001good evening everyone i want to begin by recognizing our mid-year graduation ceremony that took place in the thomas wolfe auditorium this past sunday we had 184 graduates and that represents the highest number of students graduating mid-year since and this continues to represent a great opportunity for those students that need a little bit extra academic time in addition to those students who are completing high school graduation requirements early and they want to begin their post-secondary plans and this year inca high school had the most mid-year graduates at 37 so very very proud of that on tuesday the buncombe county commissioners allocated an additional one million six hundred forty one thousand and eight hundred seventy eight dollars to our operating budget which allowed the salary and benefits of our 745 employees that are paid from local funds
002to equate their salaries and benefits with their state-funded peers as i've noticed as i've noted many times in the past the requirement to submit a budget by may 15 to the county commissioners conflicts with most often the later date and in many cases a much much later date when our state budget is approved this school year our state budget was not finalized until november 18th we depend upon a majority of our operating funds to come from the state budget in fact it's over half over 60 percent of our funding from the state budget this timeline requires us to predict by may 15 several non-negotiable increases from the state that include salaries as well as retirement and health insurance rates we want to sincerely thank the county commissioners for the additional allocation of these local dollars
003and adjustment to our original budget request that took place last spring february is recognized as love the school bus month and february 14th through the 18th represents bus driver appreciation week i want to recognize not only our highly dedicated bus drivers and transportation safety assistants but the outstanding support that transportation director david rony and his team of mechanics and staff provide daily the efforts of these individuals keep our 206 school buses running their routes and covering a total of 12 940 miles that's on a daily basis this year we are averaging 9268 students that are transported to and from school on our school buses please consider taking some time next week and personally thanking our drivers and support staff for the important role that they play to safely begin and end each school day for
004our students they are truly mvps in buncombe county schools a reminder concerning important dates this month thursday february 10th is an early release day the all-county elementary intermediate and middle school choruses will perform on tuesday february 15th at brookstone church beginning at six o'clock p.m monday february 21st on your calendar is also an optional teacher workday and in closing i want to take the opportunity to provide best wishes and a big thank you to two individuals mr barry pace who is not with us tonight and mr ben rickard who is barry has taken a position with the state in a technology leadership role and that's within the department of public instruction and robert frisbie his former assistant has assumed that role of our new technology director ben rickard will be leaving us to lead the
005communication efforts at blue ridge community college and so we so appreciate the great work that barry and ben have provided to the buncombe county school family you will always remain a member of our family and we miss them we'll miss them both but we wish them the very best and that concludes my comments thank you at this time i'll recognize good news that's me good evening madam chair dr baldwin members of the board for our good news this evening we'd like to invite associate superintendent suzanne swanger and principal heather brookshire up to the podium tonight we want to recognize nesbitt discovery academy for their 100 percent graduation rate in 2021. thank you sir dr baldwin madam chair members of the board we are here to celebrate nesbitt discovery academy the main priority that all of
006us have is to ensure students graduate from high school and ready for their post-secondary whatever their hopes and desires take them so we're honored that we just recently heard from the north carolina department of public instruction and the state board of education that nesbitt discovery academy has earned the distinction of 100 percent graduation rate despite the challenges that all of us faced last year during covet this was achieved because everyone including students faculty and staff administration community partners and families rallied together to support their students to ensure that they were nurtured that they continued to grow academically and they thrived at nesbit for those of you that don't know nesbitt is a stem-focused high school with no more than 100 students per grade level there's a college-like atmosphere courses are offered considering the range from
007high school to college courses advanced placement honors level the students are immersed in stem cross-curricular activities science technology engineering and mathematics there is a lot of project-based learning they problem solve together and at the core nesbit has an environment in which students invent their own tomorrow and aren't we fortunate that these students will invent their tomorrows that we will benefit from as a community i have to say and i know dr baldwin will agree with me it's a highlight of our careers that eight years ago nesbitt was created by a group of people and look at where it is today so heather berkshire congratulations to you and your staff and your students and your families thank you miss swonger it is an honor to accept this recognition for our school nesbitt discovery academy has achieved
008a 100 graduation rate over the past three years this is an outstanding accomplishment for the incredible work of our faculty and staff who do the extra every day to ensure all students are reaching their fullest potential our students are not immune to the barriers and difficulties that life brings those obstacles that get in the way and stifle our path to success our students have encountered hardships loss health issues and many other external factors that affect their ability to maintain their academics and even at times come to school the supports we have in place to ensure all students graduate is due to the support of our school board dr baldwin and the many others that wrap around all of our bcs schools having counselors social workers therapists in all of our school buildings is vital to
009meeting the needs of all of our students and lastly our students who show up with grit persistence and a never-give-up attitude are all represented in this 100 percent graduation rate award congratulations thank you and go chargers we learned that this is called a zoo that's our word okay it's good news for this evening thank you thank you we do appreciate all the work that goes on down there we don't always understand everything that's going on down there but we do appreciate all that tonight on the action let's see our curriculum feature is also public comment manager i do that every time i apologize public comment yes madam chair we do have five public comment signups for this evening beginning with mr don yelton followed by kim presley mr yelton please come down you'll have three
010minutes we'd like to ask you to start by saying your name and where you're from and i'll motion at one minute and also at 30 seconds well i'm don yelton for those of you don't know me i think most of you do especially dr baldwin he's seen me a long time and i'm here tonight representing two other people that can't be here because one is getting ready to run for the school board and another one is getting ready to run for position in the house so i may be one but i don't i represent three and i think you did get some an email from one of the candidates that's going to be running for the school board but i am very very concerned about what's happening in their educational system i think if you
011check over fifty percent of buffalo county's budget goes to the schools and i think what we get is people being prepared for specialty college but we don't have i remember when ab tech was ab tech and we taught people the trades today you can make a hundred thousand dollars a year working in plumbing or electrical we're not teaching that we're not talking about that we're not promoting that we're promoting we're a mass take peterson follow science and folks i've told you from time memorial science does not give the fact science is a process of analyzing to get to a theory that is a theory until other facts change that theory and what are we seeing right now with coving paper masks don't cloth masks don't work then we had a study come out and say
012that all of this being shut down and all of this not being anywhere only reduced the dex rate the death rate by percent covid is a virus it's going to act like a virus i'm not against anybody taking a shot i took a shot i got covered 51 days after taking the shot but i'm telling you it is a decision to be made by each individual personally it is a virus it will act like a virus some will get it and die some will get it and won't even know they got it my wife laid in the bed with me and i had it and she didn't catch it and by the way we need to go ahead and realize what the damage is of wearing the cloth mask even for us adults when you
013get home tonight take it off and look at it see how much snot's on it and how much you've rebreathed during the day i will be back thank you thank you sir kim presley again please start with your name and where you are from good evening i'm kim presley i live in the robertson school district and i have a grandson that attends glen arden elementary school can you believe it this week we celebrate the hundredth day of school and we've made it through a hundred school days and most of them have been in person and i think everyone should get a gold star for that i want to again thank the board for their hard work and their willingness to serve our community i recognize that this is often a thankless and difficult job i
014appreciate the time spent listening to experts listening to concerned parents and the sheer amount of homework that goes into your jobs i know that it's not easy and yet here you are showing up month after month doing the hard work in the current climate i imagine that it is especially difficult to drown out all the background noise and drama and focus on what is truly important keeping our children safe and making sure that they are prepared to navigate the world around them in a meaningful thoughtful and productive way we seem to be coming out of this latest latest spike in covid but please continue to listen to the experts and continue to keep masks in place in our schools please also continue to listen to the experts and to those who are more learned around
015issues of appropriate reading material and not be swayed by hysteria and rhetoric please pay attention to our own educators and those who are way smarter than we are around issues of what is appropriate historical context even if it makes us uncomfortable please also listen to experts as well as your own heart and mind around issues of inclusion gender and race especially if it makes us uncomfortable please do your best not to succumb to the noise drama rhetoric and fear that dominates our world today and continue to do what you know is right and best for our children thank you thank you thank you i'd like to call shanna peel followed by alissa peterson and sarah wilcox shana peel please again please start with your name and where you're from sorry i'm trying to get my
016timer up good evening my name is shanna peel i'm the ec teacher at woodfin elementary first i would like to say thank you to dr baldwin and the board for working so hard to keep us safe the continued mask policy and partnership with abc science collaborative is a reassurance that my child who goes to woodfin my students and all of our staff are that much safer in this pandemic so i've been an employee of buncombe county schools for 14 years this month and i'm a graduate of emma elementary irwin middle and irwin high go warriors actually let me take that further and give you my background i'm also a graduate of unc asheville where i was a north carolina teaching fellow i have my master's degree from western carolina university and special ed i actually
017started my master's degree while i was on maternity leave with my four-year-old and my newborn i finished my master's degree two and a half years later through two additional pregnancies and working full-time as a preschool teacher now i'm telling you all of this to say two things first i am highly qualified to do my job second i'm really good at multitasking i can change a diaper while simultaneously planning dinner and writing a 40 page research paper on behavior interventions multitasking is important as an educator did you know that researcher phillip jackson said that elementary teachers make more decisions daily than a brain surgeon as skilled as i am at multitasking i must say that more and more i am feeling overwhelmed overwhelmed at all of the things that are added on top of teaching staff
018shortages due to vacancies and absences are straining already excessive workloads and schedules across the entire county retaining veteran staff and hiring new staff we know is harder than ever we're feeling it thankfully we have received some bonuses from you and from the state these have been super helpful but it is very disheartening to see that our retention bonuses were so meager when compared to others across the state our colleagues in asheville city received almost three times what we did it's not always comfortable asking for money but when so many bcs employees are receiving less than a living wage it is necessary we still have over 60 million in esser fund so this is an easy fix i'm asking the board to please consider increasing the retention bonus to 3 000 for certified staff and 3
019500 for classified staff thank you thank you thank you melissa peterson please please start with your name and where you're from my name is melissa pedersen i am a teacher in the buncombe county schools i have been with the bunking county schools for 11 years and i am so happy to be here i'm so happy to be part of the buncombe county school system and i thank the board and i thank dr baldwin and i invite any of you to come to my classroom because there is such joy that we have in my classroom and i'm an art teacher the excitement the joy the challenge the working through the aha is wonderful you will be refreshed you'll be replenished i will have to say though that none of us got into teaching for the money
020i've said this before i'll say it again no one's gotten into teaching for the money but it helps because if you did go in for the money you'd get out of it quickly it's such a hard job it's such a hard job but it's also so important because we're dealing with educating our children for the future and it's hard and the pandemic has only made it harder we've got more duties we've got more responsibilities we have to cover for other people if you just look at the hiring people are you need more bus drivers we need more school nutrition and we have i know personally two people who have left education in this past year because of the hardship of being in education so i wanted to say that it is hard to be in
021education because of the challenges but there's great great rewards and i also wanted to talk about the esser funds and a lot of people don't know what the esser funds are esr funds come from the federal government buncombe county schools got 88.3 million dollars 88.3 million dollars you can look on the government website of north carolina and we've haven't quite spent we've spent just under 70 million so we are so we have a lot of money left i am saying that for buncombe county schools to be paid a third of what asheville city schools people are looking to go to asheville city buncombe county schools getting a bonus that's a third of what haywood county and madison county got we are feeling less valued i can tell you i talk to custodians i talk to
022people on nutrition people are feeling undervalued you have the money you are flushed flushed with cash we can never say that in education we got so much money right now from the federal government it's for emergency relief and we need the emergency relief now the emergency is now we need to match the funds of other school systems thank you for listening for me and i honestly and sincerely would like anyone to come to my classroom you'll leave with joy thank you thank you very much thank you like to call sarah wilcox for our final public comment of the evening good evening thank you as always for your service tonight i'm here to speak to the deeply concerning movement where parents who lack any training in the realm of education seek to tell educators what their
023children should learn what our children learn is determined by people far more educated than most parents as what we can know today is far more than what we all were taught as children the fear of critical race theory is a fear around a college level curriculum that illuminates how racism has shaped and continues to shape our nation it is not k through 12 learning and no one should be rejecting the importance of learning our history and how we can do better well education doesn't determine the value or worth of any human good education does provide tools that allows for critical thinking cultivates concerns for others and invites each generation to do better than the last in our historical truths medical and technological advancements and in our emotional and social growth and change many continue to
024threaten that they will switch to homeschooling or send their kids to parochial school as a pastor i do not oppose a religious education i'm also aware that many are miseducated in our religious schools take for instance the age of the earth many religious folks continue to teach that it is approximately six to eight thousand years old as geologists recognize including the one that i am married to this is inaccurate it's steeped in mythology as someone who reads and teaches from the bible i am clear the earth is about 4.5 billion years old give or take 50 million years teaching from a deficit of knowledge helps no one while i suspect this is a disservice to our children i am more concerned about the impact of parents attempting to further entrench misinformation and rejection of history
025in our classrooms the current actions of school boards across our nation removing materials as fearful parents seek to whitewash our history and ignore the very real human and cultural challenges we face create a deep moment of concern for me especially as those parents seeking to ban certain educational materials teach our his that teach our history or make our children feel bad they allow their children to read the bible i encourage them to consider whether they need to keep their children from the bible as well as it is deeply disturbing when you read it closely our children deserve the education many parents have not yet received the evolution of our knowledge and our history is not something to fear but fear is bred in the lack of exposure to and ideas of information these past few
026months you have heard about those experiencing homelessness and buncombe county particularly the folks residing at the ramada inn there are approximately 750 homeless students in asheville and buncombe county they are homeless for many reasons including mental health and substance abuse disorders they come with their children i hope that we can stop speaking about them without compassion thank you madam chair dr baldwin this does conclude our public comment this evening thank you thank you ben and now it's the curriculum feature ms swonger to provide the board an update on career technical education so mr taylor baldwin our director for cte is going to share some information with you and you'll see some wonderful statistics about our students who are involved in these outstanding courses here dr baldwin i wish mr yelton had stuck around for this
027because i think he's got some information he'd love to see we can send him a copy we'll send him a copy of that i think you guys can see up there too i first want to start off with our mission statements mission of bunk county schools career and technical education department is to provide the necessary programs and services to allow the students to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in the workforce and the secondary level with our mission statement i have a few district goals that we follow the first one is supporting both college and career readiness programs to continue to support cte program development and operation with the improvement efforts at each school site and i'm going to go over some of those here a little later in the slideshow here secure local
028and state and federal funds and then work with our community education and business industry partners and that will be to develop appropriate career and technical education program so there's little things there's a couple things on here i need to explain first the numbers you see up here is what we call duplicated numbers so with the duplicated enrollment number that means that a student may be counted one two or three times in this these are the numbers of how many students have taken a cte course so the numbers of course are going to be a little bit larger than probably what the school enrollment number is so i don't want to mislead with that but we've had 12 352 students take a cpe course and we'll take for this year that is a lot of students
029to go through our program i broke them down by school what you'll see too is that it's about 110 from the enrollment in that school i talked about duplicated numbers let me talk about unduplicated we have we reach 86 percent of students in the high school levels so we've been very consistent with 86 percent we've gone up from 84 to 86 in the past five years so we're reaching more and more and we're getting there but across the state we're above the state level reaching students in our county the next thing i want to show you is we have 14 career clusters that we offer under these career clusters there's 126 career pathways so what does that mean we have 62 course offerings at the high schools and i'm gonna i just take a look
030at this for a second because that is amazing to have 62 course offerings through these 62 course offerings these courses separate out into career pathways that build your clusters some of our career pathways take two classes to get a concentration in cp some of them very few we have a three core sequence that allow us to get a concentration in that sequence so these are concentrators and our concentrators we have a thousand one hundred and forty five concentrators fall semester and that's that's a large number for concentrators that means that we've had students take two ct courses in the pathway and most of them have had two but a few of them would have the three course sequence to be a concentrator and we're just in the fall semester so we've done a really good
031job as far as concentration goes the 62 courses you saw prior to that we've aligned those over the past five years with perkins five coming in and we've made that a little bit better for the students to concentrate through those pathways so those are just some those are some wow factors as far as our numbers go for cp and buncombe county this is cte month february so we are celebrating cte and the next thing i'm going to show you guys a lot of stuff that we have done throughout the year that we have truly celebrated throughout the year i invite you guys and if you have not already we send out a ct newsletter each month if you're not getting that please let me know because we definitely we go through each school and make
032sure we're getting everything going on in those schools i want to first talk about our community outreach so we had a great chance this is the first annual we've done this we will do this every december now north bunker middle school and tc robertson high school fccla we got together with meals on wheels and we delivered 100 meals on wheels with the students before christmas i got a chance to drive one of the county cars and drive around and knock on doors we had the students dress up and send christmas carols and gave out presents to the meals on wheels folks so it was a great thing for us to get into one of the things i want to mention too this is just one community outreach we've done and i know heather's in here
033nesbitt discovery academy started habitat for humanity and so we've kind of been in collaboration with that but we've had some great success this year with that we're going to be looking at some more community outreach programs for our ctsos and classrooms as well moving on to our next one career cafe and this one is this one's amazing because this is actually a seventh grader idea that came to fruition we had let me give you her name clear yes okay i'm sorry yeah clear bruschette now claire came to miss peak who teaches that's a family consumer science at north monkey middle school claire asked about the idea and miss pete helped her bring that to light they've now done about four of these and we're going to continue to do them until the rest of the
034year we've had all sorts of folks from industry come in to meet with all the students in that building it's really been an awesome program to to put on it usually happens during the lunch time and they have a huge rotation of students that come through to actually take part of that so it was a great idea that actually came from one of our students from north bunker middle school the next one our ffa program we had the north buncombe high school ffa had a chance to go to nationals this year now if you guys don't know that was a really hard time to go out of state with covid going on they came back with a silver silver medal they had two silvers and two bronzes we were really proud of those folks too
035mr gillespie who runs that program has worked really hard with those those students to get them there cassie saltz is the vet science state winner number one in the state from north buncombe high she'll move on to the nationals for this next year but she did a lot of work with mr gillespie to get to that point i do want to mention a couple of things that aren't on the slide show too our woodworking programs that we've started since last year have really taken off reynolds high school mr sykes from reynolds high school got a chance to build cabinets with this second level course and install them at the church down the road from him so if you guys get a chance and i can send photos of that as well but it is an
036amazing cabinetry work it would be something that you'd probably buy from a cabinetry maker they did a great job on that looking at the top left here reynolds high school we are doing a total improvement of the ffa program and the ag program for them elijah frisbie is our new teacher up there i will invite you guys out we're doing some construction work up top above reynolds to get some new buildings so when that is taking place i'll be inviting you guys out to come take a look at it but he has done a great job to flip that program the last thing to remind you with ffa please do not forget there are fundraiser you can go ahead and put your orders in for a 35 dollar boston butt from north bunkum high so
037miss franklin they're quite tasty okay so with deca and this is really important too we've kind of deca has kind of lost its way a little bit past couple years mr furlow from reynolds high school and one of our new teachers from tc robertson miss hollett i've really revamped deca in our system mr furlow put on the this is his eighth annual western region competition he had around 300 students show up to compete in that he has done an amazing job putting that on and it is a lot of work from a deca group to put that large of a program on through our deca program they're actually going to be competing in march we have 20 students from reynolds which is pretty it's doubled over the past two years for us and we've got
038about 12 students from tc robertson will be competing in march for that last thing and i did not get a chance to present this in the fall but we did a careers on wheels cow event this is our first annual careers on wheels cali cal event our cal event really took off it was a huge hit we had over 600 fifth and sixth graders attend this event on av tech's campus we took all three parking spots all the way up to the top of the hill we had 50 industry folks show up anybody that had a vehicle involved with their industry showed up to talk to the students about what the industry is we did tours with all the students on it was it was such a huge hit dpi picked it up we were
039top 10 i think for three months in a row so but our careers on wheel event was very successful we do plan to continue this into the spring and this will be something annual that we do with it last and most importantly and this is what i really really want to make sure drives home is the industry changes so covid if it hasn't done changes it has definitely changed how industry folks are thinking of how to grab our kids we were approached by mission hospital and a great partnership came from this mission is offering a cna course seven week long course to anyone 18 years or older they will pay for everything while you're taking that cna seven week course they will pay for scrubs you'll take your cna exam afterwards and during that entire
040time you get paid by mission and you get benefits starting day one so and that is that's a win-win right there i've sat and i can't tell you how many industry meetings and everybody has wanted that right there so i do hope that in the future i'll be coming to you guys with some more exciting news like this but this is where we're headed with our industry folks and i expect to see more partnerships like this in the future so that concludes my presentation on cte thank you thank you to any of you have any questions i just have a comment last week i was actually at t.c robertson waiting on to speak with a teacher and his classroom was right across from the i'm going to probably really age myself here but the health
041occupations class i notice not what we call it now but i was thrilled to hear all of the engagement that was going on between the students and the teachers and i tell you what was going through my mind was oh thank god i'm going to be able to retire so i'm just so super excited to to see and hear you know that there there is that interest and that we do have students that you know still want to go into an industry that is very difficult as a pandemic has shown so i appreciate everything that cte has done to help allow our students those kind of opportunities thank you bte is exciting as all get out i mean all those things that i never got to do as a student and to watch students get
042to enjoy that today it's just a sincere blessing and i appreciate all your work taylor and your ability to put instructors in place that make that happen and that's a skill to be celebrated thank you taylor i'm going to ask you just to to reference three of the hot items i continue to read and hear across the state is the direction of and you reference the paid internships but internships sometimes you hear apprenticeships and then what appears to be on the horizon is the importance of credentials and licensures so what what's your observation in those particular areas let me let me touch on the credentials real quick so credentials have been a hot topic for years now what i like to call it is meaningful credentials so when we look at credentials that we offer
043in our classes we want it to mean something there is thousands and thousands of credentials that you can obtain right now but if you don't walk out of the building it doesn't mean anything no what's the worth of it you know we offer credentials through we have osha training credentials that get offered through our courses our woodworker career alliance credentials that we offer you know we have our cna of course that our nursing fundamentals goes through autodesk certifications adobe certifications you know we've got even got accounting certifications that we're offering now whenever we look at a credential we want to make sure that it's gonna mean something i could pick a credential and offer in every class we've got but i don't want to offer a credential that's not going to help the student move
044forward you're going to hear credentials and it's already in operation polaris and things like that you're going to hear more and more about credentials especially in the near future i just want you guys to realize we got to focus on what's meaningful credential everybody can get a trophy but i want to make sure that trophy means something and then secondly the apprenticeship so you're going to hear another buzzword and you've probably already started hearing it apprenticeship and internship we've been doing internships the word apprenticeship to me seems like it's that is something that you would think of at a community college level the big word that we focus on is pre-apprenticeship those are things that the students can do prior to leaving the high school level i like to call them industry promises which is
045what we're seeing right here because i think a lot of a lot of the industry folks are not focusing so much on am i part of that apprenticeship or am i promising something to that employer so we're really focusing heavily on these industry promises from here on we're using this model here to go to other employers to hopefully bring that with them but our goal is right now is that senior year of high school we're going to try to be connecting you with a local employer you can get that experience with them before you head out that answers your question thank you a reason to stay in the area and be a contributing citizen next item on the agenda is the action agenda our first budget item is budget amendment number three do board members
046have questions hearing none i would entertain a motion to approve somebody thank you second thank you all those in favor all right thank you any opposed all right the next item 2022 2023 buncombe county school calendar miss swunger are there questions from the board i have one or two madam chair if i could ms swunger or or maybe mr campbell the start date for 22 23 is that later than normal first session law i can address that is the worst case scenario under the current calendar law the calendar law requires that it be so many days within i believe august 25th and that fits the calendar law and i do not mind saying once again that it is my understanding that in western north carolina camp folks are fine with school starting around august 15th
047and the general assembly still will not take this up but you are now seeing the worst case scenario as far as a late start date under the counter well that was my thought the 25th has always it's been a date closest to the 25th right so it the monday the monday closest so you can't go backwards to the 22nd if we had to go forward to the 29th that's correct which then impacts which is my second question ms swonger do we because it seems different to me as we move into january of 2023 where at what day during those first three weeks or what days during those first three weeks do we see final exams when do we see when did we see second semester much later than we have this current school year we
048have a wonderful calendar it flowed beautifully from when that monday closest august 26th right two weeks for winter break worked beautifully the 22-23 year late start creates several challenges and does move exams past that martin luther king holiday so exams will start right after martin luther king on the 17th of january will change into a new semester on the 26th of january so will the exams be over a four-day period or do they take five so there'll be a weekend break so borrowing any weather issue that goes 17th through the 23rd yes and then you have those two dates built in there for for grades and changing and getting a new semester started et cetera the positive with the calendars we are live we are aligned with ab tech for spring break and that hasn't
049happened before so a b tech is going later and we will go that week of april 3rd how do we align with them at the start of the school year we are not aligned they start before us so our students will be taking classes if they're registered will they be two weeks yes begins the 22nd of august so not the 15th correct okay and there's not mr campbell there's not anything we can do about this is it not on the current calendar law i would haven't reviewed the possibility of that earlier monday before this evening we haven't looked at that we will take a look at that be happy to take a look at that well i don't think we need to delay anymore because this is normally something we've passed in november december board
050meetings i mean we need to get a calendar out to the public the start date in the law says no earlier than the monday closest to august 26th that's correct if it pushes it is the august 26th that's right i just pulled it up to double check so that is correct we'd have to move forward the closest monday is the 29th so what we want to hope for is that we continue having those five remote learning options for for weather days and do we know if that's in the works or something that has to be voted on again that's a short story well the we are expecting there to be a clarification of the ability to have remote days but we don't have it yet they have worked beautifully this year in terms of those
051days we could not run buses and have school in person other questions from board members when we take those five days i'm assuming that probably doesn't help us toward like the waiver that we've gotten in the past how does that fall into play the waiver is really of non-existence we to qualify you have to miss eight full days of school during four of the last 10 years okay so we are not online to receive the waiver and if remote learning days continue i would think that the waiver will slowly disappear but there are still about 16 school districts in the state using a winter weather waiver creates at the back end if we didn't if we mr campbell helped me but if we had a are we still a june 10th or similar finishing date
052right correct correct and we're slated to go right to the night so if we had a box with a start date and a stop date and 180 school days in between and again for for what it's worth my understanding is and dr baldwin or ms longer could speak to this that if schools did start mid-august most calendars could finish by the end of may right we did early june one time and had exams before winter break which is so beneficial yes that's what i hear all the time is how important it is to try to have those exams before if you think that makes sense talk to your legislative delegation and we have four students on the calendar committee and they shared that same sentiment yeah the impact is of these types of things is
053always it comes from raleigh we have to implement it but the impact is to families and kids i mean that's who gets hurt by this and it's just i i fail to understand the logic with it just doesn't help anybody doesn't help anybody in any way shape or form two other parts of the calendar it was extremely important to the calendar committee and the feedback that they received in their peer groups to bring forward to have two full weeks winter break so that made a big difference to them this past year when you do that we have those days scheduled because that's what their recommendations to you are however it removes other teacher work days throughout the calendar longer spans of time the early dismissals that you see are key because this coming school year
054all teachers k through 5 will be required to attend literacy training through the state state mandate called letters and we'll be using some of those early dismissals to help teachers get a little bit of time in for that training but it's quite intensive our teachers will be doing that for the next two years and we'll share a presentation with you a little bit later once we know some more details about that program all right any other questions or comments from the board hearing none i would entertain a motion to approve i don't chair reluctantly i would make that motion yes could i get a reluctant second reluctant second thank you all those in favor okay all right the next item on the agenda is the ncsba 2022 legislative committee board nomination and i'm going to
055ask amy churchill to speak to that please so we have the opportunity to provide the north carolina school board association's board of directors with a nomination of a member to serve on the ncsba's legislative committee this is a task that they would be tasked to help develop the draft ncsba legislative agenda for consideration and adoption by the delegate assembly committee is comprised of a subset of the ncsba board of directors and at large applicants representing the eight education districts the at-large members are selected by the nhcsba president and the ncsba legislative agenda is school board's legislative agendas and this process provides an opportunity for the larger membership of school boards across the state to become more directly involved so this is a very important position that we have the honor of being able to nominate
056somebody for one that needs to be given serious consideration to and after having some some discussion with the individual i'm i am happy to make the recommendation that we nominate ms amanda simpkins to serve as our nominee for the board of directors legislative committee thank you so she put that name into nominations i would second that nomination madam chair thank you thank you any other nominee are there any other nominations hearing none do you accept this challenge amanda simkins we are so proud that you do so i by acclamation all in favor aye great thank you thank you amanda thank you now we have the consideration for the return to learn plans and that is dr baldwin well back again another month you know i want to just start out by echoing some of the
057words that we heard from mrs presley during public comment is i think we need to stop and reflect you know barring the impact of mother nature and the five days that we've lost thus far due to inclement weather that forced us to close our school campuses we've been open fully open for in-person instruction and in covid world things move so fast don't they but i just think it's relevant for us to stop and reflect and compare where we were last year at this time as you can recall you know our desire was to be stable continuous in-person instruction but there were continuous transitions back and forth certainly beyond our control but i think it's important to understand the success because all of us believe strongly that the decisions that we make in terms of are
058the best interests of our students is to maximize their opportunity to be in that classroom and to take advantage of that face-to-face instruction with a teacher so i want to start out with that comment off the soapbox just a reminder this slide i think has been in place now for about five months why we're here and that is by law we are required you the board to make a decision to vote at least once a month on whether face covering policy should be modified so that's the charge also a reminder that beginning august 13th at a special called session this board adopted some very key metrics to help us in making those decisions and once again i'm going to read just to preface to preface those metrics that as a benchmark only and subject to
059consideration of all relevant factors the board of education would consider a change in face covering protocol in consultation with our local buncombe county department health and human services if the following local metrics were realized and today i'm going to focus back on the reduction or amending those requirements what we said that was adopted regarding the metrics guidelines was that the percent positivity rate would remain below the state average and we would find buncombe county coded as yellow or blue on the cdc level of community transmission map and the number of students and staff positive cases and quarantines lessen over the 14 successive day time period so that's what was put in place and i said this at the i've said i think at several past board meetings i applaud the board for moving in this
060direction we've had numerous school systems across the state contact us and ask about this type of metric guideline so that we are again following the science following the public health experts and having a goal not that it is is finite and that the decision has to be made entirely upon these data marks but that it serves as a guide and i think personally i think that served us well and the proof is in the pudding when we look at the percentages of days that we've been able to offer in-person instruction for our students this is a slide that you're familiar with i want to thank kim matthews for helping me she updates these every every month for us and by the way what i'm showing you on these four key metrics just a reminder that
061these are statewide metrics this actually is provided to us a couple of days before each meeting through a session with the north carolina department of health and human services so that's where these statistics come from last month i don't think i had a single positive to relay to you concerning the data that we're seeing we have positives and we have i guess the best way to describe it is a mixed bag that i'm bringing you tonight four key metrics and we're starting to again to see a pattern of decreasing which is what all of us were hoping for the daily cases by the date reported and that we're seeing as of february 1st we're seeing that drop the percentage of emergency room visits that are for covet-like illness compared to previous seasons again we're seeing
062the line move southward in the direction that we're hoping for the positive test as a percent of total tests now that still remains fairly high especially if we compare it back all the way to march 2020 when we first entered into this first positive test that percentage for the states 26.9 percent but again when you look at the data points we're starting to see a reduction and then the daily number of people currently hospitalized and what i continue to hear from our experts is that this is the one the hospitalization and certainly ms churchill i think would agree with this that tends to lag behind what we're going to see in terms of the actual case reduction but again we're seeing a slight decrease so this is all this is all very good and positive
063i wanted to include this slide i did not include it last month but this actually indicates the pattern that we're seeing concerning the coveted number of coveted cases per 100 000 population by age groups and again this is a statewide example and it shows the following age groups 0 to 17 18 to 24 15 25 to 49 50 to 64 and 65 and over and again as we look toward the most recent date that the data is patterned we see again that reduction for all age groups that's very positive this is a new slide and this chart reflects the recent dominance of the omicron variant of covid19 and so this particular color-coded slide represents data from this is a national data from what's called region four which includes alabama florida georgia kentucky mississippi north carolina
064south carolina and tennessee and you can see that as of january 22nd the percentage of coveted positive cases 99.9 percent are of the omicron variant in fact if you actually backtrack to december 25th regarding this chart you'll see that is when we saw the majority of covet cases reflect the omicon variant december 25th so i think this slide i wanted to show it to you because it does reflect just the emergence of omicron and i can promise you that the transmissibility that we're seeing this strain is incredible i think i shared with you and again realize that we've had gained some quite a bit of flexibility now through our toolbook regarding the number of days that we're able to for quarantine and isolation especially with closed contacts but all that said i think i shared
065with you this past tuesday when we did a snapshot that we had 96 of our employees that were not at work that particular day showed positive tests for covet and that is a significant shift i said this last month of what we're seeing again i think it just reflects the high transmission capabilities of of omicron this is a slide again that we've included each month and that's the percent positivity and we've tried to give you a comparison if we backtrack to last month what i brought to you we saw that the positivity rate for buncombe county was 20.2 percent and for north carolina it was 31.1 percent now we move forward to february 2nd and the percent positivity for buncombe county is 23.7 percent a slight increase by the way and for north carolina decrease
06624.2 percent and again i think so much of this reflects between these two months the impact of omicron the level of community transmission that has not changed from what i presented to you january 11th to today based upon that cdc map we're seeing that there are continues to remain for all counties in north carolina high levels of community transmission and again that was one of the key areas that we identified for our metrics i think this is interesting since january 12th the number of staff and student positive covet cases new cases for staff that's 244 to give you some comparison last month when i presented this slide the number was 184. so an increase okay moderate increase for students the number of positive cases has gone to a thousand and seventy now that's compared to
067last month when i gave you this data and it was 255. so that's a sharp increase and again i attribute this to a large degree about the high transmissibility of the omicron barrier i thought you might be interested in this again i appreciate kim keeping us updated where are we across the state now when i reported this to you last month 69 and there's 115 school systems in the state of north carolina 69 of those or 60 percent had a universal mask or face covering mandate in place now let's flash forward to to january 28th and that 60 percent has moved to 75.65 it's gone from 69 school districts to 87 that at that again on january 28th and this has been the most recent report we've been able to to pull now i do
068predict that over the next several weeks we'll see shifts and changes in this as the patterns change and again good news i'm bringing to you is we're starting to see statistics move and patterns move in the direction that i believe we want them to move and that can translate into shifts in thought concerning the face coverings but i'll also say to you that again back to what our number one goal is and that is to maximize in person instruction and in order to do that face coverings play a significant role in terms of our ability to keep our kids in the school building bring them back from remember isolations are due to someone being coveted positive quarantines are due to them being a close contact of someone that is positive and that factor of the
069face coverings play into this i think that's why we saw an increase of 18 school systems over this period of time moving back to the requirement for face coverings because i think we all understand we've got to have our kids in school we do not want to return back to sending everyone home with remote instruction it's good certainly for inclement weather days as ms swonger says it's been a blessing for us but we do not want to see this extended extended leave out of our campuses or from our campuses i also wanted to remind you that from the county standpoint buncombe county that mandate extends through february 16th although they are scheduled for their next board session on february 15th and we certainly would anticipate that there is the possibility of that mass mandate being
070changed so just to to make you aware of that okay what's our recommendation our recommendation is that we maintain current mass requirements in the school building for all students and staff and i'm going to say this with a bit of a caveat i always try to look at the glass as half full and i think we're seeing some encouraging signs and again this is simply coming from one superintendent i'm encouraged that when we come back for our march meeting that we may seem some variance in that recommendation now that remains to be seen because again i think i've shown you ample evidence of what we're dealing with with the levels of transmissibility due to this overcrown variant and i don't believe it's going to end necessarily anytime quickly but over time we're seeing some patterns
071certainly moving the right direction that we would like to see so with that mana chair that concludes my presentation any questions that you might have questions from the board you have a motion no i don't have a motion i have a question dr baldwin and it's probably been presented to us previously but when we've done this are our memories if memory serves we are we are able to still participate in appropriate and different types of opportunities for our students depending on the school and grade level and what's going on off campus as well is that correct in terms of like field trips and i know we had the education day at a unc asheville home basketball game in december i know we may not have had as many as we've had in the past but
072we as a school system gauging all of the safety parameters and issues at that particular time still have the ability to do those things is that correct we have and i and i think again mr huff does a great job of coordinating and working with our principals in terms of those requests coming in but i do think that we are now seeing that pattern where we have much more flexibility again maintaining the protocols that need to be in place and i and i failed to address this as i did last month but i really do point toward the test to stay as a key for lack of a better term a key weapon for us to have in terms of addressing concerns with with with covid so you're exactly right we've been able to with
073again with we're looking at them on a case-by-case basis and i asked the question for two reasons one to to it is important for us to have our kids in the building and to be learning but there are a lot of different ways that kids learn in our school systems and a lot of those trips that we're able to make and do for i think it does two things number one there's a lot of educational value in those things but number two it's also a it would seem to me anecdotally to be a way that another step towards returning to quote unquote normal if you will and i know it's coming up and you know and this board knows where i am as a college basketball fan and the southern conference has been a huge
074partner of this city for a number of years and i know we've had a large participation in an education day type setting there don't know that it's appropriate to do it again i would hope we would look at as a system a conversation with the southern conference because they've been such a good partner for not only the city of asheville in this community but also buncombe county schools and if there's a way to still do that and other things like that as we move into the spring and the weather gets nicer and other types of things that are beneficial to a whole lot of folks in a whole lot of ways and first and foremost to our students if we could continue to to keep an eye on those types of things and look for
075those opportunities and i don't know that there's any direction that needs to come from the board i just wanted to bring that out there and to to make it as part of the discussion if if we can and i and again just to to sort of connect some dots i think the importance of the face coverings is certainly if if you're a college basketball fan and you watch college basketball games spectators and that all audience are wearing those those masks so i i think that's and we talked just talked about the importance of of internships right how important that is to actually get that type of experience certainly education the the ability to educate and provide a learning opportunity far exceeds just the classroom so i would support 100 percent what you said mr ryan
076is there a motion to accept the recommendation of dr baldwin no movement here thank you could i get a second second all those in favor aye aye all right the next part of the agenda is the consent agenda the minutes of january 13 regular open session the personnel report with addendum a b tech community college board trustee's reappointment and the an advisory council member request to add an a member could i get a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you second all those in favor all right okay any opposed information agenda we have received financial reports a notification of informal construction and repairs contracts and change orders and we have removed policy 2302 from consideration in this agenda at this time i will announce that our next meeting is march the 3rd beginning at
0774 00 p.m in the bow catcher room with open sessions beginning at 5 and i would entertain a motion to adjourn thank you second all those in favor any opposed thank you very much you