001[Music] hello everybody i'd beat this gavel but everybody was already quiet waiting in anticipation so i'm glad y'all are here um i'd like to welcome everybody to the wednesday november 3rd clark county board of education meeting i see two young adults in the crowd i hope you all had a great halloween my daughter asked me yesterday if i could start setting up the christmas tree so i don't know but that's right around the corner um to start off the meeting today uh just some quick uh housekeeping stuff we've got a lot to do tonight we've got a lot to go over and when we get to public comment if we could just be thoughtful and respectful to whatever we're talking about whatever we want to comment about i truly appreciate that we live in corwick
002county awesome county and we love each other so let's just keep keep doing that um with that said i'm going to call on the most incredible elementary school principal in beaufort to [Laughter] to um call up her students for the pledge of allegiance everyone and um i think we have two of the best looking students in the county who are right here i have cole kate who is a fifth grader at our school and then i have cadence williams a third grader and they are so excited and proud and privileged to be able to lead our pledge of allegiance tonight so if everyone would stand they're going to come up to the podium to lead up please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america
003into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you too so much y'all did a fantastic job well we've got something we want to present to you we've got something we want to present to you [Music] let's make sure i give it to the right people this is for you i truly am proud of you you did a great job and this my friend is for you you did a great job too thank you so much [Applause] all right now we've got the reverend dennis goodwin who's going to give us the invocation let's pray father you have truly blessed this school system with good leadership with good teachers with good support personnel with good students with good parents and a good place we acknowledge all
004of that tonight and we pray your blessing on this time that we spend together in our lord's name amen amen thank you thank you next up i'm going to ask dr jackson to go to the podium we've got a lot of people to recognize for doing some great things in the community and i'm going to ask all the board members to come stand out here because we're going to shake hands and be happy about all these great people [Music] you just stand right there and turn around and grab off good evening board members and all who are gathered we certainly are quite honored to recognize some amazing students community members and folks who are making a tremendous difference for our students i'd first like to invite forward mr jake joplin who is the ceo of
005the carteret craven electric co-op mr joplin if you'll come join me board members i'm excited to share with you that carteret craven electric co-op annually provides bright ideas grants to teachers in carteret county public schools these grants have been used over the years to buy books science equipment robots art supplies etc the instructional materials funded through the bright ideas grants have made a tremendous difference for students and teachers carteret county teachers were awarded over sixteen thousand five hundred dollars this year and mr joplin and his team personally delivered those on one of the big bucket trucks and we were quite excited to have the bucket trucks in front of our schools since 1994 carteret craven electric co-op has provided over 559 thousand dollars in bright ideas grants to our teachers mr joplin on behalf of
006our school system thank you so much [Applause] that you stand right in the middle there we go [Applause] board members at this time i'd like to recognize a couple of our students mosh the corps and davis starling if they'd come forward along with their advisor mr mark thompson [Applause] board members i'd like to share with you that these two students competed in the fbla life smarts quiz bowl competitive event at the national leadership conference and were awarded second place in the entire country the their advisers mr mark thompson gentlemen we're so incredibly proud of you [Applause] mandatory don't stand up [Applause] board members at this time i'd like to invite forward white oak elementary school principal terry brett and some of her team members in the last couple of weeks we had the incredible honor
007to join a virtual presentation so we're glad to be able to do this in person white oak elementary school was one of only three schools in the entire state to receive a whole child award from the north carolina association of supervision and curriculum development in cascd the school is recognized for the way they start every morning supporting students with social emotional learning through adventure to fitness second step in the sanford harmony curriculum our pe teachers also do a great job teaching the bophin life skills program a drug and violence prevention program to promote mental health and positive youth development in addition to teaching about food nutrition the school also emphasizes farm-to-table foods for students to learn where their food comes from and how it gets to school and again one of only three schools in
008the entire state to receive this award congratulations [Applause] congratulations [Music] county public schools teacher of the year mr peterson absolutely that's right board members at this time i'd like to recognize one of our great partners who's going to share a recognition with you i'd like to invite forward miss kristen riddle from the eastern north carolina market for the american heart association mr riddle thank you guys for having me tonight um so just going to talk off the cuff about someone very special to the american heart association um again in um we're recognizing white oak elementary and a fantastic teacher that um i've had the pleasure of working with for the last 12 years at my time with american heart association she has 20 years of service with us raising 180 000 for the american heart
009association which is remarkable i was telling her today that um i just presented an award earlier this morning and someone had the exact same amount of years and had raised 30. so 180 is amazing um the you know her commitment to uh the heart association has been remarkable she's become a good friend of mine um and so you know i think it started our partnership started you know for her it's a personal reason um you know a family member having heart disease and so it's just kind of continued now the school you know they just the whole child award you know that's something that we as well do you know we're always trying to incorporate that and that's something that kathy hines also did i'd like to present this award to kathy hines and [Laughter]
010oh i'm not there anymore [Music] congratulations board members we have one more recognition and at this time i'd like to invite forward our finance department to join me if if that incredible team will come forward or members quite frankly i have in all my years of service never heard of a group achieving at this level i'm incredibly proud to share with you that for the 28th consecutive year 28 consecutive years the carteret county public schools finance department has earned two national awards the first the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting from the govern government government finance officers association of the united states and canada the second the certificate of excellence and financial reporting award from the association of school business officials both awards recognize their tremendous work in transparency in comprehensive reporting to
011the community and again we're so proud that for 28 years in a row they've received both of these national awards and miss wheatley there's actually two of them there so we'd like to congratulate our finance department congratulations [Applause] mandatory thank you [Applause] ugh well that was exciting board members now we're going to move right on and i am looking for a consideration of approval of the meeting agenda a move to approve the agenda as presented reverend goodwin has moved to approve the agenda do i have a second oh second miss chadwick has taken it all in favor raise your right hand very good the meeting agenda has been approved now i will have miss kathy carswell come back up and give us the ultimate report all right nope whichever one of y'all is doing it
012okay you introduced yeah i'll introduce myself about my baggage yes yeah i'm not gonna say your last name my name is adam superk i'm a partner with anderson smith wike your independent audit firm hired to conduct the audit of management for the year ended june 30 2021 and these financial statements that are in front of you are the product of that audit there is a three-party contract between the board us and the local government commission to conduct that audit and they actually review these financial statements the audit has been submitted to them but not yet uh reviewed so it's currently under review uh by their status but it's still free and clear for me to present to you tonight um the audit also i've got in front of you a little three-page letter just addressing
013the board letting you know how the audit went if there were any unusual items or difficulties conducting the audit or anything even just new gatsby pronouncements we would have disclosed those in that letter to you uh fortunately there's nothing unusual all the new gatsbys have been pushed back to next year there was no difficulties conducting the audit the audit when is planned the timeline when is it has the last several years we come out in may and conduct an audit of compliance over your major state and federal programs then we come back in september and finish the compliance audit and then audit the financial statements as of year end june 30 and then provide these statements so that again that three-page letter just lets you know there's no uh unusual items this year in the
014statements or in the audit now the bound blue booklet is a 73-page puzzle that i'm going to go over a couple of pages with you just point out what i think are the most important pages the requirements now for these statements they grow they grow every year with new pronouncements new information to add it's really kind of a a tale of two financial statements you have your government-wide statements and we've talked about this in the past that includes the value of your assets the uh the liabilities that are related to the pension and post-employment benefits that are really liabilities of the state but your portion is reflected within these statements and so those are what are called the government-wide statements then there's also the fund statements those those haven't changed in 20 years those are
015the same fund balance is still the same cash is still the same and to me those are the most important items to really note so if you read through those first 10 pages you just have to take note whether you're reading about fund balance or you're reading about net position because net position is a government-wide term and your net position for the year is negative 26 million dollars well that's doesn't mean anything you're not financially in the hole by 26 million dollars that's just a product of these giant employment or post-employment and pension liabilities that your portion of are reflected within these statements so again whenever you're reading through any of this definitely note whether you're looking at net position or fund balance because those are two different numbers to me the board and management
016really care about net or fund balance that is how much money you have available uh you know in the coffers how much how much did you make this year your change in net position is again mostly a factor of how much pension a liability went up or down so if you turn to page 14 page 14 and 16 to me are the two most important pages in the booklet page 14 is the balance sheet for your governmental funds you have your general fund your state public school fund federal grants other special revenue capital outlay and individual schools now your biggest sources of revenue your state public school fund and also one of your smaller sources of revenue your federal grants fund they actually don't carry fund balance so all the fund balance is located in
017your general other special revenue capital outlay and then the funds at the individual schools so the first column there is your general fund balance sheet cash on hand 5.1 million dollars at the top and at the bottom your fund balance number of five million two hundred and ninety nine thousand that's an increase of one point seven million dollars from the year before and of that five point three million dollars of fund balance six hundred thousand of it is in the form of inventories that's not cash not spendable you've already spent that money but you have inventory on hand to use for future repairs and future maintenance 199 000 of that fund balance is restricted by state statute for receivables and encumbrances basically at the end of the year you have open pos that you're going
018to get ready to pay those are encumbered cannot be appropriated in the 2021-2022 fund budget so they're on automatically restricted and set aside to pay the the first couple of invoices that come in in the next year and then you have a management assignment fund balance of 1 million 438 assigned for next year's budget these are basically the funds expected to be used the fund balance expected to be used according to the 2021-2022 budget an estimate so to speak you're not held to it by any means but it is just a planned uh budget assignment and so leaving you with three million dollars of unassigned fund balance which compares to about 1.7 million dollars of last year being unassigned so there was a significant increase in fund balance like i said 1.7 million dollars but
019i uh was looking back um as far back as um i could on the audits that i've been on recently and i look back back in 2012 june 30 2012 you actually had 5.4 million dollars of unbalance so um even though you had a significant increase you are still in the realm of fund balance that you've seen in the last 10 years these fund balanced scene now with the pandemic and looking back even further back in 2008 our funds almost like a cycle you have this ability to add money to fund balance because of an increase in federal funds and you take that opportunity and then when those federal funds are gone the requirements the to maintain some of the expenditures that those created will fall back on you and fund balance will go back
020down over the next several years that's a cycle that we're now seeing with two global crisis in a row so again 5.3 million dollars of fund balance by no means is out of the realm of your recent history you also have 1.8 million dollars of fund balance in the other special revenue fund these are the funds that used to be included in local funds but have been portioned out because they they represent special programs some of them state some of them federal some of them just local some technology fees basically anything that doesn't come directly from the county now ends up in the other special revenue fund so it also carries fund balance and that fund balance went up this year by 300 000 to that 1 million 855 000 capital outlay has 10 million
021dollars of fund balance but only 165 000 of that is really yours so several years ago you received hurricane florence funds those funds are restricted for use for only repairs related to hurricanes and you still have nine million seven hundred nineteen thousand dollars of those funds left now those funds were given to you and have to be paid back to dpi and any funds that you received from fema or insurance would offset the cost of those repairs first and so the last portion that you're able to spend you know being this state or this dpi 10 million dollars that you have left to pay back so basically they fronted you some money you made your claims you did your repairs you got reimbursed by insurance and anything that you don't spend of those state funds
022after again crediting back the insurance and fema again has to be sent back to the state so we've restricted that fund balance so you see in that column 9.8 million dollars of fund balance but 9.7 million is restricted for either other repairs related that hurricane or sending back to dpi when when when those funds are required to be sent back and so what's left is just the 164 000 of restricted fund balance restricted for use of capital outlay only that is essentially your fund balance in that fund and then there's 1.2 million dollars across all your schools for their funds on hand and that went down 40 000 this year any questions about your again governmental fund balance uh really to me the most important page um does anybody know if we have uh anticipated
023repairs in coming up here for that 9.7 i believe not to the tune of 9.7 um we've been reimbursed yeah the state sent out that money there were there was a i think it was 10 to 12 districts that got this money they got it for various reasons some of them just needed the cash to pay bills they had they had water in buildings and they they had serv pro in there wanting to get paid before they did any more work and insurance wasn't ready to pay out so the district's hardest hit by hurricane florence received funds up front with the intent that it would cover anything that wasn't covered by insurance and also to help cash flow so a lot of your issues and repairs were covered by fema or insurance and that way
024that's why you still have 9.7 million of this left you used it up front but then received insurance checks you know throughout the last few years when is that to be paid back i believe it's 2025. um dpi uh stays in touch with the districts that got it but it's 2025. um and it is becoming obviously more and more difficult to get approval to spend that money because we're so many years removed now um so again your future plans to spend just aren't going to total 9.7 and shouldn't i mean it's those you know those repairs have been made um now you're just really in the stages of you know verifying that there's no other structural or hidden costs related to those damages so again you're just not going to be able to spend that
0259.7 when it's gone there will be 165 000. that's right and because that's a lot of your capital outlay funds are on a reimbursement basis from the county so you end up with a project they pay for it and so you you have very little capital outlay funds on hand carrying over um the next page page 15 not as important but it is kind of show you um how we get from fund balance to net position so you see at the very top 18 million dollars that's your total governmental fund balance and all of these factors get you to that negative 26 million dollar net position most of these related to accounts related to pension and opec benefits as well as your fixed assets the value of buildings net of depreciation so opab other post-employment
026benefits your retirement health care and disability income and death benefit the the two that are actually recorded are the disability income and the retirement health the retirement health being the biggest portion it creates the biggest liability it's a giant unfunded mandate mr chairman let me let me say that for years now i have had objections to the way this is reported because this is not a liability of the carter county public school system it is a liability of the state of north carolina i initially thought this was a way that the state was kind of shuffling off some of his debt to the counties at least for accounting purposes but i don't really think that's what it is i you are a political subdivision of the state of north carolina and i think that this
027as much as anything is a way that the state can account for what its liability is to the retired employees but these these these large figures here um are are not obligations of the carter county board of education or the taxpayers in carter accounting their state obligations the the state still has these liabilities on their uh kaffir nothing changed they just added to yours but the the gatsby rights standards to capture every type of government across all 50 states and north carolina is set up different than the the illinois so if the uh chicago board of education offers an employment benefit to retirees the rules have to capture the cost of that benefit if that again if the department or the board of education for chicago says that every every person that retires they'll get
028two thousand dollars for the rest of their life that liability has to be captured and the gatsby wrote standards to to force them to capture that but it also captures your liability your portion of a state benefit um again there's uh there's other post-employment benefits that could be offered and are offered across uh various states various forms of government i think this is more of a reaction to some poorly managed governments that have the possibility of failing have run out of money they write these standards for everybody and again even north carolina with a 86 percent funded pension plan still has to conform and present those liabilities within each individual government's respective percentage of that giant liability now again the health insurance plan is not so well funded i think it's about six and a
029half percent but it's still your portion of that is a giant liability that you won't have to pay thank you for that clarification i appreciate it um regarding one last thing about this so the the state liability the state auditors actually select a sample of governmental units every year to have an audit done of their basically their orbit system that's where you report all of your employees ages genders years of service how much they're paid how much is withheld in retirement the state auditor selects a sample and requires that sample to be either tested by the state auditor or tested by their independent auditor this year you were selected to be audited we conducted that audit uh in the spring submitted our it was a just a one-page opinion letter that said in our opinion
030you conformed with the orbit requirements and um that that opinion was accepted so you were again selected for the the orbit audit again that's the the basically the the system that compiles all the data of individuals that then goes to the actuaries who then calculate what the true liability is going into perpetuity so one question yes these unfunded liabilities are they going up or down or just leveling one went up one went down the pension liability is going up uh the retirement health benefit liability went down um and it it goes down again it's an actuarial calculation it goes it goes down just because somebody thought you know what i think on average a 71 year old male today is going to live 19.3 years instead of 19.1 year i mean that is that you
031know critical and that and that that my nude and you just change one little assumption and even just how um how the market reacts how insurance costs react there's all these factors that play into that calculation so the retirement health benefit went down but the pension liability went up page 16 is exhibit four this is the income statement for those governmental funds and uh you know i already went over the numbers but you can see um across the the top there your general fund revenues of 24 million dollars state public school fund almost 53.5 million dollars federal grants funds 6.7 million other special revenues 3.3 3.4 million and capital outlay 3.6 million then you have your expenditures and at the bottom you have that change in fund balance like again like we said uh 1.7
032million dollar increase on the general fund 300 000 increase on the other special revenue fund and a decrease of 386 000 on the capital outlay fund but that was really just a decrease in the hurricane portion that 165 000 has has been about that number slowly creeping up for the last few years so again 5.3 million total fund balance at the very bottom on the first column and 18.2 million total but again 10 million of that really isn't even yours any questions about that income statement again the increase this year the 1.7 million dollars there was a increase in prior year um there are what are considered covet savings the cost of savings of not having to transfer transport all the same kids every day this year's increase is more driven by the federal funds
033received you received 2.4 million dollars of education stabilization funds and nine 900 thirty thousand dollars of coronavirus relief funds uh those are both federal pots of money received to help offset the cost of operating a school system during a pandemic and that offsetting revenue does help you increase your fund balance so um every district i've been at this year has added fund balance and 1.7 million or one point yeah 1.7 million dollars is by far not the biggest and it is not the lowest so um i've seen city districts that have added a million dollars and large districts that have added 10 million so across the board districts are adding fund balance again utilizing those federal dollars to help offset some of the cost of the pandemic and there are also cost savings transportation still
034you know usually uh is recognizing savings and also all the the vacancies and positions across the state you know create less expenditures all right after that there's some budget versus actual uh schedules you had no budget violations uh page 22 exhibit seven is the balance sheet for the one other fund that you have the the one business type fund you have the child the school food service child nutrition fund this fund actually has to record their portion of the pension and the retirement benefit liability directly in their fund because they're a business type fund they report on a different accrual basis and so every revenue and expense every asset and liability recorded directly in the fund on a an accrual basis so you have the capital assets you have the liabilities for pension and opeb
035and so you have a negative 1.4 million dollars of fund balance that is not reflective again of that the financial position for that fund you really have to look at cash as the main judge of financial stability and you've got 1.7 million dollars of cash on hand and that compares to 1.7 million dollars of cash on hand last year now you can you can manage cash flow just because you had 1.7 million in the bank both days on june 30 isn't necessarily reflective of a flat line when you look at cash you also can look at receivables so your cash while it stayed the same your receivable which the biggest one is from the from dpi for your june meals served so that live that receivable this year was a hundred thousand dollars last year
036was 270 000 so you maintained a flatline cash but your receivable went down so you did actually use or utilize some of your current assets when you look at the change in fund balance it was only 86 000 decrease that eighty six thousand dollar decrease includes the changes in that pension there is a back schedule on page sixty one it's a non-gaap schedule so it's like modified to take out all of the revenues and expenses related to pension and contributed capital and depreciation and it puts it all below the line so page 61 two thirds of the way down before all these reconciling items in the middle column you have this excess uh this revenues and expense versus expenses actual is negative 151 thousand dollars to me that is a true or truer change in
037fund balance related to operations not related to capital not related to pension or opeb so that mirrors that change in receivables so you did have a slight usage of current assets as my point of about 150 000 again that is not a bad year when you recognized a million dollar decrease in revenues um your food sales were eight thousand dollars this year compared to 448 thousand dollars the year before your uh re federal reimbursements 3.2 million compared to 4.1 million those are significant declines in revenue you have to manage that by taking significant cuts in salaries your food costs are totally different because you're serving totally different meals so to be able to operate a kitchen in a pandemic where you're serving kids half the amount of time you used to to only use 150
038000 of your 2 million dollars of current assets is not a a bad operational year so um page 23 exhibit 8 is the income statement as presented in normal terms you can see again that food sales of 8 food costs 1.1 million salaries and benefits 1.9 million and the change in net position of 87 000 the cash flow statement is behind that again cash being one of the good judges of financial stability and child attrition and then in that middle page you can see where cash went up sixteen thousand dollars from one million six fifty eight to one million 1674 that's on page 24. but again most of that change was really related to the the biggest thing you don't see there is that change in receivable so after that there are 20 some pages
039of footnotes about all of your accounting policies a little bit more detail on all of your assets like receivables cash charts on your fixed assets 10 pages of information about the actuarial studies for the various pension and oped plans there's even charts for those liabilities if you want to turn to page 51 so this is a eight-year chart of the pension um and your your percentage basically so your proportionate share of that state liability is 0.32 percent you know a third of a percent creates a 39 million dollar liability uh when you look back at 2014 that 39 million dollar liability was a 19 million dollar liability so a significant increase in that actuarial uh calculation but also this chart shows you kind of a little history of your covered payroll so in 2021 your
040covered payroll was 49.7 million compared to uh 2014 of 45.2 million that is not a significant increase i mean it's four million dollars but when you factor in all of your um [Music] salary increases over those years um basically you can see here you're you've slowly trended up there are districts some of them rightfully so because they're significantly growing and some of them just because of poor hiring choices getting in you know getting themselves in fund balance trouble salaries is your number one expenditure so managing that is the number one goal for managing a school system so after all the financial statements schedules and notes page 62 starts the compliance part of this of the statements so page 62 begins basically three letters one letter on internal control one letter on federal compliance one letter
041on state compliance all three of these considered clean unmodified opinions and the internal control letter basically saying with it we noted those significant deficiencies in internal controls so again three good opinion letters this year for federal compliance we audited title one the education stabilization funds which were related to covet 19 and the coronavirus relief funds which were related to coven 19. those were the federal major programs and the state programs that we audited for compliance the state public school fund which has to be audited every year and then the cte program the months of employment state and federal programs have to be audited once every three years except for the state public school fund that has to be audited every year and the coronavirus relief funds were designated as high risk have to be audited
042every year for compliance not sure whether the education stabilization funds which are the bigger pot the esser funds if those will be designated as higher risk next year but if they will we'll audit them as well as required and that's it fantastic any other questions or thoughts wonderful i'm looking uh to promotion to consider our audit report i move to approve the audit report as presented reverend goodwin has made a motion do i have a second i'll second that mr day has seconded it all in favor raise your right hand there you go you did a fantastic job your knowledge is excellent we appreciate you yes we do thank you thank you next up we've got mr perry harker who is the chairman of the corner county public school foundation here to join us tonight
043good evening good evening i hope everyone is doing well as stated i'm perry harker chair carter county public school foundation and i'm here tonight to give you a brief update and overview of the foundation uh we are required in our bylaws to annually update the board and that's that's what we're going to try to do tonight the foundation was founded in 2010 with a mission to promote excellence in education by supporting students teachers schools and educational programs our focus has been and will continue to be to enrich education for all students supporting faculty encouraging support of public education by securing funds for innovative projects that cannot be used with your local state and federal dollars so since the foundation has been donated nearly 1.6 million dollars and of that 1.4 million we have invested in
044our school system programs and our students and our employees the foundation is a volunteer board served by 12 members and we have three ex-officio members it's a 501 c 3 non-profit provides a tax deductible way to support the public school system and i do want to take this opportunity to thank you for consideration of reappointment to um board members that you have on your consent agenda tonight we appreciate that greatly so the foundation accepts and administers uh donations for either specific or general purposes for example a donor can designate that a gift be used for a particular school for a particular subject and and used for students that have a need or it can be designated that it will support employees for their needs and certainly we also have funds that are designated to support
045students and their families and needs that they may have donations also received as undesignated and weird judicious and make sure that those funds are used to support the mission of the foundation and we have benefited from two very successful fundraisers and dinners this year the first will shine your light in may which was uh held at 34 north well attended i i'm saying the board did that but really catherine jackwick and her team did it or just taking credit for it but great it was outstanding we appreciate your work on that katherine the second was dining on the dots which was held last month that was a beaufort wine and food event they chose the foundation to not only highlight the work that we do but all funds raised at that event will be donated
046to the foundation as you know we've started to grow your own teacher program or teaching fellows program that will offer high school seniors scholarships so that they can pursue a degree in education and then return to carteret county to teach in our public school system we see many many benefits to to this program but three i just want to highlight the data supports that when you talk to students and families the number one issue preventing them from going to college is cost this program will eliminate the majority of that cost and in some instances all of that costs associated so it will open the door for students who want to to attend college second is will be not as measurable initially but certainly down the road we feel like it will re-energize interest in teaching
047so not only is there a teacher's shortage there's a teacher shortage and students wanting to pursue teaching as a career so we feel like the work that we would do to promote it the work that the school system would do to internally promote it hopefully would generate more interest for students that want to pursue teaching as a career and the third certainly over time we think it will create a pipeline of teachers for our school system so we're very excited about the program the foundation is excited about our future we're hoping in the in the next few weeks we're going to have an exciting announcement to make i want to end by thanking you for your service on the board of education and thank you for your support of the foundation thank thank you so
048much [Applause] all right next up we're going to have the public forum and before we get to that this is the time i get to read this long green sheet it is now time for public comment anyone present tonight wishing to make comment should have filled out a public comment form to ensure civility relevance and time management there are specific requirements for public comment set forth in school board policy they include comments are limited to matters pertaining to public education the speaker shall state his or her name at the beginning of his or her comment speaking time will be limited to three minutes per person assistant superintendent richie paler is our timekeeper he will hold up a yellow card when the speaker has 30 seconds left and a red card when time has ended for
049civility and decorum no speaker shall make obscene remarks or issue personal attacks or or insults no complaint against a school employee or student will be permitted although this may be heard in closed session at a later date following consultation with the superintendent much information about individual students including a speaker's own child is confidential under state and federal law and we discourage and often prohibit such information in open session the chairperson may immediately terminate any comments that violate these rules board members will not respond to questions except occasionally to request clarification with that introduction our first speaker tonight is mr ken riley good evening my name is uh ken riley and my wife and i are the tremendous champions for the clark county school system and in a personal capacity i uh work with the pac
050i'm serve on the pack at west carter at high school so i'm here tonight i've written some comments and i'll keep to keep the time for efficiency my comments tonight are specific to the request for additional coaching and staff for athletic programs at our area high schools winter sports season has begun and as our schools have grown we've seen a reduction in some staff for some of our sports i can share observations from west carderock high school but i know this affects sports at other had other programs and uh just ask that you respect the needs assessments that are coming forth with our athletic directors programs west carteret and croatan wrestling programs each have really large programs my daughter wrestles at west west supports a fully integrated west wrestling program with men and women varsity
051and junior varsity west currently has about 35 athletes on their roster and we're expecting several more when football season concludes the re the wrestling team currently has a head coach and assistant head coach to lead mentor and supervise those athletes which is a full contact sport bottom line for my request is that is for the health and safety of our athletes specifically we need more coaches and assistants to ensure safety and practice and ensure safe guidelines are followed when accidents happen we need more coaches and staff for wrestling matches because often in our matches we run three matches simultaneously and each match requires a coach on the mat if a wrestler does not have a coach the match may be forfeited we need more coaches because of just the busy schedule of having varsity and
052junior varsity matches tournaments and conferences covering those matches as i've previously stated and then beyond that we have women's events that are occurring and and women's wrestling is the fastest growing sector of high school athletics in the nation um coveted 19 impacts let's just want to mention about that um we're really excited that the wrestling teams across the county are young and that there's an influx of ninth graders and wrestlers that did not wrestle last year as a result of covet impacts and these are inexperienced wrestlers and they need the additional supervision and support to train them properly i would like to tell you just a little bit about my daughter i'll try to respect those those bits about person personal information my daughter wrestles at west last year she wrestled varsity as a ninth
053grader she competed in in the conference and went on to the women's high school state championship and brought home third place for our state she was the only wrestler from carderock county and we're so grateful that coach smith and his staff could lead her to on that path i'll conclude by saying that carter county school athletic program is really the only place that she's ever learned to wrestle she came home in sixth grade and said mom dad i want to try wrestling and and she's been wrestling ever since we don't have wrestling programs we don't do anything outside the school system so her success is a reflection of our county programs so i ask that you consider some of the safe health and safety considerations for our athletic programs thank you thank you thank you
054so much mr riley all right next up we have mr ray waldbusser did i get that right yeah perfect perfect they said i'm ray wallbuster all three of my kids went through the school system and i've got two grandkids in there right now so i've been here for a little while just wanted to start out thanking all of you for fracting so quickly after the health department said that their the threshold was was breached for uh allowing the mask optional to take place uh for acting that quickly and letting that happen starting yesterday so or monday so yeah thank you very much for that i do think there's a little bit more we can do on on the quarantine criteria and i know mr whitford has talked about that before about the legal aspects of
055that one thing that we might want to do there's a number of children who've been quarantined and and as has been said in past meetings there's really none that we know of or extremely few that we know of that that got sick so one thing to consider would be instead of sending them home since most everybody else is unmasked in the school system now to allow them to stay in school but be masked so that's just something i wanted to bring up as a possibility for changing the quarantine criteria i also wanted to thank you for uh the changes that are being made to some of these policies that are coming through on the second reading tonight mostly to address um critical race theory social emotional learning uh we really as parents and grandparents appreciate
056you doing this um the um and also um for having your curriculum managers look at the different curriculums in social emotion emotional learning and and actually i know pulling back one of them that was that was found um to be not very good and uh we we really appreciate that um one thing i would ask if it's possible um for for policy 7720 if if when it's brought up if if if mr probst is going to bring it up that he would he would read it just so that everybody would know it and put it on the record uh and then also for 3100 policy if he could read the part that was changed in in section d just just to have it on the record and allow everybody to hear exactly what the policy
057is instead of just proposing it and then uh approving it so all right thank you thank you mr waldbuster next up i've got miss kelsey mccormick as my sign reads i will be here to encourage you all to educate and not mandate when it comes to the coven 19 vaccines my name is kelsey mccormick and i'm a junior at croatan high school i'd first of all like to give you all thanks for letting me speak here and dropping the mask mandate whenever it reached below 5 i believe that the mask mandate should be done away with completely but i do hope this is a step in the correct direction i'm still extremely concerned when it comes to the coveted vaccine and potential of mandates in our schools the very divisive toolkit discriminates against those of
058us who are unvaccinated and pushes the vaccine in our schools this toolkit mentions the vaccine 137 times whereas it only mentions the masks and face coverings 65 times we fear that masks are just the start and so today i'm here to encourage you our board of education to stand up against against these unjust and tyrannical mandates whenever we may face them the students of our county deserve better and so do our faculty and staff we have seen many county boards of education across the state including chapel hill carrboro orange and durham counties mandating their vaccine for faculty they have forced thousands of our schools teachers and staff to choose between taking an experimental vaccine or losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families across the u.s school boards have mandated the vaccine
059for staff and students put travel restrictions on the unvaccinated and some have even required students to scan into school with a bar code to assure that they are vaccinated these mandates are a direct threat and attack on our individual liberties we have as americans look at australia with their extensive mandates and camps for the unvaccinated is that what we can expect next in america these mandates are also not based on the science the mainstream media tends to engage in fear mongering when it comes to the virus but they still sugarcoat these vaccines kids quite literally have a one in a million or .001 chance of dying from the virus itself as mentioned by the fda advisory committee ages 0-17 account 4.00002 percent of all coveted deaths the advisory committee also added that children have the
060lowest percentage of emergency department visits with covid the fact is healthy kids fare well with the virus experiencing usual cold or flu symptoms the vaccines on the other hand come with more detrimental and possibly fatal health concerns these include blood clots myocarditis pericarditis lung immuno immunopathology pulmonary edema bell's palsy paralysis sensory issues prion disease and other serious health issues including death now let's look at the data most recently approved almost unanimously by the fda advisory panel even though all members on the panel noted it was hard to evaluate the risk benefit analysis since kids really are not at risk of transmitting the virus being hospitalized because of it or dying from it as dr rubin on the panel said himself we're never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving
061it that's the way it goes they plan on using us and fda issued post-marketing studies to show long-term safety and approval of the vaccines in the next three to six years until then their goal is to keep implementing mass vaccination strategies among school-aged kids even though there will be not no long-term data on their efficacy they are using us the kids as guinea pigs now is that what we really want thank you miss mccormick we appreciate you [Applause] next up we have mr lee walter all right i'm lee walter many of you know me as the suspended uh substitute teacher here in carteret county and go in an investigation into some activity where i was walked out of croatian high school you know for yeah and so yeah while there's no reason to rehash those
062things you know i was going to provide a what i would call a assessment of failures within processes and systems that i've detected you know as a military officer you know we do something called after action review we look at systems and processes in a way where we get thin skinned and just be honest about our failures but two nights ago the script flipped and god spoke to me and he said don't say any of that this is what i want you to say and last night a friend called a woman who i look at as a mother and she said this is what god's saying to you and i knew i needed to say what i'm going to say to you so i'm well known in carteret county i'm from newport i'm west carteret
063class of 93. you know those who know me you go back and ask gordie patrick you know about lee walter what you'll actually find is an insecure broken down kid you'll find a kid with unresolved trauma and wounds that's covered up you know by some athleticism and posturing you know that it exploded in my senior year after an athletic accident you know where baseball was taken away and the next thing i know i'm like full bore into drugs and partying and that's where i'm known as you know in what in my senior year at west carteret we ran the school we ran the party culture you know we spread you know this kind of ideology you know but at 19 years old in a place you know where you know men must go which is
064looking in the insides of their heart i had a dramatic encounter with the lord jesus at 19 years old at four in the morning on a large dose of acid on fred schnibben's sidewalk i got hit with a wave of the love of god and it transformed my life you know what many would categorize as the new birth you know through repentance and faith in jesus and so it's clear when i'm talking about god i'm talking about the god of the bible there's no other god and the man jesus is raised from the dead he's coming to the earth and he has a message for you he has a message for you and this is his message so in iraq in 2009 i had like an update to some of the work god had done
065in my heart and went deep into a place of of learning to be loved by god and during that time period my heart began to break for the condition of young people in america reflecting on my condition i never connected to young people or talked to young people you know before 2010 i have no affinity for young people you know outside of what became a mandate from god for me to share what's in my heart with young people and what's coming to carteret county what i'm providing you right now is an invitation from the lord jesus the lord jesus is saying this to you he has a plan for the carteret county school systems and you got to make a choice i'll share you a little bit of his plan seven years ago i'm driving
066into mr walters seven years ago i'm driving in mr welter shut me off right now that's i do not want to shut you off i want you to understand that we've got to be respectful everybody's talking to give you 30 more seconds okay well i'm not going to finish in 30 seconds in 30 seconds of some warning mr walter you're fine i understand i respect please be respectful of everybody okay i do i'm just i'm cutting off right now and the rest of this message i'll provide via facebook live you know of what god's message is to the carteret county school system that's it thank you thank you mr walter next up we've got miss barbara smith thank you for this opportunity um i also want to say how awesome y'all look without the mask
067on can you imagine how our children feel in school now isn't that really neat um however when i was doing my research and everything i discovered the kids on the buses are still having to wear a mask why they're the same kids that are going to class every day why are they wearing masks when they get on the bus when they get off the bus until they get off the bus isn't that being ridiculous you need to think reasonable and not just think about where your money is coming from i understand that the money um it comes from the federal transportation funding you get money from the federal government all the time it is in your face as to what is going on in this country and if you do not stand up for us
068you've done a fantastic job with getting the mask off took a bit but we got there but it's ridiculous think about it it does not make sense you have been given true facts from kelsey and other people for the last couple of months stuff that we are researching if you're not but you need to if you aren't um then there was a matter of um michael fulcher is correct in questioning a 15 000 raise for the superintendent and to be retroactive two months back how many people are out of a job right now due to the pandemic and let's face it here again it's in your face it's a pandemic how many people are losing their jobs due to these unlawful mandates people are walking off their jobs to keep from getting the facts and
069i already know that craven county is planning on setting up vaccinated sites it's in their budget is that what's going to happen here too i was thinking carter county was a little bit better than what i've been seeing and hearing in craven county i've got grandkids there so i'm keeping an eye on them as well how many students are losing education due to the mass mandates and contact tracing which has been proven useless and incorrect as well how many students have you lost to other ways of educating them such as homeschooling private schools and how many are still doing virtual how much federal funding have you lost due to lower number of students raises are earned by merit not just handed out and with our economy the way it is 15 000 and mr auditor
070i don't remember what his name was mentioned that you need to manage salary i think that's a good place to start also 20 million dollars given to the carter county schools for ppe 47 pages can you tell me what that's about thank you miss smith we appreciate it thank you for the opportunity uh lastly is miss carrie dennison hi my name's carrie dennison i've never come to a board meeting sorry my mom was a teacher in this county for 20 something years and i'm not talking about covid so that might be a relief i'm actually talking about bullying my myself was horribly bullied in middle school this was 26 years ago in carter county so it's a long time ago i was hoping it was over and done with by now i wish miss wood
071was still here my son actually attended beaufort elementary school from kindergarten through fifth grade had almost straight a's the entire time he's actually in quiz bowl and battled the books now as a sixth grader but unfortunately we had to move him to moorhead middle since then um he has been bullied since he got there uh he came home one day with a black eye swollen out to here i have a picture it was an accident that time but i found out the kid that accidentally hit him in the face with his head is also related to the vice principal um i got no phone call no email no communication whatsoever now coming from beaufort elementary school they have this something called class dojo which early on i was like oh this is so annoying i
072actually wish i still had it you knew if your son you know tripped on a shoelace within 30 seconds for my child to come off the bus like this and nobody contacted me is insane i actually my ex-husband and i the first time we've gotten along in years um we bonded together on this we actually spoke to i know you said you can't say names but the principal um who never once had any kind of written communication with us when he spoke with us he spoke with us outside away from any kind of witnesses which i didn't think much of at the time but then reading policies reading things like that um i see that everything should be written now mrs wood always written communication about everything which is smart this print no um so
073okay so we dealt with that he talked to us he apologized he thought i was upset because you know um i don't know why he thought oh i forget it was something ridiculous and i said no i'm upset because we never got any kind of communication nobody came to us nothing so okay that that happened a few weeks later my son came to me and said the kids are calling me the f word no i'm not a saint none of us are but i don't say that for it i have many gay friends it's not something i say again words he begged me though he said mom last time they kept pulling me in the office please don't say anything please please please don't say anything i don't want to get you know any picked
074on anymore okay no problem huh so now last week this little class that y'all keep talking about the emotional learning thing so they were doing that all week last week it didn't help in the locker room my son was smacked in the face by another child my son didn't go report it the other kid in the locker room reported it i found out two days later when my because we have complete custody so anyway i found out two days later mom they've been pulling me in the office for two days i contacted the principal and i had to ask him about it and he thought he was very snarky to me very rude and i said something about my child once again has been hit at your school nothing has been done he told me
075well we don't know who did it he keeps changing his story and now he's saying nobody may have hit him at all then two days after that my son tells me no mom another child saw it and reported it and still nothing was done so i guess please just figure out what's going on in our school system why people aren't being held accountable my child should not be bullied and be hit in school and nobody even contacted me as this parent thank you mr dennison and that concludes public comment for the evening appreciate everybody coming in now we will move on to uh i'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda i'll move to approve the consent agenda i've got a motion to approve consent agenda do i have a second second i've
076got a second by ms wheatley all in favor raise your right hand very good now we are moving on to let's see miss mclennan don't give me a long paper tonight and i'm getting all discombobulated good evening board i'm excited to be here tonight to talk about the data that was reported from the state last school year the 2021 school year regarding our end of grade and end of course testing so we're going to jump right in i want to point out our overall score for carter county public schools we scored at 61.1 percent proficient and to the left you will see the state average of 45.4 61.1 is lower than what we are typically accustomed to but based on what we faced as a district and continue to face you can see we clearly
077outperformed the state and continue to rank high in the state of north carolina real quick i want to break it down even further for you here you'll see the north carolina scores are the blue columns carter county scores are the red columns here we are from grades three through eight and with the combined proficiency with all subjects i will not read each of those numbers to you but i do want to point out the significant difference between the state average and our average here in the county anywhere between 10 percentage points higher almost 20 percentage points higher in some grade so our staff our teachers and all staff worked incredibly hard we are thankful in our elementary schools that we were able to get our kids back sooner because we know face-to-face instruction does impact
078learning and we're excited to to see those scores with that moving on if we look at our reading proficiency you will again notice the red columns being our carter county scores are significantly higher than the state as we move across from that so we are proud of that as well math proficiency math proficiency if you look at those last from the reading to the math is lower i will tell you as a teacher at heart math instruction is harder to do virtually and we know our middle school and high school students had much of the year in blended learning and so although our percentage scores there are not as high as our reading scores they are higher than the state average in comparison with the other subject areas science proficiency we do test our fifth
079and eighth graders and you can see again we are significantly higher than the state in those areas moving to high school in the tested areas north carolina math 1 and math 3 you will see those percentages there again blue is the state red carter county biology we are higher um almost 20 points there english 71.7 proficient i will note that there are many districts in a non-pandemic year that are not at 71.7 so the fact that our students continue to perform so well in that is outstanding and i added our act and our work keys scores that were reported there as well for you to see again significantly higher than the state of north carolina so really just wanted to make a couple of quick points for you tonight our elementary schools were 16.5 percentage
080points above the state average that's phenomenal and i also want to point out our middle schools who again were not face to face until full time until late march were 13.1 percentage points above the state and our high schools pulled in at 18.9 percentage points higher than the other high schools across the state so that is phenomenal work and our parents deserve a lot of credit in that as well as they survived the blended learning environment last year so among 115 school systems in the state carter county posted the third highest district-wide proficiency rates in the state third highest out of a hundred and fifteen that is phenomenal work with everyone involved and our third grade students who are also bound to the read to achieve law ranked third in the state again out of
081115 in their reading proficiency and may i point out that those third graders have never had a typical school year since they entered our school system so that is incredible work with everyone involved and i wanted to end with this the great motivator is possibility we're not there yet we we have a dip from what we are accustomed to seeing but we will get there and we will only do it if we keep faith focus and believe that there is a destination education is not a sprint it's a marathon and our destination is ensuring that every student that walks through our doors walks across that stage to graduate from high school with possibilities and open doors for their future that's all i have for you at this point if you have any questions i'll be
082happy to answer any of them thank you so much thank you [Applause] you've got me sort of fired up right now i appreciate that all right next time we've got blair and uh mr mr probst mr blair approach if you don't mind if you'll highlight those two uh seven seven twenty and we'll i will try not to put you asleep in the process okay all right uh before you um for second read policies there's only second read this this month uh majority of these policies come from the north carolina school board association spring 2021 update packet these policies revisions reflect changes in the federal and state laws as well as mandates from north carolina department of public instruction we'll note that the second read there was a change to policy might have been let me
083see if i can pull it up real quick there were one additional some additional changes to policy 3100 by mr whitford um i'm not going to read that whole policy because that's a lot um to read but the change that did occur was the removal of this last portion of that policy and it states as a result in age appropriate classes where social or other theories reasonably relate to the standards of the course faculty members are permitted to acknowledge the existence of theories summarize what they are and allow their studies to discuss the theories in so doing the teachers should instruct their students as to generally accepted facts of the matter as supported by the textbooks and other materials approved by the state board of education further if appropriate to the class and assignment students
084are permitted to write research papers on these subjects so that was removed from that particular policy policy 7720 i'll try to read that briefly the changes well i won't say what the changes are but the policy in in total reads employment or volunteer services with the school system does not preclude an individual from participating in political activities such as registering and voting campaigning for candidates or issues running or serving in public office attending political events and contributing funds to partisan groups or candidates these political activities must not one take place during work hours to involve school system funds or materials or three make use of an official school position to encourage or to coerce students i'm sorry it's a little difficult to read when it's edited employees to support political party candidate or issue as
085specified in policy 20 2000 excuse me 22 20 official school spokesman the chairperson of the board or the designee and the superintendent or designee are the official spokespersons for the school system employees when exercising their rights assistance should take steps to ensure that their personal political activities or opinions are not erroneously attributed to the board or school system this policy should not be construed as prohibiting the impartial study and discussion of political or other controversial issues in the classroom setting however employees must be mindful of their responsibility to deliver the curriculum of the school system and may not present their personal political views to students in the classroom or when otherwise engaged in the instruction of students that particular policy was a school board edit so that was not something that came from us locally
086so any questions mr chair um mr probes that section d in policy 3100 i think that's what they'd ask about reading i think you read the stricken part but that um would you like me to read the whole pause the whole section d okay i'm sorry um d social and other theories not generally accepted notwithstanding any provision in this or other board policies to the contrary the curriculum of the cardiac public school system will not include social and other theories that are not a generally accepted as accurate by scholars in the academic fields aligned with the subjects and b included in textbooks of or other materials approved by the state board of education teachers shall not teach these theories as accepted fact an example of social political theory that is neither generally accepted as accurate
087or approved for inclusion in the textbooks for public schools in north carolina is the critical race theory or crt oversimplified crt promotes a theory that racism is embedded in the fabric of american political legal social and economic institutions and continues to be perpetuated even when measures are taken to ensure economic institutions skip i apologize ensure equality to ensure equality i apologize in addition to unaccepted social theories there are ideologies often associated with conspiracy theories that are not permitted to be taught as fact in the cardiac county schools examples are the elements of the american government where were complicit in the september 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the united states or that the nazi genocide of jews was a myth or fabrication even though these theories will not be taught as factual in clark county schools
088our students are to be taught critical thinking skills including the ability to discern fact from opinion or fiction any questions or thoughts to mr probst very good i will need a motion to uh approve this second read i'll make that question uh mr day has made the motion i have a second second mrs wheatley has made a second holland favor raise your right hand very good great job mr president thank you thank you thank you next up i've got we're looking at an update about our new feeder pattern parent advisory council meetings at um new this year and we are going to have mr mclean mr day and miss statler sort of give us an idea of how that went and some feedback yes so typically we'll have pac meetings come to a monthly meeting
089and everyone's here and we go through each school this time we've changed it to where the feeder pattern patterns meet at one school so travis katie and i met with white oak vogue sound broad creek and croatan and it was it was a more intimate platform um a couple of little takeaways that we can talk about later is you got to have somebody that runs the meeting for sure and it was very interesting to me all of the elementary pac parents were there some of the middle school parents were there and i think there was one high school pac parent was there so i would challenge the other feeder patterns to um you know have more participation and maybe that's you know the way it goes but um i liked the format it was a
090little bit different than what i was used to and travis and katie might have something to add i agree there you go updated that was a fantastic report any questions to these guys anybody have any questions all right very good we're moving on to uh consider it to dr jackson and face covering requirements thank you board members and i'll tell you i thought the croatan area feeder croatian feeder pattern the area pack meeting went very well because parents did have the opportunity to talk directly with board members to ask questions and have their questions answered board members ask very direct questions of the parents who were there and so from a dialogue standpoint i thought it went very well and appreciate the board members being there this month board members mrs chadwick and miss wheatley
091will be at east carter at high school for the peter pattern meeting there and then next month we'll have the west carteret high school feeder pattern and we certainly look forward to that as well this evening i'm quite delighted quite frankly to share with you the data around covet 19 in our school system i'm delighted because as the data as the numbers go down that means there are fewer sick people and fewer people who are dealing with covet 19 and so we very much appreciate that and so as you prepare for your monthly required vote for face coverings i wanted to give you an update on where we are in terms of our coveted data this is actually our daily student case count these are our numbers from each school day this year for 10
092weeks worth of school you'll see that at the high point we had 38 cases in one day last week we had three six one two or six one two one two and so the case count has gone down tremendously in our schools and we certainly appreciate that as we take a look at the weekly case count you'll notice the weeks one through ten across the bottom the blue bar at the bottom is actually the 2020 school year and you'll see the cases we had last year this year of course we've had many more cases as the delta variant has been present you see in week four approximately we had a high point of 92 student cases that week this past week week 10 we were down to 12 cases and so we've seen a dramatic
093decline in the number of cases i'd like to point out a couple of moments in the first 10 weeks this first happens right before week six this is our first organizational change this was the moment the board of education approved a change in our exclusion policies so that at that point we no longer would contact parents if their child was wearing a pro a mask appropriately and they were a close contact they would not be contacted at that point we also said we would no longer contact trace during launch and so the board made that decision and of course we begin to measure as we make decisions and we see the case count keeps coming down even after that change was made in our operational policies indicating that that change was certainly merited and did
094not have a negative consequence on the cases or uh and as you'll see in a few moments the quarantines that we were having there was a second organizational change this was actually made in mid-october this was the change where we no longer were um contact tracing at in our extracurriculars we moved forward without we're again still not doing that contact in terms of if a student was wearing a mask appropriately you know that we worked with the health department to ensure that the optional from the state positive antibody exception would be accepted in carteret county that was accepted and so you'll see as that operational change number two came into being our case count continued to go down and so again that metric or that change at that point did not have a negative impact
095on the cases in the school system and we certainly appreciate seeing that the final change was uh referenced earlier in public comments and that was the change that was made friday evening as we scrambled post four o'clock carteret county health department announcement to get that change out and at that point the board of education based on a previous decision made mask optional or face coverings optional in our school system and so as our case count indicates the board of education has made changes throughout this school year and those changes have eased up on some of the restrictions that we've had and actually have not had a negative consequence to that and i very much i feel very good about that i feel good about the decisions our board of education are making in terms of
096the timeliness certainly post peak periods and not creating additional issues and so uh very much appreciate that as we look at our student and staff exclusion count this looks at and of course the the name quarantine and exclusion the nomenclature quarantine and exclusion has seen seem to be used synonymously school systems and schools do not quarantine anyone we're required to exclude when we're uh notified but this is our exclusion count and so you'll see week four which coincides with that peak level of case count as our highest level of exclusions the blue bars are student exclusions the red bar is our staff number exclusions and so last week week 10 prior to the face covering change that the board of education had you'll see we had our lowest exclusion numbers for the school system with
09755 students excluded down from a high the fourth week of 609 students excluded and so if we go back and put back in those operational changes again you'll see where the board has made operational changes there was no negative consequence to those operational changes again indicating to me thoughtful consideration and doing our very best to make sure that we were able to back off of restrictions in a way that maintained a safe environment for all of our students and staff and i very much appreciate that there was some conversation earlier about our exclusion count and so this is actually looking through yesterday at the percentage of students who were excluded from school on any day of school now the title there says student and staff exclusion count this graph is actually just students and so
098this is the percentage of students in our student body who were quarantined or excluded on any one day of school and so you'll see there in september in fact september 7th which was the day after labor day after the labor day holiday that was our highest case count day for a daily case count at that point we were closing in on not quite 20 percent of our student body had been quarantined as we move forward you'll see that we're down below one percent of our student body and so again i'll put in the organizational changes as changes were made to exclusion policies and you'll see of course the number of exclusions coming down and continuing to come down and as the third exchange which was going to the face covering optional optional face coverings opportunity
099in the school system we've remained under one percent of our students are currently quarantined and so that number has certainly been coming down there's some conversation about exclusions the exclusions don't happen all the exclusions don't happen because of something that happened in school what we would call a school affected case and so just looking at the exclusions from last week so this is the tenth week of school monday through friday last week we had 55 school exclusions last week you'll see 60 percent of those came from something outside of school so that's a parent calling and saying my child excuse me my child has been quarantined because of we were at a we were at some gathering outside at school and um was exposed to covet 19 and so we're seeing that different from earlier
100in the year our school exclusion sixty percent of our our exclusions from school sixty percent are coming from non-school events this is the county positivity rate that was used by the board of education as the metric for when we could go to the face covering policy and you'll see five percent was the metric that was used and this is actually looking monday through friday each day through um actually through yesterday as i updated this this morning and so you'll see our county positivity rate maintaining below five percent i do want to point out as the board knows there was not a metric set for when face coverings might become required again that metric hasn't been said there was simply a metric set for when face coverings would be optional of course when we met that
101metric last week that's that's exactly what automatically um tripped forward and so our current protocols as they currently stand as you know we're required to follow the north carolina department of health and human services strong schools north carolina public health toolkit we received additional statutory references and a document from dhhs that continues to illustrate that we are required to follow the public health toolkit in our school system these are the three operational changes that have made were made and so again september 27th effective that day no contact tracing during lunch no contacting of parents of close contacts who are appropriately wearing a mask on october 18th effective that day the addition i didn't mention earlier the no contact tracing during breakfast or snack no contact tracing during extracurriculars athletics or non-school events that went into
102effect on october 18th and then effective this week on monday the face coverings optional opportunity went into effect we have um tried through our messaging to ensure that we want our parents and our students to know that we won't tolerate bullying around a student wearing a mask or not wearing a mask that's a decision for a parent to make along with their child and so certainly we want to maintain a safe environment for all of our students so board members would be happy to answer any questions you might have about metrics please go to travis first and i apologize for first of all for my anxiousness here i'm getting ready to leave to go teach class um and so i have to hurry but i would very much like to see us continue the mass
103optional policy i also very much like the idea of being able to allow students to remain if they are a closed contact to be able to remain in school while masked this is similar to what the abc science collaborative is offering as a a pilot program that they've already proposed is something that's being used in massachusetts and a lot in a bunch of other places a few other places where students do not have to go home based on the very low secondary attack rate almost minimal last year very small this year if these students are able to actually stay in school instead of going being i'm having to go home for 14 days or whatever the case may be then we'll make sure they're masked while they're in school and that we're not sending anybody
104home so that's what i would love ultimately to see you know how i vote i'm sorry i'd love to keep going sorry you got to go thank you mr dave we enjoy your um any other thoughts or questions dr jackson i appreciate um the detail that you've gone into and all the data that you've given us so we can make these decisions so thank you for putting that report together thank you and i'd like to say that when we have met i don't want anyone to think anything was a rash decision catherine and brittany and i have spent about six hours together with school nurses with principals going over these things um the five percent positivity rate was kind of put out as just a goal since it has been the state goal for so
105long we kind of agreed with the nurse with the principal that would be a good starting point um since then it has absolutely been pointed out that that is a piece of data that can be manipulated um home testing has become much more prevalent since this was done since we put this in about two months ago and so we're not getting accurate data by following this um so going forward i would like to remove the metric remove the metric and not use a metric we will reevaluate as needed we're required to reevaluate once a month um and we will we have been following this we get reports every week of the data and if something were to happen hopefully we are on the downhill tread of this long term and we're done talking about this
106but um that we would could come back to it if needed but not put a metric right because somebody asked me today if it went above five or we put mass back on and i was like absolutely not so no but i do like travis's idea of masking up people instead of sending them home and and i would definitely like to remove it look can we can we go ahead and agree on that that we'd like to remove the metrics so we'll make a motion tonight and i would also like to if you three don't mind getting back together one more time i love y'all what i would like to see is a recommendation for us not to send any uh healthy children home anymore that's what that's what i would like to see from
107y'all in in the near future um so yes anybody else have any questions or thoughts i would just like to thank the three smartest board members for chairing that uh for heading up that commission thank you i know y'all are mr craziest yeah i know you don't put a lot of time into it so thank you very much so i am looking for a motion i like to make a motion to continue mitigation strategies that are already in place in schools to continue mask optional for students and staff and we will evaluate and discuss as required monthly i have a motion by miss stadler and a second by ms wheatley all in favor raise your right hand very good thank you thank you thank you dr jackson on your report thank you mr jenkins and
108if i may i just want to say thank you to our school nurses all of this data is generated by our school nurses who've just done a masterful job taking care of making sure they know the status of every single student and contacting parents multiple times when this happens so i do want to thank our school nurses absolutely absolutely they've been heroes in this yes okay next up is miss carswell good evening as all of you are aware that we still do not have a state budget however um we have as the school system have received from the department of public instruction what is being called a preliminary projected planning budget and so that is how i'm able to bring you our budget resolution for the 21-22 school year this budget is based on a
109five percent increase uh for certified employees a three percent increase for classified employees 7.7.65 for our social security retirement went from 21.68 to 22.68 and hospitalization from 63 26 to 64.90 and again i want to emphasize these are these amounts are budgetary numbers it does not reflect anything that the state has actually done so our budget is based it this budget resolution is based on these estimated budget numbers on the first section of the budget resolution is the local current expense budget and it is 26 million 223 o52 that is a 5 increase over last year's budget resolution section 3 is the state public school fund in the amount of 50 million 400 000 this isn't actually actually a two percent decrease from what we had in the budget resolution last year section number five
110which is the federal grants fund is and that is the 160 percent increase from what we budgeted last year and of course that's due to the essers funding section number seven the capital outlay fund 2 million 685 000 and this is a 19 increase over what we budgeted last year section 9 which is our trial nutrition services is four million one hundred and seventy nine thousand six sixty four which is a three percent increase uh from what we budgeted last year and the last section um that is our special revenue fund is three million five hundred and forty four thousand seven hundred and sixty six dollars which is a nine percent decrease in in the funding from last year the total budget resolution 104 million 550 551 943 and that is a 12 increase over
111the budget from last year i present the 2122 budget resolution and does anyone have any questions anybody have any questions for ms carswell i do mr chair um you had told us at one time that there was a projection on it maybe it was retirement or benefits going up to was it 40 it was 30 and we're i'm sorry and we're aware now uh right now we're currently at 21.68 um some projections that i have seen as close close to the 22.68 and the 5 local increase is predominantly retirement state mandated increases yes that is correct 100 or uh yeah almost a hundred percent yes any other questions for ms corswell all right i would like a motion to approve the essers budget amendment i will move to approve budget resolution as presented i will
112move to a public sector resolution as presented i have a motion mr mclean do i have a second second second by reverend goodwin all in favor raise your right hand very good congratulations again and thank you so much your department is is one of the reasons or one of the reasons that we stay up at night not because that's kind of out of my field of expertise so uh anyway i appreciate what you do in your whole apartment and she's still she's staying up there so you can tell her this again oh good i just wanted i'll tell you just a little bit too thank you very much you're fine thank you i guess well actually you're done aren't you well thank you answers yes well that's what i thought [Laughter] due to the complexity
113of the federal budgets and we have had federal 11 new federal budgets since last year added to our budget and of course as you know just the essers 2 and the sr3 alone and the sr1 is over 20 million dollars we'd like to ask the board to agree to allow us to hire an essers budget manager to help manage these federal funds that we received got it thank you does anybody here i moved to approve the essers budget amendment for esther's budget manager as presented i have a motion by reverend goodwin do we have any questions or thoughts before we okay do we have any second i'll second i have a second by mr mclean all in favor raise your right hand very good oh you die i think you're still up there okay yes
114you are still up there about uh uh brother told me to thank you again get a little starcraft i don't know but uh consider both the teachers covering classes bonus i think dr jackson may be coming but but i don't want you anywhere ms carswell we keep our experts close board members as you know school systems across the state and here at home in carteret county have struggled with having enough substitute teachers to cover when our teachers are out that's actually something we've been dealing with throughout the pandemic many of our substitutes tend to be retired teachers and as uh covet has come along some of our retirees haven't been comfortable substituting and so what that means is that teachers during their planning period have had to cover classes so that we had a qualified
115teacher in the classroom for a teacher if you spend your planning period covering a class that means you're not able to spend time planning for your next instructional activities or grading papers or contacting parents which means that our teachers are doing that late into the night it's no question our teachers are heroic they've always been heroic but in this time of greater request or on on their time and this need to step forward to cover their teammates as they're out to substitute in the class we'd like for the board to consider this evening a bonus for teachers who are covering classes we are asking the schools to of course try to get substitutes so that we don't have to pull our teachers from their planning period ms carswell will share with you the dollar amounts
116but i will share with you that i think it's incredibly well deserved because our teachers are pulling extra duty and then having to spend late nights working on the plans that they might have been able to during their planning period but they were having to cover a class and so this potential bonus that she'll mention would give them a little bit back because we know they'll be working after hours on things they might have accomplished during their work day so ms carson i'll let you go over the numbers what we would like to recommend is um 20 an hour for each certified employee that covers a class during their planning as i looked at the number of substitutes or classes that we had available that did not have a substitute that's in an average of
11716 teachers per day that we did not have a sub to cover that classroom so that you know we're not i'm not able to see exactly how many hours that is is that an elementary teacher or is it a middle school or a high school because the high school of course may not need as much because they may not be out the entire day but it's it's 20 an hour and it's on average of 16 teachers per day that we would need to help cover those classes and i would mention that there's substitute funding that hasn't been needed the last two years because we haven't had the substitute so the funds are available it's just allowing those funds to be given to the teachers who are doing the work that is true does anybody have
118any questions for ms carswell no it is the same number that no name pizza is advertising if you for a job twenty dollars an hour well how did we come up with the 20 an hour number and he held dan just volunteered after school so we thought twenty dollars an hour would be it would compensate them and get us to where we wanted to be and are we putting this in place permanently just would you go to year by year so um thank you for asking the question it would be effective november 4th so starting tomorrow morning and would be in place for this school year for the remainder of the school year and then of course the board could look at that going forward if it continues to be a need or something the
119board would like to do but this evening we're asking to be able to do this starting tomorrow morning effective for this school year i move to approve the bonuses as presented a second i have a motion by ms chadwick in a second by reverend goodwin any other discussion or thoughts katie i do want to say absolutely support this but i do think we also need to look just in general at teacher assistance and bus driver pay when we're recognizing that we couldn't do this without them that they also are not i don't think anyone in the school system is getting paid what they deserve but especially them so i think while i absolutely agree with this we also need to look into that pretty soon i 100 agree so i have a uh for a
120motion and a second all in favor raise your right hand that's unanimously very good thank you ms cartwell you are done now and we appreciate y'all your team everything y'all do you're awesome all right moving right along we have got mr richie paler and dr jackson i think richie paler mr paylor is going to come up first so thank you um first i'll give you a capital update um last we talked paint was scarce and we're painting croton and it continues to be scarce more painting as we get paint i would say we're about 60 percent complete i know we're lacking in the gym the media center and i think on the vocational hallway and some outside but um we're painting as we can get the paint mr peterson is also working on getting quotes
121for our playground equipment to replace the playground equipment at several of our elementary schools all the playgrounds have received mulch so that project is complete um led lighting in our gyms you know that we're replacing that right now croatian high school broad creek middle school newport middle school have all been complete um and and when you walk into those gyms that have that those led lights you can tell the difference it's great lighting and it is cheaper and it is it saves operationally so it's it's good um downey's middle school was supposed to get the lights this week and then we'll continue to go and our goal is to replace all gem lighting with led lighting we have several hvac projects that have been bid and awarded and ordered and those include morehead elementary school
122morehead city primary school white oak beaufort l and newport l and harkers island um we are changing some things there with the hvac in the gym so some engineers are working to how we're going to do that and that's almost complete and it'll go to bid soon so that that's all for capital and i'll move into the bond so we've been working on finalizing um several of the plans but the east carter high school plan is is almost finished for the the addition on the auditorium and the the gym so um very soon like within the next couple of days we're going to send those plans to dpi to make sure that that they approve those plans and then hopefully by the end of the month is what we're planning on is that job will
123be advertised for bids and hopefully so that's by the end of the month and then we're going to have a bid date by late december so we're hoping that the so that'll be the first project that kicks off the first major project will be the east carter editions so ground breaking early next year white oak elementary school gym will be the next project they go to bed and that will be in early 2022. and last i've talked to you about doors i think for the past four or five months um they're on the way and um we checked again and we really think they're going to be here any day and hopefully um that's going to be true but but i'm not going to tell you that that it is true until they get here
124so many questions on capitol or bond that's what you're doing thank you so much mr pearl we appreciate you all right next up is dr jackson again board members good evening this week our school system moved to a mass optional environment this decision was one that was eagerly anticipated for over a year and a half going all the way back to the start of last school year while we know that the pandemic is not over and that we must not relax in our efforts to keep our students and staff safe i do think that it's appropriate to pause and reflect on the heroic efforts we have witnessed throughout this pandemic our teachers and staff have been and are incredible when we consider the many many changes they have worked through from taking temperatures at the
125doorways to of our schools for everyone who entered to moving classroom furniture to maximize social distancing to marking hallways so that traffic only flowed in one direction to scheduling two different cohorts of students to be in the buildings on different days to offering virtual learning to changing all of those procedures as the operational requirements from the state changed to working through changing exclusion requirements to where we are today with a change in the face covering policy we've asked our team to be amazingly flexible and they've done just that at the same time last year as we literally changed every single process in the operation of our schools from how students enter a bus to how students walk down a hallway still in the midst of all of that change still our teachers taught and our
126students learned and as you've heard this evening our students posted the third highest proficiency scores in the state out of 115 school systems i also want to highlight the board of education's careful decision-making process throughout the three school years that have been impacted by the pandemic to date i believe that our board deserves much praise for your even-handed approach to the decisions you have had to grapple with i know that there have been high emotions involved but the decisions you have made as a board have brought us safely to this moment and deserve to be celebrated thank you for carefully and thoughtfully making the decisions needed to safeguard our students and staff finally i want to thank our parents our grandparents and guardians for their tremendous support i greatly appreciate the tremendous work they did
127last year while our students were at home and supporting their learning i thank them for their patience and belief in our team to make the right decisions to protect teaching and learning and to ensure that our students are receiving the very best education possible i'm so very proud honored and blessed to be a part of this incredible school system we have been we are and we will remain carteret strong mr chair this concludes my comments thank you dr jackson uh any board comments thoughts insight this evening i'm pleased we are where we are and um as i watch coveted around the world i know it's not over so a challenge before us is what new and different mitigation measures can we come up with besides masking so if the metric goes up what you know
128i'm saying we have to be vigilant and what can we do besides masking our students because none of us wanted that just a thought thank you any other thoughts or insights i think it's amazing when dr jackson speaks you know because now we're fighting we've been fighting the mask but we quickly forget where we were last year from walking down the hallway one way and coming back and and although i mean we when you think back you do remember but it's so easily forgotten but we really really have come a long way and um and i'm so thankful for for every single person who's played a role in keeping our students in school and getting them back to school and dr jackson you mentioned everyone else but you've been incredibly calm during this entire pandemic
129you kind of kept us level headed and um and you deserve a lot of praise as well amen hey y'all gonna make me cry it's not hard anybody else have anything else to say i appreciate y'all um i'm going to tell you i'm going to end this on a really awesome note obviously i love every school in our school system i've got i'm a little bit partial to west corner just because both my kids go to school there and it's sort of serendipitous that um mr riley was in here earlier talking about our coaches and across the school system and how maybe we should recognize them more so i want to recognize our coaches whether they're sports or band they have a a insane amount of positive impact on our kids and a quick story
130so wes carter cross country team was at regionals the other day and they were projected to finish night they were not projected to be good this year they've got two coaches that brought the hearts out and these boys my son's on the team just so y'all know transparency but there's this young man named uh i'm not i guess i can't say his name but he's on the team he's a freshman young fella small fella and these coaches got this kid throughout the year the end of the race he ran 70 yards and passed two guys he was six on his team and he was fired up and i don't know if you all know cross country but the top five people score points but the sixth and the seventh person can actually move someone out
131of a place a team out of a place so this young freshman had no idea what he was doing by putting this his heart of a line out there but he moved the team that was in fifth place in the sixth which put west coroner in the fifth and we made it to the states that's right that's what our that's what our coaches are doing for us our teachers our coaches our nurses that's what's going on they're bringing out these hearts and our kids and if any y'all ever gets a chance go watch a west corner cross country match and these coaches the way they treat them you'll get so fired up anyway with that said we are going i need a motion to go to a uh anyway i need a motion mr chase
132in the morning session i moved enter into closed session to consider privileged attorney client communications pursuant to general statute 143-318-11 a three and confidential personal matters pursuant to general statute 143-318-1186 and you're good i have a moment by mr mcclain do i have a second i've got a second by miss waitley all in favor raiser i am we're in closed session thank you all appreciate y'all hanging out this whole time you