Board of Education Work Session - Jun 05, 2025

001[GAVEL] The meeting of the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools Board of Education, we'll come to order. I was checking to see if we had a quorum. The chair requests the motion to approve the agenda. So move. Second. It's been moved and seconded, all in favor say aye? Oppose? Carries unanimously. The chair request a motion to move in the closed session for the reason stated on the agenda? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded, all in favor? Opposed? We will return from closed session as close as possible to 7 p.m. Thank you. you all. [BOARD IN CLOSED SESSION] [GAVEL] The meeting is now back in open session. I apologize for the delay in getting back, thank you all for your understanding. Our first order of business is a celebration of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month proclamation, and

002if each board member would read one paragraph and I'll wrap it up. And Meredith, we'll start with you. Sure. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education Proclamation. Sorry. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education Proclamation, the Celebration of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month June 2025. Whereas June is the month to celebrate people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, Two-Spirit, gender fluid, non-binary, intersex, as well as heterosexual and cisgender allies. It commemorates the impact that LGBTQIA+ individuals have had on local, national, and international history, as well as present day visibility and advocacy and... Whereas throughout our state and country, the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals, especially those who are people of color, disabled, or members of other historically marginalized communities, continue to face systemic, systematic discrimination, including restricted rights, social stigma, challenges accessing healthcare and

003other basic social services, mental health support, and startling rates of violence. And Whereas Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools is committed to fostering an environment that values intersectional, intersectional fi- visibility and support for our LGBTQIA+ students, staff, community members, and others. And Whereas we recognize their remarkable bravery and authenticity, authenticity while also affirming the gender identity and gender expression of our LGBTQIA+ district and community members. And Whereas during LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, we are reminded that our community thrives when the school district is committed to collaborating with the LGBTQIA+ community to further its efforts of forming strong relationships in a culturally sensitive, responsive, and appropriate way. And Now, therefore, we, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education, reaffirm our opposition to discrimination, prejudice, homophobia, and transphobia, and do hereby proclaim June 1st through June 30th, 2025 to

004be LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. And be it further resolved that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education strongly encourages our students, staff, and community to observe, recognize, and celebrate the presence and contributions of LGBTQIA+ individuals to our country, to our state, our beautifully diverse county, and our schools, not only during the month of June, but throughout the year. Thank you. And that brings us to public comments. And where is Ms. Holloway? Tamara, I understand we have five or six public comments? Okay. I'm going toread the, the preliminary here, that the board recognizes the vital importance of listening to varied points of view on programs and issues facing the board of education or the school system, and encourages public comment about educational issues. Speakers are reminded that neither personal attacks

005nor obscene, abusive, or defamatory language is permitted. Board members may ask clarifying questions, but will not engage in dialogue with the speaker or the public. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to present comments, and the remaining time will be indicated on the tablet clock here in front of Ms. Jenkins to my right. And when you're out of time, please conclude your remarks. To begin, we recognize school improvement team representatives, teacher organizations, and/or high school student government representatives, followed by public comments. Are there any representatives of these groups? And if so, please come forward. Come forward, and Mr. Link, it's really go backwards today. I guess the podium's in a different place. So, welcome. Thank you. It's nice to mix it up a little bit, right? So, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of

006the school board, Superintendent Hamlet, members of our community. My name is Brian Link and I am the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. First and foremost, happy Pride Month, right? And it is great that our community, is willing to stand strong, especially in the face of the adversity, that is being directed towards the LGBTQIA+ communities, across the country and our state. So thank you for that statement of support. I speak tonight for three items, that I am certainly proud about. Number one a while ago, there was a room packed like this about concerned parents and students around what was going to happen with our Latin program. And I am proud to announce that with the aid and support of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators, that there has been a solution that is

007going to be put into place that will ensure that Latin I will continue at the middle schools and that the instruction will be done by a CHCCS teacher through both the middle and the high schools. This was done through a spirit of collaboration, right? And we thank everyone involved, from the students speaking out and the parents supporting them to administration, right, and the teachers for coming up together with a solution. The second item that I'd like to speak to tonight is this idea of continuing collaboration around allocation and allotments. Again, there was worry and concern about how that was going to play out and what would it look like in the future after this year. Substantial progress has already been made in response to the public comment there, and we look forward working over the

008summer and into the fall of next year, to ensure that there is a procedure set down in place, right, for how we're going to deal with allocation and allotments going forward. Again, we thank the collaboration that has gone on. And finally, I know there are a lot of folks here tonight, to speak on the matter and the issue of Carrboro. And as the president of the organization, on behalf of the staff, I would just like to offer the following comments from the teachers themselves. So, if someone has not already heard this, I want to direct this tonight. Quote, and this is from the Coalition of Teachers, "We appreciate that all parents are doing on our behalf and behalf of our students, but we're currently involved in a process and have agreed to forego public statements

009until we've seen it through June 13th. We thank everyone for listening to staff. The staff asked for an ADR process in which, by the way, if you're not familiar with public schools, like, this would not happen anywhere else in the rest of the state. And we have a person in from the outside who is listening and conducting interviews. That was their number one ask. It was met. When staff could raise concerns about anonymity, right, for being able to go to meetings or where those meetings were held, the staff was listened to, and those were changed. When staff expressed concerns about who and who would not be in the meeting, that was listened to, and that was provided. And going forward, right, the staff also wants a resolution by the end of this year. And as

010we understand it, the timeline continues. So, when you speak tonight, please know if you're speaking on behalf of staff, this is what staff wants, this is what's happening, and we thank you, for allowing that process to play out. Thank you, Mr. Link. and next, we go to individual speakers. You will be called to come forward to the podium. When you're recognized, please introduce yourself. State your name. If you're speaking for any organization, please identify the name of the organization. We'll work off the sign-up sheet right here. Carlos Ocampo. Hey, good evening, thank you for the opportunity to speak here. I'm just going tokind of read because I don't want to waste much time. My name is Carlos. I am the son of Ileana Herrera, who worked for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for many years, serving

011as assistant principal for Chapel Hill High School, East Chapel Hill High School, and Carrboro High School. So she's very familiar with this organization and its leadership over the last few years. My mom would be here to speak for herself tonight. But she recently got home from a long commute to a new job at Durham Public County Schools as a graduation counselor for migrant students. Another reason she's not here to speak for herself tonight is because of the years of abuse and trauma she faced at this school district. Some of you may not know this, but my mom, a first-generation Latina immigrant from Costa Rica, was publicly accused of racial discrimination during her time at East Chapel Hill several years ago, when there was clearly no evidence in a widely circulated news article concerning a teaching

012assistant. Mind you, no other school administrators, who all happened to be men, were held accountable during this affair. Instead of being defended by leadership, she was suspended from her position and later moved to Carrboro High School after lawyers found no wrongdoing. And that's when an already sour situation turned worse. I will now read my mother's statement. "I served as associate principal of Carrboro High School during the summer of 2023 when Thomas joined the leadership team. From the offset, she displayed hostile behavior and animosity toward me for no apparent reason, even refusing to make eye contact. During our first meeting, Thomas told me I was offensive and implied inappropriate conduct without context or justification. As the only immigrant Latina on the leadership team, someone with a notable accent, this felt deeply personal and discriminatory. It went

013beyond professional conflict. It was targeted and demeaning." Mr. Ocampo, I have to interrupt you. Just we can't be talking about specific individuals like that. The policy states that complaints about school complaints about school personnel, should be directed to the school officials who are responsible. "I had proudly worked as a high school administrator in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School for eight years. However, after persistent bullying by LC personnel, topped to this incident, my physical and emotional health deteriorated to the point where I had to take FMLA leave. In November of 2023, I made the difficult decision to resign. I attempted to address the issue with the superintendent, but despite the district's claim of having an open-door policy, she refused to meet with me. I reported the situation with this individual to HR to no avail. Their behavior

014has been consistent from the beginning, and district leadership was aware of it, yet they have protected their. It's clear to me that LC has cultivated a toxic and oppressive work environment, one that protects those who benefit. Mr. Ocampo, I'm respecting While silencing, while silencing others. The system does not serve all staff equitably." Sir, I respectfully asking you to conclude. All right. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] Dean Avery? Good evening. I'm Dean Avery. I'm Oak Avery's father. She spoke eloquently to you at your last meeting, and again, at Lincoln Center right in front last Thursday, where she led a student walkout from Carrboro High School. Many of the hundred or so students participating in the walkout poured their hearts out right in front here, regarding the myriad of issues that so many students are experiencing at

015Carrboro High. I know how hard it was for some to get up and speak their truth, and yet they did. I'm wearing this T-shirt to undermine, from FPG, to undermine how Oak started in kindergarten at FPG, at this very school district. One thing was for sure in the years that she attended schools where principals Dr. Bivens and then Dr. Rudolph were in charge. She was going to be safe, nurtured, and well-educated. Two years ago, that began to change. And I'm terribly sad to say that Oak, a huge percentage of teachers at CHS, a great many parents, and as you saw last week during the student walkout, a large cohort of students are trying to tell you as clearly as they can, that CHS is on a profoundly wrong path. A once proud and thriving school

016and community is falling apart, and you have the data to show exactly that. For Oak, she has endured multiple events of overt discrimination in the last couple of years. To be clear, no one's expecting perfection from a school, much less teenage kids. What we do expect, however, is that the school administration has our child's back. That has simply not been the case, and it's heartbreaking. Oak has a 504 plan and that has also been mismanaged, and alarmingly, seemingly sabotaged. The PTSA is a shadow of its former self. Teachers are at their wits' end. The only bright spot is that those teachers have unfailingly supported Oak when the school administration did not, and we're deeply grateful for that. Ladies and gentlemen, you have a five-alarm fire at Carrboro High School. This is not the time for

017more listening sessions and meetings. Action must be taken to put out the fire, and I respectfully submit that the fire isn't going to be put out by the people who started it. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] Jean Hunt. Hi. Happy Pride Month, again. Although I find the irony in that we just had a parent of a transgender student at our school who feels unsafe and also feels unheard by the district. Good evening. My name is Jen Hunt. I'm a Carrboro High parent and I'm here today because the silence from our district leadership is no longer acceptable. When people bring issues to HR, any HR in any organization, whether it's discrimination, unsafe work environments, or unfair treatment, they're not just sending an email, filling out a form, or making a phone call. They are trusting the

018system, and you are the system. They're saying, "I believe this place will do the right thing." But time and time again, those reports and those concerns from Carrboro High School have been ignored by the district at CHCCS. They have been brushed aside. They have been looked at halfway. Or worse, when nothing is done, those brave whistleblowers who are afraid for their jobs, for their families, and for their kids, are met with retaliation or ridicule, as we experienced last Thursday when we overheard two district members make a joke about how they were ready to get yelled at when the students were speaking their truth at a peaceful protest. This isn't just disappointing, it's dangerous, because when you don't act, it sends a clear message all across the district, but it really sends a clear message to

019us. And what you're saying is, "Your experience doesn't matter. Your safety doesn't matter. And your dignity doesn't matter." The CHS community is tired. I'm tired of being up here. I don't want to be a community organizer. We are tired of being told to go through the proper private channels when only we watch those channels lead to nowhere. We are tired of waiting for accountability that never comes. We're tired of leadership that hides behind optics and friendships and buzzwords in emails. We want them to stand up for kids, for families, for staff. The board and the CHCCS leaders are supposed to be a safeguard, not a shield for silence. So today we are asking, when will action replace avoidance? It's wonderful that someone is speaking with the staff and helping the staff, but who's helping the

020kids? Who's helping the dozens of kids who spoke out? Who's helping the families? When will these people be followed up with? And when will this leadership live up to the responsibility that it was trusted with? Because change isn't a suggestion anymore for us. It is a demand. You've had, since the first allegation from staff in 2023, and the time to act is now. We will not stop speaking up until every voice is heard and every issue is taken seriously and a full investigation into the administration is underway. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Jennifer Finestock. I'm requesting that we have the opportunity to speak to our counsel, our legal counsel, before we, finish public comment. Do we need a motion for that? I move that we adjourn briefly to speak to legal counsel. Is there a second? Second.

021So, it's to go into closed session? Yes. Okay. There's a motion to go into closed session. It's been seconded. Is there any further discussion? All in favor say, Aye? Opposed? [ GAVEL ] The meeting is now back in open session. before we continue, I just want to remind people that personal attacks obscene or abusive or defamatory language is not permitted. And remind also the, the group that board members may ask clarifying questions, but we typically don't interact on the spot in board meetings. Did you want to add anything about? Sure. Contact information. Absolutely. So after public comment, if there are any parents or students or community members who want to talk to someone from our school leadership department or our human resources department, they will take contact information. They have already started the process with

022reaching out to students who were here last week, but have not gotten to everyone. So, if you have a student and they, they're, they were missed or we haven't gotten to you yet, we will have three individuals in the hallway who will take your contact information so that they can be sure to start the process with your child. Thank you. Ms. Holloway, we continue with our next speaker. Okay. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Beanstalk and my son is a rising sophomore at Carrboro High School. I wasn't sure if I was going tospeak tonight, but ultimately decided to because I care about the staff, teachers, students, and loved ones of this community. We moved into this district and specifically our community because of the reputation of the schools. As a parent who has experienced both

023Carrboro High School and Chapel Hill High School, I am greatly concerned about what has been going on at Carrboro. There is so much evidence that there are serious problems as seen by the Panorama survey results, the letter that 71 teachers and staff sent to the district, the struggle that the school improvement team endured this past year, and the North Carolina schools report card. Teachers and staff should not be afraid. Students should not be reporting to their parents that the only time they see their principal is when she is in the hallways yelling at them. The students led a walkout last week where they spoke with administrators for the district and expressed serious concerns about bullying, harassment and antisemitism and the subsequent lack of response from Carrboro High School Administration. I am here for them. The

024district keeps saying that they were unaware of these issues until now, but there continues to be evidence to the contrary. Since the walkout, which had approximately 100 attendees, there has been a deafening silence from the school and district administration. These students should feel heard. We don't need more listening sessions, we need action. There should be an immediate independent investigation into the allegations by a third party, and if the investigation validates all of the concerns, then we would expect a change in leadership. Thank you for your time. [APPLAUSE] Patty. Good evening. My name is Patty Martzloff. I stand here tonight as a parent who has spent the last 15 years actively volunteering in our district. Everything from room parent at Scroggs, to hospitality at Culbreth, to PTA president at Carrboro High. I have witnessed firsthand the

025powerful impact in that strong leadership and a positive school culture can have on students and staff. What we are going through right now at Carrboro High is something entirely different. For almost two years, parents, teachers, and students have been raising alarms about the dangerous and demoralizing direction that our school has taken under the current administration. We have reported again and again a toxic culture marked by poor leadership, a pervasive sense of fear and retaliation, ignored cases of bullying, unfair treatment of students and staff, and a total breakdown in trust, communication, and safety. Carrboro High used to feel like a joyful, welcoming community. Today, it feels more like a prison. The administration's actions and inactions have stripped the school of its spirit and left families, teachers, and most importantly, our students feeling silenced and powerless. Last

026week, our students, our children, staged a walkout. They marched here in peaceful protest. They demanded their voices be heard. Their message was clear: We don't feel safe. We don't feel seen. We deserve better. How has the district responded? Silence. No investigation. No administrative leave. No plan. Nothing. Your silence speaks volumes, and it is unacceptable. This is not a matter of politics or personnel. This is a matter of student wellbeing, teacher retention, and community trust. Every day you delay action, more and more damage is done to the culture and the climate of our school. We are not asking for vague promises, more listening sessions, emails to students. We are demanding accountability and urgent action. The time to act was almost two years ago. Last week. You can still do it now. We need leadership from this

027board, not in words but in deeds. Thank you. Our students are watching Thank you. Our teachers are exhausted, and our families are done waiting. Please do your job. Thank you for concluding. [APPLAUSE] Dr. Sugrue. Thank you all for taking the time, this evening. I am a member of the NAACP, the head of the education committee, and I have heard a lot this evening, and I want to just repeat some of the words that were said, that I think that maybe we would not even encourage our children when we're dealing with very delicate situations. The words of demand, the words of urgent action, feels like a prison. I would like to say that your silence does speak volumes. It represents the patience that we need when we're dealing with actual people and not just politics or

028perceptions. I respect the fact that you have used data and that you have been responsive, and maybe the fact that you are moving slowly is because you're being careful, and you're being thoughtful, and you're being pensive. My heart goes out to all of those students who had two doors to choose from last week, to either go in a assembly, where they could discuss and start reconciliation, address harm and healing and find a way forward, and the door where they could walk out because they felt as though movement was a better path for them. I support both of those doors, and I just hope that our parents and our community continues to do that and realize that it's not just about Carrboro High School, this is a community that is all of us, not just one

029school or one administrator or one school leadership team or one school district, but that we have tons of other high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools who are looking to these parents, looking to these teachers and this leadership and our district leaders to show the way together, and I hope we don't lose that. I hope we all recognize that this is a sensitive time. And that there are those of us who know more than others, who have certain sets of data that other people may not have, but we all have kids here. We all care, we all love, and I just cannot, I just don't want to discredit the role and the responsibility and accountability that we have given to our board and to our leadership. We voted for you because we trust your judgment,

030and I appreciate your patience. And I just wanted to take my time as a concerned member of this community and a parent and NAACP to say thank you. This is hard, what you're doing, and I hope that you're very careful. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Katrina McGinty? Hi, my name's Katrina McGinty. I'm a parent of a ninth grader at Carrboro and a seventh grader at Smith, and a lot of what I've heard tonight has resolved, has kind of revolved around issues of communication. I've been present at a lot of past meetings and both in my meetings and my emails to this board, I've voiced a lot of concerns about the way that the board and the administrator communicates with the community. We have a lot of concerns and a lot of voices, and oftentimes it feels like

031it's only going one direction. We saw these concerns about lack of responsiveness expressed eloquently by parents here tonight. and as I walked in here tonight, I thought, you know, this meeting format tonight really does embody a lot of these concerns. One of our high schools is in crisis and concerned parents and students come tonight to make their voices heard. We walk in, we find a room that's too small with 80% of the seats reserved, we're forced into the hallways and in the margins. In past meetings, we're only given one minute to speak. And tonight only after a conference with legal counsel did we hear any sort of response when comments conclude. So maybe there's a lot going on that we don't know about, but we don't know unless you tell us. So the communication really

032only feels like it's going one way. This format, this structure, and this very room, intentional or not, shows the value of community voices to this administration and this board. So I urge you to please consider a better and more open format to communicate with your community and maybe some of these problems will be improved. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you all. the board encourages community members, in addition to public comment, to contact us by email or telephone. Email addresses and phone numbers are posted on the district website. With that said, we'll move on to the next item. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. and thanks for all the folks who spoke. I, I just want to respond to the perceived inaction with, when we are talking about, when we are considering issues that impact people's lives, like

033our students, like our staff, like our faculty, none of you would want us to rush through or tell everybody what we're, what's being considered as we're going through this process, right? And so if you assume, and, I think you've heard communication from administration that we have been making progress with exploring some of the concerns that have been brought forward. I just did want to not leave the perception that's not nothing is being done. I see some heads shaking, but again, like for the respect that you would want and considering your career, I think we want to consider that there needs to be time and space for considering a lot of different factors. So thanks. Thank you, Ronnie. Yeah. I want to say I thank everyone who wanted to come out to speak tonight and did.

034We've listened to all the different, comments and even though this particular, meeting you may feel is one-sided, it, it is not. We may not be able to respond in the way that you would like, but we do respond. And I will say that I hope that when you are here and you're speaking your truth, accept the fact that everyone's truth is not the same and perception can be different. And while we are working in this district to do the words that are on these screens, we need to be thinking and acting differently. And for a long time, our district has had a history of not thinking and acting differently. So when you speak about your truth, remember that there are a lot of other people's truths that have to be considered in a community. And

035this particular community has been a village for a long time, and we need to find our way back to that village with that, collaboration and collective efficacy. We need to consider that and do that and think about what we say when we're saying it because everyone doesn't know all the facts. So that when you sometimes may feel that you know all that you know and that's all there is to know and someone responds to you in the way that you don't think they should, that sometimes you have to be careful what you're saying when you say it or you may not get the response that you're looking for. But if we're looking to work together, we may be able to get there, but, Excuse me? We're going to move on to the next item, which

036is consent agenda. The chair requests the motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you.And that takes us on to recognition of our outgoing superintendent. You know, if we'll take a quick minute here if people want to rearrange their seating, leave the room, whatever they, they need to, you all need to do. I want to acknowledge that it's a tough transition right now. I mean there's a lot of concerns about the school and and following up a little bit with what Vicki said, it seems it's tough times for a lot of people. I mean, everybody's on edge, and I don't say that to minimize anything or to downplay any concerns or issues, but I want to acknowledge that we

037are the staff is, the board is, working hard on the issues. And I hesitate to even say it only because at this point it may sound defensive to people, and that's not what my comments are about. but I do want to reiterate, it's not just a case that nobody's following up on issues and concerns that are shared with us, I would like us to just everybody take a deep breath, at least I'm going to, and move into acknowledging our gratitude and also our farewell for Dr. Hamlett . Mr. Jenks was kind enough to give me some notes to talk about, but I had made pages of notes tonight because , I mean, Dr. Hamlett 's been here four and a half years, And she's got her family here tonight. Dr. Hamlett , before we get...

038Come in. Yeah. I didn't know if you needed... Oh, I got the script. [LAUGH] He must have heard me go off script. [LAUGH] Dr. Hamlett , before we get started, did you want to introduce your family members that are here or is that going to be too, like, embarrassing? [LAUGH] No, not at all. so tonight, I have a few of my family members with me here. my oldest son, Destin couldn't be here with us, and my daughter, Marley, could not be here with us. But I do have my mom, JoAnn Carroll, here. I have my husband, Bryon Hamlet, and my little one, I call him Pumpkin, he's probably like, "Oh my gosh, Mom." [LAUGH] Grayson here with us tonight. Awesome. Yeah. [APPLAUSE] I saw him sitting up there patiently just wondering, "What are all these

039adults talking about?" [LAUGH] Yeah. you know, I wanted to share that when Dr. Hamlett got here, it was COVID, we were just wrapping up returning back to school, and, the board was new. There were three of us new on the board within her first year here, Ria's son Mike Sharp and myself, and two years later three more new board members. And the only constant is sitting to my left right here Ronnie Dossi. And so I always look to Ronnie, "Ronnie, what was it like?" Lifeline. but, Dr. Hamlett got to work right away putting together a leadership team. And I wanted to acknowledge, you're going to hear from them or see some of them later but it's an incredibly superb team of leaders. It took her a few months, a year in some case, to get

040the right people in the right places, but I think it's been, it was an indication that we're not waiting around. she was serious about getting things going. she quickly commissioned an equity audit, and we used that to inform our strategic plan, which is genuinely a community-involved process. And she's lived the key priorities of that plan in just in a steadfast manner. Her focus on safety and wellness, we spend a lot of time talking about wellness of our students and staff, and not just academic performance, which is what we're kind of all about all the time. and the What's the word I'm looking for? You also blended that focus with instructional excellence. You always are constantly talking about investing in our people, and you're always talking about people and the hard work, and I'm kind of

041ad-libbing here. But, you know, she made a promise too for transparent fiscal stewardship. There's a lot of buzz out there sometimes about the budget and there's a lot of misperception sometimes, but she's always tried to add the data to that process so people could have access to it. And, that's huge. And her commitment to strengthening family and community engagement has been noticeable, and they're sort of the soft things that we don't measure with a test. But they've been very noticeable, and they're our key priorities, and she she has lived those priorities. You know, our district has changed a lot in four and a half years. we've reached a record high graduation rate two years ago of 94.8. That's 95% of the seniors graduated on time. We followed up with a record 967 seniors last year

042graduated, all-time high. That's a lot of students. Under Dr. Hamlett 's leadership, the number of schools earning an A or B grade from the state has increased from 67% to 74. Our, our employee fill rate, which sounds like a HR technical language or something, fill rate, it has been at 99.7% at right now, at times, and right now. And, what that means is people are attracted to work here, and, and we have a process in place and they want to work here. And I tell you the, one of the reasons we had a, one of the reasons we had a little budget crunch last year was nobody wanted to leave. And that's a true statement. we kind of predict year to year how many employees will move on to another job or another district and

043use that money that's available, and then last year, the rate of people staying was higher than ever. Which is a good problem to have believe me. Dr. Hamlett has set up regular meetings with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. She meets regularly with the Chapel Hill PTA Council. She has built in student-centered programs, equity and empathy ambassadors, she has re-invigorated the Blue-Ribbon Mentor Program. she has meetings with the Interfaith Leaders Council. She has established a Principal's Advisory Council, a Classified Employee Advisory Council, a Latinx Action Group a school-based Educator Cabinet. I, I say these things cause they're testament to her thoughtful leadership. It's, it's deliberate. Her strategic mind, she's always looking for another way to connect with people. And often with parts of our community that aren't used to being connected with, quite frankly, and

044we value that. So on that note, I'd like to open the floor for board members if you'd each care, or you don't have to, if you'd care to share some thoughts you're welcome to. And then we have a little gift we would like to give you to express our gratitude to you, and, and also to say farewell. But we'll get to that after I let other people have a chance to say something. So we'll just start with Risa, who's our Vice Chair, and work our way down the table. How's that? Well, Dr. Hamlett , thank you so much for being our superintendent. George, you said something that I would say to myself all the time, you sound like a strategic thinker, and that's where I, I spend a lot of time. And as I, as

045we have tackled challenges in this district and things like that, I would find myself telling Dr. Hamlett , "Yeah, I'm dealing with that right now in, in my job." And I would always ask myself when Dr. Hamlett t would make suggestions or we were thinking through like, "How are we going totackle these problems?" And I'm like, "Well, yeah, that's one way I would probably do it." Or we, unfortunately, have to handle and do things that I've had to do before. And so it was just like, wow Dr. Hamlet is similar to me, a strategic thinker, and that's something that I was looking for in a superintendent when I was sitting on the other side of this table. And it's just been really great to have somebody who's thinking really strategically about how we move this

046district forward versus us just constantly putting out fires. And that's so important for our children to see that we've got a path forward. And I just really thank Dr. Hamlett , I know she does, she'll say she didn't do it alone and she'll thank her team, but it really takes a leader at the top to move it, and to move this district along the way in the direction that we need to go. So I want to thank you. And then personally, I want to thank you. I know I've come to you personally about things that are going on with my kids and my family, and you have been such a wonderful resource as an educator and a professional in EC and things like that. I, I talked to her privately about something that was going

047on with a family member who I love and care for deeply, and I just want to thank you so much, because that's really, really important to be able to connect, you know, I think I see some leaders out here, they know me, they know I've talked to them about my kids because they worked with my kids over the years, but it just really meant a lot that Dr. Hamlet would sit down and, like, help me. I, like, texted her and said, "Look, I'm not coming to you about board stuff or anything like that. I need your help as somebody who is a trusted professional in this space and I need your help." And she just really took the time to do that, and that really, really, really means a lot. I mean, and, and, and

048I cannot explain to you, you know, that care and compassion that I see from Dr. Hamlett time and time again through everything is going tobe missed, because that's so important. That is what we needed for our kids, and I just want to thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Theresa. We'll just come down the table, Barb and Vicky, if, either of you have anything you'd like to say, please do. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Griffin. Dr. Hamlett , it's been such an honor to work with you, really, truly a privilege, to be with you on this journey to help our students in this district. you joined us, as Dr. Griffin said, during an extraordinarily trying time and have led consistently with vision and grace. in addition to the accomplishments that Dr. Griffin mentioned, you helped

049us create strategic plan 2027, an ambitious planning document that grounds all of our work. Students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students have exceeded growth expectations, again, often outperforming their statewide peers. Chronic absenteeism is at its lowest level in the last three years. And so, that's just a few things, and I would invite people to look at the website for more. but I just wanted to bring up two things that are not reducible to percentages and numbers. And so, I think everybody who runs for the school board says they care about teacher recruitment and retention. I certainly did. and I think... I have seen how it's not an accident that, that the vacancy rate is as low as it is, because I have so appreciated how you stand up for your staff, in these board meetings,

050in the community, how you help us in a really non-defensive way contextualize the extraordinary challenges that face classroom teachers and administrators. even, and this is a tough needle to thread, while demanding that we do better, and you know that we can do better and, and that we should. and I guess I just want to end, and I was planning to do this even before public comment, but, as the curriculum audit made clear, and as anybody who lives in this district knows, parents here are extraordinarily committed and engaged in the education of their children and, and express that a lot. and sometimes those suggestions come across as, as criticism, sometimes very sharp criticism, sometimes unfair criticism, you get it, we get it, the other staff gets it, and I really appreciate and have learned a lot

051from how you model a respectful responsiveness. I mean, we get so much email and I'm sure you get more, and somehow you both respond to that but don't take your eyes off what we're supposed to be doing, which is, which is helping these kids. So, I will miss you, I'm very happy for you and your family, and thank you. Good evening. I definitely would say I'd be a hypocrite if I said, "Why are you going home?" because I know what that's like, and I respect it wholeheartedly. I met you in March of '21 at a peaceful rally. I have been able to be in a lot of different spaces with you and have been privileged to do so. I have worked with you wearing a lot of different hats. There's a lot of intersectionality there.

052So, I definitely have been thankful to be in those spaces with you wearing those different hats. Half of the time that you've been here, I was not sitting in this space. and I probably spent more time with you then, even. but I say that I have been thankful for the journey that has had to happen with you leading the way with that. I have been fortunate in seeing a lot of the background fighting that you have done for our students, for all of our students, and to demand that we give the best for all of our students, and I am thankful that I've been able to see that in the different hats that I wear. So, that it's not about me as a board member, that is about me being able to witness that as

053a board member, as a parent prior to being a board member, as a community member, as a, whatever all the other things that I was honored to see you doing that part, and to see you bringing us as a community along the way. So, I appreciate that. You will be missed. I thank you, mom and husband and little baby boy for, sharing Mom. I know what that's like to have to share Mom when moms are super busy, so I thank you for supporting her, and I thank you for coming in, two feet double down on the ground while you were here. So yeah, Godspeed. Okay. So in 2019, I think it was, and y'all, my memory is fuzzy, so I'm going to do the best I can, but, we were, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools was

054engaged in a superintendent search, and I believe we had somewhere between 50 and 60 applicants, and we had some really impressive candidates, some who had 20 years of superintendent experience in multiple districts some who had different kinds of experience, but Dr. Hamlett rose to the top of all of those candidates. And I think what I remember being most impressive in that meeting and what I've continued to appreciate about what she's brought to the district is her, enthusiasm and her genuine care for the work she does. And I, want to continue to express my appreciation for you. Also, the job of a superintendent is really hard, y'all. Like, it's, it's... I can't even describe. Every day, you're facing multiple issues across multiple groups that a mistake in any decision could be kind of life-changing. And every

055day, she put on her jacket, kissed her family, I'm assuming, and she came here and she did the work. And, I think most impressively, she came to us in 2020 and you all know what happened in 2020? Like, it was an precedented time where we had a global pandemic that we had to consider decisions we never even anticipated, right? It was like, "Do you wipe down your groceries?" Like do kids go to school? What happens if I sneeze, you know? And she led us through that, not only kind of getting through that back to school, but creating a strategic plan to help guide the pathway beyond COVID and back to school. And so, thank you. I appreciate your consistent reminder to not let adult issues get in the way of what we're doing for kids.

056Like, it's something that I hope that, resonates with everybody, because sometimes we do let our egos get a bit caught up, and we lose track of what our focus might need to be. I also want to appreciate your family so much, Mom, and, Grayson and Brion and Marley and Dustin, who are not able to be with us tonight. But I know it's a lot to trust your family member to go out and lead a community. And I know that there have been experience that you have that I have not, I'm going tosay this, in a way that it doesn't even match the magnitude of your experience, but just have been not ideal. and I want to apologize to you all for that. That's unfortunate. That's the last one. What else? Sorry, I got off track.

057yeah, I was just going tonote, like, the challenges a leader faces can be compounded when the person in the role is also a parent. So again, just thank you all for the way you've supported her and enabled her to be here to do the work. And you've just led numerous challenges with a focus on students, and I wish you continued success as you move on to your next steps. I would just, I'm going totry not to repeat what my colleagues have said. It's a little hard. But, I just want to recognize Dr. Hamlett and thank her for the four and a half years of service that she's given to our district. I think we can all agree that this has been a time of extreme growth, challenge, and I mean, let's be honest, beginning the

058term, her term during the height of a pandemic was certainly not for the faint of heart, and enacting meaningful change. Your leadership has definitely made a lasting impact. under your guidance, as my colleagues have mentioned, our district achieved its highest ever graduation rate. And that's no small feat, and it speaks to your clear commitment to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to succeed. You also brought a clear focus on equity to the forefront of our work. Initiatives like the Equity and Empathy Ambassadors didn't just start conversations, they empowered students to lead the charge on enacting lasting change and solving deep-rooted problems faced by our district. And I believe that this type of stakeholder engagement will narrow the opportunity gap that has persisted between student groups for decades, and help our students grow into the

059next generation's leaders. And I thank you personally also, my daughter was part of the original cohort of that, and has spent all four years, and I think it's had a profound impact on her education and her experience. so thank you for allowing her to participate. And just to go off my script for a second, one of my favorite days that I've had as a board member was when I got to attend one of those meetings and Dr. Hamlet got very personal and talked about her experience of growing up. And I think the way that she was so honest and so real with these kids made a real impact on them hearing "Gosh, maybe I could be a superintendent one day too, or lead a company," or what have you. So, it was very impressive. So

060thank you for your dedication, your vision, and your belief in the potential of every student. I wish you the very best in your next chapter in Maryland, and hope that you and your family find the joy and the peace that you so, so deserve at this point. Thank you. Thank you all. I was jotting down a few Dr. Hamlet-isms while we were talking and Ronnie quoted one of them. "Don't let adult issues get in the way of student needs." And I want, just wanted to put that out there again. I say that to myself a lot when we're in the middle of struggling with each other. Like let's, "George, what are we here for?" and the other one is that she always says, I don't know, to the point sometimes of, "All right, all right,

061all right." She says, "Assume positive intentions." [LAUGH] And it's like, "Oh, yeah, okay." [LAUGH] And it always is a good reminder though. It's actually taught me is, like, I'm going tostart here, and really work hard to assume while you're screaming at me that you've got good intentions behind it. but, and I say that with all sincerity. That, so after you leave, that'll be one of the things I'm sure will be going, Oh, Dr. Hamlett would say right now. And somebody else will say, "Yeah right, well she ain't here," but... [LAUGH] I can picture it. the other is to you principals and district leadership staff that are here in the room, Dr. Hamlett didn't always practice what she preached. And I'll ask Mr. Brion Hamlet to verify this for me. She used to all the time

062say, "On Friday, you go home. Turn off your laptops, period. No emails. You deserve a break." And she would say that over and over and over again. "And don't get back to it 'til you come in Monday, all refreshed and ready to go." And I was elected by my peers here to be board chair, and it wasn't a week after I was sat down as board chair, on a Sunday afternoon at 2:00, while I was pumping gas at the BP station. Who called me? Who do you think called me who had a issue she had to talk about that couldn't wait 'til Monday? And Brion, I don't know if she's ever done any work like that on the weekend or not. But, you know, and after that it she really did try and follow her

063own rules, at least with me. Dr. Hamlett t you're stepping away here, but your impact will be felt for years to come, clearly, people talk about our superintendent's turnover lately. I mean, four and a half years is like a long time, but you got here yesterday, and you're go you're going on to something else. And, you know, we just want to present to you a token of our gratitude, and so I'm going todo that now, and then certainly not saying you can't have a chance to say something either, but, if I could do that, we have a first if we'll just get you this to hand it down, and I'll bring next we have a card of gratitude. And I'll get this one, Ronnie, thanks. We got you some flowers. Here we go. You're going

064tohave more flowers than you know what to do with today. Where's Jonathan Scott? Make sure that he knows that this did not come from the district budget. [LAUGH] So, the card we just passed to you is, we each wrote a little note in it, so you can like read it when you get time. So, we won't read it all, but I do want to present you some flowers because flowers are perfect for every occasion. Yeah. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Brianna, you're going to be on full-time to help do something with these flowers tonight. But we also have a desk or shelf award that we'd like to give to you to take with you. Hopefully, you'll put it somewhere where people will say, "I didn't know you were superintendent at Chapel Hill." Thank you for that. I

065don't know how else to do it. So let me just read this. It says, "In appreciation of your steadfast leadership, Dr. Nyah D. Hamlett, Superintendent Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools 2021 to 2025. Your unwavering commitment to engagement, social justice action, collective efficacy, wellness and joy made a lasting impact. With sincere gratitude, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education." [APPLAUSE] I think the most important thing I can say to you tonight is just thank you. We have much gratitude. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] And Mr. Chairman, if board members would be so inclined, we would love to get a photograph in front of the tables, please. Absolutely. Of course. [APPLAUSE] Now, Dr. Hamlett , if you would not mind standing about right there, and my cabinet colleagues who I presume are within the sound of my voice right now

066should be making their way into the room because we gave up our seats earlier. but we are here tonight as a cabinet team proud to have served Chapel Hill-Carrboro under Dr. Hamlet's leadership. And rather than all of us delivering speeches, we instead will ask Dr. Trice over here to present the next gift. What you're looking at is a framed photograph of the cabinet team, including handwritten personal thoughts and well-wishes that we hope Dr. Hamlett will look back on fondly from her new office in Montgomery County, Maryland. Dr. Hamlett , we will miss you. Thank you very much for your leadership, and we wish you the best. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, all. Dr. Hamlet, we have one more rep, group and representative. Mr. Brian Lincoln, The Association of Educators would like to say a few words to

067you. Thank you. More flowers. So, it's weird to stand at a podium and not already be thinking I'm at two minutes and 56 seconds. [LAUGH] But the fact that I, on behalf of a fantastic organization, am standing here tonight, is a microcosm, an exemplar if you will, of Dr. Hamlett 's leadership. We are in a right to work state. Labor is under attack all across the country. Teachers in particular, educators, because it takes a village. I want to be very, very clear on that. And yet, despite this adversity, Dr. Hamlett , from the first time that we sat down together, until literally her last public days, has done nothing but devote herself tirelessly, selflessly, and truly to the cause of creating a better environment for our kids so that they can succeed. And unlike many

068individuals, she truly understands that because it takes a village that a healthy environment for our kids means you need to have a supported, and you need to have a group of staff who is willing to go the extra mile for them. And she created that space. I know we don't like to think about it, right? Everyone is just like, "COVID over. Oh, those years. Like, can we move on?" But there was truly a sense of worry and fear about what was coming next. And it was Dr. Hamlett who brought many different voices together in the table and created structures and procedures where every group had a seat at the table to build consensus to make it so that everyone felt that they could get to the point of first coming back into our schools, then

069coming back regularly into our schools, and then finally, right, returning and improving upon where we were previously. And you've heard the data. Improvement. Improvement. The numbers speak for themselves. And that's something we always ask, and we are constantly saying, "This is what we want to do." But we had a leader who not only said the words, but did the work and achieved the results. And you did so in a way, as many have said, that put people first. And as a representative of an organization that is about people, we cannot thank you enough. When we had a crisis of, "Are we going toget bus drivers?" You stepped up to the plate and made sure that we had the highest bus driver pay in the state of North Carolina. My daughter goes to a school that's

070still having bus driver problems this year. Not in this district. But we don't because you took care of our people. Oftentimes, right, folks, because of who they interact with they're like, "Oh, yeah. I, I know my teacher. I know their name." But they don't necessarily know the person who checks your student in or out when you come to pick them up for an appointment. They don't know the person who serves them food in the cafeteria. They don't know the person who ensures that they'll find the stuff that they left behind, right? and, and picks it up and makes sure that it's returned the next day. A jacket, a, a water bottle, et cetera from our janitors. You spoke your values and ensured that we had one of the largest classified raises and restructuring of pay

071in our district's history. Pay that went primarily to workers of color. You spoke your values as well when we were worried about crises and teacher shortages. And we've heard that tonight, and it's real. And as someone who worked at a building that was down to one administrator when you first got here, you stepped in, and you did so in a way that brought people together. You got people to take that deep breath. And you've been able to create a thriving community in the building that I and many others work in, with great leadership, including our AP of the Year. And in doing so, you restored Chapel Hill to where it's been in the past by supporting not one, but multiple pay increases for certified staff that put us back at the top of the charts.

072It's important to connect the dots. We are 99% filled because there has been a commitment, a leadership from you directly in each and every single one of your budgets to do what is right by people. And I thank the board for listening to your leader and supporting that. And I hope our county commission will as well. They're meeting tonight. I think it's important as well to talk about this idea of truly what collaboration means. In a day and an age where we're bombarded by social media, right, and everyone a microphone is literally everywhere. Everyone has a podcast, right? Everyone speaks an opinion, and everyone has that. Collaboration means listening. Collaboration means seeking empathy and understanding. And collaboration means that you're not always going to get exactly what you want, and the other side is not

073always going toget what they want, but you're going to work together to do what's best for the people who matter most, which is our kids. And that's what you have routinely and consistently done. And I can tell you, it's been a range. I have sat in rooms where it's been at odds from administration versus, right, staff. And that's not comfortable or fun. And you have changed that whole environment. Not just you, but with your leadership team, to come together to find ways to work to ensure that people are included, that voices are heard, right? And to figure out, as many have said, to put beyond the personalities and the differences of adults and figure out what is it that we can do to get solved? As I said earlier tonight, even up to your last

074days, you were leading that effort to try to figure out solutions, and we thank you for that. And we also want to say and recognize that, yes, there are going tobe disagreements and there're differences. Not everyone's going toagree all the time, but you are someone who is comfortable enough in her own skin to accept that. And you've never ever wavered in your belief to be able to say people should speak up for what it is that they believe in and to allow those folks to go forward. As an organization, we've always done that, and we will continue to do that, but you have helped create that space when others wouldn't. Now, I've spoken a lot on the organization, I do want to take a moment to speak on a personal level. First, as a teacher,

075right? I, I don't get paid anything for doing this. I work a full-time job, and then I come to board meetings. It's a wonderful life. But you have been absolutely amazing. I have taught many of the students who are equity and empathy ambassadors. And as a civics teacher, in particular, who talks about democracy not being a spectator sport, who talks about that civics is a relationship and that you have to get involved, you have truly transformed and created opportunities for students to have a voice and see that they can make meaningful change. And as an educator, that's what gets us up and going every single morning. And we thank you for living out that commitment, because so often there can be so much distance between those at the top and those who are in the

076classroom, but you never forgot where you came from. Similarly, you never forgot where you came from with the whole child, ensuring the wellness of all, right? Not just as are we making the top marks, but are we making good and decent human beings? As the head of the social justice program at East, again, mind-blown, right? An inclusive process that had educators in, and it's literally part of our strategic plan, social justice action. I ask you, go anywhere in the other counties of North Carolina, where would you see such a thing? You don't. You live your values, and you create space for it, and we're better off because of it. Couldn't ask for a better example. And personally, and I too want to thank your family. I know how many times she's been taken away, and

077I personally want to say I'm sorry when I'm the one who, who's been calling to do that. But as a father, your greatest impact is on the little lady who you inspired from the very first time you met her, right? Until this day, who calls you boss boss. And who is with you on your wrist because she wanted to make a bracelet for you because she was sad that you're going. That's what matters. And you understand that because you are a parent, you are a spouse. And that at the end of the day, family matters most. And I hope you know that you have a very large family here. Family of people who love you, who care for you, who support you, who've been honored to work and serve with you, and are excited for

078your next opportunity. Most of you are used to seeing me red, wear red. And tonight, I've chosen yellow. And so I want to conclude on these remarks. Yellow is the color of joy. Joy in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. It's also the color of wisdom and knowledge. You have created an environment of joy for our kids. You have created an environment where educators can help extend and spread the wisdom in a culture today that needs it more than ever. And we, as an organization, wish you nothing but wellness, success, and happiness. And please know, you are a super, super. And you are our super. Thank you very much, Dr. Hamlet, On behalf of all of our members. And so continuing that joy and hopefully wellness, we have a beautiful bouquet of continuing those colors. And there's a

079card with our thanks, including an opportunity to have a nice, relaxing, enjoyable time with your family away from all of this. [LAUGH] To make those connections so that you are ready in your next endeavor to continue with collective efficacy, to continue with engagement, and to continue advancing the causes of equity in a time when it's needed most. Thank you, Dr. Hamlett , very much. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Mr. Lenk. Dr. Hamlet, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you if you would care to say a few words, or perhaps you don't. Put you on the spot here. Well, as you all know, I'm a writer, so I've written a number of messages, starting with my community updates in 2021, down to my farewell message just the other day. but I just want to express my gratitude

080to each of you to board members, who came before you, and, that were part of that journey of hiring me with Rodney. I want to express my appreciation to my team, my I'm going tomiss them so, so much. Reza's right. I don't do any of this alone, never have. They are amazing leaders, and every single person that is sitting out in this audience that wears a Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools badge, from our principals, our assistant principals, our district leaders, they are amazing educators, and they care so deeply about every single child and every single staff member that is under their care. And the only reason why you guys can recite those stats is because of the work that they do every single day. And I merely just tried to stand in the gap for them

081so that they could get the work done. And they have done an amazing job. Thank you. [LAUGH]They have done an amazing job, and they know that the work that it's not over. Just because I'm going on to a new chapter, I've been telling them I'll be cheering them on from afar. but I would love for each of you who does wear a badge, whether you're a teacher, an assistant principal, principal, if you are here today, and I mean, I think many of you are here to support me. [LAUGH] But I want you to stand up and to be recognized, because I want to be able to give you your flowers. If you all could stand. [APPLAUSE] And I look out, I look out in that audience, and I look at individuals and see and just

082know some of the things that you've had to endure, some of the battles that you've fought. So my stuff might be public and out there in the open, but there are private battles that I know that some of you have fought that I've had the privilege to walk through with you. There are professional battles that some of you have had to walk through. And again, you're still doing the work and getting the results for kids every single day. And like I said in my farewell message, whether you always agreed with my approach or not, I just thank you for being on this journey with me and being the amazing leaders and educators that you are. And you continue to fight for the children of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Dr. Hamlett

083. Are we ready to do what? You need a break? Yeah, we'll just get, we'll get a break after this. After this next part. All right. I get to do something exciting. Dr. Griffin and board members, I'd like to move to amend the agenda and add the approval of the new superintendent as the next item on our agenda. Been moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Carries unanimously. Thank you. We've amended the agenda. Are you ready for? Did you want to? Yes, I can do the next motion. Make another motion here? Yep. I move to approve the superintendent contract for Dr. Rodney Trice. Second! Second! Second! [APPLAUSE] There's been a motion and a second. With no further discussion, all in favor say aye. It was me, I seconded.

084All in favor say aye? Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. Dr. Trice welcome. Do what? Do we need, do you want to do the second motion? Oh, we have a second? You can go ahead and have your comments and, We're first going to, to let this sink in. Welcome Dr. Trice. We are so excited to have you in your new role. And, a couple board members had asked earlier could they make a comment or two and I'd like to forward them a quick comment and then we'd like to offer you a chance to respond. So any board members that wanted to say something? And I'm just being asked to remind that he will be sworn in at a later date. Most likely on June 18th, which is our next regularly scheduled board meeting. So any board

085members want to make a quick comment, please do. Barb? I just wanted to talk about the process that might, the public might not be aware of that we took to get to this place. So, I mean, it is a sacred and solemn responsibility to be on a board of education. I mean, public schools are the lifeblood of a community and really, our fragile democracy depends on them. and I think this is the most important thing that we do. I think we did good. Just going to say, but I so we retained the North Carolina School Board Association to help us with this search. over, after a lot of discussion and some of us expressed some concern like, "Can we afford this?" And it was like, no, we need a professional organization with experience and they

086really helped us. the first thing they did was put together a survey and we got a lot of surveys back from staff and community members. And they synthesized those results and helped create the profile of a superintendent. And, Dr. Trice checked every single box. as you know if you've read the materials, we got 37 applications, from 14 different states. And his resume and his application are so incredible, that it wasn't close. I guess I just, I also want to address, we got some questions about why didn't we have community forums for the finalists to be able to meet the community? And I don't think anyone's ever explained that in this forum. So, we were advised against that by the North Carolina School Board Association that you would have to be crazy to waive confidentiality to

087come and meet a bunch of people in case you don't get the job. It doesn't help you and your prior employer. but I do, so I just, I wanted to say that, I mean, the, one of the answers that impressed me so much that Dr. Trice gave in our interview was when asked what some of the three biggest challenges are, he said, "Complacency" which I just really appreciated because we think we're so great, but we know we can do just a lot better. so that's all I wanted to say for now. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, with that said Dr. Trice, would you like to, as superintendent, almost superintendent. So my IC team knows, I'll cry in a minute. But I want to say good evening. I've prepared a few remarks. but primarily to just

088express my deep thanks and gratitude this evening, knowing that I'll have some time to, speak at length in the next couple of weeks or so. But tonight, is about pausing to honor the moment, and the people in this room who make schools work. First, to the Board of Education, thank you for this incredible opportunity and for your trust in my leadership. Serving as superintendent is more than a title. It is a responsibility rooted in the public's trust. I'm honored, I'm humbled and I'm ready to do this work in partnership with the board for a community that means so much to me and my family. A community that I've called home for almost two decades. To my cabinet and district leadership colleagues, thank you. Your clarity, courage commitment, fussing and fighting. Have been a daily source

089of strength for me. Thank you for always showing up with honesty. And for keeping the main thing, the main thing, focused on our students, our families, and our caregivers. I'm excited to continue this work alongside you, and to deepen our collaboration in ways that reflect the best of who we are and who we aspire to be. To our school leaders, who are all back there, thank you for hanging out with us again. I know it's been a long time. But also our teachers you are the ones who carry our mission forward every single day, often in ways that go unnoticed and unseen. their work is challenging, it is deeply human and absolutely vital, as was stated earlier. I look forward to not only listening to you, but also learning from you, and ensuring we have

090what you need to thrive and lead in our schools, our classrooms, every single day. To the students and families in the broader Chapel Hill-Carrboro community, the heart of our district, I look forward to walking with you and working with you to continue to build a system that reflects your hopes and dreams and honors your experiences. But I want to pause and talk about Dr. Hamlet, boss boss. I've told you this privately, but I think it's important to say publicly here tonight. I've seen the early mornings, I've seen the late evenings, the weekends, the holidays, the countless decisions, the burden and beauty of your work. I've seen you carry it with grace, with faith, and an unshakeable commitment to our students, irrespective of their social or cultural background. It says something powerful about leadership when you

091leave a place better than you found it. And as both a parent and an employee of CHCCS, I will be forever grateful for your example, your prayers, your mentorship, and your heart. And finally, to my family, my wife, Kenya, my daughters, Zuri and Sala, thank you for keeping a smile on my face, even on the toughest days. And I imagine that I'll need you now more than ever. [LAUGH] But all in all, in full partnership, I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work for our students, our families and caregivers, and our community. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Dr. Trice. you just said you were ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work, and that is going tobring us to the next part, and we'll, we're getting ready to wrap

092up, but Dr. Hamlett , after the at the end of this week, is going totake some vacation leave time for the remainder, for the next few weeks. And so, I'm going toask for a motion in a minute to appoint Dr. Trice as acting superintendent for the time next, starting Monday, for the rest of this month up until July 1st, when he will assume his duties permanently. So, you're basically going tostart working Monday. [LAUGH] Right, you signed up for this. And today's Thursday night. [LAUGH] So, can I have a motion to to that effect? I move to appoint Dr. Rodney Trice as the acting superintendent, effective June 7th, 2025. I second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It carries unanimously. Welcome. All right. We're going to take... [APPLAUSE] We're going

093to take a five-minute break. Did you want to say something? Go ahead, before we do that. I just want to tell Dr. Trice he can have tomorrow off. [LAUGH] Very good. We'll take a five-minute break. [RECESS] [GAVEL] The meeting is back in order or in session, I should say. we're going to make a few changes in the order of presentation and do the Exceptional Children's presentation next, in just one minute if you'll just sit tight. And then we're going todo the policy change. And we've asked if there's any other items that can be moved to June 18th, to alert us to that, and we'll do that. and before we get started with Exceptional Children, I'm just going toissue an apology. We always seem to push Exceptional Children late into the meetings. It is not intentional.

094We talked about it. We knew our program would take just 30 minutes and it took 90, and I really, I apologize for that. but we will... it's not an indication of our, our interest or our support at all. So our apologies again. And with that said Ms. Robinson, and I give you the floor. I know you've got a I looked at your presentation, and I thought, "There's some exciting information in there," so looking forward to hearing it. All right. Good evening, everyone. Of course, my name is Fonda Robinson, and I'm the senior executive director of the Exceptional Children's Program. And our team is going tobe sharing with you all tonight. This is a culmination of the work that has gone forth this year. With our restructuring plan, we hope to be able to share with

095you our progress. We will be disaggregating and analyzing data this summer, for some of the data that we have collected because we've collected data for, for discipline. We'll be digging into that. We are, have collected data for, excuse me. We have collected data, as far as our, restructuring plan and how we are supporting schools. And so, we want to kind of dig a little bit deeper to see where our holes are, to see where our successes have been, and we look forward to reporting that out. Without further ado, I would like to present to you the team that will be sharing tonight. Ms. Erin Watts will be speaking. She is the director of compliance. Catherine Pritchard will be speaking tonight, not necessarily in that order. And of course Diane Vilwok, who is a great asset

096and support to us in terms of our data analysis. And Justin Kaiser will be sharing our fiscal landscape with you. And then, our own Tianca Day will close us out. So without further ado, I turn over the floor to Erin. Thank you for having us here tonight. I just want you to know that I'm going to try to be very brief. And the longer that we went, the more things that I crossed off that I was going tosay. So, how do I get this to? It's not going. Alright, so we are going to start with the background. This is our demographic information for the entire district. This is very similar to what you have seen in, that we have reported in the last few presentations. And as we go through this, you're going to see

097that the next couple of graphs are going to look very similar, because our trends are very similar. Here's our child count data. We did talk about this the last, at the last meeting. as you can see, we have steadily increased as we have moved from 2023 to April 2025. while we do report on December child count, April is no longer, but we still do continue to run those numbers because that's what informs our allotment. This is a breakup of how our students, according to race and gender. As you can see, we typically have more boys than girls. and our highest number of demographics is our White students. This is our breakdown according to the 14 categories of disability. Again, the trends, while the numbers have changed, the trends and the lines are still there. We

098are still heavily identified in LD, followed by, autism. This data reflects our eligibility of our students by race, of our largest identification areas. So, we really broke it down so that we can look at if there are any disproportionalities, which at the moment, we are not, on any of those lists for disproportionality. This next one is a new slide. this is our exit count. Exit count is another area that gets reported to the state. Please note that this year's exit count is actually not due till September, so it's not finalized yet. So I want to make sure that that last run was on, May 22nd, so that's not complete data. The table shows the number of students who have left EC either through graduation, whether or not they have exited services for, for the, they

099no longer qualify, for good reasons, we're excited about that, or that they have left through graduation. We also have a category of other. The other category, is the students that have either moved out of our district or they are no longer, they're still here, but they are no longer coming to CHCCS. When we did a breakdown of that, I didn't have a slide for this, but we did do a breakdown of that. What we found is that in 2022-23, 59%, of our students that left were left because they went out of district or out of state. In 2024, 66 were because they moved out of district or out of state. And for this year so far, we're looking at 57 who have moved out of district or out of state. We do have some for

100private schools. 2022-23 was 33 went to private or home school. 2023-24 it was 29%. and then for this year, right now as we stand, was 18%. There were some percentages that I couldn't categorize because they were very low in numbers or it just wasn't reported to our data managers, so I didn't have that information. So now we're going to move into our EC vacancy report. This is for our staffing, so we're shifting gears a little bit. As of May 30th, we are 98% staffed in our certified positions, 92 staffed in our classified positions, and 93% staffed for central office positions. As we met last time, one of the questions that was asked was about teacher vacancies and how we do what we do if there is a teacher vacancy. so here is what we have

101the guidance that we have given to schools, in how to respond to teacher vacancies. One of the things that we do want to highlight and note that because our caseload sizes are small caseload sizes, that many cases school staff can absorb the load of a vacant position, at least temporarily. And the last thing that I'm going to talk about today is our parent survey. Our parent survey, is what the state gave us. It's the EC department wanted to increase, our efforts to ensure families had access to the survey. So partnering with communications of our translation departments to identify all of our dominant languages in CHCCS and making sure that they had that information so that they could fill out our, our survey. This information was shared in PLCs, it was shared with principals and principal

102updates, newsletters, and it's on our EC website. So far this year we have had 296 responses, which places us at a 19% completion rate. And just so you guys are aware, the state is only expecting a 10%, response rate. Yep. So like Fonda said, I'm here to give the fiscal landscape. Erin mentioned she was going to try to be brief. I don't need to try. I'm always brief. So this should be pretty quick. So I wanted to I wanted to present the data in like a, a funnel fashion. That's kind of how I view data, especially financial data. so this first slide is showing the district's entire budget. every fund, one through, one through eight. And, I just wanted to base the presentation in this so you know that the budget in total is about

103222 million. It's normally around 200 million depending on what we're doing with capital, but yeah, so right now keep that number in mind. Another important number to think about in this, through these couple slides is they mentioned the EC headcount. In the district that represents about 13% of our student population, and that 13% number is pretty interesting as you look at this data. So this is the total budget allocated to EC services. You'll see 13% of the total budget is EC. That's not necessarily an intentional thing that we do, it's just interesting to know that that's how that worked out. I will say, bit of nuance on this slide, I removed, capital, child nutrition, and community schools because those funds sort of operate on their own. The buildings are the buildings. It doesn't matter how

104many general ed students that are in there, how many EC students are in there. So I removed those to get to that 13% number. But it is interesting that it, it's kind of in proportion with the population. So I also wanted to focus on the local budget. We always focus most of our attention on that. That's where we make the most decisions. And interestingly, that 13% shows up again and it holds within that fund as well. So breakdown of the EC funding sources is on this slide. You can see state and local are the two biggest. That's where we get most of our money for everything, so that also holds true in the EC, department. I included federal grants and fund date there as well because that's the operational funds that we use. So breakdown

105of that EC budget, what do we spend that on? And the short answer is people. 90% of the budget is spent on in-district salaries, so that's the people we staff. that dark blue section you see there is contracted services. That's also people. We're just contracting people to come in. And that very small light blue sliver there is like supplies and materials that we physically buy. So that is less than 1% of the EC budget, and that's, I think that's a pretty interesting fact. So moving into that, into the staff that we have, again, it is, I think this number is 15%, but that is pretty close to that 13% number I, I mean, I keep mentioning. And below there you can see the ratios. These ratios right here are all the, all the staff in

106the EC department just put against the EC population. so you can see the comparison there. All right, here is the staff. top left, that is our central office, that's our pure central office staff. They are the support. That's Fonda and her team. Below that is what I would kind of call a hybrid section. We would consider these central office people, but they do work out in the schools. I think they evaluate, students, but they also do some of the backend work. So they kind of go back and forth. They're not purely central office. And on the right, that is our, that is the bulk of our staff. That is the direct student-facing, population. So you can see those numbers there. And then at the bottom of the right table. I redid those ratios I talked

107about earlier with just the student-facing, population. And so, you can compare that to the earlier number. All right, so moving into that dark blue and light blue sliver This is a breakdown of the EC non-salary expenditures. a large portion of that, as I said, is contracted services. We also got some professional development in there. I think some travel, and then supplies is a, a pretty small part of what we, what we purchase outside of salaries. And then on this slide, I just included our top 10, contracted services, just so that the board and the public can see this is what that money goes to. almost all of it is direct student-facing services of bringing in health professionals and, interpreters, and things like that, so I'll hand it over. Thank you. This is way too tall

108for me. So, the other things that you asked me for, or asked us for, in the, last meeting was to talk about things that we're doing that are innovative, that are related to programming. And then the last one of the exciting things that I'm going to end with is the aspirations. What are we aspiring to as an EC department? So, innovations. One of the things that is really exciting to me, we are one of only two districts in the state of North Carolina that has a, an in-house Pre-ETS program. That's pre-employment transition services, that provides education to our students and brings money in to us. So, they bring in, for the milestones that our students complete, $798,000. This year we have submitted for all of those milestones. The funds don't always come, you know, when

109we submit. It can take a year, a year and a half to actually get the funds. However, that $798,000 covers our TEaCH contract, and it covers up to 90% of our transition team's salary and expenses. So, it's a self-funded, if you will, operation, and it's providing our students with the pre-employment advanced skills that they need to help them prepare for the future in their life. Mostly this services our OCS students, but it also, we also work with our ECAC students as well as our Future Ready Corps students. In addition, last year we started a contract, or MOU, with Voices Together. They also do pre-employment transition services, so they are offering additional services for our students at no cost to us. and this gives us an, a wealth of opportunity to provide our students with, important

110and required lessons for preparing them for their future without us incurring the cost. The other thing that's exciting that's actually just happened, we have entered into an agreement with UNC TEACh for them to come and train three of our teachers, our ECAC teachers, and provide coaching for them. We are targeting one to, one new teacher, and so we're working with the new teachers, in middle, one in middle, one in, elementary, one in high. And the benefit for Teach is that they get to bring a consultant in and help them train and grow. The benefit for us is that our teacher gets free training, our teacher gets free coaching, and our autism team, as well as our instructional specialists will be able to be in the room and get benefit from the coaching as well. And

111again, all of this is limited or no cost to us. Couple other things that we do. so the North Carolina State Improvement Project, we did not submit for that last year, but we can submit for it this year. It will enable us to provide some professional learning for our teachers in relation to science of reading and science of math. In the district, we currently have three reading research to classroom practice instructors and one foundations of math instructor, as well as a dyscalculia delegate. And that enables us, like I said, to provide state-level training for our teachers, again, at no cost. And if we do apply for the NC SIP program, we can bring in some funds to provide substitutes for teachers to attend additional trainings. So, you also asked about programming. Programming, as you know,

112in EC is all about specially designed instruction. And I'm going to explain that in a little bit more detail later. But other things that we do with programming, like we already talked about, is the Pre-ETS program, as well as lately, the state put in a plan saying that eighth graders needed to have a career development plan. We are using those to help inform our students' course selections as they move into high school, and also help support with our Pre-ETS team, our transition team, the types of supports that the students need to move forward. Other programming that we do, we have some required programming that we have to do, which is compensatory services. If students have missed some services that we haven't been able to provide for them, and then extended school year. Some students qualify

113for extended school year if they have regression or they have an emerging skill, or other things. and then our optional program is the ECAC summer camp. Just a couple statistics of that, those programs this summer. We have 31 students enrolled for comp ed and ESY. We have 52 students enrolled in the optional ECAC program. We have 15 students enrolled in the work-based learning program, but that program will also bring in money for the summer program and expensive, and then there will be 51 staff who will provide those summer services. So, thinking of SDI and specially designed instruction, you may remember the graphic from last year where we talked about specially designed instruction is that gap, is bridging that gap between where a student is and where they need to be. What we put in place

114this year was a intensive training for our teachers, beginning-of-the-year training, ongoing PLC conversations, as well as on district PL days. We use the curriculum plan, we also use the two comprehensive reviews from DPI to inform the training that we did for our teachers. and we are really going to focus next year on educational benefit for student, looking at IEPs to make sure that they are informing that educational benefit so that we can see that our students are growing, as well as the standards alignment in the IEPs as well. All of those components came out of our comprehensive review, and again, are in alignment with our curriculum plan. All of this takes time. Right? So last year, we began this process, we started the research, we reviewed all the plans. This year, we began the implementation

115of a couple evidence-based programs and practices for our teachers, training them and providing some initial coaching, and in future years we hope to continue that. To Justin's point, the 1% of materials is kind of a challenge because in order to pre-implement the evidence-based programs and practices, we need to have the resources for, not only the curriculums, but also the training and to support the teachers. So, just some additional kick trainings that we have done for the students, sorry, the students the teachers over the course of the year. Kickoff, we went very intense into data, and we had a theme of data and how we were going to collect data and what we needed to do, and then also how we were going to design the classroom and implement our practices. And then over the course

116of the year, we've done some additional trainings. Our ECAC teachers got training in ULS as well as the Polaris system, which is their data collection system. We had the focus trainings on district PL days, activities for increasing student engagement which align with the high leverage practices which are put out by CEEDAR and CEC, which are evidence-based practices for working with students with disabilities, and we have a plan to increase a couple other trainings with that in the fall, put focusing on feedback as well as explicit instruction and maintenance and generalization. We also, in our PLC topics, we talked about, data review and making sure that each group was aligned in a topic that was appropriate for them. So our adaptive curriculum specialists focused very much on the ECAC needs and what was needed in the

117classroom with visuals, and again, with data collection. we did a lot with ESY for our high school teachers. We focused on the block schedule and how they can plan for that, and goal maintenance. So we've done a lot of variety of training and support for our teachers over time. So what's working and what's yet to be actualized? We got quotes from our specialists to inform this slide. The specialists feel like the teams are beginning to coalesce, they're becoming familiar with the processes, and they are reaching out for support. They are asking for evidence-based practices and programs, and so we are consistently getting requests for these that we are saying, you know, "We are in process. We've got a plan. We hope to work for it." What's also a consistent process that needs to be built

118is that consistency of data collection and using data to inform the instruction and the IEP planning. But again, this is a growth process. Implementation takes years, and so we are going to build on that as we move forward in the next coming years. And all of this leads to the sort of resources that we need is administrative support with accountability for the teachers and, following through with some observations. We do have plans to train the teachers train the principals with that and get them involved with observing and practicing along with us so that we can, align our observation protocol. And then teaching teams need the required evidence-based programs and practices, and protected time for service delivery. Our EC teachers need time with the students providing that instruction so that it's not taken away from meetings

119and other things. And all of this leads to the aspiration and so the aspiration is that we have that power to completely transform the narrative in the state and federal reports that we're receiving and the data we get for our kids, and that we can change the compliance data and the students achievement data. Our efforts dedication can shine a bright light on their true potential, ensuring their struggles are recognized and their successes are celebrated. Together, we can make a profound lasting impact that changes perceptions and opens doors for a brighter future for our kids with disabilities and all kids. Thank you. Good evening. So, I wrote a quote about this in the presentation at the last board meeting that apparently was confusing to folks, so I have pictures. So, and understand, and Forgive me for

120not being here last time because I could have explained it. So, when you look at this chart, what you're seeing is numbers of unique office referrals, these are children who have one or more infractions over a period of three years, and I broke it down by non-students with disabilities and students with disabilities. So, what you see on the left is this really beautiful, decelerating, you know, falling, set of data where we're having fewer and fewer referrals. Fabulous. Students with disabilities dropped a bit from 22-23 to 23-24, and was flat going into 24-25. And this data is all August through April, which is a little bit of an odd interval, but it worked for the conversation. And then the total is over on the right-hand side where I just add up the numbers in the two

121sets. So, this next one is percentage of the pool, so I'm going to use my hands. This is a pool. All the kids who got a referral are in the pool, okay? So, we saw that the non-students with disability numbers were dropping, but the students with disability numbers were kind of flat. So, the proportion of students with disabilities in the pool is growing, right? That's what I said last time in a sentence that kind of got a little bit of a head nod. You know, just people weren't quite sure how that worked, and so now you can see it. So, let's go further and look at, this by, category of identification. And so you see some really different patterns here. So, among the autistic students, again, these are children who have one or more referrals,

122we're counting students, there was a big jump in autistic students with an office referral. The ED kids, emotionally disabled kids, kind of flat this year after a bit of a drop. The LD students dropped really nicely this year. The other health-impaired students have a really pretty linear dropping. The other is going up a bit, but the numbers are small, and inside of that, there's one or two kids with this category and one or two I just, you can't make too much sense out of it. when we looked into the autistic category, because that obviously catches one's attention, the top referral, for those offenses were 15 physical aggression and nine assault on school employee that did not result in serious injury. And among those 38 students, the race was, 18 white students, eight Latinx, five Black,

123five multiracial, and two Asians. And in the notes that don't show, I believe there were five girls and, what am I missing, 35 boys. So, it's largely the boys. So, this is switching channels to satisfactory attendance, and part of what we're showing you here is a really nice improvement in satisfactory attendance among the students with disabilities. That's the, part on the outside on the right, and I can't read those numbers from here even with count, but 44.9 we got up to. and so if I could read my own slide, it would be right there in front of me. They went up 8.6 percentage points since last year to 61.4% for the district as a whole, and the students with disabilities went up, 5.3 percentage points in the same time period. So, not quite the same

124amplitude of improvement, but moving definitely in the right direction. Now, what should be here, I realized this afternoon at about 4:00, is the chronic absences number, or actually the severe. So, I have them on my phone because I think that's important too. so in 22-23, the, percent of severe absences among students with disabilities was 12.8%. It was pretty similar at 12.1% last year, and it's gone down to 10.7% this year. So again, some progress being made on the severe end as well as on the satisfactory side. And I will hand off to whoever gets to go next. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. as highlighted in our comprehensive review, building capacity, is the cornerstone for helping us to improve student outcomes, and so that has long since been a focus of both our psychological and support

125services teams throughout the years. And this evening, I have the honor to be able to share with you all some of the innovative strategies that we have used this year to help us more effectively support not only our exceptional children's staff, but also our general education colleagues. The teachers that serve our district behavior support classrooms are exceptional children's teachers, and as such, they have access to all of the professional learning that their counterparts across the district have access to. However, because of the unique nature and the complex needs of the students that they serve in their classrooms, we were intentional to build in some, additional supplemental supports to help them feel equipped to effectively support their students, but also to build in protective factors for their emotional, and mental well-being. So Zones of Regulation is

126an evidence-based, program that is used in both of our classrooms. All of our teaching staff and those who support those classrooms were trained in that this year. And it is a methodology that helps us to teach students to self-regulate. Our Community Resiliency Model is a trauma-informed, resiliency focused evidence evidence-based practice, and we partner with Duke University and the Center for, Child and Family Health to be able to provide that training for our staff that supports those two classrooms. And in doing so, they taught the six core skills that adults need to be able to track their own nervous system and then be able to reset and restore themselves to a place of calm and balance when they are in a situation and episodes of stress and duress. For, this summer, we are excited to be

127able to have our staff partake in training being presented by Boys Town Press. And so our staff will, have training on specialized classroom management, and while the vendor, is specific to one gender, I did want to highlight for all that the research and the evidence-based practices associated with that have found to be, have been found to be effective with all genders and students. Our teacher assistants, as we know, are vital components of our instructional framework, and so in order to ensure that they felt equipped to be able to partner successfully with the teachers that they serve alongside, we were intentional in creating these professional learning opportunities so that our, teacher assistants in these two classrooms were able to be able to not only help with deescalating behaviors, but also had a firm understanding of how

128to reinforce replacement behaviors and also how to partner in teaching those replacement behaviors and the data collection associated with them. Many of you in this room have probably heard me say this many times, that well over 80% of the students in this district who have disabilities are served in the general education setting. And because of that, the psychological and support services team developed what we coined the Professional Learning Academy, or PLA, because in EC, we love a good acronym and so, we tasked ourselves with being able to meet the need that we saw our general education colleagues needing support with, with regard to helping to improve outcomes for our students with disabilities and their varying needs as they present in the general education setting. So, it's important to recognize, that I wanted to share with

129you all that these trainings that our staff presented were recorded live and they have been uploaded into Canvas. So that allows our teachers throughout the year as they self-identify a need to be able to go onto Canvas and partake in those trainings. It has an exit ticket in there which allows them to be able to self-report any additional supports that they need that allows our staff to go behind and provide any coaching, either individual coaching or small group coaching. and principals then have it at their access to be able to use for perpetual onboarding or when they identify a staff need as well. So quarter one, all of the disciplines on the psychological and support services team provided instruction to both instruction and training to both our exceptional children student support services staff as well

130as our general education teachers. If you take a look at this slide here, all of the coursework on the left was presented at our final School Support and Wellness Kickoff this year, and that you'll see included, again student services, exceptional children's, to include our teacher assistants. All of the courses that you see listed on the right were, conducted and shared with all of our general education teachers at our Teaching and Learning Conference this year. For quarter two and going forward, each of the disciplines under, under, on my team or under my supervision were paired together and they were tasked with being responsible for and facilitating the professional learning, for their quarter. You'll see here quarter two was facilitated by the Autism and Behavior Team. You might recognize that many of or some of the areas

131that were highlighted here were also shared as concerns the last time we stood before the board based on some of the observations that you all shared from your school visits. Quarter three was facilitated by our Speech-Language Pathology and our School Psychology Teams. Some of our school leaders have left, but I want to give a big thank you to, Principal John Dixon of Phoenix Academy High School, and also to Assistant Principal Beverly Beckwith of Rachkis Elementary. They are two of the school leaders that participated in coursework throughout the Professional Learning Academy this year. again here in quarter four, our Occupational Therapy and our Physical Therapy along with our Assisted Technology Teams, offered these coursework to both our general education and exceptional children's colleagues. I'd also like to add here that when we offer this opportunity to

132our general education colleagues we thought that the primary audience would be our general education teachers, and that was the case, but I also want to highlight and identify that we had social workers, and counselors, interventionists in addition to the school leaders that I noted, and music teachers who all gave us very strong feedback that allowed us to feel confident with strengthening our programming and our supports for next year. So, in addition to the Professional Learning Academy, this is a snapshot of some of the 43 opportunities that our staff provided to both general education and, exceptional children's staff throughout the year. I do want to highlight here, this APART, Parent Institute for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, that was a new initiative that we put in place this year. We got wonderful feedback from our parents who

133participated in that institute. Our assistant technology team presented that. It was virtual in the evening to allow parents to be able to access it, and then there was coaching that was available from their respective speech-language pathologists back at the home school of that student. I also want to make note that you will have noticed for quarter three and quarter four, that the assistive technology team partner with occupational therapists and also our speech-language therapists to ensure that our general education teachers were equipped to be able to embed the AAC devices into instruction, and I think that that's very important. It allows our students to be able to access the curriculum to be able to communicate and express not only, not only their desires, and needs, but it also allows us to get a better, read and

134progress monitor of the instruction that we provide to them when they are able to engage and let us know and be able to communicate how much they are receiving from the instruction that we are providing. That's very important because it also helps to extinguish some of the externalizing behaviors that might, present themselves when students are frustrated because they cannot communicate and express themselves holistically. I also would like to take the opportunity to highlight the fact that all of this, all of these professional learning opportunities were made available to our colleagues across the district by our psychological and support teams and related services teams, all of whom are student-facing, who complete and conduct the volume of our special education evaluations, and also, provide direct services and therapies to our students. And so, I would like to,

135personally and publicly thank them for their commitment to our students and their dedication to, the collective advocacy and support of their colleagues in helping us to improve outcomes for all students. And as I close, I'd like to share some of the partnerships that we have engaged in this year. I already spoke to our partnership with Duke University and the Center for Child & Family Health. This year, we also partnered with UNC and their Project Express, and, with that, it was a research study where they studied the impact group-based, pro-group-based, the word just fell out of my brain. Group-based, assessments and the impact on specifically middle school students who were diagnosed with autism who were on the general curriculum and the two focus areas were social, executive functioning and social anxiety. The UNC Teach ASAP was

136also another group-based research study, and they were studying the impact of, anxiety and... Social-emotional? Social-emotional, yeah, social-emotional learning. And the wonderful part about these two is that our teachers, again, as Dr. Pritchett highlighted, receive this training for free. They get to keep these materials and use them with other students that they identify have similar needs. And lastly, we're currently partnering with North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and their, North Carolina START project, where they are partnering with us to provide some professional learning for our specialists, our psychologists, all of our support and related service providers on PDA, which is pathological... Demand avoidance. Demand avoidance. Thank you. PDA. apparently I need more coffee. Some of you are likely well aware that that is a growing diagnosis in our, in the autism community, and so

137that will allow all of our support and related services to be more effective in problem-solving at our school teams around the needs of our students with autism who also have a PDA diagnosis or who have characteristics, similar to. So, whether that is our 504 teams, our MTSS teams, or our IEP teams. Just one last partnership, and we actually have some members of our SNAC representatives, if they can please stand tonight for recognition. [APPLAUSE] Thank you all. So, our partners, they are our partners as well in this work. They walk, walk alongside us, and thank you to board member Ballew, she also serves on our SNAC committee as well. So, thank you again for being with us tonight and walking the journey, with our exceptional children. We appreciate it. Okay. That concludes our presentation. Do you

138all have any questions? Let me just say thank you all. To, just to get us started, I, I do have some observations and questions, but I'm going to defer to my colleagues first, just out of basic courtesy. Meredith, I'm looking your way because I've been looking to the right all. If you care. You know, I'm not putting you on the spot if you don't No, no. That's okay. I, one thing that I appreciate you including this slide about the exits from the districts. That's definitely been something that, I've had my eye on. I just wondered, I think I may have brought this up the last time we had a presentation, but I just wonder if there's information that can be gleaned, from some of those families, either it could be from previous years, it could

139be from this year, but just a very simple survey or a conversation that we could have with them to figure out what needs were not being met and what kind of, why they felt like they needed to pursue a different type of education. because I I have some suspicions, but I don't really know and I just would like to, to get a little more info. And so, I just was wondering if that's something that we have considered doing, if it's something that we might consider in the future. I was going to say, Ms. Robinson and I spoke about that, that today, so it is not, you're right, something we currently ask, but we talked about how that could be a question that's asked because our data managers collect that information, so it is something that

140we can work with that team with, to think about how we can get some more information, like a short narrative portion. Thank you. Barb? I have two questions. Should I, do you want? Okay. Well, first, thank you very much, and I echo George's, apology that this is so late. and I wanted to say thanks for being so responsive to our questions last time and incorporating that into the presentation. And thanks, Dr. Vilwack, for explaining math. [LAUGH] It really helps. I like the visual. It's like a nice break from the slide, so awesome. So, and I'm not sure which of you this is for, but it's two questions. So one is on slide 22. I think this was Mr. Kaiser's part. I think it's 22 on my thing. It's, it's about staffing. Yeah, that one. so

141the second that the box about 22 that says there are 22 staff offering indirect support, that they're school-based, but that's not one per school, right? Like, that's, some of those folks are across several schools. Correct. And, okay. So they're school-based, but they're not, like are they more a part of the school or are they more a part of central office, or is it like a hybrid? I guess how would you describe those folks? I would say it would be a hybrid. Okay. Certainly, they are providing support to teachers, but they're also interacting with students in various ways, so I think it's a hybrid. And my other question was just following up on something from a little bit ago, which was, about the EC restructuring from two years ago. Yes. And, I don't know when it

142was. It was right when I started being on the school board, so maybe January of '24. We had gotten a letter from some staff asking for a survey. And I'm just wondering if that was ever, any version of that was done, or like what if anything you can tell us about input that you're getting from either from EC providers or from administrators about how the restructuring has affected them? We did not do a formal survey, but certainly it's always open forum for discussions and the PLCs, et cetera. But that may be something that we can revisit. Yeah, Ronnie? Thank you also for the presentation. I really appreciate the detail on the professional development. That's not something we've got to hear a lot about this year, so I'm really grateful to hear that. My question is

143kind of along the lines of communication. How are we getting input from parents? That was, I thought there was some good data in here, teacher surveys. I'm interested in your input from parents. Our main source would be the EC parent survey. also our collaboration with the SNAC committee. They share information with us, as they receive it. But again, we're always open to new pathways to, gaining more information from parents. Do you have something to add? Please, yeah, go ahead. I would add that our teachers are also very con... Sorry. I would add that our teachers are also very connected, and a lot of times the, parents don't hesitate to reach out if they have a concern. We spend a lot of our time, talking with parents, and helping them navigate. I think that compliance specialists

144especially, talk with parents a lot, as there are concerns and things like that. Yeah, thank you. Ronnie, you elevated the two things I had a question about, but I appreciate the additional breakdown on the parent survey. I'm always curious who we're hearing from, so I appreciate that. It was a nice diverse mix of responses, and hopefully we can get more responses on this survey. Along the lines of the professional development, I love how there's additional training for the general, staff who are in the general education portion of it. But I'm curious with, with, with so many students who are, you know, they're, they're across the district, are we looking at some of the PD being... And I'm assuming that's optional, right? Like, it's not required. But I think moving to, like, baseline everyone in the

145district has to take, like, these certain trainings, just because you, you never know what kiddo is going to be sitting in your class. And so, I think it would just be helpful. And I get it, we're building all this stuff out, which is wonderful. I'm so excited. I've been asking about professional development forever. And so, I think that would be, like, next step if we're thinking about things, like moving in that direction where it's just, like, I'm certain there's PD that all staff have to take in other areas, and it's just, like, everyone has to take, you know, whatever from this bucket, this bucket, this bucket right here, because we know that X percent of our kids have, autism diagnoses, right? And so, the odds are you're probably going to have one kiddo at some

146point in your tenure in this district. So just making sure we do that. But I think this is just wonderful information. Thank you. Thank you for the budget piece. We've been curious about that. I have some more thoughts, but it's brewing in my head, so I'm just going to let these numbers sit here. And I know it'll come back later, but, but thank you to the team for pulling this together. And I know it's not precise, but it's, it's pretty close, right? So. All right, thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, just to go back to the parent survey, because I, I was looking for a little bit more. I know we touched on the general questions, but, like, where are parents communicating gaps and, and how are we addressing those? And it's maybe not a

147question you have to answer today, but, like, I'd love to, next time we have a presentation like this, to get some context of, like, what are the things we're doing to be responsive to what we're hearing from parents? And maybe a slide on, like, the ways in which... And I just want to acknowledge that SNAC is a Special Needs Advisory Council, and they do bring some valuable input and... But what are the other ways in which we're collecting input from parents and families about this? I will say the, this my first year working with EC and I've seen some noted concerns around our transition services, so as students are getting ready to transition from one grade to the next, of course there's natural hesitation with most parents. But there's an additional hesitation when, our special

148needs students or exceptional, children will leave and go out from high school. And so, that's been something that I've just seen a lot of noted concerns. We tend to get a lot of feedback from parents, in terms of concern. They come to us in terms of concerns, but we want to do a better job about communicating during that time as well. So, that's been one thing that I've seen that I, I think we need to continue to look at. I'm sorry, I just have one more thing. that reminded me of something that I've had the conversation with a lot of people about and it's that we have a lot of programs in our district for very specific types of things, like BEST and SAIL, which were mentioned earlier in the presentation. But something that I

149hear from a lot of families is that we, where we fall short sometimes are serving the kids who are in general ed, but still need a lot of supports. and I think really trying to figure out how we can better serve those kids is something that has long since been a priority of mine. I know we've had conversations about it. Figuring out how we can increase the, the amount of time kids are accessing co-teaching in class, for example, where, you know, I've, the PD, I don't, Thank you, Resa, for bringing that up, because the PD is so crucial, especially in those general ed classrooms, where the teachers don't necessarily have special ed training as a part of their education. And so, making sure that those teachers are really able to access that, because I don't

150think that they may run into a kid who's autistic at some point. They will, and they will probably every year. I mean, it's like 1 in 30 kids are getting diagnosed right now. So, if you do the math, there's one in every class, so at least, and so making sure that those teachers are really properly trained to deal with whatever issues come up, is really important to me. And I would say, any professional development that we're providing, particularly in the area of autism, is, will be open to everyone. And so, I think we can make more of a concerted effort to make sure that principals are aware of that. We put it in the principal's update, any training that we're offering. But I think that we can increase our emphasis on that. Can I just

151jump in very briefly? I think something that Resa said really resonated with me, like the district identifying what it is we believe that all of our teachers need, and being able to kind of provide that. the same question could apply to our ML students and the type of training that our teachers need for that EC training. And so, just working with our HR department, who will be presenting our professional development kind of plan overview in the next couple of meetings, I think we can begin to really put some stones in place to, to address, you know, some of those foundational beliefs that we all believe that our teachers need. I think it's unfair sometimes that we ask teachers to do the work, but haven't provided the training, right? And so, I think we're moving in

152the right direction, and you'll begin to see the, the, the, the bricks really laid really smoothly for some of that work. I just quickly wanted to commend you all on, the Community Resiliency Models, CRM, to, bring that to teachers. That is a absolutely wonderful training, is, yeah, the Trauma Resource Institute is, is, is so, yeah, kudos. I think that is just a absolutely wonderful process. So yeah, I think that's going to be great for teachers. So, I want to repeat what a couple of my colleagues have said first, and thank you for addressing the questions and to all of you, I found this most enlightening, in a sense of not only just a data picture, but, like, which, what're, what're you really doing? Like, what do you want to brag about a little bit? And

153that, that was, Very easy That was helpful to me. I honestly didn't realize our staff fill rate was as high as it is, because it is so hard to find exceptional children's teachers and, so that's a testimony to the testament or pat on the back to whoever's responsible for, for working on that. and Mr. Kaiser's numbers. you know, there's that saying, "Explain it to me like a, I'm a fifth grader." Well, I feel like explain it to me like I'm a board member and the 13% and 13% coincidental match was something like, "Wow, I can really actually, like use that." because we hear sometimes how expensive everything is. But then, when you think, "Wow, it just, we're just matching the actual demographic population number here," it puts a perspective on it. Particularly as we talk

154with our county commissioners, they're always rightfully so wondering, "Where are we what are you spending your money on?" That's right. "And how's it do?" So that one hit home with me. And, and I love the comments the parts about innovation and the pre-employment transition service project, for example. When you were talking about that, I just realized that I need to see more of the EC programming myself, and that's my fault, not yours. and so in the fall, look for me. I'm going to get up with you, Ms. Robinson. You're going to take me to some of these or send me or some of you are. You may not want to have to take me, because it's just like, yeah, what does this specially designed instruction really look like so that I can explain it to

155somebody else? And I have a background in EC professionally, but it's been a while. And like, "Wow, what is all this language?" it, and so I appreciate the way you presented it tonight so we can have a picture of this and this and this. And, and yeah, there's a lot, a lot going on. And, I thank you for that. and just even what's working and what's yet to be actualized? What a great way to say it. What's yet to be actualized? I, I appreciate that. Where are we headed? We I want I want to encourage you all to continue to control the narrative and tell the narrative and the story, because there's a lot of things going on, but sometimes we get bogged down in what's not working at our level, and it's like, so,

156thank you for that. And the aspiration statement, I mean, like write it down. And just like that. And I, I've, I've got a copy on the slide here. Like, yeah, that's what we need to be talking about is, where are we headed? What do you really want to do? get that message out there. So I just applaud that. And one technical question, and it doesn't have to be in detail tonight, I know it's getting late. When I, when I see the office referral data my assumption is, office referrals are something we don't want to have happen. And then I see ASD kids and office referrals. And for the life of me, I'm trying to picture how that occurs. And is this something good? Do, do the kids benefit from being sent to the office? Or

157is it a teacher that's just totally beyond frustrated or, or is it too late to get into that? I think we can both answer that. Like, I mean, I'm just curious. Like, I just I have a hard time. How do you get from? So the state has a list of 17 infractions, that we must report. Right. When we talk about office referrals, that's what we're talking about. Right. So students have done something on the list. Right. And so you've seen the list, right? It's physical aggression. It's a number of things. And all we're doing is saying, "You have an EC identification, and you had an office referral, and I'm reporting to you what the numbers look like and whether they're shifting in a particular way." We're going to want to watch that autism number. My

158hope is next year it pops right back down, and that's an anomaly, and we'll go, "Yay." Right? But you won't know that until April next year when we can look at the numbers. Yes. So that makes sense from the data reporting. So is it a situation though in school where the child needed to be sent to the office literally, or is that what we're just calling it? Well, I don't think we have enough data to be able to definitively answer that. But I will say that discipline in and of itself is not punitive or negative. So as educators, we don't punish children, we discipline students. And discipline is instructive, right? So when, if you're asking if it is good for students, discipline is intended to be instructive. And so our students who have disabilities specifically

159here are students who, are on the autism spectrum. They have, goals in their IEPs to help teach, safe behaviors or replacement behaviors. They have behavior some behavior intervention plans also to help with those. They have accommodations, so people have a full understanding of their learning profile the things that might trigger them, in different circumstances, what types of circumstances might cause them to feel dysregulated. So students in particular with autism aren't being, written up having disciplinary write-ups because of a situation where they were dysregulated and didn't complete an assignment or didn't, something, I'll say trivial or minor. When it is a situation where someone's safety, is a matter of, of the point, whether it's a staff members, whether it's their own safety or a, classmate, you'll see that those are the issues that are being written

160up. So that's aggression and assault on school employees. So when that happens, it's not simply a disciplinary write-up. It then triggers our teams to come back together to take a look at, let's look at our IEP goals and determine, do we need to refine them, revise them, review them? Do we need to take a look at the accommodations and make any changes to them? Do we need to look at their behavior intervention plan to see if the antecedents or the environment or some of those things we need to be more cognate is cognizant of and build more protective factors in and be more intentional about the replacement behavior and truly identifying what the unmet need is that is contributing to that behavior? So I say it's instructive in that it calls for us once that

161happens to come back to the table to be able to. And because of all of the professional learning that we've put in place this year, we hope that that better equips and more effectively equips our general education teachers to more effectively participate in those discussions and making those decisions as well. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate that, that was helpful. Appreciate it. All right. So we appreciate the report and the information and, and your patience with the lateness of the hour. But thank you very much. Thank you. We, we are going to next go to the 7A, which is approval of policy code 2302, the remote participation in board meetings, because we need to get that in tonight. Is that Eva? Yes. Eva, are you doing that one? Okay. Yes. Mic. Board members. this is

162a policy revision based on a change in law, or rather, a change back in law. we revised Policy 2302 in February in response to a decision from the Court of Appeals indicating that board members participating remotely in a meeting could not be counted towards a quorum which meant that we could not have virtual meetings except in case of a state-declared emergency. The North Carolina Supreme Court has since, declared that that ruling has, is no longer in effect with regard to, our... We don't have to follow that ruling anymore. It was declared to be without precedential value. And so what that means is we can go back to our practices before that ruling, which was that under the Open Meetings Law, board members can participate and be counted present remotely, as long as they can hear

163and be heard and, we take, we take roll call votes. So I think we may have had to update the abstract that was on there, but what you, so rather than looking at what's on the abstract, what we are asking to do is to revert back to the policy that, as it existed before February, which is actually still the policy on your board policy manual because it hadn't been updated yet. So, essentially, going back to the policy as it stood prior to that February meeting. And I think this might be a good one for waiving second reading. So just need a motion to that effect to go back to the policy as it was originally written and, in fact, is in the current policy manual. And we also would waive a second reading, so we

164would approve it tonight. We have a motion here. Motion to approve the policy and waive second readings. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say, Aye? Opposed? Thank you. Mr. Srogge, I see you coming up here. I think maybe that's a construction management risk question, and I know we probably need to get that approved tonight. And there was just some questions since we've talked so much about this. Quick version of what we're approving here. Absolutely. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Dr. Hamlett , and Dr. Trice. Like hearing it. I do want to be very brief because this is a topic that for you as a board, we have provided numerous iterations and updates, but we are finally at a point, we are at the very end of our preseason, if

165you want to call it, where we are going to be asking you as a board to approve a resolution for a construction delivery method, which is going to be construction management at risk. and I just want to give you a quick overview. State statute in North Carolina requires that there are, for the most part, three types. You have traditional design-bid-build. That's where you as a board would have a contract with an architect and a contractor. The architect designs it, then passes the drawings on to the contractor. The contractor bids and builds it. No collaboration at all. You just pass it on, and then you have to, I'll say, duke it out when there's any errors or anything. And that is a tried and true form here in North Carolina, but it does prevent you from

166having collaboration, which is something that we have said we need because all of our future projects are going to be replaced on site, have extensive topographic, challenges. They have proximity to students. They're occupied replacements. We need to have collaboration between the architect and the contractor, as well as with our project management company that will help us. That is essential. So the design-bid-build, out. That's something we chose not to do. So here's the bottom line. we are recommending construction management at risk for the following reasons to you. And I'm just going to get right to it. First of all, for you as a board, it maintains your design control. It allows you to have direct contract relationships with a contractor, an architect, and a project manager so that everything is fully transparent. You're going to be

167able to see what the architect is recommending. The contractor is going to be able to collaborate, and everything will be put on the table. When you look at the other design method that we looked at called design-build, that is one challenge that exists because in design-build, the contractor runs the whole show. So the architect doesn't work for you as a board. The architect works for the contractor. So there are cases where there are things that the architect may want to share with you, and they're not able to. Hence, we believe that construction management at risk will give you the greatest control, but will also allow the greatest collaboration and the ability to be fully transparent to you, our community, and even our facility staff as we look through these projects, which are going to be

168very challenging. If we just had a field and we were building a school, design-build might be the best option, given our situation, but we don't have that. And we, our lessons learned from Chapel Hill High School's renovation/replacement shows that collaboration was an area of growth that did not occur. Anything we do on the front end, we'll be able to make informed decisions because we will run into challenges on our projects, but we'd rather do it with our eyes open and for everyone to be able to see and understand as we go through it so that there are no surprises that we didn't able to control on the front end. So with all that being said you have a resolution that is before you that state statute does require when you do anything beyond design-bid-build to

169where you are acknowledging as a board that you believe that CM at risk is financially advantageous for the needs of the project that we have at hand, be it our first project is the replacement of Carrboro Elementary. So I turn it back over to you. Thank you. Yes, Ronnie? Yeah. Can you speak to the language? Just the construction manager at risk, does that mean it's a riskier proposition for us? Just the opposite. it's where you bring inthe contractor in on the front end. So what you're going to see this summer we're going to have an RFQ for a project manager. And immediately after that, the next board meeting, our goal is going to be that you're going to have an award for an architect. And within four to six weeks, we're going to have a

170contractor on board. So what it does is the contractor works with the architect. They look at the design. They look at the phasing. And then the contractor is going to be able to give their best price. When they give their best price, they're going to have to assume that risk. So when you say construction management at risk, it's that the contractor is going to assume that risk. But by having them in on the front end, they're able to be there and to be able to have greater confidence in whatever figure that they provide for the cost of the school. The lesson learned with Chapel Hill is that the contractor did not get in on the front end, came in much later. So there was a lot of design that they didn't have say in, and

171that created a lot of challenges because things had to be changed as a result of not having that collaboration. So the at-risk part is that the manager sets a maximum price, and they take on some risk if it goes over that? Thank you. Anything else? Can we have a motion to approve the, at-risk delivery method for Carrboro Elementary replacement project? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye? Opposed? Carries unanimously. Thank you. And we have one more item here. Mr. Scott, are we going to need to get to that tonight? And if so, please come forward. Okay. Always just looking for someone who says, "Well, we could do it June 18th." That's all. I wasn't prepared to do it June 18th. I prefer to do it now. But either way,

172I would have more information to present maybe by then. It-it is okay to wait till June 18th, and that would be preferred? Certainly. Certainly. I would prefer that also. [LAUGH] With that said, one quick check here. Is there anything, board members, that you need to report for anything that needs to go out tonight? Otherwise, I'm getting ready to adjourn the meeting. Angela? Well, I do have my finance facility and operations committee meeting. So Meredith Farrar, we've got it on Tuesday, June 10th, 5:30. It is virtual. the meeting information is on the website under Board of Education Committees. Thank you. Anybody else? Well, I just, it's the end of the school year, and so thanks to all the teachers for a great year. [APPLAUSE] Well said. I'm looking, I don't see any other business. And with

173that said, the meeting is adjourned.