March 13, 2023 Finance Bond Workshop/School Board Meeting

001Jay can you hear us are you still there do that foreign thank you there's a potential coming through the attend women's careers nothing hmm can you see that up and back out it's still not there foreign because back 10 feet at the top of the kitchen plate is is Mr Glover are you still listening I don't see it moving anymore no where should I be moving Amy can you call or text him I want to we change the setting I want to see if that take the echo away that might have turned both of it off should be in both areas so we can change it and it's not oh he left the meeting star if you want I'll go to the MDF and get the book because okay he may not be able to

002hear us so I changed something that may have made it better and may have cut it off that's what the USB cable sound not that sound [Music] hey Jay can you hear us nope I don't think you can hear us let me change something back then let's go where did I change it devices um I think they are oh it's gone all the way go back to manage sound device you got to put that back all right so I got both all right Mr Glover can you hear me yeah I can hear you fine can you hear me we can there may still be a little bit of an echo some of it's the room if there's something you can't hear just feel free to tell us to repeat okay yeah well [Music] it's Brandy

003here's the clicker too when you need it okay you were Virginia all right are we ready is everybody ready to okay I'm I am going to call to order um our finance Bond Workshop and Dr Ross I am going to let you start us off or ask you to start us off yes thank you madam chair members of the board in our community we're thankful to have the opportunity to hear from Jay Glover of pfm and uh from Franny Hauser of reforma so we're going to ask at this time that Madison poll began opening up our barn Workshop sure thank you Dr Ross um uh good afternoon board members um chairman Hans welcome back um so yes today we have Jake Glover he is online with us so again he is our financial advisor from

004pfn and then we also have Franny Heiser from Earth form and she is our bond Council so they're going to really lead this Workshop they're going to alternate between some of the slides but I think I'll let Jay go ahead and get us started I think hello this is Jay Glover from pfm I think I was just prompted I apologize in advance and thank you for allowing me to do this uh presentation virtually we had a long scheduled family vacation I'm on but I'm glad to participate here and I think uh Franny is actually going to do the first few slides of the presentation and we're going to uh flip back and forth between the two of us as we walk through sort of the existing debt and then talk about some things as we

005move forward so I think I see Franny standing there right ready to go so I'll defer to her to start the presentation off thank you Jay it's great to be with you all as has been said for Annie Heiser and word or two with school districts for 30 plus years I generally limit my practice to helping school districts borrow money and very delighted to be able to have had a long time relationship with with this school district and we appreciate y'all giving us some time today to go over with you sort of your existing debt profile and what debt you have now and then maybe open up the possibility for y'all's consideration or discussion talk about what might be next in terms of your ability to meet your Capital needs so the um long-term debt

006for the school districts could only borrow money in certain very limited ways and issuing long-term debt to use for your Capital project is uh is generally the way that you would meet your Capital needs General obligation bonds are bonds that are secured by the full faith credit and taxing power of the school district meaning that they are they are backed by taxes that are levied and collected on personal and real property under the South Carolina Constitution a school district like any other political subdivision so a City County School District can issue an amount up to eight percent of the assessed value of all taxable property in the school district the we call that the eight percent debt limit sometimes you might hear that called your constitutional debt limit and that basically is your credit limit

007that's what you as a Board of Trustees or school board can can decide to borrow without having to have voter approval if you need if your needs exceed what you can pay for from your eight percent debt limit you would generally look at a referendum a referendum is a as an effort to go to your voters and ask your voters to approve issuing debt in an amount above your constitutional debt limit now as you'll see in from the the numbers y'all got a huge assessed value your eight percent of your assessed value is that 46 million dollars and you would say well man that's a lot of money but when when a new high school might cost you 70 or 80 million dollars a new elementary school could be in the 30 to 40 million

008dollar range maybe even a little bit higher you can see that your eight percent debt limit is really valuable to you for your annual need so that you would borrow some on an annual basis to meet your Capital needs but eight percent is generally not um going to be enough to meet your long-term capital needs so the um companion piece to the eight percent to any Geo not just eight percent but referendum proof that or or your eight percent debt um the companion to that is your jet service millage when when geojet is issued the county auditor and the County Treasurer Levy and collect sufficient amounts through Debt Service millage to pay uh personal interest on the bonds as they become due your eight percent capacity does change over time generally speaking it's going to

009grow in a school district that is experiencing growth on an annual basis or during your the reassessment every four or five years your assessed value is going to be going to uh be higher so you'll you'll have more eight percent debt limit as eight percent debt is retired or paid off you you recapture that amount and then if new debt is issued it's going to count against your eight percent debt limit so when um in the next couple of slides I think Jay is going to talk to you all about the amount of debt you have outstanding and what the opportunities are but I just wanted to um sort of make sure that we're we're clear on eight percent on on obligation debt and uh how Debt Service millage fits into that it was I

010think last year that the school board voted to have a Target Debt Service Village of 69.5 Mills it is that that amount of millage can go up or down it's based on decisions made by this board but the uh 6.9 Mills I think Jay's going to show you will give y'all some flexibility and some options going forward to meet your Capital debt needs that's just a real brief brief introduction I'm going to turn it over to Jay and but I'm not stand here because I am the the clicker person here we go perfect thanks Franny and again I apologize for being virtual so if you all have a question for me in the midst of this please don't hesitate to ask uh Franny's given sort of a brief overview of the details of how uh

011school districts in the state of South Carolina issued debt we're going to talk a little bit more about the district's actual debt that's outstanding as we sit here today so as you can see on this table the district has five finance things outstanding uh that total about 145 million dollars of outstanding par amount of that amount about 24.1 million is subject or excuse me 22.8 million is subject to the 8 debt limit and that's really the 2022 bonds that some of you will recall we issued last year to finance a portion of the Irma high school project so we actually issued that on a long-term basis with a final maturity in 2031 but we paid down 24 million of that in in this year as of March 1 of 2023 we actually paid down 24.1

012million of that principle and what that has done is it's allowed us to regenerate that eight percent that capacity so as we sit here today uh Freeney mentioned your eight percent capacity in total is about 47 million dollars of that we've issued about 22 million dollars so you have about 24 million dollars of eight percent capacity um and uh we are proposing that in May of this year the district would actually issue that full amount of 24.1 million to max out your 8 debt capacity as you see here in the lower bullet and that will be for the 15 million dollars of annual maintenance projects that you all undertake each year as well as an additional 9.1 million dollar for Irma High School uh for those of you that were on the board previously you'll

013recall we had planned to finance the Irma high school project over a three-year period really given your eight percent debt limitation so this will be the second of three financings to fund the Irmo High School project that's being undertaken now uh Franny if you skip to page five this just pictorially shows what your annual Debt Service is as of today but also layers in the proposed issuance of the series 2023 bonds so if I can just uh the gray bars that are shown here is your outstanding referendum approved Debt Service uh the red bar is the 2022 financing that I just mentioned that's outstanding and then sorry I was having a bit of a technical difficulty so I apologize for that the red bar is the 2022 Geo financing and the yellow bar is the

014proposed 20 20 24 million that we're going to issue this year in 2023. you can see we're proposing to pay that off in one year all of it's going to be paid off in March of 2024 and you might ask you know why is the yellow bar extending beyond your debt service millage Target and that's because we plan to use 5 million we're sinking fund Monies to actually help pay down that in March of 2024. so this is what your debt service will look like after the proposed issuance of your 2023 bonds and and while this is important as we move forward you'll see there is significant amount of capacity underneath your 69 and a half mil millage Levy to add on referendum that in the future if you so choose to do so so

015it's very important to show this graph because it really does provide you some flexibility to take on additional debt in the future without having to raise your millage rate raising your military will generate additional capacity but you even have capacity within your current millage rate if you want to slip to the next slide Frankie okay so uh that was sort of a pictorial snapshot of where your existing debt is and a brief explanation of your proposed 2023 bonds that will ask you to consider it a subsequent board meeting when we look at issuing those bonds we really look at two different ways to issue those bonds uh one is through a standalone public offering or direct placement bank loan so that's when the school district is actually the issuer of the bonds and that gives

016you complete flexibility as to when you can issue those bonds because you have to do that at your own discretion and the key part here is those bonds can also have a final maturity longer than one year so anytime you're going to issue bonds with a maturity longer than one year you're really going to do it on a standalone basis with the district being the issuer the other option we consider each year is actually issuing through scago which is a pooled program that allows you to create some economies of scale by combining issuances with other school districts in the state of South Carolina the one caveat with the skago program is they only issue bonds with a one-year maturity that actually mature each March 1st so if you have a longer term bond program for

017instance with your referendum debt with a longer payback the skago program is not really an option um some other elements of the scago program the bond proceeds and The Debt Service for each district are held by your local County Treasurer so there's no difference between that and your Standalone Bond program and there's no what we call cross default so if another District that was involved in the program did not Levy enough millage to cover their Debt Service all of the other issuers are not responsible for that debt service so that's the key feature you don't want to have any risk exposure to any other districts in the state of South Carolina as I mentioned before it also allows you to pull with other borrowers to create economies of scale in terms of the issuance costs

018which can be a benefit to you all and again I mentioned this before there's two issuances a year and both of those here on March one of the following year so you don't have complete flexibility in terms of timing you go through the scago program um I will mention here that if there's more details warranted on the scago program I think uh Franny has a complete presentation she can walk through at your discretion as part of this meeting uh we'd also thought it was very important to point out the timing associated with the proposed 2023 bond issue that we just talked about again the 24 million dollars that will fund your annual maintenance and a portion of the ormo project so the thought here was on March the 27th we would bring the bond resolution

019to you all as a discussion item so you can have any questions that you would like addressed on April the 24th we'd bring it back as an action item for your consideration and then we'd be in a position to have the bond sale and lock the interest rates in May and really this time frame Works whether you do a standalone financing or through the scago program so we still need to determine based on feedback from you all which one is the desired path because the timing we've laid out really works for either of the programs now Franny I'll turn it back over to you I think we're going to transition now from talking about your eight percent debt to Future referendum bonds and sort of how that might work in some scenarios as we are

020in the very early stages of discussions with that this is all preliminary but thought it would be helpful to you all to understand the process you would go through if a referendum was able to be considered so we are covering a lot of material for y'all and with y'all this afternoon and so um there'll be plenty of time for questions afterwards and both Jay and I'll be we'll be happy to answer uh any any questions that you might have so moving from your annual eight percent uh Bond program to the potential for referendum bonds uh we look at referendum bonds because you need more Capital money than your eight percent will provide you the critical decisions to be made by you the Board of Trustees you first really need to identify your Capital needs sometimes

021I've seen school boards start with how much will we how much can we afford or how much will our taxpayers let us borrow but I think that the best starting point is actually to identify what your needs are and let your needs Drive the requests that you make in the referendum the as part of the process of Jay your financial advisor would work with you on what millage levels might look like if you borrowed 200 million dollars let's say right now here in in this school district you've got a 69.5 millage Target and you've seen from the chart earlier on the graph earlier on that you'll actually have a good bit of room under your current Target millage to pay for referendum debt your needs may be such that the millage needs to be a

022little bit higher so again that would be a decision that y'all would make maybe 69 and a half mils doesn't provide everything you need but maybe 75 mils would so again decision for y'all the um the amount of bondage to be authorized obviously for y'all the list of projects what's going to be paid for from the referendum Bond proceeds those are all decisions that the school board makes y'all also make decisions and have the flexibility to have a referendum as a special election we have had success lately in the last several years for Bond referenda on true general election days that would mean November even numbered years um if but you are not limited to um to that date in order for your referendum you could have a special election in the spring you could

023have one in the fall um again y'all's decisions the um we generally recommend that you have the referendum when school is in session because your school families your school stakeholders are your best um best Advocates they are the most important single uh factor in the success of a referendum so you want to be able to to have your referendum plans go forward while folks are still in school so that gives you like a May or September October or anytime during the winter the um the steps that you would take to actually order a bond referendum would be adopting a resolution in that resolution you would have the amount you would have the form of the question and the former the question is where the projects are identified and listed the um and U.S you would

024set the the day day and time for the referendum we them would work with your local election commissions to have notices published and to have the um election commissions run the referendum for y'all we would do other notices that are required by law then you would um you know just the the referendums held hopefully it's successful you you identify you certify the results and you're um you're in business to um go forward with your um your your Capital program is approved by the vote so yes sir yes sir absolutely I'm kind of a loud person my wife tells me so I'm I'm a toss that one over to Jay because he does your numbers I do your I do your written work your legal work Jay does your numbers but the answer is yes the

025the so they don't fluctuate with the feds rates sir that they don't fluctuate the blood over there is a fixed rate and we just determine the amount of time if we do a standalone correct yes sir say that the um the suggestion for this year is that you do a one-year bond that you have between the millage that that has been the target millage and the excess that's in your sinking fund or Debt Service balance um y'all can borrow the 24 million and repay it by by March of next year and and we're making that recommendation um because the 15 million is needed for your annual and again deferring to y'all because y'all actually made the decisions but the recommendation is 15 million for your annual needs and the balance for the second installment at

026Irma and the idea of borrowing it and paying it within one year is you recapture that eight percent so you can do it again and you pay the lowest possible interest costs because the bonds are only outstanding for a short period of time yes sir so that means you're basically recommending the skago bonds please you'll have the lower cost of issuance and you'll have the benefit of a publicly traded interest rate but that's absolutely a decision for the board to make either way y'all will be in good shape whether you go Standalone or through schedule did you want to say something about the interest rates yeah I don't I don't know if the question was like what level of interest rates there were but in terms of the interest rates those are locked on the

027day that we actually borrow the functions so um once they're borrowed if it's a 10-year financing those bonds are generally locked for the 10-year period so yeah if there was a specific question about interest rates I didn't catch that but I can address that I think the question was are the interest rates fixed and I think you just answered it yes no they're they're definitely fixed so on the date of issuance uh they're locked in and they're locked in for the term of the bonds whether their interest rates rise or fall after that there's no risk to the district and this next Miss Heiser right here real quick while we were talking about the process of a referendum and when you would schedule that you mentioned that we could do a special election for a

028referendum but you would recommend uh holding it on the even years with the special election is there additional cost to the district for that do you know yeah and the school district would be responsible the school district will be responsible for the the cost of opening the polling places organizing or or having the ballots put into the election into the machine so yes the school district itself would pay the cost of a special election do you know what that generally ranges yeah um young or I I would I'd prefer to get back to you with that but but I would say conservatively you're probably looking at twenty five thousand dollars it could be more than that uh because but y'all are a relatively small geographic area so it might not need to be much more

029than than that but I'd be glad to check with the election commissions okay if we if we held it during a general election is there a cost to the district for that or is that just hand okay I will say that I was remind people that if you want to have the um the referendum on a general election day and that's either even year or an odd year so like this coming November of of 23 the ballot question has to be delivered to your Election Commission by noon on August the 15th because it's a general election the state election commission has so many different ballots that they have to manage that that August the 15th deadline is Statewide and it is a hard deadline real quick massage you said earlier in your presentation that you

030see more success with referendums during November even your elections it I guess is there is there a Wi-Fi is there a why yeah the um I think that the in special elections meaning not on a general election day if you have a organized group that opposes the referendum they seem to have more energy and are more willing to come out to vote no then your supporters who are supportive but they just don't seem to be quite as motivated to get out there and win the day for the school district for a general election you actually already have your pool of Voters coming to the election the polling place so you don't need to drive or or have a committee work to drive the voters to the polling places and and we've had um and I'd

031be happy to to provide Dr Ross with some numbers but um most school districts that go on Election nights have been successful Dr Ross what's our time our preferred timeline on on this and does it fit the general election schedule or yeah think of uh kind of going back to miss uh Hauser said we refer to you as Franny if you don't mind well not to be informal but uh we have taken the opportunity of doing the five-year which would put the needs first in our question and by doing that I think we would miss any opportunity to make that hard deadline on August 15th I think looking at 75 days to prepare the resolution we would be rushing that so I think the recommendation from the administration to the board would be to look

032at the 2024 November and then we would then take our time to look at what these priorities are in our five-year master plan and I think that way at that point we would be able to fully capture all of those needs that are there and and we have until uh November 15th or whenever that we've elected or the board has voted because at that point we cannot use District resources to advocate for it correct that that is correct the um the state ethics act provides that no public resources can be used to advocate for or against a referendum the state ethics commission has an opinion that says until the vote has been taken to hold a referendum the do's and don'ts do not kick in because there is no referendum until you vote for it

033so so you've you've got Flex more flexibility now to educate your public about your needs and and do it with a very positive twist then you will have when we are strictly just the facts just the facts so so there are good reasons to um to not vote to have your referendum until you know what your needs are and you in fact are ready to go and that that would give us a whole year that we can use our resources to share this with the public and then when the board votes that's when we go radio silence so to speak [Music] because the numbers here may not meet all your needs but I think it's a really good piece of information that that what you can access with no additional millage on your taxpayers Jay

034yeah thanks Franny and again I want to emphasize here and I'll say over and over again these are very preliminary numbers so and we're using very conservative assumptions so I don't want to lock these in in your brain right now I just want to give you an idea of where ranges are in terms of how much money you might be able to afford under different scenarios that we've talked about as Dr Ross just mentioned fall 2024 might be the uh time that you're looking at but we've also looked at scenarios for fall 2023 and this initial graph here shows if a referendum was done in Fall of 2023 and you had no Debt Service millage increase so you kept your debt service millage at 69 and a half Mills we estimate you could afford about

035a hundred and eighty million dollars worth of referendum debt and that debt would be issued in 2024 2025 and 2026 in equal installments of 60 million um so again this is very preliminary but that gives you a range of where you're looking at in terms of no tax increase with a referendum and fall of 2023. Mr Glover can I ask you a question can you hear me was it if that was a question could somebody else repeat it please can okay my question is is there a way for us to get this chart updated if we were to ask for a 24 referendum with no tax increase yeah so I think the question was no tax increase in 2024 that'll be actually the next slide after this one so we actually have three uh we

036have four different scenarios we're showing if if Franny can switch to page nine this actually again shows us all 2023 referendum with a 10 mil increase in debt service so that would mean moving from 69.5 mils to 79.5 mils which is about a sixty dollar increase per year for a homeowner within the district and as you can see here that bumps Up Your Capacity to about 280 million dollars or two installments of 90 million with one uh installment of 100 million again being issued in 2024 2025 and 2026. uh so those are your 2023 scenarios if you flip to the next slide we actually look at the 2024 referendum date with no tax increase and by actually shifting it out a year you can actually generate a little bit more funding while still keeping the

037same final maturity of 2039 and that seems a little bit odd but the reason is your pinch point so to speak is in those first couple of years where you don't have capacity to pay interest at your current millage rate so by pushing The Debt Service out to 2025 2026 and 2027 you can actually get 194 million dollars so deferring it out a year actually increases your capacity somewhat uh in terms of a no tax increase scenario and then the final one that we looked at would be the same 2024 referendum with the same 10 mil increase and that gets you a little bit more 282 million dollars in terms of your borrow again in 2025 2026 and 2027. again I'll re-emphasize here we're using very conservative assumptions in terms of your assessed value growth

038and we're not assuming any type of reassessments along the way so in reality I think your capacity would be slightly higher than what we're showing here but again these are just for preliminary purposes for illustration purposes so you get a sense of what the capacity might be I will finalize by saying we have a very sophisticated kind of excel model that models all of these that we maintain and can update based on different scenarios and we'll do so as you all work through this process of determining what your needs are to see how we can best Finance this but this gives you a sense of kind of where we would be on Broad terms in terms of capacity for these referendums and those are really the only that's the final slide that we have but

039would obviously address any questions you all might have Mr Saturday I have a question this might be for Dr Ross as well um we're going through a process right now with our stadium and because of inflation we've had to make some modifications do you all give any advice or are there any calculations used or I mean let's say that you we decide we needed 200 million in bonds and let's say that all of a sudden everything improves gets cheaper and we doubt that's going to happen but um our our adjustment can adjustments be made uh to lessen your requirements with regards to bonds or once you commit you're committed the successful referendum authorizes the school district to borrow up to a certain amount right it does not require you to borrow all that is approved

040I've had one school district one time that did not borrow all that they they had approved in a referendum it was not because of construction cost it was because they did not buy a piece of property that that would have would have so that expenditure was unnecessary um one of the reasons to take your time to for the school district to be very methodical in preparing for the referendum is to get good numbers it is possible that between now and in the fall of 24 things will go up and go down and might level off and and building in early 25 might be better than building in early 24 we we don't know Jay and I helped you on the borrowing side we're not really don't have too much advice on the on the spending

041side except that there's almost nothing worse than having people expect a product approve it in a referendum and you'll not be able to deliver it because of of increased cost so the the um another as I say another reason to be very methodical in how you go about preparing for your referendum and I'll just add to that I think in our five-year Master facilities plan we're hiring we're going to propose a a e team that will get us to schematic design and schematic design brings in a third-party estimator which will get us better to those realities than I think just kind of looking at square footage so that's that is a good point because of the fluctuation you see there in the market um can you walk us through the process in terms of what

042does it look like if we approve what the referendum gets approved we have our plan we have our set amount 200 million or whatever it is um how does that look from a processing standpoint do do we we issue all of the full amount of the bonds all at once I assume that the bank disperses that money into a fund and then we allocate it as needed as we go through the projects I'm trying to figure out how when do we begin incurring interest on each project or is it all at once up front and then generally the answer to that is no particularly with a large building program of of this size 180 200 million I think all the scenarios that are in your in this presentation involve I think two or three separate

043borrowings the one fall 2024 that's still on the um talks about two installments of 90 million and one in a third installment of 102 million so you borrow the money um as as you need it for the first 12 months the second 18 months and then you finalize the borrowing under state law the proceeds of General obligation debt go to your County Treasurer in this case it's the Lexington County Treasurer to be the custodian you would work with the the treasurer probably to have the money invested in the state treasurers local government pool called el chip so it would be earning interest before you spend it and before and and then the um the school district would use its normal um procedures to um uh to request reimbursement from the bond funds held by the

044County Treasurer Mr Hogan did you have a question yeah massage you'd mentioned earlier that uh Arts our Target Mill Raider said at 69.5 how often do you see districts fluctuating their millage rate or is it something that's just is it taboo to even talk about no sir nothing taboo about talking about millage it's a fact of life um I will tell you that since 2006 since act 388 almost every school district in the state issues at least a small Geo Bond every year because with act 388 and the limitations on millage increases on your operations side and the fact that homeowners don't pay operations so so that's the the more stressed part of your budget beginning in 07 school districts took Capital out of their operating fund before then you might have had uh you

045know your annual Capital things you do in the summer your Capital maintenance I could have been in your operations budget so with the Advent of annual um borrowings most school districts try to keep their millage stable we call it millage stabilization and the um there's some movement right now in the legal World about who actually sets your millage but we know a couple of things the auditor will not set millage for debt that has not been issued and historically y'all have had a very good relationship with your Auditors and they have tended to to Levy the amount of millage I'll have requested but again you request what is needed for debt that's already been issued second question of God and I'm looking at the page nine in yours so it's the actually now let's look

046at sorry what's a good 11. follow 24 no tax increase obviously that line going across is our millage rate without any increases for us to get 194 million red bars are General obligation bonds that is is that the 15 million we're using for deferred maintenance Jay did you hear the question I I think I think I heard the question if I can explain this a little bit more the gray Mars are your existing uh referendum approved Geo bonds from previous correct the yellow bars for the series of three finance things to fund the Irma high school project the red bars are your 15 million of annual maintenance and then the blue bars or the proposed 194 million in this case of of a new referendum debt okay so I guess and appreciate the clarity on

047I guess my question leading into that is that in the event this is put on the table in any event it's passed would this put the district in a situation to where in order to utilize eight percent money in the future they would have to raise millage in order to afford to no sir I don't think so I think that 15 million dollars is used as a placeholder well yeah I'm not referring to that I'm referring to utilizing eight percent money for a project or another person you've got the projects that will be built into this referendum and if that was something outside of the referendum that wanted to be put into place the only method to do that would be eight percent or another referendum correct and based on this graph it would put

048it where a millage would have to be increased in order okay yes sir yeah thanks for the clarity any other questions all right did y'all have any questions about scagot I think it's probably good to go over it we have since we have four new board members yeah sure so Faygo was established as a non-profit in 2002 through largely the activities of school business officials and school superintendents or the association of school administrators in 2002 2013 that we were in a recession and bad Economic Times school districts found the state withholding State funds just willy-nilly if the state doesn't have the money they don't send it and so a number of school districts were in need of a tax anticipation note y'all may have had one early on you have not needed a tan in

049in many years a tan is a short-term borrowing that helps your cash flow it gives you cash in in the in the late summer and early fall when you're starting school up and then the note is repaid in April after your taxes come in you know real property taxes are billed in the fall and they start to come in in December January and February so that July August September you might not have funds coming in and so that's what a tax anticipation note is used for and that was the first program that skago offered this year by this time there are very few school districts that still need tax anticipation notes but if and we hope this is not going to happen but if there's another 0809 we may see school districts needing Tans again

050but the the bigger program for skago has become the general obligation Bond program the in that program as we said earlier each just each district issues its own debt skago bundles those debts up they get a credit rating and they publicly sell that debt uh to the marketplace so in y'all's instance 24 million instead of being a standalone you would be part of like a 200 million dollar bond issue so you get the advantage of uh prorated ratings fees you'd probably get you'd get the advantage of the lowest interest rate available at that time on the on that day the um all the um issues twice a year once in the spring once in the fall but all the debt matures on March the first so again going back to act 388 when every school

051district in the state or almost everyone started issuing small Geo bonds the skago debt program became very valuable to them because we've had we've had issuers in for as little as 500 000 and we've had as much as 25 million so the large and the small school districts can benefit the other benefit that um skagojet program offers isn't relevant to y'all but to other school districts a number of other districts issued what we call installment purchase revenue bonds that was like the Greenville plan that was it was a sort of a lease purchase type arrangement to um for school districts to not have to have a referendum it was a go around your eight percent debt limit well at 388 ended that program in 2006 but provided that any debt issued under any debts issued

052before December 31 of 2006 between August and and December that year they have to use General obligation bonds to make their payments so the legislature is requiring Newberry for example Lexington one trying to think who around here the Lancaster school districts are about 20 school districts that had installment purchase revenue bonds they have to borrow money twice a year in order to make those payments so that's another reason why this annual program for skago has really become very popular very cost of cost effective so long as it's a one-year debt and you can um pay everything off on March the 1st the skego board of directors all work in the area of Public Finance they are all CFOs retired CFOs or School superintendents and they volunteer you know for the the betterment of of the

053public school districts in South Carolina I think we've got page seven is the map it'll show you how many school districts have participated and so if y'all decide to do this again you would be in the program y'all were in the school district has been in the program for most of the last 10 years you it didn't meet your needs last year because last year your eight percent borrowing was a three-year borrowing and so the scago program wouldn't have been helpful to you but prior to that your CFO was comfortable with skego and that's how the school district borrowed his annual money so this would be sort of Back to the Future if you will quick question and this goes back to Mr Hogan's question which was a good one um if we borrow that

054money from skego then we wouldn't necessarily have to increase the millage because it's a one-year Bond it would mature in a year and we'd free that we'd pay that back and have that available correct and technically you borrow money through gram you don't actually borrow it from scago um Merrill Lynch or JP Morgan will end up being the holder holder of the debt and the recommendation for y'all is to authorize the 24 point something million to borrow it in this spring and pay it off next march and there'll probably be a similar recommendation next year because in March you would in the in the fall if you're then thinking about a referendum in the November of 24 you're first borrowing for the referendum would come in 25. so you've got this year and next year

055for your one year bonds any more questions Again full disclosure I am counseled both skago and the school district there's no conflict um if your interests are met by scago be in skago is there any concerns we'll just stand alone what we could do um we could we could send you resolutions that would go either way y'all could make the the choice and we could send you a proposed cost of issuance so that you would see what the savings would be one way or the other for discussion I guess on the 27th I will be virtual with y'all on the 27th but um would be happy to answer any questions and I think I can be here on the 24th of April the the model that he Mr Glover referred to earlier do we have

056access to that Miss Paul do you have the Excel spreadsheet the projection model yes if not okay okay great thank you thank you Miss Paul is there anything else I don't think so um thank you for any thank you Jay I appreciate y'all's time again today I think we um you know really tried to do a broad overview especially for the new members to make sure that we covered everything in regards to eight percent and bond referendum so hopefully y'all found this helpful um and again Franny will be uh virtual with us on March 27th and so March 27th we will have that first version of the bond resolution for um the May issuance and we will also have our listing of capital projects for that 15 million so again those will just be on

057discussion on March 27th and then hopefully for approval at the April 24th meeting but um those will go hand in hand thank you okay okay thank you Miss Heiser thank you Mr Glover all right if you have Mr Hogan I'd like to make the mission we adjourn all right do I have a second second all right so um Mr Hogan's made a motion to adjourn um any discussion on that all right I'll call the question all in favor all right that passes unanimously we will adjourn and we will call the meeting back to order to go into executive session at 5 30. all right I've been practicing for two years I've been practicing on a journey meetings y'all and I finally I finally had the opportunity that was good I'm glad we did that lost

058it two times some good questions foreign thank you I would like to call to order our March 13th 2023 board meeting at 5 30. do I have a motion to approve the agenda Mr Hogan I can make the motion that we approve the agenda do I have a second Miss huddle all right any discussion about the agenda I mean yeah the agenda all right I'll call the question all in favor and that motion carries seven to zero and do I have a motion to enter executive session yeah I'd make a motion in her executive session to consider the following May is Select employment items exhibit a for Action B selected employment items exhibit B information only C contractual matter regarding social emotional learning SEL should an Exhibit C D legal advice regarding talent Chapin feasibility

059study Shannon exhibit d e contractual matter regarding the RFQ for the five-year Master facility study should an exhibit e F legal advice regarding construction defects at Chapin High School and G legal advice regarding contractual matter do I have a second Miss Miss huddle okay Miss huddle um do I do I have any discussion about the atoms on Executive session all right I will call the question all in favor seven to zero that motion carries and I will adjourn for executive session all right I would like to call to order our regular regularly scheduled meeting for March 13 2023 and I would like to welcome everyone we have a pretty big crowd here today I do want to thank Mr Hogan for running the meeting at our previous meeting he did a fantastic job while I

060was out um my family welcomed a little boy two weeks ago so I was unable to make it I appreciate Mr Hogan's help with that um and with that I would like to turn it over to miss huddle for the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance thank you let us pray dear Lord thank you for this day and for all your blessings thank you for the challenge and the joy of educating children thank you for all the many people in our community who have come together to educate our children including our parents grandparents teachers staff administrators Volunteers in our entire community please be with us as we work together to make decisions that positively impact our students and those who support them amen please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance all right and and I want

061to turn it over to Dr Ross for the school board spotlight good evening Madam chair members of the board we are excited for this week's School Board Spotlight I'll now turn the mic over to our executive director for communications Mr Amanda Taylor yes great very good okay I'll start over last week we celebrated National School social workers week and as you know this group is invaluable in helping students achieve success at school some of the things that they do are very big and visible like if we have a fire or a natural disaster they're right in there helping those families but other just as important things they do are helping students on an individual basis if they're having behavioral challenges or other needs that help them become successful in school and have personal success as

062well so whether big or small visible or behind the scenes we celebrate them all and couldn't do it without them and we are happy to welcome our school social workers here tonight for recognition School social workers come on up laughs foreign okay and you may have noticed we have a very tall group in the audience as well this is the Irmo High School boys basketball team and week before last they won the 4A boys state championship they completed a 26-5 season ending up with nine consecutive wins so it was a great season even leading up to the playoffs and as you know the team is led by coach Tim Whipple and this Championship season was his 11th state championship appearance and his sixth titles so we are thrilled to welcome this team tonight for recognition

063gentlemen players good again we're gonna take two on three one two three one more one two three I now feel incredibly short [Laughter] all right thank you for that and congratulations and good job everyone this moves us to item number 11 on our agenda the superintendent's report Dr Ross thank you madam chair members of the board in our community uh to our executive staff uh thank you I'd just like the as a transition and recognition of the Irmo High School basketball team for their 4A state championship if you know anything about Irmo Tim Whipple is a name that lives long in that community and we've talked about a lot of the changes in in Irmo and and how those changes could affect certain measurements and outcomes but if you think about it as was read

064he has 11 state championship appearances with his first state championship I think it's the 1990-91 team and what Irma was in in 1990 91 and winning it in 22-23 and what Irma is today and how do you get Excellence over 40 or over 40 years and sitting down with Coach who's very modest uh humble humble man it was interesting he says my standards have never changed over that time right where the coaching BJ Mackey or Justin Mackey his son but he says it's my job to figure out how to make each child successful and I think it's not the X's and O's it's what you see right out there in that hallway it's a it's a mentor of young men and I think that's a a great lesson we have right here in our community

065as someone who can find a child at their level and move them to his ex to their expectations and I think that's what we celebrate today not just on the basketball court but in life so um we are so blessed and honored to to have the leadership of Tim Whipple and that brings us into why we exist our our vision our mission our outcome is to do exactly what we see from those social workers uh from from our coaches our staff and our teachers as to love and grow our students each and every day and we focus on academic social and emotional growth in order to get those educational outcomes in a safe secure diverse and Equitable learning environment that we have a strategic plan that looks at getting those two outcomes of love and

066grow that every student feels loved in our schools and every student has demonstrated academic growth outcomes and we measure these through full performance goals of school climate teacher and administrative quality student achievement and gifted and talents and strategies and that our job is to stay focused on academic growth and development on that growth and development so we measure it and those measurements are through the Proviso of our formative assessments or to the map tests that we do in the fall in the winter looking at those growths of the students who are off Target and if we were to take the SC ready on the time of the assessment and those who are on level and we're working each and every day to meet those challenges so that we can get all of our students on

067grade level we also track our graduation rate and our goal our strategic plan goal is 90.28 I think if Ms Waters attracts us each and every week with our secondary teams we look we know that there are certain students that are not on diploma tracks I think you know the best we could get this year would be 90.3 percent so we're tracking to get 100 percent of every eligible student to graduate on time within four years and so we we use this we'll have a new model at our next meeting that looks at Daily grades so give us a more accurate picture of our of our graduation report we are also gearing up for the wind tests this is the career assessment as we look to make sure that not only our students graduate on

068time but are they prepared for the realities of what happens after graduation are they ready for the marketplace are they college or career ready right now we have at our last assessment in January 543 students who are neither College and Career ready we're working each and every day to make sure that they're prepared when we do the administration you'll see a decrease in this number so we're going to track this as our school board to ensure that we're meeting the Strategic plan goals that we're focused on the growth and development of every student and so at this time Madam chair members of the board and the community I'd like to turn it over to our chief of academics Administration Miss Anna Miller for her academic report foreign thank you so much um Dr Ross good

069evening Madam chair board members and Dr Ross we're excited to be here tonight to give you a brief history an overview of our magnet programs to talk just a little bit about our application process as we just completed that for next year's magnet choices and we'll also touch on our funding and future possibilities there is no one better to tell you all about this than our wonderful director of magnet programs Miss Sarah Wheeler okay and I just go to the right and you just go to the right thank you you're welcome thank you so much Madam chairperson honorable board Dr Ross it is a pleasure to be here and talk about my passion which is magnet schools so again I will start after my introduction I just want you all to focus on this picture

070because it's the epitome of what we do we love and grow our children and these are all our own students and they were actually with parent permission on billboards during our magnet season so it's your choice your voice and we love this picture I know some of you are new on the board and I want to just give you a brief review and update about our programs actually magnet schools have become part of our culture over the last several years we now have 15 different programs at 11 School sites we have whole school models and we have programs within a school model we have seven certified magnet schools which is a national process we have a merit award-winning magnet schools we have student poster contest winners on the national level and we've had a magnet

071scholarship winner last year from Dutch Fork High School our Elementary magnet schools and programs are Dutch Fork Elementary Academy of Environmental Sciences they all have long names Harbison West element escolaris Academy magnet program within a school that's an example of that model he Corley leadership and Montessori magnet Lee part Elementary steam magnet Nursery roads Arts Magnet Seven Oaks Elementary media magnet and as you can see these are three that were recently recognized this past year and they will be recognized again at the magnet schools of America National Conference in April and then we hope to have them come here so you can recognize them our Middle School magnets Irmo Middle International academic magnet with the I am escolaris Academy located there our high school programs Dutch Fork High School stem program again that is a

072school within a school Irmo High School International School for the Arts this is escolaris is located there and I will talk about that pathway in one moment the international Baccalaureate IB diploma and career related programs and Spring Hill High School career Pathways magnet just to give you a little review that actually magnets started in 2005 here in District Five and that was with the stem magnets program at Dutch Fork High School that same year Irmo High School became a world Certified International Baccalaureate diploma program then in 2008 the escolarus academy started at Harbison West Elementary and then in 2008 as well the leap or STEM Magnet was at Lee Park Elementary School to 2012 he Corley Leader in Me magnet was established and these programs were all district initiated magnet programs the expansion of magnet

073programs came with our first funding that we got which was 10.7 million and with that magnet funding source we were able to put in five programs which was the project was Project access and that's when we put in Seven Oaks media magnet Irmo International academic Middle School magnet Irmo International Magnet School of the Arts Dutch Fork Elementary environmental Sciences magnet and Spring Hill then we put the we grew I am escolaris because we wanted to provide a pathway for our families for a gifted track so those students that went to Harbison West in The escolarus Academy parents were eager to see if we could continue that magnet so we phased in I am escolaris at Irmo Middle School because the I am is international academic magnet and we did that in 2018 then we finally

074completed that pathway in 2021 with this is escolaris at Irmo High School International School for the Arts so you can see we have the escolars pathway students apply they have the option of being identified and selected to attend grades two through five at Harbison West then they move into the sixth grade I am escolars six through eight this is escolaris 910 at Irmo High School which feeds into the IB diploma program and the IB careers related program and then we all have a wonderful celebration at graduation our application and selection process that we hold every year we have an online application for choice and magnets so it's one application you must provide necessary information for certain criteria-based programs stem for instance at Dutch Fork High School has certain criteria to be eligible to be selected

075for that program and escolaris also has prerequisites and criteria for identification then we have our choice of magnet programs that use a random lottery for selection and that is most of our programs the criteria-based magnets are an exception and selection is based on qualification all notifications come through the magnet office and what we did to help our community a few years ago is magnet used to be that you were accepted and you could remain to that highest grade without having to reapply each year but at that time we also had schools open to choice and you would have to reapply each year so we changed that to make it easier on our community that once you are accepted at a school open to choice you can remain there until that highest grade of that school

076a quick magnet review of our most recent uh magnet season which closed at the end of January then we got all of our lists together and in February sent those rosters to the schools and now we're in the process of getting everyone registered we had total applications 1092. First Choice 801 applicants got their first choice 31 their second choice 89 declined their placement and there's 93 remaining in the applicant pool this slide was done just a few weeks back and as each day goes we don't have that many in the applicant pool anymore so as space becomes available we continuously move students into open slots so that just lets you know that the process for the most part most students get their first choice this is an interesting fact I think you all would like

077to see the impact of spring Spring Hill High School because it is a non-zone school and we have applicants come in and it's a random Lottery and you can see for the for the most part Chapin High School 132 students attend Spring Hill from the Dutch Fork High School Zone 104 and from the Irmo High School Zone 103 and that includes 9th and 10th grade placement so I think it's an interesting fact that you see it's pretty well balanced most coming from Chapin than Dutch Fort then Irmo this is a quick review I mentioned before that we were able to put in and expand our magnets through a federal funding of magnet schools assistance program the 2013 project access was 10.3 million for three years and then in 2017 we put in the four programs

078that we refer to as our Discover five magnet schools and that was with 13.7 million for five years the grant changed over that time period from being a three-year Grant they realized a lot of change could not take place within three years so they extended it to five years magnet school next steps we do have another 2023 opportunity that we're excited about and one would be with Seven Oaks Elementary and it says significant revision and if you remember up there they put were put in place in the 2019 magnet project access but as a media magnet back in 2013 things have changed dramatically in the past 10 years at the time we didn't have one-to-one for instance with devices now everyone does so a lot of the unique features that they offered back in 2013

079really no longer exist and it's not as much of a draw anymore plus and I know I believe our principal is even here tonight his demographics have changed they've got a very very International population which is quite exciting and even if you go there now they have the different countries and they change them out each year where kids go to school there and it's always changing so with that in mind we were going to write to significantly revise it and make it a global international elementary school to feed into Irmo Middle that again is international academic magnet magnet and then into the international Baccalaureate program at Irmo High School giving a good feeder pattern for Global International Studies and when the slides were made we were still in discussion but we're very excited because it

080seems as if Harbison West is going to be a really good candidate also to write for federal funding and it's a very exciting you know escolaris Academy is fair that serves an academically gifted track from grades two through five the model we're looking at for Harbison West is called the GT model but the gifted context there is that all kids have gifts and talents and the premise of the whole school model in philosophy is you identify those talents and grow those children whether it be athletic it could be music it could be leadership it could be academic so that gives them their identity it gives choice and voice to the community to the students it lets them grow their own strengths and we help them be successful and good friends of mine that are in

081Wake County North Carolina said those were the backbones of all of their original magnet programs because all children have gifts and talents and parents love that and it gives kids a great opportunity so we're excited about that opportunity coming forward and going back here to give you an example of some of the activities our students are constantly involved with and we love and grow our students any questions do we have any questions Miss huddle um I was curious what advantages the the IB Program may have for kids enter in college or other applications the IB program is very well known internationally as well as nationally and students go that go there it educates the whole child and it also educates teaches teaches them how to study they have a course called theory of knowledge which

082is how do you study to study they look at themselves amidst the whole Global society and actually they don't take their IB diploma test until after they graduate but they if they're candidates and they apply um to go to whatever school they get points at a lot of colleges just for being IB candidates and that is a great question and what I would love to do is get some information and bring back of the actual statistics of the number of students that are IB candidate students when they graduate high school and the schools that they do get accepted to and one other thing is we are the only School in Lexington five that offers IB and usually it's very competitive so it's a real Jewel and that's my goal is to educate everybody about that

083Mr Satterfield yeah I had just a couple uh piggybacking on that with the IB are our numbers staying pretty consistent I mean I know that they're they've fluctuated over the years when they first started it there was a lot of folks involved with IB I mean how many students are in do you know how many students are in IB now I'm not exactly sure of the exact number I can get it but what I can tell you is that you're right it has fluctuated over the last several years one of the issues there is the program begins in the 11th grade so when it's easier when I say capture students at a ninth grade because a lot of times once they're at a particular school they don't want to switch and that's where we worked

084very hard and we came up with our pathway so that we can capture students that are coming through a pathway and get them in the ninth grade at Irmo High School and so and then the career related program is another new one so from within we've already built that program to 40-something students and our this is escolaris has a lot of interest this year so that's the foundation so we hope to get our numbers back to what they were you are right do you think location has anything to do with that I mean are you getting a lot of kids from Dutch Fork or are you getting like you had on your uh showing the with the Spring Hill they were pretty equal as far as percentages no one of the things that we don't

085get a lot of students from outside the Zone but one thing it does do is we will have students that often might choose to leave their home school in choice to another school so it's just as important that we try to keep our home his own kids home so having this opportunity at Irmo is a is a wonderful opportunity for those students and for the families in the community that move in and we do have a lot of fam when I say a lot I could get the numbers but there's families that move in a lot of them might teach at the University and they choose to live here they're very familiar with the IB Program because again it was started overseas with diplomats is how it started so they are very familiar with that

086type of universal education that you're going to get and it's the same curricula from one state to another so a lot of times people move in and that's an attraction uh that second question I had I and I may have brought this up before and this I think we had another discussion about magnet schools earlier would we provide transportation with regards to elementary kids getting if they choose a different Magnet or is that up to the parents and I say that because originally we did not we offered um a hub situation for instance for Spring Hill where students can ride there they go to their Home Zone school then they catch a bus and they can come to Spring Hill our fed it's very expensive as you know transportation in general lots of magnet schools

087across the country districts do not provide Universal Transportation some do the federal dollars did not allow us to use it for transportation up until this last cohort so in 2017 Lex 5 along with only a very few others across the country took advantage of that so we put funding in there where we were able to buy three additional buses and we were able to include transportation for those discover five schools because you can only spend the funding for the particular schools that are identified right and our families have taken great advantage of that and I look over at Mr Wiseman has they've done a fabulous job and he can tell you that so our hope our hope will be to try to utilize a cost-effective way to be able to provide it because Equity really

088to be Equitable we should well that's what the magnet program is all about I was on the committee that visited Connecticut's magnet school and the state provides all transportation and they guarantee you Transportation within 50 mile radius of any Magna school that you wanted to go to and my last question is this might be more for Mr Ross I noticed that Spring Hill is this High School career Pathways magnet um do do we not do igps at every High School still or with the school to work is that still a thing or not yeah yeah we're still required to do igps at old schools uh when Spring Hill you may want to speak to this either one it's a career Pathways model because with it s enmity to the to the center when it was

089thought and designed and created it allowed um ninth grade students to be able to go to the center where normally it's 10th and 11 or 11th as as something to make it unique and those students have five different career academies as the Way Spring Hill is structured and most most of those kids come in and then they have a pathway to completion in that particular career so that was the premise behind that but all schools have access to the center and all schools do have you know the opportunity okay one quick thing I just wanted to say about Connecticut because I love Connecticut that's good news bad news they provide that State Transportation because they're under court order because they were sued so that's why they do that so it's it's a great thing but

090but you know that's if you're going to offer by Design and I but then they have little townships side by side exactly and so they had these little mini schools but it really worked out for them you know it it is a great thing and that's what we're trying to do and like I said we've got some funding that has helped us so hopefully we'll make it Equitable for all of our community does anyone else have any questions I have two questions um one you mentioned the grant opportunity at Harbison West the GT program and so that would be a whole school magnet program how does that impact the escolares program there does it or well it would still exist and it would still have its same selection but what would happen now because that's

091just a school within a school just like the Montessori is a school within a school with at he Corley with the leadership magnet the beauty about the gifts and talents it it would allow identification of some kids it may not be identified through that escolaris tract and it also will build on all the multiple intelligences that are out there that are not just the academic gifts and talents so it would blend and just enhance what it has to offer that's great my second question is regarding the Harvest and West Grant opportunity and the Seven Oaks Grant opportunity which I think that that is wonderful when do they usually hear back from when you apply for a grant when are the deadlines and when do you usually get an award it's quick the RFP should be

092coming out within any day maybe a week or two you have 60 days to write it so it'll be due either it the end of April maybe mid-may then you get notified the problem with the fiscal year you don't get notified until the end of September okay but you get notified whether or not you have received the Grant and then and you're planning more or less so it would start 24-25 okay the next year would be some PD some training some getting things ready and then it would be part of the next year's magnet application okay watch it anyone Mr Scully just piggy backing onto that the grant is that a fully funded Grant or is there a matching component the grant opportunity is that fully funded or is there a match required fully funded

093awesome fully funded all right thank you so much uh we're always learning a lot about our magnet programs and see Mr English here in the audience of Mr English how many nations are are represented at Seven Oaks right now 26 countries and when you you you visit Seven Oaks you go into their activity room you see all they update the flags as Miss wheeler said so so 26 countries will be represented in one building we are excited about the opportunity for uh this this grant here so great job and so as I'll conclude with as always our you know and priorities as identified it in our annual report of our top three challenges that we see in School District Five the growth and mental health issues and so to have our our social workers here

094today dealing with that on the front line we certainly appreciate it the challenges that we have to meet those grade level proficiencies and then the growth of student enrollment in Chapin schools and the growing facility needs in Irmo but each of these challenges gives us an opportunity to look at a social emotional learning program for the district to connect every student with a trusted adult for academics and maximize our world-class honors programs and that's kind of what we're talking about today with our magnet programs and also to create a five-year Master facilities plan faculty and access for all students so Madam chair members of the board that is rd5 story and that concludes the soup superintendent's report and we stand for any questions all right thank you Dr Ross that moves us to item 12

095on our agenda approval of the minutes of the February 27 2023 board meeting do I have a motion a move that we approved the minutes of the February 27th 2023 board meeting a second Mr Hogan all right uh any discussion all right I will call the question all in favor that would be six and uh Mr Scully just stepped out so that motion carries and that moves us to public participation item 13. I believe we have one one uh one speaker today and 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 limited to three minutes and must remain either on the topic noted on your sign-in form or a listed agenda item questions asked during

096public participation will be handled in accordance with board policy bedh ous Taylor thank you madam chair Beth Sly speedenbow is here to speak about concerns about the district's book challenge policies good evening my name is Beth slice biedenba and I recently retired in 2020. I was honored to teach eighth grade language arts in South Carolina history for 33 years in this District all in Chapin last fall I became aware that there was a parent challenge in this District to a picture book this deeply concerned me I wanted to see how our district would handle this so I attended the two public meetings of this committee to see what this would look like I liked the way it was handled the book was reviewed in public with a committee of teachers parents and administrators from various

097schools and grade levels the committee met twice ultimately deciding that the challenged picture book was perfectly fine and should stay in our schools the only part I did not like was the fact that the book was removed while this challenge was being reviewed in my opinion any challenge book should be left on shelves until the committee makes its decision I'm here tonight on what I consider to be a related matter I understand that recently at Chapin High School an English teacher was told to stop teaching a book one this teacher had already started teaching a book mind you that was used in the past to teach curriculum standards from what I understand a parent called to complain about the use of this book in its subject matter the book deals with racism and systemic racism

098in our country not a controversial Topic in my opinion it's called history as I said this teacher had used this book in past years so how does a book all of a sudden become controversial why would this teacher even worry about controversy having used this book before but the bigger question for you tonight is how did this book get removed from these kids hands which is Banning it as far as I'm concerned without following District policy and going through the book challenge process because obviously this book was challenged if the teacher was asked to stop teaching it it is absolutely frightening that a complaint from a parent can result in a teacher a professional with years of education and experience having to remove a book from kids hands a book that in previous years had

099been used with no issues as a retired teacher my big biggest question is this why is the professional Educators judgment in question at all we are on a slippery slope here ladies and gentlemen yes parents have the right to challenge anything that is taught to their child the parents should first be encouraged to talk to the teacher about their concerns if not satisfied the parents should then place a formal written challenge with the district I am certain when this book was taken back up after the class had already started it the classroom Dynamic would have drastically been altered and not for the better you as a board and the administrators in this room have an obligation to your teachers and their professional judgment I don't know all of the facts in this case but what

100I do know is teachers are leaving this profession in droves for many reasons one of the biggest reasons is when teachers professional judgment is questioned especially by the people who should have their backs follow your own policies thank you thank you and that concludes public participation that moves us to act the action agenda item number 14 Action as necessary or appropriate on matters discussed in executive session do I have any motions Miss huddle I move that we have approve selected employment items per exhibit a do you have a second Mr Hogan any discussion I'll call the question all in favor motion carries seven to zero do I have any additional motions um Miss hounds per item C I move that we issue a solicitation for a social emotional learning professional development program with the program

101content and final contract to be approved by the board do I have a second Mr Scully any discussion all right I'll call the question all in favor uh that would be sick Mr Satterfield yes all right all opposed one all right that motion carries six to one do I have any additional motions I have one more all right um per item E I move that we approve the contract with MacMillan pasden Smith architecture for the facilities needs assessment and advisory services for the five-year Master facilities plan do you have a second Miss Barnhart any discussion all right I'll call the question all in favor all right not opposed set that motion carries seven to zero and is there are there any other motions all right seeing none that moves us to item 15 first reading

102approval of proposed revisions to board policy I.E organization of instruction exhibit F Dr Ross Madam chair I call our chief of academics and administration Miss Anna Miller to present for first approval what policy I.E organization of instruction thank you so much good evening again Madam chair Borden Dr Ross our organization of instruction we have this for discussion at the last meeting we took your recommendations and put those into the policy for this meeting excuse me so as you can see um in the policy it would be the board prefers an elementary um Pre-K K-5 and then middle six through eight and then High School remains 9 through 12. then in the next part excuse me we took out beginning with the 12 13 school year as we have offered our career in technical education since

103that time and we'll continue to do so and then finally at your request we change the will to May the district may offer a choice-based virtual program for students in grades K through 12. and again we remove the year as that will be ongoing and that is our um our changes that we made and so we're looking for first reading approval all right do I have a motion for first reading Mr Hogan like to make the motion that we approve the first reading approval of proposed revisions to board policy IE organization of instruction Shannon exhibit F do you have a second Mr Scully any discussion any questions is there a question from Miss from anyone over here from any uh District administration Okay no Okay any questions um Dr Ross we've probably discussed this but

104pending if this does get passed do we know or does it stand here that I've ever look at when implementation of this great structure will take place yeah so we took the year off to give us some flexibility by saying this is what we prefer and that way we'll let the five-year study guide it but we could still pass this okay but I guess the intent would be as soon as possible okay yes sir and in theory maybe three to five years would we be safe to say that would be a Target or next year you're looking at three to five years but uh we would like to see what options we can get from the from this five-year study okay yes yes sir any other questions all right I will call for the question

105um all in favor that motion carries seven to zero Snipes you raise your hand did you raise your hand okay Miss snipe says outstanding fact motion carries six to zero thank you very much and that moves us to the next item on the agenda which is unencumbered time first reading approval of new board policy gcle unencumbered time exhibit G and so the podium is Dr wicker to bring forth that policy Dr wicker good evening Madam chair my name is the board Dr Ross this evening we're presenting proposed board policy gcle unencumbered time as an action item for first reading just a reminder that this policy is pursuant to the new statute where local board school boards must adopt unincome policy within three months of the state's adopted policy which took place on January the 17th

1062023 is the recommendation of the administration that the district adopts the Statewide policy for unencumbered time adopted by the State Board of Education submit the newly adopted policy to the South Carolina Department of Education within 30 days of adoption and completely implement the provisions of the act before the July 1st 2023 deadline wait do I have a motion for this policy Mr Hogan the big promotion that we approve the first reading approval of new board policy gcle unencumbered time Shannon exhibit G do I have a second Mr Scully any discussion or questions for Mr wicker Dr Ricker all right seeing none I will call for the question all in favor that motion carries seven to zero thank you very much that moves us to item 17 on the agenda um cmta guaranteed Energy savings contractor

107update at this time I'll turn it over to our director of operations Mr Wiseman good evening Madam chairman members of the board Dr Ross members of the community thank you I have some exciting news I want to give cmta a chance to talk about the Energy savings program that they put together over the summer for Dutch Fork Elementary and Irmo High School and so I would like to introduce you to Sal lock from cmta good evening thank you for having me thank you for your time um I'd like to thank you know not only my team but Dave and Alan Knotts were a huge part of making this as a success and um these are like my favorite days this is why I get up every day is coming and tell the story of what

108we did and I'm really passionate about what we do so I'll jump right into it I'm not going to bore you with 10 minutes about who we are but I'll remind you of why we were selected to do this project and then I'll talk about what you got and where we're at with it so um just briefly starting with who we are we're a nationally recognized firm for our energy efficient schools we designed the first zero energy school which means that that school produce as much energy as it consumed which meant that it was a very efficient School we've literally written the book on how to design an efficient school and that's kind of what led us into this industry and why I believe you all selected us about a year and a half ago

109to do this project at these two schools um so what did you all get um you got a lot at two of your facilities focusing on scope of work that saves energy you all entered into a five-year Energy savings program with us where we have skin in the game to give you a guarantee to Energy savings year after year so starting with Dutch Fork Elementary um I'm a real nerd about videography so I record a lot of my stuff because I love what I do so starting with you know the HVAC renovation at Dutch Fork there was 42 rooftop units that we touched the ones in red we did not touch just because we decided you know they're from 2010 didn't make sense to replace those but all the other ones were at the end

110of their life so we went ahead and replaced those um it's a very hectic summer and that's where Dave and his team helped us get this completed uh coordinated a lot we dealt with a lot of equipment lead time issues a lot had to happen at the end of that week and in fact I definitely broke my record for the number of nights I've spent outside of my home for work but learned a lot this summer and we got it done and it could not have done we could not have done it without you all's help with the cleaning afterwards the the school helping us coordinate everything so it was really good partnership to get that completed but Dutch Fork also got a HVAC control system which is what majority of our savings are going

111to come from is how we control the HVAC system um and in addition you know that no-brainer energy saver is those LED lights so we implemented LED lights everywhere at that school um and you also got a new roof at the gym which was aging and we were able to replace that roof into a pretty new uh White roof there that you see um Dutch Fork also got a solar carport which was the first one that my company actually did we typically do roof mounted panels but with the region that you all are in we kind of ran into an obstacle here during design that we were able to resolve even after we had a contract with you guys at no cost to you all um just because of the region that we're in something

112was discovered and we decided to to install that solar carport that we promised and delivered and it turned out great um you should drive out there and look at it because it's honestly pretty impressive I've seen a lot out in LA and this one is A step above that just because of the the region that you're in it has to be very structurally sound um so it looks really good and it's going to produce some Energy savings for that school as well as an initiative that you all are taking to do solar at your schools um and I'll Circle back about the solar later on the presentation um dashboard also got 73 new windows which obviously helps with Energy Efficiency and they needed to be replaced they're really where uh in Irma High School is

113a little bit of a simpler scope of work we were specifically focused on that activities building that's going to remain um and we tackled the HVAC there was it ranged in age anywhere from 2019 to 2001 and those units in blue are the ones that we tackled and replaced one for one uh we did this over a single week believe it or not we were able to set those units in a single week and that's that's meant that Jason is sitting back there to coordinate everybody to be on site to get her done and you'll get a sneak peek of the solar there as well but you know all it is it's going to continue to generate Energy savings but a key factor of that Irma High School is reusing the existing infrastructure that you

114had and optimize it so you had infrastructure of HVAC control systems that we're coming in and optimizing how that system operates to run it more efficiently efficiently with efficient sequences and again the no-brainer energy saver the LED lights throughout that school uh School looks great and uh even the practice gym looks really good as well and my favorite piece of this project was being able to implement a really large solar array at this high school with a newer roof that was in place we were able to add the solar array to that roof which looks great and it's going to generate a substantial amount of savings for the district and I'll Circle back about solar at the end of my presentations but to remind you all of why a guaranteed Energy savings contract was used

115to procure this part of this renovation and you know I could sit here and obviously I do this for a living but to me it's it's part of a no-brainer for school districts because it it generates a revenue path to find the money to do projects like this IT addresses existing infrastructures as aging I know sometimes we we focus on new buildings but we have to keep up with the buildings that we have and and be more energy efficient at those buildings and sometimes you could also at a more dollar friendly way than you would a brand new building um and there's also more Earth friendly and you know that one key aspect of this procurement method is that the competitive bidding process stops when you select the Energy savings contract provider being cmta so

116what that means is that you get to hand pick select your preferred contractors that you want to work with after you select a Energy savings contract provider like cmta which essentially brings more value into your schools because you have a little bit more control into what who's doing the work at your schools um and that doesn't mean that you have to pick that low bid with a contractor you're not familiar with so it allows you to have more control your Construction and it offers a turnkey project with no change orders um you can ask Ali and Dave what the office of school facilities was found at Dutch Fork that school was very old when you take a ceiling down you open up yourself to a lot of critique from a code perspective and there was

117no change orders that were handed over um we found a lot trust me we did but you know that's an advantage of doing a project through us is that that no change order process and another one which you know I I um learned a lot through the summer was what it was like to tackle the off to school facilities um it's definitely a team effort uh a lot of meetings a lot of can we work this out let's figure it out what we need to do in a timely manner and it was a huge effort between the third party inspector and cmta along with Dave and Alan to to get this completed because honestly there was some talks that we weren't going to open school on Tom and that just was not something that was

118going to let happen our team was not going to let that happen and we worked together to figure that out it was a good Learning lesson from from all of us and we got through it together to implement this project at a very old school and in the end which I'll close off with is the guaranteed Energy savings that I'm going to highlight here at the end so as I mentioned you all entered into the five-year contract with us where over that term of that contract you will realize at the bare minimum uh 722 000 in savings our savings are typical always met and often beaten by 10 to 20 to be honest so you all will get more than this These funds and in fact uh throughout the presentation I mentioned I'll Circle back

119to the solar piece of it so for one to for doing the LED lights in the HVAC you all received an automatic rebate that we applied for you all that's going to go directly into you all's pocket it's already in your pocket actually um and our guarantee technically doesn't start being measured until we're done with the work right like we're not going to measure savings until we're done now we're gonna we're almost done here in the next month then we're going to start tracking the utility bills to see what we saved um to compare to this 140 000 number next year well our I'll come back and tell y'all that we did beat it but um that 53 000 rebate automatically contributes to that first year cost savings which you know for for this year

120I only have to hit 86 000 in rebates and one thing that is incredible incredibly lucky as well um not sure how familiar you are with the inflation reduction act that was passed late last year it's a incredible amount of money that the federal government passed to basically incentivize school districts to implement energy efficient designs in geothermal and also Renewables like solar they're basically giving you a 30 coupon off especially for solar and geothermal so this is also new that the paperwork's now being kind of being put out but in essence when you did that solar you made that decision to implement that solar array system because it was financially advantageous for you all to do it well now after making that good decision to do it you're going to get 30 percent back of

121that cost and that could be anywhere depending on the fees of the consultant that you all hire that will help you find um it could be anywhere from 200 to 300 000 that you all would get back just for doing that solar at those two schools which you know it's like icing on top of the cake sorry i cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake like is going to be very substantial and it's to me it's like I already met half of my savings and I haven't even started measuring things so it's gonna help me sleep at night and it's gonna be very financially positive project that you all took on with us and I'm very happy to sit here and and tell you all about it and we'll certainly work

122with your team to to get that basically rebate direct payment that our the inflation reduction act offers and that you may consider knowing that your school district does have an opportunity to do solar elsewhere to consider adding solar elsewhere in a financially positive way so um that's what the project savings are going to be to give you an update on where things are the solar array I'm actually here to meet with the utility company tomorrow to turn it on and start producing power at both sites and the building automation system we've installed all the hardware and we're about a two months two and a half month period to closing out the what I call commissioning making sure that what we designed is implemented correctly so that should be nearly finished before the summer so that's

123where the project is and the savings will start to be accumulate when we close this out so that's all I have and if you have any questions does anyone have any questions Mr Scully yeah um what and I guess really for Irmo High School with the solar what's the how much energy does that generate let me just calculate it it's like it's 330 KW savings so that's 000 kilowatt hours a year which is roughly thirty three thousand dollars a year do we have a an agreement with the power company to get a credit for that you do yeah and we ran a financial model of whether it made sense or not and um worked that into our calculations to see what the simple payback period was for that building what's the payback I'm sorry the

124payback off the top of my head is going to be tough but it was less than 18 years and you can quote me on that okay all right thank you any other Mr Satterfield yeah I had two questions probably one is for Mr Wiseman but this one's for you the solar panels and all the maintenance I know there's maintenance involved and how does that work so the maintenance of it is it's really non-existent after the first year so there's two components right you've got your solar panels and you've got your inverter which changes the power from the solar that you can use in your building in that first year if there's that solar inverter doesn't go out um it's simply going to be fine for the for the life cycle of it because there's not

125a whole lot of moving Parts it's just um but you actually have a five-year maintenance contract with us where we'll take care of that solar if something goes down we'll commission it and so after that solar is on for that five years you're really not going to have to take care of it um as far as a maintenance standpoint okay and my second question was with the HVAC systems that you put in is there a maintenance contract with that as well are we responsible or do you give us in order to say we can guarantee you this this amount of money that you're going to save but you have to follow this schedule and so forth we come to an agreement on what that schedule is what the set points are to help us guide

126into and those those are there to to not be a set rule those are there to protect us you know typically we'll work with our existing clients to figure out you know what makes sense for that specific school um and again it's to protect us if we're dealing with an unreasonable client that wants to operate their buildings 24 7. uh that we have something to look back on onto what we agreed upon yeah thank you now to answer your other question no we did not include a maintenance contract because we're not in the business of selling maintenance contracts because we have a view on that but something we can offer in the future I know we have a lot of very old um HVAC systems on those roofs so I'm just curious it doesn't follow

127up with what Sal does but him and Jason back there I tell you what uh for my first project walking in uh you may not know it but I was kind of scared about that whole project every time I talked to Sal I was like learning new things from smoke detectors or fire detectors and the ductworks to having to reconfigure the solar panels there at Dutch Fork Elementary but they gave me a lot of confidence they gave me a lot of guidance our third party inspector was in there OSF was coming down giving us training so we could make sure we met their standards it was a very interesting project to start the year out I think Dr Ross is down there about a week before the school started and said you sure you're going

128to pull this off so Sal was down there one night cleaning away pushing the mop running the dust rag the custodials kicked in the Dutch Fork Elementary staff was just amazing allowing us to do a little flexibility in getting them into the building so it was a lot of people pulling this together but thank you for your support Jason I tell you what uh I can't thank you enough he's the guy on the ground pushing everybody to get everything done like I said the uh the solar parking lot not only is it a vantage to us but to me the kids can see it from the playground you know so that's part of their educational process and I know that you're planning to come down and give a class to the kids about that project

129so excellent work uh we got this one almost finished and I'll be glad to finish it up and go into something new so again thank you thank you Mr Scully did you have another question yeah and and this is either probably for Mr Wiseman um the the inverters on our solar system are really the largest replacement cost from a maintenance standpoint that we're going to have the the panels and the racking and all that the panels you can get pretty cheap and the inverters are actually very it's pretty significant replacement cost typically you need to within 10 to 15 years did you guys consider that or build up any kind of Reserve or kind of plan for that in the proposal and did the did you consider that in the projection model so I'll speak

130for them they actually we were dealing with a different Administration where those decisions were made um so the decision was made to do a five-year contract where we take care of the maintenance program but after that it would be up to the school district to replace that inverter to replace those panels when they warranty on those would not cover the replacement of them yeah and so just FYI I mean it's something that you are going to want to keep on your it's a very it's a steep cost it's worth it I'd still do I work in energy uh with my job so if you're comparing Apples to Apples like one rooftop unit replacement at one classroom that would be the cost of two inverters today and you've got six in the district so if you

131think of it it just like the cost that you're referring to for those inverters which is you know those things that it will burn up in about 15 years the cost is it's like replacing three or four rooftop units um so it's not substantial in a district of this size yeah and it's a smaller project so and I typically see it on a utility scale but with Irmo being Spring Hill I'm sorry the um that's four caliminary wasn't large enough but it's something that you do want to kind of keep in mind because it is it's more substantial than you think but if we get it as long as it was considered in the projection payback we're gonna save the money and it's worth it yep any additional questions Miss Barnhart not necessarily a question

132but um hey this presentation was awesome did you say you did the video that's really cool to be able to see that I love that and I love that um the parking solar thing that's really cool I can see where that could be implemented in a bunch of schools as well so I just want to say thank you to you and your team um everybody that's worked on it because it looks fantastic you all did a really good job so thank you it was a cool presentation thank you very much all right anyone else all right well thank you very much and we can get a bus under that we checked on that before you can get a bus under that that was one of stipulations make sure all right again they were great to

133work with it was a little bit scary at first but we got through it we learned a lot uh OSF was a big supporter of ours so uh thanks for everybody who pulled that together Dutch work Elementary especially all right thank you gentlemen all right all right so that moves us on to 18 under our discussion agenda the discussion of proposed revisions to the 2016-2021 capital projects and I'm hoping this is my good news tonight uh like I said cmta was a an awesome project and I want to come back and talk to you about the 2016-2021 uh proposals for renovation or revision of capital projects I want to talk to you about some of the things that we've completed uh some of this was before my time before Alan's time but I I think

134we just saw an honorable mention to make sure you understand that we are moving forward with a lot of these capital projects to uh to deal with some of the issues across the district so these are some of the things that we've completed in the last probably a year year and a half a lot of moving Parts on those some of the things that that you'll see some pictures of were a little bit over the budget last time you approved us to go over the budget with the capital monies the big ones was Dutch Fork High School track the Ada ramps at Spring Hill and and Seven Oaks so all of those are completed with just for the final top you know short track and talk about that here in just a second so this

135is the Dutch Fort track in addition to the turfs that we put down this summer we had to go back and do some additional digging and I guess a laying of gravel and stuff to make sure that the holes that were there that we didn't know when we first took off the top layer that we could fill those so we're not having to go back every couple years and address this issue so they went down I want to say four inches I'm not sure exactly the instrument they milled everything down to the as far as they could go put the gravel back in there packed it you know did some testing all around the track and just did a an excellent job in putting it back to a a very good standard it finishes curing

136at the end of this month and then we'll just put the top layer down here in the near future but they took care of a lot of uh other issues if you look at the top right hand corner picture that's the driveway coming from the top of the parking lot down into the track what was really happening as you bring equipment down there it was bottling out and causing some drainage issues causing some water issues so while they were doing that we we asked them to go back in there and make sure that that was more sound for us of course they've done the long jump track in the uh The Trackers itself and it's it's beautiful from the from the stands and once we get the uh the yellow color on there it'll look

137good I was only kidding it's green green right great so they'll look really good from the stadium so we got that done we're on track with the cost that you approved us to proceed with so a couple of the other things some of the things that we just recently completed was just the upgrades to Oak Point Elementary as far as the Landscaping it'll look a lot different obviously as the summer progresses so we're excited about seeing how that turns out some of the furniture at Crossroads element or intermediate these are the two projects this is Seven Oaks Elementary the one on the left is before we actually got the rails in there but as you can see that's a long ramp to bring down to bring the child the children down safely and all the

138way into the playground so we've we've met ADA requirements on that uh they were seeding the grass I think when I took these pictures the other day so we're expecting some the rest of that to be green here in the near future and this is the one at uh Spring Hill it's probably even further as far as the distance of the ramps uh not only do we put some additional some steps in there but we also got the ramps in there so again we're in ADA Compliant that was a pretty good project we got the rails up here recently so we've we've got those two things uh you know off the checklist I was real pleased with that uh this is something we actually did a test in in our office building today or actually

139we had these installed at our building and we're still working out this is the alarm system the timing uh that's actually the wrong picture on the far left I didn't know what the sensor looked like and apparently that's not it but they pointed it out to me today but we did some tests and it was amazing within if if the from the time I opened the door to the time the alarm went off I got a text within five seconds so we're we're seeing just a number of different applications that when they turned it on I think I've got 25 texts in less than a minute about because we were holding the door open and testing it out so it's going to be great as we go forward with putting these into the schools and

140the exterior doors we're looking at hopefully this summer if not during spring break to start doing about 50 at a time you know the the vendor that we have Fort seasonal State contract so that's going to save us some money uh we don't have to go out to a bid on all that they just got to get all the parts in you know a little of the time so we're looking at doing at least 50 to start out we'll start identifying the schools but when we're going to the school we want to make sure that you know what other projects we've got going on we're not interfering with that but we want to do one school at a time until we get those 50 installed somewhere and then go on from there so we're excited

141about getting that it's it's a good system and a good thing is it ties in to our card readers so we've got one company we can go to with our card readers and to the alarm system so we're excited about that uh what I like to do is some of this you'll see up there on the screen there's some some leftovers monies from the project that we originally talked about some other projects throughout the school year and then there's some additional monies that we're going to ask you to allow us to reallocate that money because I just think that with some of the things coming forward into Bond referendum we'll be able to tackle that as a project for that particular school instead of putting some money into a school and then having to go

142back out and find out it wasn't a good fit when we're going to do some additional work in that school so that's going to kind of tie into The Five-Year Plan so those are the things that I'd ask that you allow us to reallocate so that we can go back into finishing or identifying all the insulation for the interior alarms we just got some our first two schematics for the first two vestibules we had a meeting with Mosley architect and asked them to kind of redesign some of these projects so that again if we're going into a school and touching it during a bond referendum or a reinvent remodeling we're not having to tear that down what we just put in so we're trying to go back and make sure we're good stewards of the

143district money and then one of the things that at the very end you see a purchase of a state vehicle we didn't add that when we hired the last safety officer uh getting them a vehicle so we're actually that we allow you allow us to buy a vehicle a good vehicle from State Surplus we got a couple real nice explorers for a real cheap price we the Tahoe's you see them drive we got those from Surplus they're not new vehicles but they're in really good shape mechanically and they got a a long history as far as mechanical maintenance performed arms so we're real excited about that so we're just asking it it'll be about sixteen thousand dollars for a vehicle to to support the safety officers opinion any questions do we have any questions Miss

144Hubble um this actually might be a question for our CFO but um the list that you had um prior to to um it's been a while but anyway there was a lot of money I think and I don't know how far back these go I guess some of them go to 2016. but I was wondering if maybe um we could get an update so every year we approve the summer projects but things happen and they don't all get spent so it would kind of be nice to just have kind of a agenda item sometime after the summer on what was done and what wasn't done and what was left um just so we know that makes good sense and we can we can talk about where to schedule that one that way we'll know what

145what went over budget we had to spend from what would we could be reallocated and then kind of give an update on the process of all the capital do we have any other questions Mr Scully clarification is is that different from what this chart is it it is in that um I've been through two summer is it two summer projects and we we um I'm sure that's coming up soon Dr Ross where we'll do that but what I didn't know was what didn't get done and especially with covid so now we see it but it's the first time I've seen it and so I don't even know from like two years ago what didn't get done so I think it'd just be nice for us as a board if we're approving what's going to happen

146this summer then sometime after this summer we get a report of what actually got done some things may have been over budget some things we might not have been able to finish for whatever reason thank you Dr Ross is this something going to have on the action agenda for the next meeting yes ma'am we would like to put interactions in it okay is that is Miss Huddle's question something that we could get before the next meeting to compare I know she said after the summer I just didn't know if you had a list that would kind of be interesting to hear or to hear to not here to before we vote on this at the next meeting so for clarification this is 2016 to so it'd be like I mean I guess maybe just asterisk

147these or which of these were I'm losing track of time which of these were 20 21 items right so that would have been the um and what's this total does anybody know what the total is I'm just curious I think we just rent out a lot of rooms in the slides I think it's 756 thousand dollars I don't add well in my head I mean a total would be helpful and also kind of where we're going to reallocate to other projects what the anticipated costs would be for the installation of the equatorial EXT exterior door alarms you know an estimate of the vehicles things like that would be helpful when we at least to have in writing before we vote um I think our next meeting is the 27th so that's two weeks is that

148enough time that'll work yes ma'am okay Mr Satterfield you have a question yeah I had a question uh Dr Ross is there a certain amount of money that's allocated every year for capital projects yeah so we will do uh for annual maintenance we're going to do the 15 million dollar uh Bond sale for that so that's where these will come from and each year we'll bring that list to you for approval and so uh some of these in 2016 I think were over 10 million and but these are all of that kind of uncaptured funds being wrapped up that's why this is listed so long but going forward we'll we'll do it all off of 15 and then bring back to you every I guess at the end of the summer more so in the

149fall really because they roll into the fall what has been completed the reason I ask um I guess this is more of a two-part or maybe even a three-part question um in the past I know that every principal put together their capital projects list their requests so to speak and then we got into a big board room and then we sort of duked it out on who was going to get what um but I know that it's a it's the new principles are at a real disadvantage and understanding that and understanding the facility needs and the improvements Mr Wiseman is there anybody that goes to those schools or kind of helps them we actually bring what we call our assessment team uh Alan goes out there myself Jenny from I.T someone from the custodial staff

150we all go to the school and we walk through with the facility manager prior to meeting with the principal so they can point out what their needs are from from their perspective we can also Identify some things that they may not catch and then we sit down with the principal of the facility manager and go through the list of some of the things the needs and the wants then last month we gave the principals a a link so they could put in what their needs are or their wants depending on your interpretation of that and we're in the process of looking at those things they put down a priority of what their first needs are and second and so on and so forth and then we'll put that in to roll that into the capital

151for next year well I'm just going to say it is a learning process and especially if you're a new administrator um just understanding about facilities is a new Pro is a learning process too so um just to help those new folks out I'm glad that you all do that but it's a good idea to kind of walk through and say well you might want to consider this and we kind of looked into some of the things that they uh previous administrations over the last year or two that was their Capital uh wish list if you will so we've kind of identified and walked through with especially the new principles about that the old guys I shouldn't say that the the more seasoned principles uh know how how it worked but we wanted to get it

152in before we started looking at the Capitol what the projects are typically we would have that after the capital was already set so hopefully now we'll be getting with Madison here soon and taking that list and putting some dollar figures to it and then looking at the capital budget that we'll bring back to you for next year yeah thank you any other questions for Mr Wiseman thank you very much thank you all right all right Mr Wiseman when the uh when they turned the solar panels on is that tomorrow well there'll be like a glow how does that worker I I certainly hope not that's probably not a good but you should okay awesome we look forward to turning on the switch tomorrow here all right uh Madam chair uh we have um we we

153thank you for the the board for the motion for the solicitation but this time we would like Dr Harris and Miss Miller to come forward and just for the Public's understanding uh have a discussion about a proposed district-wise social emotional learning program us and members of the board and and general community and in light of the vote in which we've made note of this will be far more uh brief than what we originally intended but prior to our giving a very brief statement or two in regard to a dealership-wide social emotional learning program I did want to take opportunity to highlight a couple of persons who are here who have been integral in terms of assisting with the process of identifying a SEL program and they are here many of which I think or perhaps

154all of them which you perhaps know I asked him Tina mccaskill our director of Elementary education Mr Shonda Walters our director of secondary education principal Christian English Seven Oaks Elementary uh it's Beth a hook was our coordinator of mental health Ms Jessica Morris who's assistant principal at Irmo High School and was Jennifer Falco who is our coordinator of parenting and social work there are others who are unable to be here on tonight but I do want to acknowledge them they have been patient with us and I do thank them for the time in which they have invested in the business that they've participated in this program this idea we have talked much about these are slides that we saw at our last presentation on the 27th of February where we talked about Beth hook and

155Jennifer felco talked about the the models in which we have uh uh addressed in terms of prevention intervention and Recovery we talked a little bit about and you've heard oftentimes Dr Ross talk about the Staggering statistics of Direct Services uh intervention that our school counselors our clinical Council School social workers and others who have who are on a daily basis and these stats are stats that were in reference to quite frankly our first semester of school so obviously at this point of the year they've changed quite a bit I'm certain uh we talked a little bit about in indirect interventions as well uh things that we hear much of in terms of our code of conduct and our stop at apps and other interventions by way of home visits that we uh are participating in

156on a regular routine basis there's also the recovery component of that where we've heard again about kerosolus our Partnerships uh with the care silence program my clinical counseling programs uh within the three geographical eras of the district as well as our Partnerships with the Department of Mental Health Services uh in Lexington and Richland counties those are things that we do in terms of recovery we also know that in terms of prevention we continue to build upon in that area I think that's the area that we heard some time ago where Dr Rosa kind of think he said it almost like this that we've spent a lot of time in terms of interventions and Recovery needed to spend a little more time uh and give a little more attention to the preventive factors and with that

157being said we do have a few that were listed there that we discussed on last week the last board meeting rather but we wanted to highlight again that which we've heard about earlier and that is in terms of capturing kid's heart and with that I'm going to turn the floor over to Mrs uh Miller who would talk a little bit more in depth about that all right so um in light of the um vote for the solicitation again as Dr Harris said it will be brief because we'll see what we get from that but part of capturing kids Hart's Mission with kids is to win their hearts and to lead them to their personal best all of this is based on the state Department's definition of social and emotional learning I won't read that to

158you as it's there and it's in the slides for the public but social emotion emotional learning provides the skills that our students need for success in life and work and that's that last sentence of that definition and that is the definition that that we will use in District Five when we talk about social and emotional learning um on their on the state South Carolina State Department of education's website they also um have some more information about that and their research demonstrating that the students who do receive the support with social emotional learning do better academically socially and behaviorally so more reason why we need this preventive measure the State Department of Education supports the castle five and we would do that as well in any program that we seek to fund as a district-wide program

159we would want to also address the castle five and you see those five competencies there before you when we look at those definitions and all of this is available on the South Carolina Department of Education website for each of those competencies there again I will not read those to you but one of the things that we notice in all of those is the verbs so that students would have the ability to regulate to recognize to establish and maintain to empathize to understand and to make constructive and respectful choices for themselves and for others and in a variety of situations so that will be important as we're looking to a district-wide model these are specific to capturing kids Hearts the social contract the Excel model which is both for classrooms and for adults so even in

160professional development or faculty meetings they would follow the Excel model and then student staff affirmations Again part of their motto is to capture Hearts impact culture and see change and then these are just some of the results that comes from capturing kids Hearts I imagine this would come these results would come from other social emotional programs as well as they're all geared towards the same outcome and finally just another excerpt from the State Department of Education that they are focused on promoting social and emotional learning to enhance the building of positive School climates and the healthy development of young people again this slide is specific to um capturing kids hearts and that completes our presentation and we'll stand for any questions if you have any questions Miss huddle um the if you go back to

161the slide if you don't mind where you had the outcomes so is is that something as we do the the um solicitation we can ask the the vendors to give us um like numeric values like actual results of their programs do you in other words do you see us being able to measure all five of these areas provide and with their school visits and they do have the hard data from those surveys so yes I do think that that could and should be a part of that I have a question kind of uh piggybacking off of that question when we get that data those data points is there any way and I don't know if in the RFQ that we asked this but I know a concern is capturing programs like this on a district-wide

162level as opposed of just like one school that has utilized a program because this is something that I believe that the district would like to implement district-wide so it would impact all of all of our schools and so seeing those types of results on the district level may be different than just on a school by school basis is that something that is reasonable or obtainable absolutely I think we can any program that does that should be able to give that yes ma'am anybody else have any questions I have one more question because you mentioned on um on your slideshow the Department of educations definitions and and and what they recommend from their website I know that the Department of Education has an a relatively new SEL Department um have we engaged with that department and

163does that department come in um and give recommendations or do they does the state department provide PD opportunities for districts and if they do are there typically costs associated with that that's great great questions and yes we have engaged with that office and yes they do provide now they do not give recommendations for SEL programs but they certainly provide supports for that they have vetted some programs for screeners in Act 2 8 213 there is recommended screening for SEL and so they have recommended screeners for that should a district choose to use that but they don't actually recommend programs or anything they do provide training they do provide PD it is free for all districts and schools in South Carolina and we do have the name of who our regional coach or person would be

164but yes they would come out whatever SEL program we choose they will come out and they will help us plan that PD and incorporate that PD all for free they don't have a set presentation or program because they personalize is it so what the district wants where the district wants to go and then they help them to personalize that within those tenants of their definition in the castle five and things of that nature anyone else all right Mr Scully yeah I just wanted to thank you guys for your hard work on this I know you put a lot of time and effort into it um it's important and anything we can do to address those issues uh we need to do so um piggybacking off of um Miss Blackburn hines's question I know they can't

165recommend providers uh they're as a government or organization they're not going to favor any one over another can they provide a list of who who has been used within other districts or schools in our state or that we can may help in US finding evaluating uh and finding a program so um to my knowledge they don't have an exhausted list of what schools are or aren't using or districts or aren't using but certainly the districts who have contacted them and they've worked with they are aware of those programs and we have spoken very briefly about some of those so yes we could get some of that information from them and one of the key Parts I should have said um to yours chair Byron Hines is part of their work with us would be also

166to incorporate that with our mtss process and in line to align with our the South Carolina profile profile of the South Carolina graduate so that would help to do that and a part of the concern has been is this extra work on teachers and so they would help us to see how that aligns with two two things that we're already doing two initiatives that we already have as well but yes they're willing to to share and to um provide us with with the information that they have and they know and it there there may not be a whole lot of value there I I know um but it's more of a historical provide historical information and who they used great idea thank you thank you do we have any other questions we appreciate it very

167much all right do I have a motion for item 20. Mr Hogan like to make the motion that we adjourn the meeting do I have a second Miss Barnhart any discussion all right I call the question all in favor all right that that would be eight to zero because we had two hands down I mean seven to zero all right meeting adjourned