really proud of this and again this is one example I could give you 30 uh I don't want to I know it's been a long night but I wanted to kind of give you an overview of how this implementation works. Uh just just some numbers we have a total about 45,000 students that we've engaged that are either about to drop out or have dropped out. I think the number Dr. Rush you had 49 or so that was disconnected. We'll

104go find those kiddos. We'll find them and find aunt, find uncle, somebody. We will text message. We'll send uh uh emails. We'll make phone calls. We'll do all those things to try to engage the students and that's what we do. Um, if you look at it, it says 35% graduation rate. You're like, boy, that's not too good. But if you really think about it, we're starting at zero. We're we're grabbing every kid that have uh has dropped out in our program or about to drop out, we're getting to 35%. The last mileer you see is graduation rate is 46%. And what we we call the last mileer, I didn't know that until a couple years ago I came to graduation alliance, but last mileers is kids that have five credits or less. It would break

105your heart to see some of these kiddos that have one or two credits shy of graduating and they don't have a diploma. We can get we're almost 50% actually that number is a little bit higher now of getting those kids that have five credits or less getting them a high school diploma. So we we monitor that closely. We work closely uh with your team here um and Dr. Ross to kind of give them an update every week, every other week, every month depending on the cadence that they would they would like. Um, but we're really good at what we do and uh we've surpassed last year 10,000 graduates. Uh, just again I I just want to talk briefly about this. Uh, when we we get a list of students that uh uh we get from

106uh school districts, list of kids who have dropped out, we're about 10% conversion. Um, you know, it depends on each state, each district, but that's the whole national all the all the school districts we work with across the country. And then if a district is um referring a student, a kid that's about to drop out, we're about 80% success rate. It's a little bit higher now that we get the student in our program and and activated and enrolled. So um but the district approves every student coming in our program. We're just an umbrella of the district. We work closely with the district. Um so you approve what students come into the program and we match your graduation rate. So how many credits you need for science, English, and those for will work with um with

107your team here. And just a just a couple examples of what students are saying about our program. Uh we monitor this very closely. We do an NPS score. I don't know if you've traveled and you get a text message, you know, this survey, that survey, we we get a lot. We actually do that with our students and our and uh our parents. We want to know that and our CEO and myself, we all look at uh the this NPS score every single day, what kids are saying about our academic coaches, um about our enrollment counselors. Uh we monitor that very very closely. And you could see some of the nice things that um uh high school dropouts or are about to drop out saying about about our our team. And again, we monitor that. I

108mentioned the contact rate. You'll see percentage of students once you we start working with your district, how many we've reached out to, how many we've got on track. We'll give you the mobility data back. If they went to the military, they're incarcerated. Um they went to another state, we'll be, you know, some things you'll be able to just clean up your data um and maybe increase your graduation rate uh just by cleaning the data up because we'll be doing that work. Uh that's part of what we do to try and re-engage kids. It's your data. We're going to give just hand it over to you. We also uh ask our students once they are enrolled their barrier data like what happened. Um we'll be able to give you that data back too. So then you

109you can start to develop maybe some different programs that you have uh that you maybe have you could start to create within your own school. So we give you that barrier barrier data back. Um again it's your data. Um again we we really try to identify the academic and social barriers uh the students are faced. We we we create an indivi individual personalized plan for every single student. We give them every student gets an academic coach to keep keep them on track and pace of the progress for each each week each month. Again this is just a sample that I want to share with you. Um this is actually I think this year of referred students to us how many we've contacted. Um and then if you look at the bottom right the mobility data

110that'll and again this is just a sample just how many kids have graduated um maybe from the what you've given us uh how many um students have moved out of the district u rolled in another district maybe they went to a private school maybe they're getting homeschooled now these this is the kind of data that we'll we'll give you so you can clean up your uh withdrawal codes again this I mentioned this earlier but this is the mission measurement finding um this looked at uh companies all across the country regarding dropout recovery programs. Um, and you could see we uh we were very high of what we do. Um, really proud of that. And again, this is the NPS score. This is what our students and and we're at 83, which is really, really high

111compared to uh other companies similar to ours. And again, we monitor that very closely and evaluate our staff using the NPS. We know we're dealing with the most at risk kids. Um, we need to make sure that we we treat them with empathy and passion of trying to get them reenrolled. And I don't know if we have time for this, but I'll we'll share this with you. Um, it's just a story of a Oh, okay. Somebody's gonna Yeah, you want Let's see if the sound worked. Technology is great when it works. It was my senior year of high school and I just was realizing that school wasn't for me. I mentally was in a space where I just couldn't really handle going to school and um being on such a different pace I guess. So

112when I was talking to my counselor, she had suggested graduation alliance. If I wasn't working or anything, I would, you know, wake up, do my morning routine, eat breakfast, do whatever. um and then log on uh do I would do one class and then take like a like a lunch break basically and within that time I would like read or like do something that was still educational in a sense but still like taking a break also from work and then proceed to just do work and then finish it up. My support system was great. I really enjoyed my counselors and my mom and just my teachers in general as well. Everybody was very supportive and very understanding of just anything that I brought to them, whether that was questions or concerns or uh just stuff

113going on. I'm glad she thanked them all. I really enjoyed Graduation Alliance because I was able to work at my own pace, which is something that I kind of needed just in school in general because of how I learn, I guess. Um, but I really enjoyed that as well as being able to kind of pick the classes that I need, but also pick when I was able to do them. So, let's say if I didn't really want to do math right away, I could do English and history and then do math. So, it was kind of it was kind of nice on that aspect. Um, I also like just the format of Graduation Alliance. I like how the classes are set up, how it's four weeks and um how there's like the little circle to

114tell you like your completion and everything. um just easier to visualize and see everything kind of all laid out for you versus like being like in 10 different browsers looking for 10 different things like I feel like I would at school. So, it's way easier um working with I feel like another thing was also being able to do other things such as like work or even like be like travel and still being able to bring my laptop or do what I needed to do on where wherever I was at or if I was at work and taking a break or something, you know, I was able to do Earning my diploma has been such an amazing experience, honestly. Like, and it's super fun just to say that I graduated high school. I was able to

115get my diploma. And even though I'm a little older now, like I still think getting your diploma, getting your high school education is so important. even if it's even if it's not fun, even if you don't think it is, like I think it's very important and it builds you so much as well as just teaches you so many different things. Um, so being able to mark that with my diploma and being able to say that I did it and show it off when I got it, it was so fun. This program is pretty great and honestly I think it's pretty good. Especially this is coming from somebody who didn't know if this was going to work for her or not. I personally was scared going into this just because I didn't do great with e-learning

116in the past and online learning. So, I was scared. But again, the way it's showed and the way it's laid out for you, I appreciate it. and it's so different from other programs that I knew this was going to be the one for me and I knew this was kind of how how it was going to work. That probably went over my time, but I think it's good to hear from a student talking about and we all know students are just like that that um you know that that you have in your schools and maybe that have been disconnected. Um and again, I just want to make sure everybody knows that this is a program that um this isn't going to take students away from your alternative school, your own virtual program. This is the

117last safety net. As a company, we are truly we want to be the last safety net for every school district. You have tons of interventions. You have the MTSS model. You you have all these things in place, but there there always going to be some kids that have different issues and and we're here to help. And uh so any questions? I know over time. Dr. Ros, Mr. Satderfield. Uh yeah. Um thank you for that presentation. Uh um how I'm still trying to figure out um the young lady mentioned that she was taking she was on virtual school. Um, so if we had a student that was really at risk, a lot of it absences and things like that and they contacted you, does the child enroll in this virtual school, South Carolina virtual schools or

118this would be uh your district's um virtual program with uh the provider of graduation alliance. So we would be the provider. they would they would register uh with graduation alliance under the umbrella of your district and you would be giving them a high school diploma within your district. So your approach with these students, if I was a junior, let's say, and I was not coming to school or not doing well or whatever, your approach would be much different for me than it would be for someone who has never never did graduate, but it hasn't been that long and you were trying to, you know, pull them back into the fold. Yeah, I think our enrollment counselors would treat those those students differently naturally. The academic coaches, too. Um, we will, uh, there's a course that

119we want the students to take that I will graduate. They'll set priorities, uh, kind of time management. If somebody's been out of school for a long period of time, maybe a year or so, or a kid that's been in school, haven't had success, and ready to drop out. Our our enrollment counselors, our academic coaches would treat those those kiddos a little different. Okay. I have two more questions. Um, one is that I know you talked a lot about your academic coaches. A lot of these kids and I was an old high school principal too, but a lot of these kids um there are other issues. I mean there family issues there, um many things that result in them not attending. Are there any sort of coun is there any kind of counseling or anything involved

120with this process? Yes. So we have counselors uh that are on board. The local advocate if kids would need maybe connected to any kind of community resources, our local advocate would work with the district to connect those kiddos. um they're they're still your kids and we'll still help support them. We'll let we'll meet again weekly, bi-weekly with with the team here to talk about this kid's still struggling. What other interventions can we put in place? Uh we do that across the country. So we don't just put the kid in a program and and uh you know let them fail. We really want you know our our model is based on uh satisfactory progress. We want kids progressing. Uh we actually chunk the courses. So we might um like an algebra one course, we have a

121algebra one part A and a part B really to to chunk those to see see those kids get some success right away. So all right and my last question and Dr. Rush, you might be able to help with this is how does this go as far as reporting on our graduation rates? Very good. So this would really uh help Nunda and her team just looking at the presentation here 35% of our disconnected students about 497 that's 17 Michon if we added that to this year's NGR would put us over our strategic plan goal it would be a huge impact for us and I think the I'm sorry no go ahead Dr. I think the the benefit is that this is throughout the year as well and could be multi-grade so we can get an earlier

122jump on those juniors earlier jump on the on the 10th graders and so it would be a a huge support for us. Well, I will say this um this is very interesting. Um I know that uh all my years in education uh there's always a lot of emphasis on the students that are enrolled currently enrolled and once a student becomes truent um they're just truent and if they don't show up and if they're at that age where it really is not a me uh you know they are allowed to be truent then they're just sort of dropped from the roles and uh um it's a shame um and we're very dependent on that student someow now finding and making better choices to come back either to adult ed or whatever to finish their school. But

123I mean, I'm very impressed. But thank you. And you know, you might have a 17-year-old that shows up on the guidance counselor's uh in the office that has six credits and they're transferring into your school and you have to accept them. But, you know, this is another program that could, you know, another resource, another tool for your your team to have to be able to help support those kiddos that live in your community. All right. Now, I do have one more question since you said that. Sorry, Miss Knights. Um, are students allowed to double up on courses? In other words, um, used to be the the principal sort of had that authority, but would let's say that I needed two Englishes. Yeah. So, it does give us some flexibility the way that they do their

124classes because it's about four to six weeks to do a class. So, you're not looking at a semester, you're not looking at a year. So, they would take say two classes at a time. And so you could easily get through multiple classes for your time. So it wouldn't even be necessary to have two Englishes at a time unless the only two classes needed. So yes, the answer to yours is yes, we can, but it's less likely to take two at the same time. Mr. Skully. Yeah, thank you. I just want to kind of go back over the map. Who's doing the slides? Can you go to this slide? Yep. All right. So, based on um and I'm sorry I didn't catch your name. based on what you said were your hit rates um your capture

125rates rather um you said 10% you you enroll 10% roughly of the truent the disconnected so that would be 10% of the 49 we could expect to be captured and then 80% of your kind of identified we still have them and they're about to drop out um and so I I relate that. I guess that would be 80% of the 55. Is that what's being considered there? Yeah. And keep in mind that's a national average. So we're dealing with districts that give us a thousand kids a month that have dropped out of high school. Not exaggerating. No, that's fine. I'm just kind even even looking at those raw numbers. So we take 10% of 49. I'm going to round up to five. Um 80% of 55 is 44. So, we've got a total of 49

126students that get enrolled in your program. So, the math, how that works out to us, make sure I'm I'm doing the math right, that comes off the top of the 1515 starting number, right? The cohort. So, we reduce that number 1515 by 49. And then we take our graduation rate of our graduates 1347 divided by the the new number would be 1466 and that would have the hypothetically given us a 91.8 graduation rate. Is that accurate? That is that is exactly what this could do. Yes sir. And and and it also has the ability to roll them back in for us as graduates of D5. So we have that They're still us. They're still our students. They're serving them, but they stay in our school. They stay, but our cohort our our the calculation they

127don't get subtracted from. So, we add the 49 to the 1347. Then you would add it to the node. 15 is our cohort. What graduation alliance would do for us would be instead of 49 and the 55 coming off of our graduation rate those students that you just those would go into that 95% they would be so they add it's they go into the numerator and not the denominator. Okay. So if you do it that way then the math would be 92.1. Yeah, I think it' be higher and and I it's kind of banan right Todd if pronounce your last name for Kushkin but just call me Todd please. Dr. Kushkin we give respect the title but I think too some of the dropouts of disconnected students if we find some clerical pieces that incarceration

128or transfer to a private school or what then those would come off the denominator. So you got both hands working with us. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. So, if I find a student that maybe moved out of state, uh, and you didn't know they moved out of state, you know, is there a different withdrawal code? Like, we would help you work through that process. Your team knows that inside and out, but we would, we would give that to you. Private schools, boy, I didn't know that kid went to a private school. But instead of having a needle in a hay stack where you, let's say you have um a little over 100 students, we'll be able to identify this kid said he's going to private school. We try to get the information of what private

129school, but at least you have that information that you'll be able to go do some followup instead of trying to find that one out of 100 that went to a private school or five. So, we're able to track that down for you. We give that data to all of our districts. Um, to follow up on Mr. Satderfield's question, so um I'm just going to use an example. Let's say you have a kid that's halfway through their senior year. Um, it's not that hard to get the credits and everything except English and they only have three Englishes. Is this something that can help? And if they say, "I'm out." And you say, "Well, come on, stay." And you're like, "No, I'm out." And the only thing they need to graduate is that English class. This is

130exactly to Okay, very good. Um, when And again, you you have all these other interventions, too. I'm sure you're going to try before graduation lines, but that's that last safety net to help the kid. I get goosebumps thinking about it, but I'm just passionate about helping kids. So, yeah. Um, and so if you don't mind, how does the funding work? Like you said it wouldn't cost us anything. You guys get funds from the state. How does that work? Dr. Ross, you want to talk about that or you want me to? Yeah. Nothing's free. Uh, M. like if you would like to there is a there's there's two models and it's going to depend on the contract and we're going to handle this in contractual negotiation. There is the reimburse model and that's where uh Dr.

131Kushian is correct. It is a reimbur the kid is gone. We're you talking about WPUs we're not getting anything from when that student returns back then as a call share with GRD Alliance. Uh the other piece is what Lex one is doing and we're going to ask for that funding model where we would basically have an assignment of funds uh that we just draw down on per student. And so that way our reimbursement on the state level is is not all it's not perfect in terms of when we get our funds for the fifth day, the 10th day, the 45th day, the 135th day. So because of that, it's better to just say to Mully's point 104 seats and we're going We have that budgeted as many seats as you can apply back. We'll we'll

132pay the company. But we would contract review hand out more towards election one model than the reimbursement model. I think so. So you're basically saying those 100 kids, they don't we don't get them in the enrollment count. So we we have an incentive to actually pay to have this service done or another model would be some kind of cost share based on the number of kids. So I get that have a number of questions I'm sorry to say but I think they're short and I promise not to expound. Dr. Ross, don't we have people to do this? Why we pay people to do this? Why would we need to engage an outside service to track down students? And I want to speak to those people who are doing this and I and I thank you

133for that question because it it just kind of shares the the the challenge that is ahead of us. Um I don't know if it's trade secret how many calls it takes or how many contacts it takes to get a dropout student back into school. There's some cases on average in some states it's 42 different messages to reach out to the kiddos with phone calls. I mean it's it's never ending of what we do to try to track these kiddos down. So if we look at our average case load for counselor of 300 uh students total with IGPS with the recommendations the college applications you look at the disconnected uh and the ones in progress. Imagine 42 calls per child. Um we may get to six. Those folks may get to 12. But to do 42

134each we find but to make one call and and someone else takes on the 50 plus or 40 plus that's what the benefit is um it's a it's a way to give that staff who are always making the call and I'll say this you know you drive past Ir cars in the front of that that building those are school counselors and registars in there trying to enroll and unenroll Look at their dust. Their stacks of are this high and they're still trying to get to them. And as they get to one, that child not even there. They're working weekends and nights way past the contracted time as they're trying to bring the blue folders. You can see them in their office and they're trying to bring those down to zero. the next day school starts

135another stack is they could make one call and someone else could take the 42 there that would be a huge benefit to our district I think top are our told don't beat us up in negotiation they' be $186,000 the amount of staff that I would need to do this would be way more than 186 or $180 Thank you a question for um what is your rate of students that you don't ever reach? You know, that's a great question. It just depends on each state. Um and it also depends on a student that's about to uh um drop out and the counselor or the principal handing us that name and say, "Hey, this kid's about to drop out." Um the kid that's about to drop out, we're about 86% success rate uh of getting that kid

136enrolled in our program. So that that, you know, half the battle is getting that kid to enroll in our program. Um the list it it just depends on each state, each district. um you know if it's transient like so it just depends if you give us a list and you know but on average in nationally if you give us a list of you know let's say 100 kids or 200 kids we're about 10% of of getting that kid enrolled but we're about 50 60% of actually contacting them finding out details about you know where they are you know um but again it's a lot of time calling grandma aunt uncle to figure out where the kiddo is now um a lot of times the kids in military they didn't know that like there's just so

137many different factors that we'll be able to give you that data back. Okay. And um what rate of or percentage of students do you actually see return in person to the school? You know, it varies in every district too. Um sometimes just us reaching out to the student and um maybe they messed up in six months they they've they want to go and try again. We'll let the district know, hey, we have taught Kushkin that once he dropped out of your school um he wants to come back. Is that possibility? You know, we work with the district to to do that. So aren't I you'll you'll hear me say it a thousand times if I'm even here next next summer uh presenting some of the d your data you know the best education is in

138front of your teachers in that classroom but you do every district has kids that have mental health issues anxiety si you know babysitting siblings you know has a full-time job to support the family all those kind of things are are factors that we're dealing with in in in public education across the country and we're just we're glad to be that last safety net to make sure that kiddo gets a diploma And finally, very quickly, I'm assuming that your team of staff and counselors and teachers, um, tutors, they're not dedicated per like per school district. They're probably serving nationally, but you can feel good that you could absorb the students in this district into your program and still have effective results. Correct. Absolutely, 100%. And we'll monitor that closely with your team and I'd be glad

139to come out and if you want to give me you want to give quarterly updates, I'd be glad to do that or give that information to Dr. Ross and report out, I'd be glad to do that. Um it does take time though like if you look at that example about eight months in Arizona example that we just started last it does take time. It takes two or three months to get things moving in in the right direction. I think you do have any more questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you for having me. No problem. Thank you for being here. All right. That um that concludes the superintendent report. All right. Thank you, Dr. Ross. Um, that moves us to the approval of the minutes of the June 23rd board meeting. Uh, Madam Chair, I

140make a motion to approve the minutes of the June 23rd, 2025 board meeting. Second. All in favor? All oppose? Motion carries 6 to zero. At this time, we will open the meeting up for public participation. The board welcomes and encourages public participation. We respectfully ask that you adhere to the procedures provided in board policy BEDH public participation and meetings. Your comments should be limited to three minutes and must remain on either a topic noted on your signin form or a listed agenda item. Questions asked during public participation will be handled in accordance with board policy beh H Miss Taylor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Rick Howell is here to thank the board for D teams. Madam Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Ross, I want to simply come and thank you. I want to thank you

141for the position that you've taken in development of D teams. For some 30 years, I've been able to coach young people that children from 10, 11, 12 years of age, fourth, fifth, sixth graders. And what I've been able to do in kind of looking at these young children as they develop is recognize the academic success that these kids have. One is that as we talk about, what impact does it make? A child that plays sports, they do better with the GPA. They don't drop out of school basically. The second thing is that they have physical uh they meet physical things such as they build muscle, they exercise, they work hard, and then they have social. Social is a standpoint. They make friends and they're able to talk to other friends. They learn how to set

142go uh goals. And then is the mental aspect. You know, kids who play sports, team sports, they uh have the anxiety kind of goes away. They don't get as depressed and most of all, they're not suicidal. You know, we talk about the whole child and the whole curriculum of a child. Teen sports helps develop that. Some time ago, I learned that to love and grow children, you have to invest in those children. Mooney player is a football coach that we know from some time ago. He had two sayings. One is to do what you say and the other one is to uh invest and uh pay the upfront price. This board and other boards have paid the upfront price. We have millions of dollars that are invested in gyms, pitches, fields, tracks. What do we

143get for that return on investment? Well, you get the return on investment when you start at this level and this level. But what happens when you have a D team and what is going to happen is they're going to be playing in the neighborhood and they're going to be playing in the community and they're going to be supporting their school and all of a sudden you got team spirit. The investment is like uh taking some small money and then it grows and it grows and it grows and it impacts the entire community. The second thing is to do what you say and I want to change that a little bit with his permission is to do what you pray. I listen to your prayers at the beginning of every session that we have and what

144you want is in the best interest of the children. decision you have made is in the best interest of the child that is detained. Thank you very much. Let's love and grow our children. Kim Murphy is here to speak about school capacity. Good evening. two items on your agenda um that involve capacities of schools uh the number of children that can be educated in the school building. You are discussing moving forward with adding on to Lake Murray Elementary and Chapen Elementary where there are portables. It is being represented that this addition of permanent classrooms will increase capacity but there has been no discussion of what the current capacity of the school is and how much capacity would be added to the schools. Are you just replacing the portables with permanent classrooms? Are you adding um

145more classrooms than a number of portables which would actually increase capacity? um or are you building fewer classrooms than portables which would decrease capacity? What is the current capacity? In other words, the number of classrooms dedicated to home rooms in both the portables and in the school. What will the cap capacity be after permanent classrooms are added? Keep in mind that when adding additional home rooms, additional classrooms may be needed for special areas, but those classrooms don't count towards capacity. You have just been given extensive information related to academics, which is wonderful. But before moving forward with these projects and spending millions, please get this information. A discussion should not, excuse me, a decision should not be made without it. It is also a factor in the major reasonzoning that is forthcoming. When you have

146the opportunity to expand, which is the case here because the core capacities of the schools can accommodate it, you should expand. Otherwise, you may be um actually reducing the capacity of the schools and forcing the construction of expensive schools. That brings me to the resoning proposal and the proposed pathways to allow students flagged in the resoning to attend a school not in their attendance area but without giving capacity information to the board and the enrollment projections. How can a decision that will impact capacity be made? Based on my research with data available from the district, the major upcoming resoning, which will uproot children from their home schools, is absolutely not necessary, especially with the way that enrollment is decreasing unless there might be some type of motive to build new schools. Thank you. Thank you.

147That moves us to our action agenda. First up is action as necessary or appropriate on matters discussed in executive session. Do I have any motions? Madam Chair, um make a motion to approve selected employment items shown in exhibit A. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? All opposed? The motion carries six to zero. Madam Chair, I make a motion to approve the purchase of properties located at 1400 Kerly Road, Hermo, South Carolina. 1627 and 1635 Hollings Shed Road in Irmo, South Carolina. 1707 Holling Shed Road in Armo, South Carolina and 11601 Broad River Road, Chapen, South Carolina. Second. All in favor? Can we discuss I just want I have a question clarification. Um so that was how many parcels? Five. Five. So the one on Broad River Road is for Kate and the

148other four are for the new Dutch Fork Elementary. Yes, ma'am. Okay. All those in favor? All opposed? And the motion carries six to zero? Madame Chair, I make a motion to approve the contract to Edcon incorporated for the design bid build services for additional classroom wings to be added to Chapen Elementary School and Lake Murray Elementary School as shown in exhibit D. Second. All those in favor? All opposed. And the motion carries six to zero. Madame Chair, I make a motion to approve the 25 and 2026 amendment to the current rates of pay for substance substitutes as shown in attachment E for full day non-certified high school diploma substitute teacher half-day non-certified high school diploma substitute teacher full day bachelor's substitute teacher half-day bachelor's substitute teacher full day certified substitute teacher and halfday certif ified

149substitute teacher. Second. All those in favor, may I ask a point of clar? Okay. Yes, ma'am. So, just to clarif this is a contract amendment to raise all of those rates. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Correct. And the other thing is um the the contract is not changing for long-term substitutes, but we are looking at what the changes at the state level regarding certification may impact those rates. And I'm looking over at finance and HR they not ahead, but yes, there's a new law that would help with those long-term certified retiree subs. So, we should have another report very soon on that. Thank you. All in favor? All oppose. And the motion carries six to zero. I make a motion to approve the district's transition to capital SAS with Tyler Technologies/I Visions allowing for the full restoration

150of workflows and processes and finance, payroll, purchasing, and human resources shown in exhibit F. subject to removing the indemnity clause and clarifying exhibit D of the contract. Second. All in favor? And the motion carries six to zero. Make a motion to approve recommended weapon detection service contractual agreement regarding the development of security personnel or devices shown in exhibit G. Do I have a second? Second. Miss Huttle. Um yeah, I just wanted to put something on the record. Mr. Bayum um couldn't be here because the meeting got moved and his he's on vacation, but um he asked me to put uh he sent us all an email that he asked me to put into the record. So, I'll give that to the secretary, but basically it's his request that the board look at um detection systems

151for smoking and vaping in our restrooms. Thank you. Oh, yes. And I did um this the um this contract would be sole source. So I just wanted to clarify my understanding is that the order of this is that the board approves it first and then the CFO would approve it as sole source and post it and there's a process by which people can challenge it and all of that, but it's okay for us to go ahead and approve it prior to your certification as as soul source. Thank you. All those in favor and the motion carries six to zero. Miss Tucker that moves us um to the procurement review panel. Make a motion to approve the establishing or approval of establishing procurement review panel shown in exhibit J. Second. So, the board needs to elect

152a chair for the procurement review panel. So, um, yes, I'd like to nominate Jason Bum. He's not here, but I did get his approval to nominate him. Uh, do we need to vote on that before I make my nomination? I'd like to nominate Mr. Kevin Scully. He uh has served well at this up to this point in time and um I know of no issues and I think everything's going smoothly. So I would like to nominate Mr. Skully to stay on board with that position. Second like to make a motion to close nominations. Second. All right. We um have two nominations on the floor. So you take the first Well, did we vote to close nominations? You did. We I just made a motion. Did we actually vote on that? Oh, we have a motion

153to close the nominations. All those in favor? Right. Um and the motion carries uh six to zero. So, first um we have a nomination for Jason um Boehner to serve on the procurement review panel. All those in favor? All those opposed. And um the motion fail stage zero. And then we um that moves us to the motion failed for Jason three to two. I'm sorry. Um um I didn't vote. And then um we have a motion on the floor for Kevin Scully. Um all those in favor? All those opposed? And the motion carries um three to two. So Kevin will continue to serve on the procurement review panel. Thank you, Dr. Harris. Yes, the appointment. Make a motion to approve the appointment of Richland County First Steps board member for school district 5 of Lexon

154and Richland counties shown in exhibit K. Second. Sorry, Dr. Harris. Very good. Thank you so much. Um um members of the board, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Ross and community, this is a uh request for approval for appointment to as of a staff member to the Richland County uh board uh of first steps. This comes by way of a 2023 reauthorization uh first step statewide uh that advises rather than having a designate or designating a person that we would um in fact have a board approval to appoint a person to uh the board. And so on tonight uh we're here with the recommendation for the given staff member to serve in the capacity of board member for Richland County. Uh and of course this district office is is very unique in several ways

155and we get to do this uh for both counties but on tonight we're looking for it for the Richland County first steps forward. Do we have any questions? All right we have a motion on the floor. It's been properly second. All those in favor the motion carries six to zero. Thank you Dr. Harris. Make a motion to approve the adoption of updated educational structure and redistricting plan for 2026 and 2027 shown in exhibit L. Second. Do we have any questions? I do. Yeah. Um, can um can you go to the slide that has the um I can't remember what it's called, but the the what's it called? It's where the parent can ask for um Thank you. Per preferred choice. Okay. Can I understand preferred choice? I don't understand preferred pathways. Thank you. Preferred pathways

156and I'm ask Dr. Harris to interrupt me. Uh with any clarifying pieces, but it really only applies that let's go back to where we are now. This is our current educational structure and organization uh piece as we move towards the community schools uh model. Uh we have reszoned back towards our our older schools, back towards Hermo. What happened is uh the most impacted school in this is Valentine Elementary School and What happened with Valentine is if you watch them in a new model, uh the school moved to out of the Dutch Fork area into the Chapen area. But the students, they could be in Dut for elementary, River Springs, Oak Point, and even H Corley. The students who went from Valentine to H Corley will now go to H Corley instead of Valentine and they'll

157go to Crossroads Middle instead of Duck for Middle. So when we drew the lines um those who were resoneed uh were really resoned out of one school, their elementary school and then after that they were back in line at their middle school and at their high school. But uh as we've been saying from the beginning, there's 1% of of the group that lost their their high school. Um but there are 76 students I believe 75 students in out of the 17,000 that have been reszoned twice. Um as through the resoning conversations y'all have given me aid this number was larger uh because we had um uh AJ A thoroughares Marina Road th the farare and the twin gates areas. We were able to work them back in through resoning. It was one uh street, one

158we called it throw there that we could not make this work with and that was the Salem church road which currently has 75 students in it. So choice would not work for them because choice would allow anyone and this is when we were talking about the resoning process with the referendum process. They said if there's room then any room you can move back to the school you were res but you zone twice you move you you lost two schools like the Salem church road uh group that's what gives them the pathways so when they apply very small group but when they apply they would get back into their home their their reasonzone elementary reason middle Harris if anything I didn't clarify if you want to clean up for me no actually I think you described

159it well um um that's exactly the idea and the intent is to ensure as best we possibly can that those families who have been um or potential may be um um reszoned twice that they have that opportunity should they choose uh to participate in or stay in the school in which they were currently in both elementary and middle school. Um so and again everything is predicated whether it's the choice or the pathway it's all predicated on space availability. Um, but I think I think we we certainly feel comfortable and very confident that um um that we want to to take a give take into consideration every family who chooses. We want to certainly honor that as best we possibly can. Can I ask for some like can I pose some examples just to help me

160understand. So let's say you had a student that was is currently attending Lake Marie Elementary and they got reszoned to Valentine Elementary. under preferred choice, they could stay at Lake Murray Elementary, assuming there's a space and assuming someone can get them to and from school. Okay. Now, for preferred pathways, these 75 students at Salem Church Road area, where do they currently attend school? Like today or last last, you know, in May, where did they go to school? Uh, many of them are in the Valentine area or Valentine school rather. So, most of them went to Valentine Elementary. And under the new zoning, where do most of them go? Okay. So, they could use preferred choice as well, right? They could say, "I want to keep going to Valentine Elementary if they wanted to. If if

161if their choice was simply in reference to the elementary level, then yes, they could certainly use that. But many of them the expressions that we've received is that they are interested in not just the elementary but also gotcha the middle school there. Hence the the idea of pathway that we would maintain. So I got I think I got it now. So they under preferred choice they could say hey I want to stay at Valentine and if there's room but then once they hit sixth grade now they got to go to crossroads. That's correct. And they may pathway is okay. Um, I might not be the I might be the only one who doesn't understand. So, if I am, that's fine. But I might suggest that somehow we find a way to word it that is

162very or even give example. Maybe that's all we need to do is give an example. And and I would offer this preferred pathways was actually drawn up with in conjunction with the Salem Church Road family. So, um, they they have met with Dr. Harris and I multiple times as we we we try to work this out. So, it's a very small population. I think our work on the educational materials and the lunch and learns is to to share that for 99.5% of it's going to be preferred choice. But we do need approval on that very slim uh group and may 75 students may not apply that the preferred pathways is there for them. So Dr. Ross just to clarify too then this is only applies to students that are redistricted through if we pass this

163motion tonight. It doesn't apply to other situations. Okay. And the other question I had is I think we talked about this last time, but the as part of this is not just the pathways, but we would be moving roughly two to 50 kids per grade. um from the Ballentine Elementary split feeder where they would go to Dutch Fork cluster to now roughly 50 kids per grade that would go to Chapen cluster. Um one concern I have to put that out there is that um Chapen Ele Chapen High School so I know they won't get there for a few years but Chapen High School is like really close to capacity and we're going to open up space at at the um Spring Hill, right? But just also um there's close to eight I think um the

164town of Chapen Planning Commission is voting on this soon but there's close to 800 home sites I think 400 regular homes and 400 town homes planned for Brighton. So what what will we do if we get a whole bunch more students from Brighton? So I I'll actually share the the numbers here and again has cut me off. This is the worst case scenario that we see in in terms of where we would be. And let's focus in on Chapen. That is um very close to their capacity. That is keeping Spring Hill at its current 1100 students. Once Spring Hill opens up to uh two more wings of uh of capacity, uh it is our goal by having Spring Hill Middle that that number would come down. Um, one of the things that we we look

165at in in operations and Gary, Mr. Alan Knox, is once we finish one fiveyear um program, we start the next fiveyear program. And so that's looking at it. I will I'll be honest with you. I think that as we start to look at the next fiveyear facilities plan, um, my goal was in this year fix all the and fix and what we currently have. The next plot is is there another school that has to go that will require it next study. So we'll do the demographics like we do. We'll follow our five founding principles that we always do including looking at facilities and community trends and our demographics. But you're right. As we look at the next fiveyear plan, we do need to look at what that would be. And that could be elementary middle

166school. We'll see what the demographics say. Uh I do want to share that there is a high school in I'm committed to Spring Hill being a magnet school. So is the state's best magnet school. We want to keep it that way. So the fiveyear plan those demographics I think with the growth there we may have to look at another metal combo and middle but we'll put that in our next fiveyear plan that align with our strategic plan right thank you before the vote we have any more questions I keep hearing through different channels that we are shrinking as a district that we're shrinking as a So mut suggesting that there may be 400 homes or how how many more homes did you say? I don't remember. He said almost 800. It's like 400 houses and

167400 town homes. It's like three something houses. Thank you. So the growth that we're seeing in that area is it being completely offset by the other areas of the district. That's um appreciated that point. I tell you what surprisingly is what we're seeing in Irma. U we're seeing a trend of aging out. proper term, I guess, but they're aging out of the homes and uh neighborhoods that haven't presented in 30 years are presenting themselves as as young family homes. These were uh I would say Whiteall has generated more students this year. So, we look at the uptick of nurs. So, we're seeing that as well. Uh I This is not 30 years ago where every house in our neighborhood is going to generate at these interest rate and prices. These are not necessarily young families

168bringing their children. But we we so we have to look a little differently at the demographics of that. Um and again with choice, but I just want to note that yes, we're watching the trends of of the taps in these areas. But uh let you know that I am glad we're investing in these older schools because We're seeing a lot of young families move into kind of aging out. We've seen that in Quell Valley. We're seeing it in a lot of those areas that had students 30 years ago and now we're bringing back new development on River Road coming in too. That's going to be a lot of homes. This time I'm going to call for the vote. All those in favor? Opposed? And the motion carries 4 to two. That moves us to the

169last item on the um action agenda. Make a motion to approve the solicitation for supplemental supplement pay salary SC study to include athletics, arts, and special duties as shown in exhibit M. Do I have a second? Second. Is there any discussion or questions? Miss Hodle. Um, two questions. One is what do we think this will cost? And the second is do we um are we looking for some someone that's really just going to gather information from other school districts and kind of tell us what the going thing is or are we looking for someone that's going to propose something kind of radical and new? Uh I'll say the first question uh we we don't know until we get the bids back but we are not obligated through the solicitation to buy. So we would uh

170have to bring back to this body what what those costs are. Uh we are looking um at some local um we have set up a structure and uh Dr. Wicker has worked with uh our teams for about a year and a half to I want to call it radical but it is uh I think it's innovative in terms of looking at the supplements by work function and not by name and I think that would help you know the principles really leaned into this but the detail of it does require some expertise that we don't have in house that's looking at market rates of positions looking at, you know, maybe it needs some upgrading, you know, maybe like a 30-year view of what's required of a particular position that's uh that is increased. So, uh um

171but we would look at the the scope of work with this body when it comes back and we may mark out some say we don't want this part, but we want want that. So, the solicitation be very broad. Um maybe we could chunk it there with some adults in it and then bring it back for this body for the final. I'm kind of modeling it towards what we did for the salary study. The reason we would like to do it now is if we have a shot of putting it in the upcoming budget, we we probably needed to start yesterday. So that's that's our thought. We wanted to have discussion at the last meeting in action today. Do we have any more questions? Right. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor. The motion

172carries six to zero. That moves us to the discussion agenda starting with the administrative priorities for the year. Thank you, Madam Chair. The following hour present will not be an hour. This is uh last year's administrative priorities. And as we look into this year, you'll see this over and over. Uh but it's about supporting the whole child, the whole teacher and staff, uh and the whole district. Uh as Miss McCow showed you, uh our umbrella of support over our students and all of the areas that we work on diligently to ensure that our students are protected. Um, and when we look at that classroom, we need every part from our physical safety to the educational needs. It takes all of that in order to make a success. And, um, and so, uh, what we're really

173looking at is is ensuring our students are ready to learn. And to be ready to learn, um, taught sort of beautifully of of of those different levels of support that we need. um the majority of the people that they deal in graduation graduation alliance, they're in that survival state. Um and so getting them into the ready to learn is very tough when they're in a survival state. But answering those three questions, am I safe? Do I feel loved? And does this have value to me? Uh and so we want to make sure that they're safe, loved, and connected. And that is uh as our speaker said today that's in the classrooms and science labs but that's also on stage in art galleries that's also in the field in the courts and that's before during and

174after school uh answering those three questions. Uh we want to take care of the whole teacher and staff this reality I cannot put this in front of us enough but uh Dr. Herren you asked what does that look like for the district when we pull those numbers Dr. Harris's team and accountability pulled those numbers. This is the average third grade, sixth grade, and eighth grade class by that we have and you can see the percentages that are facing the average teacher. Blue representing those students in the 80th plus percentile. These are high flyers. Uh that green represents the average amount of students that you'll see that are on grade level. Uh the yellow uh those are our approaches. That's from the 41st to the 60th percentile. And then you can see the the levels that

175we have to gain from that. So as a teacher, you put this into desk. This is what your classroom looks like. And so having uh those multi- teiers of support are important so that you can reach all levels. Our teachers asked us to recognize what they're going through. They don't just get 25 same widgets that move through the day. It's this reality. They asked us to give them supports and and you've reached out and you gave them support. Magic school AI is going to be a huge support for them as they work to address this issue here. giving that faculty a faculty and time to reflect. And I think this is going to give them time back in their schedule supports that we can call on uh on a partner that will help us with

17642 calls for for a student and then the whole district as we move forward. Um this is going to be a tough year for school district 5. Exciting, but we have a lot on our plate. educational restructuring, um staffing for the new structure, reszoning, executing the referendum, including designs, the permits, the construction, operations, and then the contingencies. It's a year of uncertainty when it comes to funding. Uh we are trying to predict as best we can our state funding, our federal funding. As you saw tonight, all of these are uncertainties and as is set in our board policy providing for the educational welfare of all students. That's what we have as our main goal. So, um before you in the packet, uh I have a year at a glance, our budget calendar. I like if

177y'all can review that to to give feedback. But this is a way that we can structure the year. Uh so you can see uh from July to June all the things that we're going to have to have take place to make the budget work. Uh it's a very aggressive uh tight timeline, but the district also has undercutting responsibilities within this which none of this represents the 166 activities that we are responsible for the strategic plan. So because of that, if you overlay that, it'd be hard to even read this this chart. So um we're going to ask that you you review this uh so that we are in position uh to to do the things that we need to do to ensure that we do that goal where every child feels loved in our schools

178and every child has demonstrated academic growth in our schools. Those are the admin priorities for the 2006 2000 2005 2026 school year. Do we have any questions? Right. Thank you Dr. Ross. Um that moves us um to discussion regarding the school finance workshop. I sent out an email. I lose track of time at this point, especially in the summer, but I think about a month or so ago just suggesting that maybe we look at a finance one-on-one workshop and outside of the time frame when we would normally be discussing the budget or trying to prepare for it. just sort of giving us an opportunity um um to understand um some of the terminology, but then also to understand what money comes from where and to get certain questions answered. I've gotten feedback um from a

179couple of you that you thought that that would be beneficial and then even some really good questions um that we could cover during that workshop as well. And so my thought process is that um we'd have somebody come in and lead a workshop that could um answer some of the questions that you all send in ahead of time. So some of it structured around maybe you know a lot of people don't understand how this works or whatever. So we um so it makes sense um in that regard and then they can also just give us information because sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And so I'd like us to be able to look at that maybe in September. Um Amy is the best way to handle that to maybe send out a poll

180of a couple of dates to so we can get the most attendance. Dr. Ross. Yes, if you can. Um we can send out a poll of September the 8th uh and September the 22nd if we wanted to do that at a board meeting. And then if you wanted to do it off of a board meeting, then we can we can pull some dates. But u Miss Missy Campbell from Scasville has agreed to do it. She serves as the if you want to speak to it. Um Missy Campbell reached out. She's the CFO of Spartanberg 7. She's also on the board of the South Carolina School Business Officials. Um and she does this for for school districts. She has been a great resource to me and is a great CFO resource across the state. Um she

181said she would love to come and speak to the board, love to come give an educational kind of overview and answer any questions. So, um she has agreed to do this for our board um for for everybody. And so, um those are some dates that she could work with, but we could definitely look at others if we want to do it outside of a board meeting. So, thought it would be good to just get a outside um perspective. Um Mr. Satfield, you had a question? Yeah. Uh, one suggestion I'd like to make is that um, when we hold this gathering, I'm call it a gathering instead of a meeting. I don't want to do it during a board meeting, I'll be honest with you. Um, that we do it in in a more informal setting

182where we can really just sit down and converse back and forth and ask um maybe some the specific questions that we had during the previous budget uh, process. Um, you know, adults are not unlike kids in that they don't want to be embarrassed by asking a question that somebody else might think is a dumb question. Um, but, uh, the best way to learn, um, and Miss Tucker, you've done a fabulous job of explaining and helping us through that process. But I just think I'd like to do it in a more infor I know we have to announce it because it is a official meeting because we're all gathered, but um, I don't know. I just think like a more informal setting where we can sit around the table or two tables, whatever, and just kind

183of talk and she can kind of share with us and we can ask questions and um you know, so it's sort of a non-threatening, you know, environment. I just think people would learn a lot more about that. So, other thoughts, questions? I just have one. Um this today's meeting 4:30 started executive session. if we have to go earlier than that to make something like this work. I know that's going to present possibly some issues for those of us with kids. I had already um yeah, just brought that same comment up um as a concern as well. So, you're not alone in that. Um initially my comment um to Dr. Ross was that if we were going to do it before a board meeting, it needed to be a super light agenda. But I also um

184respect Mrs. sat feels um perspective um you know that maybe it is better to do it where we don't have to feel as rushed because I know sometimes that happens even in executive session where we feel the pressure to kind of get things wrapped up. So I'm open to doing it at a separate time if the if the board thinks that that would be most helpful. So I don't know if that means we circle back to her. Okay. All right. All right. I'll get with Amy on that. And I would appreciate if we could um as much participation as possible. I do think this could be a good learning opportunity um for all of us. All right. Dr. Harris, I think you got everything else on the agenda. All right. Permission to handle all three

185at once. Go for it. Floor is yours. Love to do that. But I will tell you, I am uh there are some that are specific to nursing that I am not quite qualified for. Uh so I have with me tonight nurse uh Joanna Stannic who's our nursing and health services health services supervisor who will address very quickly two of these. Uh I will address one of those but I'll say as she comes to the department I think she has the first one. Uh we've got three they are all interrelated uh in that uh the idea to move forward. We needed to get the updates to these policies somewhere around the start of the school year. It was uh emanating from our district health advisory uh committee that is comprised of various local uh physicians uh

186and persons who represent the department of uh public health which used to be DHECK and uh some other areas throughout the area. So we want to bring these to your attention tonight uh to begin a discussion and as we move through uh hopefully the process of approval. Uh all of the new changes are highlighted in blue. the old current policies are also attached and what we'll do is attempt to highlight what is new and different in the various policies and we'll start with the first one which is in reference to uh again individual health care plans and we've asked again nurse staff to give us that information. Good evening members of the board and Dr. Ross. Um I will go over um proposed revisions to board policy JLCDA um individual health care plans. Um it

187hasn't been updated since 2011. Um and there were some recent changes to the code of laws 596380. Um and one of the main things they've done is changed some definitions. So they have defined for us an emergency action plan and they have defined for us a seizure action plan. So both things are in that policy. Um the other thing they did was add some hold harmless language as part of the law. Um, so we that's addressed in the policy and we have incorporated that language into our medication permission forms, our self-medicating, self-monitoring forms um and our individual healthc care plan templates. Um, but those are the big um changes in those policies. Are there any questions, comments, concerns? Thank you. bring her back. Uh tobacco tobacco used by students. Uh again this is a new

188policy. All of these have been um uh consulted with our school association as well. Uh this new policy new revised simply gives us some definitions as well which were not necessarily highlighted in the current policy specific to tobacco products uh and electronic smoking devices and u calls and say I think it was um Mr. Huddle who made mention of Mr. Bane whose concern about or or request about uh vape detectors in in our schools and he and I have talked a couple different times on this. I was certainly fully aware of that. Uh but obviously the attempt is to make certain that all of our schools and facilities are uh tobacco uh free and this is in reference to students but obviously that goes for staff as well which is found in the G policy.

189uh disciplinary appropriate actions are listed as well and uh we want to again bring this to your attention as a revision to uh the current policy. I also note that we have in the information section a request to u uh delete abandon if you will the current administrative rule which is reflected in the current in the new revised policy. Uh but that is an information item that you should have as well in your packet. Go ahead. This is only tangentially related to the policy. Um I mentioned this to Dr. Ross. So we're taking an aggressive stance on tobacco use and so I was wondering if we um have information on whether or not we are completely divested from these companies in our investment portfolio. I figure Miss Tucker could answer that. Yes. and I've reached

190out to our financial advisor to make sure that we are, but we'll we'll get back to an answer on that. Um, so one question about the tobacco use. Um, I looked at in the it's in the code of conduct. It's a it's a level two. Is that right? It's a level two violation. Anyway, is that's not going to change, right? I mean, that's correct. That just changes the policy. That's correct. Just the policy. The discipline code remains as is. That's correct. Thanks. Was that okay? Do we have any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Okay. And then the next policy is JLCDB and that is use of life-saving medication. Um, and the changes there is when this was originally instated back in 2014, the only life-saving medication we were authorized to do was epinephrine. They have

191expanded that now so we have access to more life-saving medications. Um, so this uh since the law has expanded to allow us to do that, then our board policy would align with that. Um, and so basically the changes are everywhere it says epinephrine, it will now say lifesaving medication. Um, and we are currently implementing epinephrine and also Narcan. We started stocking Narcan last school year. Um, so um, and just so you know, last year we gave three uh, epinephrines, three epiens. Of the three, one of them was from stock. The other two were prescribed specifically for the student and we did administer one dose of Narcan last year during our school school year. Miss um do we also stock albuterol? We do not currently stock albuterol. that one. Um, we have had several discussions at

192health advisory. Um, and it's not there's there's more things that need to be figured out before we can just implement it. For example, Narcan and epinephrine is a one time the the vehicle of administration is a one-time and done. Um, aluterol is an inhaler with multiple puffs. So, you have to figure out a way to be able to utilize that for more than just one person. And then there's spacers that go with that. Um there's cost involved with it. The other ones we can get through free programs, but there's not a free program for albuterol. So we'd have to look at cost. Um the toolkit from DPH requires that we call 911 anytime that we give a life-saving medication, which makes sense. Um, but with aluterol it's a little tricky because a lot of times

193when you give aluterol they're they're better and so now we've summoned an ambulance that we might not really need you know and so we're like do we if we can't really align with that you know so there is all that to say there's some things to work out um and it's still in discussion so thank you anybody else all right thank you so much I'll move that we adjourn. Second. All in favor. The motion carries six to zero. Y'all have a good night.