October 9, 2023 School Board Meeting

001it is 5:30 I would like to call to order our October 9th 2023 board meeting do I have a motion to approve the agenda Mr Hogan like to make a motion to approve the agenda do have a second Miss Snipes any discussion I do have a question um the and I apologize it's not in front of me at the moment um the item on um the 3E I think it is um that's information only correct because it doesn't say that and I had someone contact me because it's not very descriptive so I guess I just am asking is that information only we're not going to make any motions on that yes that is a it's a legal update so it's in okay yep um on our yeah on our active lawsuits um any other questions

002all right I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries seven to zero that was for our agenda all right so do I have a motion for executive session Mr hug make the motion to enter executive session to consider the following a selected employment items exhibit a for Action B selected employment items exhibit B information only C legal advice regarding retaining wall at harbest and West Elementary D legal advice regarding construction defects at chapen high school and E legal advice regarding active lawsuits and Exhibit C do have a second second Miss Miss barnhard for the win all any discussion uh seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor motion Carri 7 to zero we will adjourn for executive session and convene at 7 a 7 pm e for I'd like to

003call to order our regularly scheduled meeting for October 9th 20 23 I'd like to welcome it looks like we have a fun group here tonight to watch our board meeting I'm I'm thrilled about our school board Spotlight so welcome and um I have the pleasure of doing the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance tonight so um if you wish please bow your heads dear heavenly father be with us tonight in our discussion and guide our decision so that we act and respond with clear Minds to always do what is right for our students and our community give us rest from worry and peace and in in peace that passes our own understanding so that we may live in harmony and respect of each other we ask for your blessing upon our students our teachers and

004our staff we pray for our world tonight Lord and we ask for your hand of protection presence and peace in these times of unrest we thank you for your mercy your healing power and your love it's in your name we pray amen please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance all right so that brings us to number eight on our agenda which is the school board Spotlight Miss Taylor thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Ross good evening would y'all like to join at the front for the spotlight tonight we are happy to welcome and Spotlight members of our parenting and Social Work Services team led by coordinator Jennifer felc this group Works tirelessly to support School District 5 families they offer family educator Services opportunities for families to connect with one another for

005support Health screenings for students young parent services and countdown to kindergarten I would also like to highlight that the ready by five team won a blue ribon award aard for excellence for their parents as Teachers program this past spring so thank you for all that you do to help and support School District 5 families and please come up to be recognized okay we also have Spring Hill High School career Pathways magnet this evening they have achieved recertification from magnet schools of America and they have also been recognized as a national demonstration School nationally certified magnet schools provide highquality Innovative programs that promote Choice diversity and Excellence certified National demonstration magnet schools exceed that criteria and are considered to be a model for other districts across the country the administration and staff are looking forward to

006having visitors come from all over to observe and learn from the great work they are doing loving and growing the students at Spring Hill High School I'm happy to invite principal Dr Michael Lofton and magnet coordinator denell sell to come up and be recognized tonight right that leads us to number nine which is our superintendent report so I will turn it over to Dr Ross thank you madam chair members of the board and our community is an honor to be here uh again thank you to our social workers and the the angels that they represent present to a lot of our students and families lot things that um they take care of that we we don't see but they make sure that that support is there and uh we we really appreciate that hard work

007so thank you so much for all of the work uh that we do see and the the work that we we have yet to see that you take care of for us and supporting our families uh we also again thank and congratulate Spring Hill on their many achievements and accomplishments and uh we're very proud of The Proud tradition that has been created at Spring Hill High School uh this is October and October is principal uh month we celebrate our principles and administrators this is our entire administrative team uh we're very proud of the hard work uh that they have done and this board has the opportunity to approve our principles administrators uh but we don't always get a chance to in U them to you formally so that you can see them so they've all

008been our new principles are here tonight they're prepared with uh 10 minute speeches each one of them I'm joking I'm uh we just ask that they stand and be recognized um um so first we have chapen High School uh he's unable to attend due to a junior ring ceremony but Mr Ed Davis we welcome him uh leaving Davis comes to us from Chap and intermediate so that led a vacancy at Chap and intermediate school and we were able to uh look to our neighbors coming from AC floor High School our new principal of chape and intermediate Mr Brett Davis shape and intermediate was uh so fortunate uh with so many great leaders that um we had another former administrator at chaper intermediate who is now the principal of Dutch Fork Elementary Miss Rebecca Dilly and

009uh if you have seen Innovation and action you've seen it at Bridge Creek Elementary School in Richland 2 uh we are so fortunate to have her leading now Lake Murray Elementary Miss chrisen yakes probably making the longest drive every day to School District 5 Le Ron counties uh is no stranger to us but truly loves uh the work that she does at Nursery Road a former assistant principal now principal Miss Carrie fiser we're always excited when uh we have our own uh grown in right here in our community at the U former student and and teacher assistant principal and now principal so we're very proud of the leadership of our own at H Corley Elementary School Miss Melanie Harris you may have heard of a program that originated out of clemon university called call me

010mister uh we are fortunate now to add another mister to our ranks uh very interesting in that program over 22 years of that program's existence 100% of the misters are still in education they have not lost one Mister uh outside of the field of Education they're all of serving and now we have uh at harberson West Elementary another Mr Dr Thomas Turner Madam chair members of the board we wanted to uh thank you for supporting the administrators that um do the Frontline work and supporting our teachers uh in School District 5 and we thank you for your your work your dedication and your service you have any question does anyone have any questions for these lovely principles we could put them on the spot no but thank you for everything that you all do seriously

011yes I second that thank you very much I know that it's not easy coming into a new school and and starting a new year and from what I've seen everyone has done a great job that means you're dismissed at this time thank you so much that Carline will come early when we think about the work of our principles and what they're doing uh we talk about being proficient and excelling in four major areas uh research recently as 2021 says that a principal needs to be highly engaged in instructionally focused interactions with teachers uh we look at the work of the amount of standards and the uh indicators the changing movement of uh of curriculum all our princip princi need to be highly engaged to be able to have those instructional conversations with the teachers the

012principal is also the number one person of that building responsible for the productive School climate uh they are the cheerleaders for that for that building they are the ones that are promoting uh how we feel in the things that we do in a school building everything from uh from from student uh discipline into providing opport unities for academics uh for productive educational experiences uh but also just supporting the the community as a whole they facilitate productive collaborations and professional learning communities they help teachers help themselves uh in in learning and also uh they're able to manage their personnel and resources strategically this is a difficult task and we thank all of our principls and directors uh for their hard work to make this a reality each and every day we believe this because we're a

013system answering three critical questions each day why do we do this work how do we accomplish this work and what have we created our vision is the why question that we love and grow our students our mission is to how question that we're focused on academic social and emotional growth and development and our what or our outcomes are identified by our strategic plan uh we have four performance goals we have six goal uh strategies on our school climate goal six strategies on our teacher administrative quality goal which we've outlined some today and six strategies for student achievement and eight strategies for our gifted and talented and so we measure these uh throughout the year you'll have an opportunity to revisit the Strategic plan uh as we do annually we mark this year as the growing

014season this is an opportunity to not only celebrate achievement but to celebrate the growth of students if you remember last year uh as required by um the State Department of Education we were to do three formative assessments um every year in grades two through eight we use measures of academic progress which is called map and this would let us know if we were to take the SC ready today what percentage of our students would be on level meeting that expectations and which students would be off level not meeting blue lines are all the students who are on level red lines are the students who are off level this was last year's data this is the starting point that we had really focusing on turning those red bars to Blue bars our teachers and administrators our

015support have been working tremendously I want you to focus on the blue bars and the the red bars as we look at this year's fall map you can see that and except for one category all of the blue bars have out U outpaced the the red bars still have work to go but we start off at a much better launching Point than we did last year that's a testament to the growth that we have in our school district and we're very proud of the the very hard work that our teachers our support our administrators and our families are doing uh to to grow our season so it's indeed the growing season again last fall every category there were more students off level than on level there's a different reality for today we look forward for

016standing on this strong Foundation as we move forward when it comes to our high schools we look at are we preparing them for college career and as we talked about this morning uh earlier today life uh We've set a strategic plan goal of uh 90 and a half% of our students uh being uh to graduate within their four-year uh cohort right now we're at 83% uh that span between the 83% and the 90% or 100% maybe 200 students so uh statistically uh every number has a name every name has a story our teachers and staff are working very hard to make sure that we know the stories but uh so that we can meet the needs of our children so we're very excited about the growing season and it's a lot of strategy that goes

017into the work that we do uh to make sure that we can meet the objective where every child feels loved in our schools and every child has demonstrated growth in our schools so with that we would like to share some of the exciting things that we do and at this time I'm going to ask mAh willing to come forward uh also with director priy uh to talk about our magnet collaborations and magnet in Career Technical education ceration thank you very much and all of my principles left that I wanted to brag on that because most of those are magnet principles thank you Dr Ross Madam chairperson honorable uh board members I'd like to take this opportunity to brag a little little bit about what we're doing with our magnet programs and to share a collaboration

018which is an outcome of our Pathways and our work together I want to give you a quick update because this is the beginning of our magnet season we presently and I'll expound on that in a little bit we presently have 15 magnet programs at 11 School sites our magnet application season is open if you noticed I left you a little save the date card for our two magnet fairs that will be coming up first one November 9th which will focus on our secondary middle and high school programs and January 4th which will focus on our elementary schools there will be a lot more of publicity about around that in the coming months but tonight we want to focus on a collaboration that we have with the center and all of our magnet schools now the

019Center Partners with hermo high school with the career um I International baloria career program so there's a lot of sharing there but we extend the learning with our high school students our middle school students and our elementary school students and here are some examples agriculture education at the center with Mr Cox is amazing and I want to show you here where the students at the center are building a chicken Coupe for the leap heart students with their steam magnet it's in the process Mr priy I don't think it's quite finished yet do you know it's about three qu of the way done and when it's done it'll be delivered it'll be there at leap heart that'll be part of their Steam and they will be raising some chickens that's one example another and this is

020Mr Cox again is when we have visitors or profession or Consultants or guests that come to our district we often will find a way to give maybe give a little gift to them give them some candy something along those lines well we had an epiphany epiphany why don't we get our students at the center to make and you can explain this a little bit more where we can give in our little gift bags that we give to folks that visit us or come to help us learn a gift with from the center explain what those are and how those are made well the one the one that's featured in that picture is the called metal Tree on top of the state outline and that is done through U the egg mechanics course here at the

021center and it's used uh it's made by a plasma can it's a computerized plasma cutter for metal and we also do some aluminum uh flags and different awards that Dr Ross has wanted us to do through our Machining program our CNC operator program which is now partnered I'm going to brag a little bit partnered with Midland's Tech and apprenticeship Carolina we have 23 students that are going through that program and on a personal note that particular picture down at the bottom has a plaque that has magnet schools of America and I was a president of that organization a few years ago and the outgoing president always gives a gift to their board and the gift usually is representative of where that president is from so I was so proud to be able to give them

022the palmetto tree with the moon and with the plaque that said magnet schools of America so we're all over the country this is a really big collaboration mediate Tech technology with Ashlin Langley in the past we have paid um providers that charge a lot of money to do videos professionally and we stopped and we went wait a minute why we have the center and we have media technology and this year they've taken on a tremendous task the students are preparing our marketing videos and our high school choice videos those are our four High School schools and all Rising ninth graders get to see those videos while they're at their middle schools and then our marketing for magnet will be a video available on our website that that people can click in and see and this

023year we've got our own students in fact I got the first script today to sign off as they're developing that so that's outstanding and Nursery Road Arts Magnet also last year put on an original art Opera which meant they started from scratch they came up with the idea they wrote it they built the the set and everything and they got guidance from our Center and the center students came out and videoed that for them also our culinary arts with Jeff Dugen and if anyone has had the opportunity to eat his food it's fantastic so this year last year again we went to an outside provider to make cookies for us with our little seals on it to give away at the magnet Fair this year we have the center students doing that for us so

024that's just an example of the wonderful collaboration and the way we utilize our own students in a pathway they work with our younger students so they can see the opportunities that are out there for them and now drum roll please can someone give me a drum roll all right this has got to be verble because I've been told that we can't do a press release until the official press release comes from the US Department of Education but School District 5 is a recent recipient of a new magnet schools assistance program grant for $9.6 million to put two magnet programs into two of our existing schools that's why we have 16 now not 15 but I didn't put it in writing well one of our programs is going to be at Seven Oaks which is presently

025a media magnet but it was put in in 2013 and with changes in our society and every student in our district having devices they sort of lost their uniqueness so what we're going to be doing is significantly revising Seven Oaks Elementary and it is going to be a global magnet and if anyone is been there to see their very diverse student body and we're going to be utilizing the primary years's International balarat curriculum for that school and then our second is going to be harberson West Elementary gifted and talent development elementary school as you all know they have the Escolar academic Academy which is intellectually academic gifted students presently there but what we're doing is having a school enrichment model to offer the strategies and opportunities for all kids to develop their individual gifts and

026talents so those are the two new programs on the horizon this is a year of our marketing them doing our training getting the schools ready and then they'll actually Implement these new programs in 2024 next August but this year we will will spin marketing so that's our update on magnets all right thank you very much I I loved when you said um we can't do a press release and then you see the Press head go right on it do we have any questions for Miss wheeler I don't see any but that is fantastic exciting news for District 5 so thank you very much and it's it's really great to see all of our students collaborating and getting real Real World experience with the different programs that we have at the center so thank you for

027sharing that thank you all very much we certainly thank you and making those connections it is the tie in between the center our magnet programs and and you see how these work K through 12 these are really great systems we thank you so much Mr py and uh Miss Willer um has been just super instrumental in providing these opportunities so we look forward uh to when we can make the press release uh and celebrating more uh this amazing work cannot be done uh without support and uh School District 5 lection Richland counties is proud to have the support of a strong Foundation uh Theo um our foundation has been uh very instrumental and supporting us in a variety of programs and so I'll have uh our executive director dor of the District 5 Foundation Miss

028ly Collins come forward to give an update from our District 5 Foundation sorry have to take my glasses off so I can read here all right good evening Madam chair Dr Ross board members D5 community members both present and watching virtually my name is Lyn Collins I'm the executive director of The District 5 Foundation and thank you so much for having me here tonight after working in this district for many years including with many of those amazing principles that were here earlier I've seen firsthand the many needs of our students and our staff we know that if there is an unmet need our teachers can't teach and our students can't learn we need your help to meet the needs of our students and staff we are in danger of not being able to meet one

029of the basic needs and that is food our snack pack program with the price of food going up the cost of providing one snack pack has risen from around $5 per pack to almost $10 per snack pack with over 500 snack packs a week that we pay for one week a month of that that really adds up over the course of 10 months so how have we adjusted after careful reflection the D5 Foundation decided toy try something a little different this year for our Fall fundraiser rather than a fancy Gala with lots of overhead costs we will be hosting a week-long online auction culminating in a CommunityWide Spirit day the theme this year is shine a light on D5 we have so many talented students staff and community members to which we wish to bring

030attention items will range from art items from the community art items from our schools and other great school experiences anybody out there interested in a car rider line Fastpass they're up for bid anybody interested in trying to be principal for the day or an SRO for half the day those are just some of the amazing experiences we have um and more coming in every day all funds because we will have no overhead for this all funds generated will go directly back to the students and staff our goal for the campaign is between 75,000 and $100,000 with our current sponsorships that we have as of today we're sitting at just around $10,000 if all of that went to snack packs we would not even have a enough funds to fund three months worth of snack packs

031that leaves us with nothing remaining for student grants or teacher grants for which we funded almost $40,000 worth last year not to mention the emergency Mercy fund anybody remember what happened about eight years ago this last week we really need those funds for emergencies so how can you help first thing is I think thank you the board um because I think most everybody in this room now has ordered a District 5 Foundation t-shirt so I hope to place the next order of this by October the 18th so everybody will have their t-shirt in time for October 30th for our CommunityWide uh day we um decided to direct all the proceeds from our t-shirt sales to snack packs um and a QR code is on the screen if you haven't already ordered yours and I also

032want to thank uh local small business Cathy's Creations for partnering with us for the production of these t-shirts second donate any time of the year while we would appreciate sponsor donations and time for the Fall fundraiser in order for us to better budget for Teacher grants and student grants we need to replenish our funds year round large donors for our sponsorships for the fundraiser will receive special recognition on our fundraising site at the schools and on the names of the grant Awards on a side note we still have our five for five campaign running year round which is an easy way to say thank you to a staff member just $5 a few times a year goes a long way and all donations can be made through our website or by mail lastly join our

033auction create a login for the auction site and bid bid bid please items are already posted you can browse some of the items already and I'll be adding more as whenever we get them so if you have any items you wish to donate we're still taking those just shoot me an email please share this auction site this QR code with your family your your friends any and all community members especially any of those who want those treasured Carline Fastpass okay thank you for your time we look forward to fulfilling our promise of supporting our students and staff of District 5 and I welcome any questions you may have thank you Miss huddle um you said the goal was 75,000 to 100,000 right yes so I was just curious um what's how's that compared to like

034the last two to three years um we've never set an official goal the last few years um but since we don't have the overhead of like the caterer and the venue and things like that um the last several years of course our goal would have been much higher than that to account for those costs so um other question is um the ring auction is is near and dear to everybody's heart so are do we know if we're going to have a ring auction oh like the Blinky ring thing well I know you can't really do the Blinky yeah it's hard to do the Blinky ring game over there um David's fine jewelers is the person who uh is the company that donates those every year he is one of our major sponsors but as of

035right now we don't have that ring donated so so pressure yeah yeah so we're trying to involve a lot of the schools and getting a lot of those good school experiences so you know if you think back to those Gallas that you've attended before it's a lot of administrators who come and the the schools while we appreciate the baskets that they've put together it really doesn't involve the staff and the students and the families of our schools and we really want to highlight those things that they do great and give them a chance to be part of this and part of the excitement and be able to get something out of it so is there a competition for the schools of who raises the most money for the D5 Foundation because um I happen to

036know that there are a lot of competitive students in our district so just we didn't want to base it on the amount of money that was raised because each school at least historically each School varies in what they can afford to contribute and You' been to the Gallas before you've seen the baskets some schools do these elaborate presentations so we did not want to base it on a monetary okay donation but we um Dr Ross and I have been talking about somewh to recognize the schools that seem to show the most Spirit on that last day that we have we're looking at percentage participation percentage absolutely any other questions all right thank you very much all right thank you thank you Miss Collins and we certainly appreciate the uh support of our our foundation so

037that is our D5 story and we're certainly proud of the hard work of all of our our staff and our faculty as a they support our students Madam chair members of the board this concludes the superintendent's report and I stand for any questions any questions for da Ross all right thank you Dr Ross that moves us to number 10 on our agenda which is the approval of the minutes of the September 25th 2023 board meeting do I have a motion Mr Hogan make the motion that we approve the minutes of the September 25th 2023 board meeting have a second Miss Snipes any discussion seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to zero that moves us to number 11 um which is public participation uh before Miss Taylor announces

038uh our public partici participation guess um the board welcomes and encourages public participation we respectfully ask that you adhere to the procedures provided in board policy bedh public participation at meetings your comments should be be limited to 3 minutes and must remain on either the topic noted on your sign-in form or a listed agenda item questions asked during public participation will be handled in accordance with board policy bedh and Miss Taylor thank you madam chair Kim Weinbach is here to speak about book Banning or book removal from libraries hi this is my first board meeting so I'm just kind of learning what's going on and what's happening and I'm really I didn't realize it wasn't on the agenda so I guess I'm um and I'm really just here speaking off the cough because book uh

039books mean so much to me and um and they have for my whole life um I can remember being in kindergarten and I had double pneumonia and I missed so much of school and my kindergarten teacher would come to my house and she would bring books to me and and and they changed my life and they changed my life in middle school when I was bullied and they changed my life in high school and they changed my life in college and they continue to change my life and they shape who I am as a person and who I am as a woman and who I am as a mother and um I read two to three novels a week um I've continued that throughout my life and I'm very lucky that my kids have have

040continued that and that they read that that much and that they they have found that um that love of reading too and the idea of removing books from the library is so appalling to me um I mean I I can't find anywhere on on the side of History where removing a book has been the right thing to do um I mean books are a way of Escape for many kids they're a way to travel for many kids I mean they're a way of learning so many different things um and I know that the book that has been um brought up to to ban or remove from the high school recently I think the reason why they want to ban it is because of a few passage passages that have to do with sex well we're

041kidding ourselves if we think that um that our high schoolers aren't thinking about sex or talking about sex um but if we don't give them that choice to read then what are we saying what are we telling our our kids we already are are are are imposing so many rules and we're saying we don't trust what you're going to check out in the library because of a couple of the passages I think that's wrong I just I think that's wrong and I and I don't believe in it and I think that we need to tell our kids that we trust in them more than that and um when I was in the sixth grade um they banned our they weren't doing that back then I'm way too old for that but they did say that

042we couldn't read like Go Ask Alice a couple of parents did say that so I remember a couple of us had a copy and so just because they said that we couldn't read it we passed it all around the sixth grade so if you tell somebody they're not going to read it or not to read something hopefully they're going to all run out and buy it and they're all going to read it um that's my hope for whatever this book is that you're trying to B um and there's my my time so I'll be prepared next time but I just heard that we're going to talk about that so I wanted to say that but anyway thank you very much for your time Kim Murphy is here to speak about spending of excess tax dollars

043collected um good evening I wanted to talk about the operating budget and the history that um District 5 has of collecting um more Revenue than it needs to meet need its budget um this year um the budget that was approved was 232 million the previous budget was 213 um million was unprecedent um increase amount of $18 million and an increase of 19.9 Mills which is huge included um in that um budget in that um Mill rate um is the purchase of Portables in the amount of $1.5 million which is not an operating cost and should not be taxed on citizens in the operating budget facilities should be taxed under the capital project millage rate the board packet tonight shows a proposal to spend $6.5 million that was over collected from taxpayers last year that's the

044equivalent of seven Mills so so essentially the 19.9 Mills that you're charging should have been 7 Ms less than that what this shows is that the millage rate that you set for the operating budget is much higher than necessary if it continues to bring in more tax dollars than necessary to meet the budget a budget that the board approves every year and represents that it must have to operate our schools I want to point out that not all board members some supported that millage increase so what it looks like is that the board is intentionally over budgeting expenses underestimating revenue or undervaluing the mill to end up with extra money to spend on things that are unrelated to education to spend it on facilities I'm very supportive of using the excess dollars to help educate

045students I am not supportive of the tax dollars collected under the guise of educating students but but using it on facilities which have their own funding source I ask that you develop a policy that will prevent this overcharging and that when you find there is an excess that you will reserve it to offset the next year's operating millage rate or spend it directly on education not facilities and um I would urge you also to go back and look at the um annual Financial reports that show a 10-year history of the over collection of taxes and I want you to note that each year you will see that it continues to happen and at the same time our millage rate continues to go up but you continue to collect more money it's helpful to see that

046I know this is somewhat of a new board um thank you very much and and I believe that concludes public participation so that moves us to our action agenda um number 12 action as action as necessary or appropriate on matters discussed in executive session do I have any motions Mr Hogan like to make a motion that the board approves um a selected employment item should exhibit a for Action do I have a second Miss Snipes any discussion same n I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to zero I don't believe there's any other items in executive session seeing none that moves us to item 13 the approval for bidding by the pre-qualified contractors for the new armo High School East Wing exhibit D thank you madam chair members of the

047board this is more of a ceremonial motion not required by the procurement policy but we would like to bring this forth to the uh board um just to show the the process that we've gone through so I'm going to ask Mr wisman to come forward and introduce our special guest from ls3p good evening Madam chairman Dr Ross members of the board Community I'd like to introduce you to Mary Beth brandham and Tyler McKenzie from ls3p who are The Architects on herma high school Wing yes sir good evening everyone uh glad to be back here to um update you on the process um and I think most of what you will see tonight has a lot to do with what you saw last time but we've got updated information so we wanted to share that with

048you so just to go back to kind of our design process you can see that we are now um at the bidding phase and uh we have completed construction documents we're bringing those to a close right now and so we are here for y'all to see where we are with our estimate now our we have a CD estimate that I'll show you towards the end um we anticipate with your approval to go forward um with the bidding process we uh hope to be back perhaps in early December for an approval to to award the contract to the to the lowest bidder um but again those are some of those things may change slightly but that's our anticipated date of coming back and then again we're still on schedule um for occupancy at the end of

0492025 I'll show you an overall schedule towards the end as well um so you can see again just the the a repeat of the the site plan and where the new East Wing will fall there on the far right where some of it was where the existing student parking is now that'll be reconfigured with a new entry and then this is an overall first floor plan as you know you enter the main entry and then you're able to go to the right is the new administrative area with student counseling um a dispersed dining and and storium towards that pink area that you see with some access to outdoor dining in the courtyard and then of course some classrooms on this level there'll also be an entry for students um off of the side as well

050where parking will take place I showed you these images before they really have not changed they've just been more developed in the design documents again this is that weird ENT view but it's looking as if you were up High inside that entry vest looking down um the logo on the floor where we're incorporating a lot of uh wonderful pride in in the um in in all of The Branding that will be throughout the school as you see over in the counseling area as well we're still finalizing all of these uh with the school just we we meeting with them about their history wall and we'll be finalizing a lot of the artifacts and the sayings and the things like that that we'll be highlighting this of course is moving up to the second floor where

051we have our focal kind of point is the media center with additional uh classrooms on this Wing as well with the upstairs area of the dispersed dining and storium this is actually where the dispersed dining area will be and um I showed you a rendering that I'll show you again this is actually that view of that area um outside of the media center that you can see and we love some of our pride words of Beware of the sting that we have uh so I think the kids are going to be very excited about how we've really taking that branding to the next level for them we we really heard them at the community meetings and we're really incorporating a lot of what we heard from them of course the media center will have a

052lot of natural daylighting throughout um there'll be a lot of different seating areas as well as some of the bookshelves that you see there but again a wonderful experience for great learning spaces and then as we move up to the third floor we actually have our science labs located there of course because on the upper level to be able to vent the science labs and whatnot so those are the mainly focused on the science labs and classrooms on the third floor um again just to the the renderings haven't changed again it's just exactly what you've been seeing through the progression of the imagery but you can see the brand new new entry that complements the auditorium side um on the other side of the West Wing but you can see how it will be very

053branded very identifiable that will be another a new visitor entry and drop off um in the front there a secure entry vestibule and kind of the the the bookend of the other Auditorium where it steps back um from the facade and it'll just be a beautiful new uh image all along St Andrew's road again this is a little bit more zoomed in close view of of exactly what the new building looks like and the connector to the west wing and then kind of coming around the side we've got some uh keeping with some metal panels that we have we're doing doing a little bit of playfulness with some punched Windows along the end panel that you see there as well as coming around the other end this is the admin area that you see to

054the left and then of course the classroom Wing as it comes around so with that I'm going to go ahead and show you where we are if you recall I came to you after we finished our design development drawings and we had an updated cost estimate I'm happy to report today that we were able to look at some cost savings ideas but we were able to get the project within the budget and we're very excited about that you can see that for the total construction costs we're looking at somewhere and this again is based on Ain cost estimates cost estimate and they usually estimate to the midpoint of construction which would be September 2024 uh as well as kind of the midpoint of where they think the co the bids will come in so it

055could be better it could be come in better than than what these numbers look like it could come in a little bit higher but it's usually around the midpoint um so it's based on looking at something that's around $419 a square foot so that's that 51.6 million um we're also estimating your soft cost for you which are all the other things that the district has to pay for that's included um so again we're we're guesstimating but we also have a set aside of a contingency for the district in that number as well which brings us to a total of 61.6 million and your District's overall budget was 63.5 so at this moment we have a delta in your favor a below budget this again is based on an estimate not on the bid um of

056less than or $1 1.87 million less than what you have budgeted now we did have a few alternates that we pulled out then alternates are set up to allow us to bid the project they actually will list out the alternates separately and if we can accept the alternates then we can add those back into the budget so the budget number you see at the top of the 51.6 does not include this $485,000 worth of additional things which would be a gravel parking lot the shade sale over that outdoor Courtyard that I believe I showed y'all last time and then and a possibility of changing the floor finishes to Polished concrete so even if y'all accepted all of those when we get the bids in and they come in about those numbers will'll still be below

057your budget so we are very pleased with the results of that and if you have any qu well let me go on to well I have one more slide which is the schedule but if anybody has any questions about the budget maybe I'll go ahead and entertain those now any questions I don't see any okay so um we're right on par with the schedule as I mentioned we're we came here in a early August with the DD update and here we are to show you where we are um feeling good about the estimate and the bidding climate and where we are with our bid package so that you've got your selected pre- selected um pre-qualified contractors that we will be um able to give them the packet that they will bid over the next month

058to six weeks and then we'll be able to come back to the board hopefully with with a recommendation or Dave would be coming back with an a recommendation to award the contract to a contractor so if anyone has any other questions I'm happy to entertain them yes hle um I have several so I'll just do one at a time give other people but um the first question I had um if you can go back to the schematic showing the floors like from the on the first floor with the classrooms and so this is kind of a question I guess for Dr Ross too um is is there a vision as far as like um grade alignment like will this Wing be all four grades or will it be you know predominantly Juniors and seniors what's

059the the plan so a great question we programed the entire academic program of iral high school so if we go back uh one to the layout what's currently in the existing East Wing is all being moved over to the new East Wing that was the entire all Sciences 9 through 12 all English is 9 through 12 social studies I think the things that are not programmed in there may be some Kate uh programs uh some art programs but that's the 912 and we were able to pick up some efficiencies with the square footage because there's a lot of kind of ins and outs that we could have eliminated uh in there so U my you want to speak to if I miss something yes no you're absolutely right we basically and we do have art

060you see these blue spaces right here that's those are two art classrooms so yes ma'am it's all grade levels because it's all of the core component English math social studies and science so things like um foreign language electives those are currently in the west wing and will stay in the West Wing correct correct okay can I ask one more question related to the layout I see main student entry um and I'm just wondering from a security standpoint is that St I this is the first time I've noticed that they had a different entry than the main entry so I'm just curious is that typical in all of our high schools and are there any security concerns with having that separate entry for students so I don't know I can't speak to the rest of the

061schools in the district but it's really going to be an operational decision by the principal and and your District staff what it allows them to do is either they can open up the front door and ask all the students to come through that main entry and then lock down those secure doors or it allows them to have this separate entrance if they choose to use it they absolutely do not need to if operationally they feel that security-wise they need them to all come from the front door so that's purely an operational decision if I go to this elevation and help me understand that entry would be on the opposite side of of this building on on this side on this side Dr Ross and it would be underneath that canopy correct Tyler that Center yeah

062I don't want to mess with this point yeah yes sir right there and one of the things and if I go back to this elevation uh we would load the building through the hole on the inside but one of the things that you would we have to have is for is that egress for emergency uh evacuation so um fire drills for instance um making sure that we we move out so uh I think right now like at uh at chapen for instance use the back of the building to load just as you can use the the the the center holes where you would have uh protection from the street so um but ideally uh operationally uh you can load from that Center hole and then up and down the stairs all internally without having to

063go outside EX I think our only issue which we see at hero now is every student has to go outside to go to the cafeteria every student has to go outside to go to the gymnasium so we we uh at iral High School uh currently do not have all enclosed um but you would feed from where it says North East wing on the inside loop all the way down behind the school correct that's correct okay any more Mr saterfield yeah I had a couple of questions and I know Dr Ross talk to you about my couple of questions mine are it's more about supervision than anything else and I don't know at this stage that any changes could even be uh considered uh but the first question I had uh Dr Ross uh what about

064car riders where will car riders load from are they going to load from the same side as the middle school off of Westcott let Mr wisman handle that yes sir currently uh the plan is to bring them on from that side that Mrs huddle kind of talked about but we're also looking to make sure that we have the Bus Loop will still be over there by the stadium and they'll be bringing in the students from that way as always we try to separate car rider lines and bus traffic just because of the volume of of vehicles coming in and out so car riders will come down Westcott and hit that right by the new Wing that's where they will load and unload along with iro Middle School right and then they'll come straight out to

065St Andrews you'll still have that little offshoot where the visitors come come and park in front of the school now would that still be a student parking lot right there on the corner there'll still be some areas for student parking yes sir it's going to be a busy place yes sir um my next question is um I notice on the second and third floor your stairwells are at one end of the building or the other and now let's say between classes changeing classes that's a lot of kids moving all the way from one end if you have it anytime during the lunchtime all your lunch and your feeding is all at one end so all those kids you're going to have a huge migration of kids uh down there um in that one little area

066probably in that one stairwell for the most part you're talking about 30 classrooms of kids yes sir so so by code we're required to put the stairs on opposite ends of of of of the thing so where they land and where it is in proximity to where the students will be coming from or going to just like Dr Ross said they could come from the cafeteria through the back entry where that other stair is potentially or they could be coming across the bridge connector and coming to that other stair so right I understand that but I I just know that when they we did the addition at Dutch Fork High School we didn't plan it very well and they all spilled in one little Crossroads and it was like it came to a log Jam

067and everybody stopped until somebody was able to move and I stood out there every day just anticipating you know some kid losing his cool or so but uh um I noticed on the on your dra on the schematic that you showed on the entrance way there was a big nice big open open space right there and you know that's great that's a great place for for the kids to arrive but I I I would just tell you I'm a little concerned that having those small stairwells at e either end um and and they're going to are they going to be sealed stairwell would they be walled in or would they be glassed in they're they're in those are fire stairs so they are definitely solid stairs because they have to be because it is a

068fire it is a way for the students to get out safely from the building but the doors will be on hold open so it will feel as open as a fire stair can feel but by code we're required to have those two at opposite ends now the one that's going to be open with a lot of glass is that dispersed dining one the storium that's right there by the pink area but that's at the far end of the hallway cor correct and and the only uh assistant PR I again I had to use my magnifying glass cuz the drawing was pretty small uh but the only assistant principal's office I see is all the way down at the other end of the building on the third floor is that correct I'm pretty sure it's in

069the center is it not Tyler are both of them are both of them loc I know one is at one end of the down far end so on the third level I think it did end up down at the far end because of all the science classrooms and that need to be on either side of the labs okay well again I'm just telling you from my experience having your administration at the other end of the building and you got a sealed stairwell on the other end of the hall is a supervision issue I can tell you I've talked with Dr Gary at Dutch Fork High School to ask how would because it was when I was there it was an issue for us and I don't again I don't know if it's too late to

070make any changes they may just have to figure out a plan for dealing with it but when when you're designing uh for the for the for the supervision of kids I again as a former principal I just see it differently I guess um it's easy if you can step out and you're in the middle of the hallway between classes at class changed and so you can see little short you know on either side so you can get to any issue that might crop up if you're at the far end and you're dealing with something and something's at the very other end you got to fight through all those students to get to where it is that you're getting um and again I don't know if it's too late to even look at that and consider

071that I know this was something that was planned earlier and uh well yes sir actually it's not about if it's too late to change it we we would not by code be allowed to change it we cannot move that stair that's at the end into the middle of the the class room Wing if that makes sense no no I understand that you have to have the exits at the end that I understand I wish that we could have this is hindsight if we could have had some sort of uh stairwell or accessory in the middle and that yes sir and and the the way we were also fighting with a budget that we just talked about we're fighting with square footage in a perfect world could we have lots of great big open stairwells well

072that would be everyone's dream layout unfortunately that that was that was not going to be an option for us other than the one that's up at the front that they wanted the most supervision and that's why it is located there how how about at least can it be is it possible to um have a an office space or the flexible space in the middle I know that Dutch Fork Elementary School Dr Ross when I visited there that he set up a desk the assistant principal set up a desk in the hallway because he was too far away from the student body and I'm looking here we do have some Flex space if you look at faculty support in the middle um we have that here and I think one of the things that we're going

073to be talking about in terms of the technology package is the uh camera systems um one of the the skill sets that uh we have now is uh to have the eye in the sky covering a good bit of uh of blind spots particularly um you know we're we're doing that now with uh door um alarms and and camera systems but uh we do have you know to that point of supervision the administrative offices and um this resource classroom so we do have some options in the middle yeah and in both ends that we could operationally flip to get that around those steer wheells well I think that's great I really do and please understand where I'm coming from I'm not being critical of the drawings or the schematic or anything like that I'm just

074thinking about the Practical usage and when you when kids start arriving and all that now are the one I had one other question I'm Sorry Miss H the width of the hallways how wide are the Halls any idea they're 11 feet wide they're 11 feet wide no and no lockers on either side so I know we've eliminated lockers and Dr Ross um I mean I I totally understand uh your points Mr saterfield um but Dr Hampton has been very involved in this planning process correct I just want to make sure that you know sometimes you you know plans come about and there's no input from the administration but I think that we've she's been ingal integral into all the planning all the programming all the planning she's seen all of this and is is aware

075um and if she feels like we need to change something operational she's been very involved in that so she she's very aware well I I understand and again I'm just asking question and I I had a conversation with Dr Hampton and then she was she's sort of she was new to the position and so I was just trying to maybe offer some input put and uh it's just kids are getting bigger and if you walk down she took me down to one of the lower Halls where Mr Hogan was at heral hos which is a long time ago and the the Halls you can reach out just about and touch either side because they're so narrow so um anyway it'll be wider than that right I'm asking it'll be wider than that oh oh much

07611t 11 feet and um no we appreciate your your perspective we really do M absolutely absolutely uh Miss huddle um two more questions and I'm done okay one is I think you said before but I just wanted to verify that this plan was done in a way that we could add to it correct down on the road if we needed to add another Wing or something great um and my other question is um when the construction process starts so you guys are are doing the design and it says the materials and and all of that when construction starts whose responsibility is it to make sure that the contractor uses the right materials and constructs the the building correctly to your specifications so we we do handle construction Administration um and W which is to be

077sure that when we inspect we we actually do observe the site we come out every two weeks to be sure we have meetings with the facility staff and make sure with our engineers and the architects involved that as we walk through the building as they're pouring putting things in place even from the foundations all the way up to the final uh ceilings and light fixtures that'll be put in place that part of what we do is give a report to the district uh after we do a site visit and we are able to document if we see anything that is not conforming with the documents that we produced did you have a second question okay okay yeah you did sorry I have a question um and I was really thinking I think that um Miss

078hudle asked some good questions about the safety because the school's going to be very um spread out it it seems um and I just noticed I didn't just notice this but I see the cafeteria on one side and we have this dining space is there um the two there's two things that I noticed about the layout of this school one I see that there may be an issue if you're on the third floor in science class um and you have to go to the Spanish class in the West Wing like the time that it may take to get across I that that is an operational issue I just I noticed that um that's more of a comment than a question I guess but the dining space in the new Wing is there going to be

079a cafeteria there as well or food or is that like a you brought there some sort of food service I don't know Tyler do you know what they've finally ended on in terms of what will be there there will be some um coffee makers some vending machines um cold food mainly there won't be any if if there's hot food served there um it will be come from the cafeteria on warming trays um and that's kind of an operational thing for how the school wants to handle that but we've set it up for um some vending and and um cold food especially and drinks I'd be interested to see how that's going to work in practice because it seems like the cafeteria is pretty far away from where that dining space is so well that's exactly

080the reason that we put the dispersed dining here and the ability for outdoor dining is because we are actually doing it a lot in other schools not just because of the distance but because it disperses the students from all being in one spot and it allows you not to build as large of a cafeteria dining area as we've seen in the past so you have your huge cafeteria and then half the time you're not using it for cafeteria right so we're seeing a lot of dispersed dining in in new builds new designs where you take where we're able to take other types of food and give students options and you know they love the outdoor dining thing and it's going to be such a wonderful outdoor dining experience um for them so we feel like

081and we got a lot of feedback from the students during our community meetings that they are really going to utilize that space so it is going to be a functional thing of the dining folks figuring out what exactly works over there and how the kids will be able to you know purchase it from vending machines and things like that um but I think you're going to find that it'll be a very very well-used space absolutely to that point uh Madam chairman of the board I do want to I think Miss huddle you brought it up about future can you build on to it so as Mary be said there's five steps to the process we're at the visioning we have uh talked about this area here um when budget allows being the future cafeteria um

082and then we will bring to you a discussion on uh instructional programs about we we talked about the small business incubator and how that can be converted so the goal is to move more of this being the campus I'm sorry about the neck turning but we are um we have visioned that you would move uh straight from this building to the new cafeteria Student Center that would be here so we will um as you know MPS is also working with ls3p on our five-year Master facilities plan we'll look at conditions of facilities first uh but then if we have those options that would be that next phase because you're right um taking the walk from here to the cafeteria was uh the concern that we had uh but we felt that we would provide those

083options once we could uh finish our facilities assessment so I just wanted to um make that known they've designed it to be built on but we're on phase one now but great Point all right any other questions Mr Scully hey Mary Beth good to see you again um a couple of just questions kind of to change the pace um regarding the bidding and the the contracts can you refresh me and I apologize if if we've gone over this but what's what's the the contract it's a it's going to be a guaranteed Max price is that what you're bidding out for and then no it's not how what are you going to be I guess that's the first question is what so so what what the district has done this go around is actually pre-qualify select

084group of contractors so they sent out an RFP Dave RFQ two selected contractors and then they have selected um five of them four four of them four contractors have met the qualifications for this particular build uh once approved they'll get a copy of the CD and then they'll bid uh all four them will will hopefully bid on on the project okay and then you'll look at the four bids and and evaluate that with a recommendation okay and I'm just curious um I I saw in your estimate here you're including two and a half% for construction contingency that seems low to me how does that compare with typical projects well we'll see probably the contractor will hold a contingency to but what we like to do is have the owner hold a contingency and that's usually

085about in the range I mean some districts hold more some less we're just recommending that's really a district decision about how much contingency to hold okay but we feel like it's sufficient for this size project thank you okay any more so I believe that means that we need a motion is that correct uh yes Madam chair we would uh entertain a motion this would U have us proceed with the uh bidding and our goal is to advertise uh and bring back a responsible bidder on December the 11th so we have a recommendation all right do I have a motion Mr Hogan I'd like to make a motion that the board approve for bidding of the pre-qualified contractors for the new armor High School East wing and exhibit D do have a second Miss H any

086discussion I do have a question which this prior dialogue brought up um when we approve this um does that mean that the district will award the contract to the lowest bidder or will it be a different criteria is it is it a price competitive bid I gotta think for a second so I can make sure I I give you the right answer lows responsive bidder I I think he might have stumped us on that one okay but Sor regardless it the final approval will come back to the board correct so we will not execute anything until it comes back so you will see all the bids uh we'll have a recommendation this lets us go out to advertise uh we will do the opening I guess and then um that's usually public everybody gets to

087see what everyone's bided on uh you see the lowest we will bring a recommendation uh to you uh on December the 11th and for that board meeting any other questions all right seeing none I will call for the vote all in favor that motion carries seven to zero thank you very very much you we're excited for a January groundbreaking we are very fingers crossed for a a January ground bre breaking ceremony so thank you so much we really appreciate it I just wanted to uh if we can leave this right up for one more second um just kind of outline where we are in the process on the timeline uh we have completed our community analysis enrollment projections um just know that this sits in the middle of a five-year plan so we're in progress

088we will bring back to this body on October 23rd uh the results from from the MPS study that shows all of our conditions of our facilities and you will see the entire need to get a full understanding of of where we sit in the midst of facility needs so that facilities conditions assessment will come back on October 23rd that will show us other needs that we have facilities wise in our district uh we will look at our instructional uh plan review on November 13th uh this where we kind of line up this this is where student movement instructional programs magnet programs how all that's aligned and on uh we'll look at potential financing options on December the 11th that is the same meeting that we plan to bring back a vendor for uh the hero

089high school project so just a lot going on I just want to just outline the timeline of uh how these will will um impact us over the next three meetings any questions any questions all right I see none so that brings us to number 14 on our action agenda which is the first reading approval of prop proposed revisions to board policy ikf graduation requirements and exhibit e our chief of academics Tina mcass will come forward with our first reading on ikf good evening good evening Madam chair board and Dr Ross um this is the same that we had before notice that I did include for you um for ikf we were adding that statement that is straight out of the law that that you were asking about and so I just included what that um

090regulation was and printed that out for you and kind of made a star and the recommendation is that we move forward and for second and final reading for next time do I have any question well actually do I have a motion and then I'll ask for questions i' like make motion that the board approve the first reading of proposed revisions to board policy ikf graduation requirements exhibit e do have a second miss knipes any questions all right seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries seven to zero thank you m MP thank you m MC all right that brings us to item 15 on the discussion agenda which is the discussion of the June 30th 2023 fund ballots analysis and assignment recommendation as seen in exhibit F that us thank

091you madam chair members of the board at this time to go over our fund balance analysis and assignment of our CFO Miss Madison Paul good evening Madam chair members of the board and Dr Ross thank thank you for allowing me to discuss the assignment of general fund balance for fiscal year 2023 um so I did want to start with kind of where we are um as of our most recent audit so our most recent audit was in fiscal year 2022 as youall know we are actively working on um the last school Year's audit um so looking at just the fund balance of last year overall total fund balance to start the year so the year before was 51 million 205,000 287 um we had three categories of fund balance the first one is nonspendable if

092y'all will recall before when we talked about the different categories nonspendable is our inventory and our prepaid expenses um at June 30th 2022 we had about 4.3 million in that category um the second category is assigned um which is uh usually our board commitment so those are the um items that y'all actually vote on as a board to be assigned and as of June 30th of 2022 we had about 9.3 million in that category and that kind of leaves everything else in the unassigned um which was 38 roughly 5 million as of uh June 30th of 2022 as a reminder we do have a board policy that our unassigned fund balance must stay within the range of 15 to 18% of our budgeted expenditures um and as of June 30 of last year it was

093right at 17.9% of the FY 23 budget which is in line with board policy so we start there and then I wanted to talk about you know what we actually spent last fiscal year from the assignment so of the 9.3 that again y'all assigned roughly this time last year um it was broken down into really four main assignments the first one was the District 5 snack program um so this was actually through our um student nutrition group where they provided a snack an individual snack to every student in the district last year um during kind of different times of the day not necessarily at lunch we also funded um The Nest program at hermo high school which is about 1.5 million was the the budget for that um y'all approved $3 million for an employee

094appreciation gift um and this was around November 18th Last year um that was $1,000 for every um active employee at that time and then also the last assignment was um for Arma High School construction so what we just heard y'all assigned about $3.5 million to go towards that that overall budget of Irma High School so then we look at okay well what did we actually spend and again keep in mind this is UN audited at this time um but for the D5 snack program um we did of course allocate every student that wanted a snack a snack throughout the school year um that ended up coming in under budget and we spent about $620,000 of that 1.3 million that was assigned for that program um The Nest program uh similar as well we were we

095did come in under budget this was for a few reasons so when y'all first talked about The Nest I guess more like a year and a half ago um you know there was several assignments for teachers uh teacher assistants there was a principal um and then there were expectation coaches and different levels um and I think throughout the year they were able to really use existing resources in some capacities and then also of course um add on to existing um positions but overall did not need the entire budget um so only used about 428,000 of that 1.5 million for the Employee Appreciation GI um again right at November of last year we did use most of that $3 million so that was about 2.9 Million that came in for that budget um for the Employee

096Appreciation bonus and then of course with ARA High School since we're still talking about the construction documents um the only piece of that that was used was the actual purchase of the land so that was about 63,000 so of the total $9.3 million that was assigned um about 4.5 was used which would um leave a remaining 4.7 that was really unused last year so I also want to talk about um our Revenue increase over budget so um the FY 23 budgeted Revenue um was 213 m719 so we have a couple of categories that actually came in over budget um the first one I want to mention is our local Revenue piece so a lot of times we think about this as our property tax revenue um what we found in this past year is that

097our real estate property taxes actually came in um under budget but where we actually did make up some of that ground was on our vehicle taxes um so y'all can kind of Imagine in your own household um the uh assess value or the cost of vehicles is going up used or new um and we definitely saw that from our property tax standpoint um so we did um receive about 1.1 million um over budget in our local revenue and this came in to be about 1.5% over our total budget um from tax from property taxes the other item that came in over budget was interest income um so again as we all know interest rates have gone up pretty significantly since we were looking at this from a budget standpoint um you know over a year

098ago so our interest income was about 1.5 million over budget the other piece the really the biggest piece of this is our state revenue um so as y'all know that our state revenue uh comes up to about 63% of our total general fund budget and of that we were um pleased to actually collect about 1.7 million more than we thought that we would at budget time um this is really um attributable to of course our state aid to classrooms that is allocated directly from the state we also had some increases in the manufacturer reimbursement that we received from the state and also our tier three reimbursement that we get so I know when I talk uh monthly about our tier one our tier two and our tier three property tax revenue that actually comes in

099from the state um so that tier three is really that homestead exemption and um the sales tax that uh act 3 388 from 2006 where they Exempted all prop all owner occupied property taxes from school districts and then in turn give you a sales tax from that that's uh tier three so we actually uh received a get a little bit more than we uh thought we would at budget time from the state revenue side additionally we had some excess from indirect our indirect cost transfer so this actually is a rate that is provided to us from the state and so when we do have federal funds we are able to to charge that money um these indirect cost rates that is attributable to us and that um comes in the form of a revenue from

100the general fund side and then lastly that miscellaneous is really um uh several different items but uh a few of the notes are insurance proceeds rebates legal cements and other reimbursements so in total we were fortunate certainly last year um that we do expect to see about a $5.3 million um increase in Revenue over budget again this is unaudited at this time um we'll certainly true it up we get our audited financials but I wanted to make sure that y'all are aware of even though we did have some assignments and we did expect to go into fund balance we actually had some some Revenue that offset that um that fund balance dip so kind of tying it all together and I know there's a lot of numbers on the screen um but hopefully we can

101we can go through this together so again I wanted to start with what we know so our audited financials as of June 30th 2022 showed a total fund balance of right at 52 million we use Bo 4.5 of that so that was that assignment that we've already gone through um but we also had Revenue over budget so that really adds to our fund balance and then we also um you know really did a good job as far as expenditures and we had some savings and purchase services and supplies that equated to about 1.8 million so overall our total um projected fund balance as of June 30th 2023 is 54,6 21,5 24 so a slight increase from the previous year so again as we look at our different buckets of fund balance I just want to

102make sure that we're um keeping everything separate so our nonspendable fund balance as of June 30 2023 again unaudited is expected to be about 3.6 million this is our inventory and our prepaid expenses and then if y'all recall on June 12th 2023 y'all already made two assignments the first one was to just reassign the hermo high school construction money so that was about 2.8 and then additional y'all approved six additional teachers for CR critical areas which is about 543,000 so just a reminder that was um for anytime that we have teachers in critical areas that we in case we are truly at 100% um uh as far as hiring teachers that we can go above and beyond if needed um we have kind of found in the past that due to vacancy rates and things

103like that that usually does not hit fund balance but it is there just as a windfall in case um but we do have some recommendations again not for vote tonight just for discussion but at this time I'll turn that over to Dr Ross uh thank you Miss Paul uh our recommendation again for discussion tonight is uh two assignments of that fund balance um mirroring what we did last year the first one would be uh for all active employees on November the 17th for American Education week to do a employee retention incentive uh we want to um thank all of those who have or continue to stay with our district we know it is hard to um retain and recruit teachers and and staff um sometimes and there's incentives to bring people to your District uh

104but there's uh a need to appreciate those who stay with you so this would be a $11,000 uh employee retention incentive PID during American Education week uh and then uh as we did last year we did a $3.5 million um assignment for heral High School uh I would like um the recommendation is to bring uh the same assignment for our five-year facilities plan this is for discussion tonight but we will have on October 23rd more data uh from our facilities conditions assessment uh to see the dire state that our school district is in um right now uh we also would would like um to present some options to this board and we don't have the resources to do it um I've have been presenting a plan about uh a a flow of moving all of

105our schools elementary schools to uh K through five having only middle schools and no intermediate schools and without one additional building uh I'm at a loss of how to make that happen I can't come up with a plan without the land board policy Fe allows the administration to do feasibility uh and to provide to this body um up to what's called a letter of intent to purchase um we cannot purchase a property but we can bring after doing due diligence of flood zone traffic counts um Environmental Studies uh working with Department of Transportation OSF uh we can actually engage with owners uh to uh get contingent uh approval uh was called a letter for attented purchase we would still have to come to this body for final approval uh but we would like to exercise

106this $3.5 million to really acquire uh to begin acquiring the land that we need uh specifically in the Dutch Fork area uh to make this zoning plan work uh we'll present and I know MPS is working on the worst case scenario we don't get any funds to do anything how would that look it has been my goal through this plan to uh only change the zoning lines Around the Lake Murray Elementary Balentine area uh without that um I'm looking at changing lines from Piney Woods to Piney Grove um that would be something I would like to avoid uh again the there's no vote tonight but it is the administration's intent to exercise board policy Fe to present some options to this body uh so that we could be least disruptive um uh in the resoning

107plan uh again I wanted to these are the same assignments we did last year but we're justifying them in and in new ways this year um the 3.5 went to one project uh last year at iral high school the 3.5 this year would go to the entire five-year facilities plan and we will as you will see on October 23rd when we get the full weight of of the facility needs uh we would like to provide some options and that's why um we are asking for uh these assignments so yes sir yes the only thing I would like to add is just that um so that would get us to an overall um Rec commended a sign Bal sign fund balance of 9.9 million as shown on your screen leaving a remaining unassigned of 41 million

108$ 54,5 and this is 17.6% of the budgeted expenditures for the current fiscal year so still within board policy dfab for Reserve funds okay Dr Ross I have a question just um something that I noticed that was on last year year and it was unique because of the situation last year we had the um the 1.3 million for the D5 snack program and we only spent 600,000 and that program has been discontinued this year um why why would we not continue that if if that was a possibility I mean how how did that work in practice um it was that I mean I'm just curious as to when we're talking about using the fund balance for our students you know just I think not negating the other items on here I'm just curious as to

109right um if you look at last year in terms of what we had to assign to get into that board policy we have more money to assigned last year um I mean we could definitely add that back that would get us we wouldn't be close to the 18% I think our issue that we faced this year was uh just worrying about what all of the revenue that was injected into our economy through the co stimulus I worried very much what would happen when when when that flattened out what that would do to our our our our revenue and so I did not want to um go closer to that 15% um by by doing additional assignments uh what we saw was a change in in our um as we we talked about with our c

110program uh we added I think four new schools uh which we um we you know we never like to bring something where the administration disagrees to the board we always like to be in sync but uh I don't I worry about covering 40% because we typically go on the hole in that in that in those um situations so it was more of a notion of not being confident that we could we could continue that program going going forth and I think as well you know with it being coming from fund balance and it being and really being a continual need um then at some point we would have to allocate it through our our just general expenditures so I think you know last year was just a one-time thing and if we continue it at

111some point it would end up having to go under our just regular general fund expenditures okay any question miss m hle um I know we're not voting on anything tonight but um back in early June you know when we were looking at raising the millage I sent an email out and I've got something I want to add to the minutes that includes that email but at that point since 2017 we had moved 8.5 million doar out of the operating fund to the capital fund and I realized that all predated the majority of this board um I did vote for one of those um because I didn't know the background either you know at the time I'm thinking well we've got this money we have a need at hermo high school you know let's move it

112um but now here we are again and there's a pattern here we you know if we move this $3.5 million to Capital it'll be TW over12 million that has been moved out of operating to Capital and and that may sound like well you're just moving it from one bucket to another but it is really important because the operating fund is designed to take care of the day-to-day operations of the schools and educate our children um the tax basis is also different okay if if someone owns a $2 million home they're not paying any of the operating fund so when we pass that millage increase it largely fell on people that rent their PL their H their home whether they rent an apartment or they rent a house because the person that owns that property is

113getting that tax increase and so now they raise the rent also those individuals rely on their cars and the cars as we just heard was a big part of why the taxes went up so I'm very concerned that we keep doing this now it's too late now but I hope that we'll think about this next um May when we're looking at the budget um but I would say let's not do it again I mean that's the def definition of insanity is keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome let's use the money for what it was attended for so before we vote on this in a couple weeks I would like to propose we look at a couple things one is this bonus it's been $1,000 since I've been

114on the board and we all know that prices have gone way up and our staff you know while they've had some salary increases um they're subject to that too so I would say let's raise it to um $1,300 okay for example that would use4 million instead of three million let's take the other two and a half million and let's do voluntary tutoring we've got teachers who would probably gladly get extra pay to tutor kids before school and after school and that would also help us academically with especially our our math and our reading scores uh and there may be other opportunities as well I just think we we owe that to the taxpayers who paid this money to use it for operating expenses and we owe it to our staff and our students our job

115is to put students first and I realize bu buildings are important but they're not more important than the learning opportunities for your students and for your staff to help them and and we're we have an opportunity now that'll help make for some of the losses that we've had um due to the pandemic so just encourage us to think about using it for operating Dr Ross I know you want to comment on that I I do I think because it it goes to a a clarification that I need to defend this Administration for and I and I I politely disagree I think I can't divorce the quality of the building from the quality of the learning environment textbook um the textbook says exactly what you said that we maintain our facilities with the debt service we

116pay our teachers and supplies with the operating if that was the textbook reality I would agree 100% what you're going to see on October 23rd is we're not in a textbook situation there is you can use your operating to address issues of capital when I go to these schools and you go to these schools have we met the minimum quality of our facilities to provide educational opportunities for our children and we haven't we haven't and that's the legal responsibility of this board and so I just hope that we would wait till October 23rd see that data see the conditions that our facilities are in and that we're asking our teachers to educate in and then let's make the best decision with that um but we're not in a textbook situation so because you can use

117operating funds to fix the issues that we have and once we get The Five-Year Plan in and the 10year plan in and we're we're set I I'm with you I would I would never want to use operating to fix the issue issues that we have but when the air conditioner is out or the heat doesn't work or we have Plumbing issues or we have uh rodents and Sewer issues we have to get these things addressed so I have purposely stayed out of the way of MPS haven't have met with them stayed totally independent so that we hear at the same time the conditions but this is just coming from what we see when we walk these schools the standard of educational excellence in this district is very high but we have to give our teachers

118and staff the places to be in order to do it 3.5 is a lot of money I know and I want to give our teachers more but I have to be able to meet those facilities and pars that I can't separate from the educational um uh experiences for our kids so I just want to provide that clarification I do want to stop this being but that's not our reality so when we meet on October 23rd let's let's look at this together and see what's the best way to attack that problem Dr Ross I have a question kind of following up on something that Miss huddle mentioned and she's mentioned it before in previous meetings about um spending money on after school tutoring and you may not know the answer to this right now but my

119question is related to I mean I think that's a great idea I mean I think that it's a great idea to to have after after school tutoring I think that you know probably every student in our district would benefit from that my question is whether or not is there an internal policy like from or a procedure from from the operational District side that's not a board policy that prohibits teachers from tutoring students at school because it's my understanding that there is so um is that something that I mean does that matter whether or not we if we have a a special supplement how that how does that work because if there are you know parents paying for tutoring and they have to you know make arrangements to do it offsite because it doesn't work at

120school but then we Implement an after school tutoring program where some students get I'm just trying to make sure that we're Fair across the board with after school tutoring so the and M Mall will correct if I'm wrong you can't pay your child's teacher to tutor um but to miss Huddle's Point uh we have allocated additional funds out of Esser so I'm ask Miss MCO if you can speak to uh what we're doing in terms of the tutoring front there that's correct so every school has been given um $225,000 um for tutoring for this year U for after school tutoring and um so we do have families that are able to take advantage of that we we don't have quite as many staff members who are able to um assist with that after hours with

121other commitments that they have but we do have we have a good bit taking place at all of our schools now so if we ex well I guess I'm just trying to I mean to me if we're going to expand that program are more students going to be eligible to participate or um or can Arrangements be made you know AC districtwide that if if you're not in that program that teachers can utilize school facilities for for tutoring I'm just curious I've been asked that question several times because it logistically provides complications for families yeah we we just don't allow for um the families to pay the teacher on site to use our facilities because the teacher doesn't pay facilities fees for the use of the facilities because they're not really doing school business at that

122point um so that is part of the policy for that if we increase the amount of money that we were to put into tutoring I'm going to be very honest I don't know that we would have enough teachers to teach to even utilize much more funding we our teachers at the end of the day many of them have to go home to families and and things like that and they just aren't able to spend a lot of extra time after school to do the after school tutoring so we've made it available we've had 25,000 at minimum 25,000 per school for for increase out of the Esser we'll use that as a um as a kind of a guide stick there um but we encourage parents you know take advantage of what we have you know

123fill up the existing seats um but to your point the only thing that we we cannot do and I listen I'm guilty of it but I've I've used it was not my child's teacher and I paid a district five teacher to two to my children in my living room so uh you can do that uh but you can't use it on on um on the district property and so um and and so we're also working on um supplement schedules for clubs and activities uh because to that point point it it may be an opportunity to get kids involved it might not be a direct uh instructional link to math and English but through Arts through Athletics through um career related activities you can also get gains that way okay um did I see a hand

124raised over here Mr saterfield Dr Ross explained exactly I'm we and apologize we used to have enrichment so every day for 30 minutes teachers would have students come and get activities but it is very it's a very difficult and I appreciate Miss huddle thinking outside the box I think you know again that is you brought that up multiple times and it is a what seemed to be a very obvious thing that we need to do it's just a very difficult thing when your kids got to get on the bus or parents can't come get kids 30 minutes later and they can't get Transportation but um um we have tried different things in the past I know that and there are kids that need it but we do have a policy says that says teach or

125we did anyway that teachers cannot use District facilities to make extra money so anyway yeah just one other point about the tutoring in theory it sounds like a a great idea and it is however like you were saying you're competing against the private sector Market really because a teacher can go out and teach uh tutor one child in their living room for $40 a session but if we put them into a organized District school-based program they may have four or five kids that they're tutoring at one time which is a whole another it's a class essentially and not only and so that $40 per session is now $10 per kid instead of 40 so economically it doesn't make sense for the the teacher or it's not very incentivizing and then for the student perspective they're

126not getting the quality of instruction because if you have multiple kids in a suit a tutoring session you're not able to meet their individual needs they're all at different levels in different places so it's it's a it's a more complicated matter than what you would you would think of U off the hand oh I definitely understand I just logistically I mean when we're talking about adding you know a couple million dollar into a tutoring program I'm just wondering how that works I mean and how that works with existing with everyone yeah M um well first of all I wasn't suggesting that was the only possible use of the money so it was just I would I again it's not a bad idea right I would just like us to look at we have so many

127needs we have so many kids that are not proficient in in English and math in particular um but related to Mr scully's point so a question is there any reason we can't pay the teacher like they would externally can we pay them4 or $50 an hour to tutor one child is there any reason we can't do that and I think with the uh Max increase that uh Miss mccal uh put in the schools uh we can meet market rate I I would like to just give this an opportunity we have Esser it leaves this year um and so this is a a great place to to place it um her and her staff came up with a way to to to edit the the Essa plan for the tutoring and um so I'll just uh

128we'll bring back how that's going I think we we're just kind of starting it up report cards are coming out that usually is what triggers tutoring and so uh we're looking forward to that but I think the biggest thing is just making sure we can um Target the need um the the parents that see the value in it they take advantage of it uh is it's getting those students that we really need to get our arms around Meeting those barriers whether it's Transportation um to be a part of it and the other thing is and I'm I'm an example of that child before I would sit down for your math in English I needed another activity and it was it was arts or Athletics and so as we expand that that that builds that relationship

129where the child is ready to sit down and start reading so as all of these expand this year um but but to that point we have put um that additional money in and uh look to see to to bring back to this body how that's working thank you any other questions relating to this discussion item all right seeing none thank you Madison Miss Paul that moves us to item 16 discussion of new board policy ji CFB Gavin's law implementation exhibit G thank you madam chair members of the board uh we received a memo from the State Department of Education on August 29th regarding the Gavin's law implementation requirements and our chief of student services and planning Dr Harris will bring the policy thank you thank you um that Ross members of the board and our

130general Community uh there's a new legislation uh Gavin's law it can be found and identified under South Carolina Cota laws section 161 15430 that references um violations if you will of sexual extort extortion and uh as a result of that um we've had a collaboration and Communications um by way of the sled State Department of Education as well as the Attorney General's office who crafted the legislation and as a result there is a model policy that you currently have from our school boards Association that speaks to that for districts across uh South Carolina uh contingent upon uh our ultimate readings and uh looking forward to your approval this Gavin law will be incorporated into our student code of conduct uh at as a um um one of the violations and one of the levels that

131we currently have as well as incorporated into the staff code of conduct as well in any instance and in all instances uh this would include law enforcement uh I'll simply uh conclude that this law also pertains to a um this particular model policy we have also in partnership with our academics office who by way of our school counselors will um make available information education and awareness to all of our students our parents and other persons throughout the community so with that we present to you this uh new policy Gavin's law implementation and uh for your approval I'll certainly try to respond any questions you might have any questions all right thank you I have one question oh sorry Miss okay and um okay I apologize because I didn't print it out out um so with

132a lot of our policies we have a an r that talks about actually the mechanics of it so are we going to have an R with this as well or do you think we don't need an r i I'm certainly uh willing to consult with our school boards Association and reference to whether or not there is a u a thought behind having an R for this um as we all aware some of our polies as you indicated do have an r or um and so I'm not sure I have not heard that this one would but certainly willing between now and first reading to uh to inquire to see if in fact that's a thought process okay because I mean I guess I'm the other thing I'm kind of fixated on is the second paragraph

133the last sentence says um you know Implement a policy to educate and notify students of the provision of this law which includes adequate notice to stud students parents Guardians public all so maybe we do or don't need an R but we are going to have to have a plan to educate everybody correct absolutely right and as we referenced earlier in collaboration and partnership with the office of academics through School counseling we'll be that plan will be developed and communicated that way to all students absolutely okay absolutely and that would identify what constitutes adequate notice that yes that is that is correct yes any other all right thank you Dr Harris thank you that moves us to 17 on our discussion agenda which is discussion of revisions to board policy gbb staff conduct exhibit H thank

134you m chair members of our board and our community we bring uh Dr Turner our chief of Human Resources officer to discuss uh this is a policy that uh we have considered in uh in the past uh we have attorney Kathy Mahoney here who helped us draft this policy and so I'll have uh Dr Turner um uh begin the presentation good evening Madam chair members of the board and Dr Ross this discussion provides an opportunity for the board to determine revisions and updates to policy gbb staff conduct the original policy was issued in 2009 and as you can imagine since 2009 we've had a number of laws as well as other District policies that the board has adopted that determines how we deal with staff conduct issues we've had an opportunity to work with attorney

135Mahoney um who's present here tonight and she'll offer some insights regarding the policy revisions as well you'll noticed on the revised version of the policy it's it's more concise it's updated it has references to some of the um policies that we've adopted so with that being said I'm going to invite Mrs attorney Mahoney to um present some insight to us thank you Dr Turner um Madam chair members of the board and Dr Ross um you have before you um the proposed revisions to gbb um as as Dr Turner mentioned this was last revised in 2009 and there's certainly been a number of laws since then and I think the the world has changed a bit in the last 14 years in terms of particularly electronic conduct and Communications so in the policy just a quick

136overview of the of the of the key changes these recommended revisions by the way that we're providing to this to to to you all are consistent with recommendations we provided to boards across the state on these very issues but the overarching issue is it provides Clarity to employees about about expectations for staff conduct which is important for employees to have a clear understanding of it it also then gives clear guidance to the administration um for addressing the conduct so it's important for both ends both for the employees to understand the expectations and then for the administration to have a road mapap to address it um key areas addressed are employee speech and social media that's you can see one large part of it it's not so much new it's more just um additional guidance um

137and also the guidance specifically references the US Supreme Court's decision um in the Pickering case and then the four circuits decision in the grutzmacher case and these are cases we consistently talk about across the state with school administrators School Employees um um about their compliance with this both employee speech issues as well as social media there's also a section of course that addresses the a key issue and that's employee conduct with students and it incorporates multiple existing board policies that it deal with with that um and then there other there's several other Provisions that that just incorporate lots of other existing policies the the second paragraph says you know you obviously have to comply with all board policies this is not an an intent to relist every board policy but it's intended to sort of

138bring in the key ones to put them in front of everybody and give a nice road map both for expectations as well as sort of enforcement and applicability so um those are the overall thoughts I would make and certainly happy to answer Dr I can answer any questions you all may have thank you do I have any questions Mr saterfield yeah I had a couple of questions um uh on the first or the original current the current policy excuse me um the fourth statement says the personal life of an employee will be the concern of and warrant the attention of the board only if the employees action da da da da but in the rewrite and there are several changes in the rewrite but there it says only was taking out out can you tell

139me why and it makes it a little ambiguous when you when it says uh the personal life of an employee including the personal use of District issued and nonissuer non-district issued electronic equipment inside and outside I hate to read the whole thing through social networking sites social media personal portrayal on the internet will be the concern of the warrant and warrant the attention of the board and then the other one the first one is very clearcut it says is only if it's impairs the employees ability but this one says if it if it impairs the employees ability to effectively perform their responsibilities sure um what what this does is that sentence at the end it really just expands on it so where where the sentence at the end struck through was just one sentence this

140really broadens it and expands it yeah I and I'll be honest with you I'm a little concerned with that um I think that with the direction that social media is going I guess and Lord knows where it's going to go next year and the year after um but I think when it says only that means the board will only get involved if it specifically affects their the efficiency and the performance otherwise the board can choose to get in involved right and I don't think that this changes is the meaning of that because what it says is um if it it still the concept is still I mean the language at the end is really incorporated into the the the extent the expanded version is what I'm saying because it still says um you know if

141it if it impairs their ability to effectively perform their job or if it violates law and then you expect all this conduct to not disrupt the school work environment or impair the efficiency of the workplace and those are the two Provisions right out of what the US Supreme Court talks about back in the 60s on speech and then also what the fourth circuit talks about now and It ultimately says this policy will be applied consistent with the legal principles on the issue of employee expression set forth in these cases so clearly the intent is to guide the administration to apply case law into how you analyze each fact specific situation right and I went back and I reread both of those cases just to make sure that I was looking at it properly but it

142it just says on the very on again uh the original one I think they specifically put that only in there to keep to keep some separation there I guess um I did have a couple other questions um uh where it says do not this is I'm sorry in the fourth paragraph of the new one it says um where it says the personal life of an employee and it goes through all the networking sites social media personal portrayal on the internet and then it says do not dis I'm sorry I'm I'm getting ahead of myself the board expects employees to ensure all their conduct and Communications including those associated with social media and electronic communications do not disrupt the school work environment or impair the efficiency of the school workplace what does impair the efficiency excellent

143question and that's the phrasing that the US Supreme Court talks about and it's the phrasing that the grow mker case talks about in the fourth circuit and what they do is apply that standard in both cases and they break down the facts and you know impair the efficiency of the workplace ultimately um when you look at the factual application of it really talks about disrupting things making the workplace not efficient not effective um so and in the workplaces in the grp her case or or fire station and Fire Department officials so it's not the same thing as students being educated in a school system right but it's broadly applied the Pickering case that's where the only sort of comes into play for me when I was re rereading and rereading that thing because it the

144the teacher that expressed her concerns in the news it really did not affect her ability to do her job uh and it had to go all the way to the United States Supreme Court for them to make that decision that she had the right of free speech I just think that only should be consistent with the first and I am there I was a little I am concerned about to impair the efficiency of the school workplace and I had Miss are do we want to stay on that or well I just want to make sure that I open it up for other people to ask questions as well so um do we have Miss huddle I actually have a I guess a similar concern and I'm I'm thinking about for the administration is you can't

145ask all our staff members to read case law and figure out what they can and can't do um and I mean I'm just going to throw an example at you because the the the thing that sticks out in my mind is do not disrupt the school work environment okay that's a very broad statement so if I'm a teacher in Irmo and I go out on all my social media and say Irmo sucks I hate Irmo it's the worst place in the world does that qualify am I disrupting the school work environment I mean those are the kind of things we got to think about yeah and that that is that is exactly what administrators and I can show you your Human Resources staff has to navigate all the time not just in this District but

146everywhere in the state and everywhere in the country and each situation is fact specific um and so and and and I've I've done videos that go across the state that that some districts require employees to watch I think y'all are one of them and I talk about the grut smer case I there there are probably lots of people who've heard about that case across the state and in that case because of the type of social media and the content of it the court concluded that in that situation it disrupted the work environment in the Pickering case as Mr saterfield mentioned that was a teacher who back in the 60s wrote a letter just to the editor saying the school board should spend more on a more on academics and Athletics that was the message and

147and there was no evidence that that imper the deficiency of the workplace or disrupted anything and so the court said you can't fire someone for that but the flip side is in the grut smer case you're taking a lot of communications they were um racially derogatory and absolutely disrupted the workplace and impacted even the confidence in the in the fire department in the sort of the system so every case is fact specific you can't say this is right or this is wrong but this gives a framework a legal framework um to say make sure you're thoughtful in how you conduct yourself through public Communications social media or at a at a church on the weekend and getting in a fight in front of a bunch of people the point being you don't want to Rend

148render yourself ineffective with educating students or in the work so so kind of what I'm hearing is it's an after Thea answer okay because because if I go out there and I say hero sucks I hate hero blah blah blah blah but nobody cares nobody does anything then it's okay but if people start picketing the school and you know 20 newspaper articles and parents calling now I've disrupted the schoolwork environment even though what I did was the same it was the reaction to what I did yeah actually Administration doesn't look doesn't sit back and wait for reaction Administration will assess each situation Case by case whether it's erupted IND something or not they have to look at the set of facts the eruption of dis the disruption adds to it but I what I can

149tell you is every scenario has its own set of facts and how it impacts everything has to be decided um but but if if you just go in with some clear understanding that the administration is going to be um conscious that there's a US Supreme Court decision that talks about expression and public speaking on public concern coupled with the the other more egregious conduct which disrupted things and that's the balance that you have to take when you look at every scenario but you don't just say here's the scenario if there's no if there's no disruption no one complains about it it's not an issue that's not how the administration is going to look at they're going to look at all the factors as to whether it impaires your ability to be effective in the classroom

150or whatever else your job might be it definitely seems like it could be very ambiguous in today's society because of opinions and like and what people are going to be offended by or outraged by right now that they may not have been offended by 10 years ago or that they may not be offended by 10 offended by 10 years from now I mean it could be as silly as you know um I like Chick-fil-A but somebody else likes you know Popeyes or somebody else likes um you know I mean I happen to like our gas station my G the gas station near my house has really good fried chicken I mean but you know if I were to go and say something like that I mean that sounds silly but that could really offend someone

151you know someone else and so it's hard to know what you should or shouldn't say yeah and that's a good that isn't like outwardly inflammatory or egregious you know with language or I don't know I mean it just makes it very complicated very complicated world and and it's not the offensiveness it's it's it's it's the full picture right it's not just you said something that I disagree with or that offends me that's not it can't Administration can't react that way either you know you have to literally look at it with what's the right thing what's the factual what are the facts and then what's the law going to support if you do act a certain way and all that matters and I can't tell you how complicated this has become when you talk about impairing

152the efficiency of a school environment it is about what is outrageous or offensive if it caus cuses you know outrage in an entire class or an entire school or an entire staff um that to me that could be disruptive to the workplace or to the school environment learning environment those are certainly factors absolutely all all factors have to be considered right right uh Mr Hogan I'm trying to I'm coming back to you Mr thank you um quick way is my spot of choice for chicken but um does this policy read differently if let's say given the examples that we've used used if if one social media is is locked down at private and they've got it select with they determine who sees it they say something derogatory does that come into play any different than

153if like Kathy said hero sucked on Twitter right is it like is it any hero does not suck it doesn't I have not just using the examples just be clear I graduated from armo in 1985 I'm very proud but 2001 so yeah I shouldn't have said 1985 though I realized but no I mean is it is it viewed any differently that's an excellent question um and and what I would say to that is how does it get to the administration's attention and what impact does it have what happens so very often is I had no idea someone else would see that I only had three people following me I only had this but once it screenshotted and passed around there in lies the problem and now I've got someone who I know said or did

154something um so it's it's complicated um they're not simple scenarios but you have to be thoughtful in analyzing it and any anything that comes to the administrator's attention they have to react to in whatever way that's appropriate Mr scolly did you have and then I'm coming back um to your point I'm come at me but I'm team papy um I'm going to direct you to second paragraph uh the last sentence employees must be familiar with board policies and act in a manner that is consistent with board policies so my question there is I'm on the board I I'm not familiar with all of our board policies and how I guess with must how is that me measured um how are they tested do they get training for that um how how I can we delete

155that is that what was the rationale for putting that in there the rationale for that sentence is to make it clear that while this policy attempts to highlight particularly policies that are staff conduct related to students um highlight policies that are sort of the weapons issues the drugs the Alcohol Tobacco those types of things that by no means is that you want to be careful and this is kind of probably the lawyer mind of me you want to be careful not to say well I was only told I I read There were 12 Poli policy s in have context and none of the rest of them apply to me I mean there are other policies like a sickly policy that says you can't violate how you use sickly I mean that's still a policy you

156have to comply with and there are many many policies particularly in section g um for employees that that they're expected to be familiar with um and you have an employee handbook which is going to which is going to um reference many many district policies and board policies that would be applicable to them so it's not it's it's just meant to be clear that this is not not intended intended to be an exclusive list that this is the only thing that applies to employees but to say you know broadly you must comply with all policies it's not to trick anybody it's just you're highlighting the ones you continually refer to when you're dealing with staff conduct with students and other sort of obvious violations that deal with sort of the alcohol drug tobacco those types of

157things and bullying and harassment is one you know those types of things so that's I guess the word must is kind of throwing me there could could that be changed to should instead of must or I mean we have we don't even agree with our we have eight or seven different interpretations of a board policy for example so which which interpretation must they be familiar with or employees are expected to be familiar with policies would that be helpful or yeah I would certainly I'm just I think on the on the operational side and Dr attorney you may be able to speak to this um we know when it comes to the full School board policy that's a lot to read when it comes to G policies we get a little specific and so while we

158don't do tests we do certificates that they have to earn annually and if you can explain that process uh I think anytime you know our attorneys are kind of famous they stop in the grocery stores because we do the videos and and you receive certificates and I think every employee has to do that in addition to the employee handbook and that's our accountability system we used to do it on the first day everyone had to sit down and we would go through Page by page of the employee handbook teacher said look we've don't do this give us some autonomy to do it independently so if you can kind of speak to on the G policies which are the staff policies how we do that for our staff and one of the things I thought about

159Mr Scully and in and when you asked your question was a part of this statement believe it or not is to be extremely protective of employees there are a number of cases that I've dealt with even in my role in human resources that employees have said I wish I would have known I never knew that there are a number of employees that come to us through alternative certification that may not have been exposed to everything the traditionally trained educator has been exposed to so this is really an emphasis to really let employees know take time to educate yourself we support that at the beginning of each year all of our employees are are required to do an online training module and because of feedback that we've received from employees that find themselves unfortunately having HR

160conversations with us and they're and I think they're sincere they they really say I wish someone would have emphasized that more what we've tried to do is we even follow up with supervisors and we say hey you still have a handful of employees that haven't completed these modules that haven't completed these trainings so there is the video training um that scasa puts out and I think that's become a a popular mode of communication for many districts we do require all of our employees certified and support to complete those training modules in addition to that there is the handbook um and that handbook it's not every policy but it's the key G policies like staff conduct staff conduct with students Title Nine it's those major policies that employees tend to find themselves sometimes sitting on the

161wrong end of the employment Spectrum on so the two modules the employee handbook um and we try to emphasize different things for principles to um emphasize to their employees um so I think it it it ends up being a bit protective and I think we do try to overemphasize it because that's the only way we know for employees to educate themselves to protect themselves really in situations I appreciate that so I guess my concern there is obviously I don't I would be concerned that it would be used to be punitive against them but I I appreciate that that you say that it is protective and then I guess if it ever comes down to a question from a labor issue um what is the administration protected because if the employee is disciplined in some manner

162uh for not being familiar with the policy um you know how are we protected from administratively did we appropriately train them on the policy that they're being you know disciplined for or whatever so that's I guess that's kind of the root of my concern there but if if if you think that it's it's more beneficial than not then I appreciate that I think it is and and most the conduct discipline would largely fall under what's really addressed here I don't think it's going to be some of the extraneous stuff but you just don't want to leave it out as if it it's not important Mr saterfield yeah and um I was going to just make a suggestion um if I was a principle and and I had a you've got seven people here asking questions

163if I had 200 employees sitting in my cafeteria and I'm reviewing this policy and a a myriad of hands start going up with a lot of questions um I would ask that while we're going through this process it's kind of like my question about to impair the efficiency of the school the workplace if we can find a way to work on this to make this as clear and specific the the previous policy says oh you can't fight you can't fight at school you can't steal you can't destroy school property those things are very obvious you know to when you're explaining it to somebody they walk out and they go oh no I can't fight I can't drink alcohol at school I can't do this and I can't do that but a lot of this is

164is very ambiguous in the language and when I'm trying to explain it to teachers and then if I have a parent who gets upset because of something that they read on social media um uh it you know if it's not I don't want to say easily easy to interpret but a little more specific I guess I'm searching for a word here um I I would just encourage uh you when you're going through this process that we uh we come up with something a little more specific I'm going to just use that word and I but I did have one question I know that Mr Hogan asked a question just to throw some gasoline on the fire there uh what if I have a a social media account and somebody else makes an inappropriate comment on

165my account am I responsible for that um that that's obviously a good question as well and I'm going to what I'll say broadly is how it's addressed in conduct is going to be the full set of facts right but I mean you didn't make the comment if it was responsive to your comment but but I've seen scenarios where things a a firestorm gets involved when when you start somewhere and it's your your name's in the middle of a comment and things come into play so so it's not your comment like the four- circuit and grutz marer that's one of the important parts about that case is the grutz marker Court says in the footnote which is fascinating you've got a four- circuit group of Judges who are saying that liking sharing retweeting you know whatever

166you're doing to the social media message constitutes the same thing as if it were your speech right so if you're thumbs uping it liking it sharing it what what whatever the other terms you can do because I don't do all this stuff myself then you're respons but if someone is commenting on it that obviously is not the same as you're liking it and sharing it retweeting it yeah I I again I there's so many scenarios with social media I mean so many variables and as we go through this process well even over the next year or two I'm sure it's going to change tremendously but I was just curious if somebody else makes a comment on my post and somebody else screenshots it and says well Mr safield must agree with that cuz it was

167he didn't take it off his post well I didn't know it was on my post um again there are a lot of variables but uh uh getting back to my previous comment I would try to work on the verbage so that it's as clear as it we can possibly make it so that as the principal and I certainly hope that all principles are going to sit down with their staff with this sort of policy because social media runs rampant you know through everything we do so so Mr saterfield um I know Miss huddle has a comment but I will say um so this was the policy that was drafted by Miss Mahoney and presented to the board so um I think I mean I'm hearing like different thoughts about what people are thinking about the

168policy but when we actually like go and and take action on voting for this it may be that you make a motion to change the language and see if that carries for the board and if it doesn't then we move for like I think that that's probably the most efficient way to move forward with the policy because there are changes and I don't want to hold it up based off of um without knowing what the consensus is right I I just thought everybody want know I agree with you 100% I just thought we were having an open discussion about the Poli absolutely but well I I just because you were like well I'd like to see you come back with this I just want to make sure that so if we put this on the

169agenda for next time if we M if we make a motion if there's language that wants to be shifted that we make a motion and if that carries then we figure that out during that first reading process um Miss huddle I'm just I'm wondering I'm taking totally different kind of subject about something whether or not it should be added to this um and that is um this policy right now is really heavy on social media and and that kind of thing um I looked and I don't think we have a policy that really addresses um portrayal of political beliefs in the classroom there's a a policy on controversial teaching that kind of touches on it but I guess what I'm getting at is you know again I'm just going to use an example because that's

170how I think and it's you know C is where does it say if I'm a teacher can I go in my classroom and put up a right to life flag and uh you know Bible verses and you know stuff like that and is is am I allowed to do that and if not what policy says I can't do that or I can do that so gbb in the same fourth paragraph that talks about the social media is really talking about expression entirely encompasses everything in the sentence it says the board expects employees to ensure all their conduct and Communications including those associated with social media do not disrupt or impair the efficiency of the workplace that's the exact same sense that you would apply in any other other situation like that and what and and

171to Mr sfi's Point made earlier what's important in a board policy is that you have a policy that if challenged on the underlying conduct you're addressing you don't want simultaneously there to be a challenge to the policy itself not being defensible legally so what is in this policy that that I'm presenting to you is legally defensible language which is based strictly on the case law so your board policy that says the two phrases that come from the US Supreme Court decision and the four circuit decision that's straight out of case law so it's hard to argue in a court you shouldn't have those sentences which are the exact standard that are applied time and time again in case law now is that to suggest that courts and lawyers get it right and are they're clear

172I'm not saying that necessarily right and that comes in the details and how you train administrators and this video that you know we do annually dives into the details but the same kind of conduct what you do in a classroom what you post what you say what you wear what you put on social media all that is expression and all that would be addressed in the same exact way within this policy does that though stop us from still laying out some specifics does it stop us from expanding on the policy and saying you will not have Flags in your classroom other than country flags or you you understand what I'm saying I mean I'm I'm just struggling as a if I was employee how how do I know what I can do and I can't

173you know what I'm saying you know I mean I've had Parents contact me that are not happy that we have people that have certain Flags in their classrooms you know I mean and those teachers don't really know I don't think and I don't think this policy is going to help them know can they do that or not so that is um Prime material that I'm talking with just about any District I'm working with right now across the state each situation that presents itself Case by case if you start to articulate specific examples in a board policy then that's what you get into does some does somebody's are their rights impacted here are there are their are their rights of students impacted are their rights of employees impacted um where is the first amendment come into

174play where is the disruption piece come into play so when you start breaking it down and you can do this and you can't do this that's when you could get a a a policy which is constitutionally on its face a problem which is why if you stick with the rules of what the courts are saying and then you apply each one individually that's what I would recommend for the board's role to be in your policy the application is where it's complicated but in a facility that we own we can't make rules about I mean my spouse worked for the Department of Corrections and they had very strict rules you couldn't put a picture of your family on your desk okay because of it was it you know so can we not do that when we

175own the the building school districts can make rules um within buildings and how you handle things but they've got to be consistent and they can't vary and they can't impact I mean all different rights pop up I mean they're rights of multiple players involved so that's why putting rules and and specific items and policies are not the ideal way to address that the ideal way is to look at it as as I know Dr Ross is having to do more holistically one one of the things I may Madam chair um and you brought up this point earlier what what we have done is try to create a policy and a rule all at the same time I think what would be best is to adopt this as policy or a draft and then there could

176be an R policy if you look at our Bard policy about uh conduct with students you see a policy and then you see a rule under the rules you'll see the will Nots will Nots um and so what we're into now as you know that this isn't the fourth circuit it's not Supreme Court right so uh we've had U Miss Mahoney come and speak to all of our principles and assistant principles and we are realizing we're living history right now as we uh uh address issues of of expression um and when you look at the Pickering decision it was not a you know total freedom of speech there was a test that came out of Pickering uh that it was um that you wasn't disruptive but um uh think it can be false right so

177there are some limits so I think probably what's best is that we look at the policy which will be Brad and then uh we may come back with an with an R type which would kind of outline that but to be full disclosure and I think you know you're reading between the lines um we have seen because of the pivot of this and unsettling of the case law um that there might not be what we've seen historically as our will not will not there may be some may Nots in there so um but I think the policy is is written broad for that and the rules are brought down narrow um to be more clear if that makes sense all right what a robust conversation all right any is that are we good all right

178all right thank you Miss Mahoney thank you Dr Turner we appreciate you okay so that brings us to 18 on our agenda which is a discussion on a sales tax exemption for capital projects under exhibit I so um I brought this forward and I just kind of want to explain to you um why and what what I this is and and we may I wanted because we can't just have conversations and we need to discuss it as a board um I printed out or Dr Ross printed out an email that was sent to me by a chair of another school district um in McCormick County and he sent it to every chair I believe um to every school district in the state and he called me about it um and we had a conversation about

179what they were doing in Mccormick regarding sales tax exemptions and I just wanted to bring it to the board to see if this was something that we're interested in having a conversation about um talking to you know the administration about and potentially reaching out to our delegation um you know advocating for them to take a position in in modifying legislation so uh the email that he sent out to all of the school boards was for a request to consider advocating modification of current state law to exempt school districts from paying sales tax for all purchase services and materials they sent a letter to each of their legislators and their delegation that um basically requested a modification to exempt all South Carolina School Districts from the payment of all sales tax for purchase services and materials

180currently sales tax exemptions for school districts is limited to the purchase of textbooks periodicals and some technology materials Etc since school districts receive Revenue through taxation it makes little sense for districts to pay taxes with Revenue gained through tax expending District revenue for sales tax has the effect causing need to pass on to local citizens additional tax through added Mills on property tax duplicates and so basically the conversation that I had with Mr Wilson was that there is the idea that we might be paying double taxes so if we have a capital project and the vendor doesn't have a sales tax exemption form that they may be passing on the cost for um the the sales tax for materials onto the district which means that we're paying you know we're ra you know we we

181have to raise Mills to pay for the capital you know improvements or new buildings but then we're also paying sales tax that's being passed on To Us by construction companies I am not an expert in all of this so full disclaimer um you know but it's in to me I have questions about whether or not you know that is something that we should be advocating for apparently other a lot several other states like Ohio have uh sales tax exemption forms that their uh construction vendors um are given so that that sales they're exempt um from paying sales tax on materials to for Capital Improvements or construction I'm not sure how that impacts our district um you know how how that impacts our district McCormack is not really a comparable District to District 5 it is

182very small um I think that they have 600 students we have 600 students in most of our schools and we have 23 schools so I mean like it's not it is not the same but if this is something that you know mat uh M Miss Paul and Dr Ross think that could potentially save US Dollars and and help us reduce Mills or or what have you um you know I I would love to know y'all's feedback and to maybe get more information or um I don't know if this is something that the board would consider writing a letter um to our delegation or to um the state fiscal Affairs authority to ask them what that looks like for school districts um you know I've kind of tried to ask around from different school board members

183that I know in different districts and there may have been a conversation about this publicly before any of our time um and so I mean I'm being transparent about that there may be a an answer that we are just not talking about but um and y'all may have answers that I don't or you may have already heard about this so I'm just I wanted to throw this out on the table of of what if this is something that we're considering if we would want to consider to get more information about or if we know um information currently or Miss Paul if you have any if you've heard of this or fast around about it um I'm not trying to put you on the spot thank you um no I appreciate it so I did get

184forwarded this email when you initially sent it um and so you know the the initial email talks about a sales tax exemption just in general for school district so not just specific to capital projects just in general um my first thought with that is that since we are so heavily funded by state revenue then that would impact the state side of it so my concern is okay well if we are sales tax exempt in general what does that look like in terms of Revenue that actually comes to our district through the general fund um you know I did take a look at the state budget about 35% of the state budget revenues comes from sales tax I don't know what percentage of that is made up from school districts or if that would be easily

185to easy to find but that's kind of where my concern goes just in general to just totally exempt school districts I could see the impact being greater from a revenue standpoint um if we're talking just capital projects you know that is um funded through property taxes so our capital projects do get funded through our debt service millage um which does not have that state component to it um but I you know I wasn't aware of you know Ohio and how they logistically do that with a third party because you know when we contract with a um a vendor a general contractor we're not directly purchasing any materials that vendor is purchasing them on our behalf to build X facility um but if there's a way that others other states are doing this I'd be interested

186to hear um I just don't know how logistically that would work since we for the most part when we're built we're under construction we're not phys you know we're not the ones actually purchasing the materials it would be a third party vendor purchasing them for this um do we know if our state agencies do they do we know if they pay sales tax like you know I don't know Department of Revenue do they if they buy stuff do they pay sales tax I'm not sure off of hand but I can certainly look into it okay because I'm just thinking if they don't that's a really good case that we shouldn't have to well and so one of the things that um was told to me about how this even beca was discovered was that um

187there was a board member that was reviewing invoices and noticed the sales tax line item on an invoice and that was what and I guess there was you know there may have been I don't want to misspeak or mischaracterize a statement but maybe there was a construction Background by that board member and that may have triggered that question so it's really you know you to me I would just like to know what that you know first of all I if on our invoices from you know from any of our Capital Improvements or major construction um projects if that's something that we notice on that if sales taxes included and then what that overall impact would be if we got an exemption I mean you know or who we who is it that we need to

188ask those questions to or have those conversations with um before we send you know I I I'm not sure how many districts are sending this letter um but I just figured it was worth us having a conversation about about that so um Madam chair we have our Midland's superintendent around table coming up we'll add this as a discussion item just to see if um that's kind of the general consensus and I think we can bring that back uh to this body Mr scy yeah um Madison kind of Elo um said exactly what I was thinking I I think we'd be biting the hand that feeds us in that case um if we were to do that so I my my first reaction is it's probably not a viable or good idea uh the other thing

189is I mean teachers are State their state employees their revenue comes from taxation so do they get to be Exempted from paying sales tax I'd love it but um I just don't think it's very viable I don't I don't know that that's a I don't know I I I don't know how it actually plays out so I don't know if that's like comparable or not I just don't know um Miss I mean I think it's definitely something that we should look at I mean what harm does it do to to look at it um I was curious do we charge anybody sales tax like do we have to charge sales tax on lunches or anything like that um so lunches we do not but like when we pay an invoice to like US Foods there

190are certain things so like the food portion of it we actually don't have to pay sales tax on that but any Commodities or supplies we have to pay sales tax on it so there's certain things that we do but as far as like um a a student we don't charge sales tax but I do think actually with adults I believe that we do charge sales tax to adults um but in general you know the the $3.30 just encompasses the entire cost of everything that student nutrition would have to pay for okay well I just wanted to bring that up to the board because it was presented to me so Dr Ross if you bring that to the Midland superintendent Advisory board or if if we hear if anybody hears of anything um I just wanted

191to have that conversation collectively um and and just kind of let us know our thoughts so yeah I'm gonna break Matt's heart I move that we adjourn any discussion all right seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor the motion carries 7 to zero we are adjourned