Board of Education Work Session - Jul 10, 2025

001The meeting of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education will come to order. The chair requests a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Carries unanimously. Chair requests a motion to move into closed session for the reasons stated on the agenda. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Folks, we'll return from closed session as close as possible to 7:00 p.m. [ CLOSED SESSION ] The meeting is now back in open session, and that takes us to our public comments tonight. And, Mr. Davis, I see you're standing in for Miss Holloway. Nobody has signed up. Is there anybody here that wanted to speak tonight, Mr. Link? Would you care to introduce yourself, sir? And I

002won't read the typical introduction, if that's okay with you. It's perfectly fine, Mr. Chair. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, and members of the board. I'm sorry. Summer, that's great. Good evening, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the Mr. Superintendent and the public. My name is Brian Link and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. I stand here first tonight to formally congratulate and recognize Dr. Rodney Trice on his ascension to the superintendency. We could not be more thrilled to be able to be a partner with him going forward. We thank the board for their inspired choice of Dr. Trice. I can say personally the best professional development I ever had was a record that he made from the Racial Equity Institute way back when I was a young educator that is still

003paying dividends in my classroom today. And so we know you're gonna continue our commitment to equity as well as excellence in the classroom, and we're here to stand by you and to make you as successful as possible. Otherwise, I rise for three items this evening. One, I want to consistent with our strategic plan salute the board and the administration for their proposal around a student health advisory committee. This is something that is long overdue and is a focus on the whole child and we think it will be excellent to talk about how can we ensure that we are right getting well-rounded individuals in our schools and in our society. And so we thank you for that and support and look forward to this endeavor getting off the ground. The second thing I know board member

004Fedders is not here this evening but she had asked me a question a while ago to which I can respond right around around the role or use of technology. And I think we see that in what is coming before the board this evening for discussion and action, which is the cell phone implementation policy, a balanced approach, right, which certainly reflects the beliefs of teachers. I think those slides there accurately capture the teacher perception. But it's also nice to know that there's strong support there from parents and from students, in particular as a high school teacher myself, I want to point out how articulate and how nuanced they are about understanding both the positives of technology as well as some of the things that they're asking for help and assistance with to guide them as they

005grow into mature, well-rounded human beings and citizens. And finally, this evening, I stand up here to listen more to the superintendent's report around block schedule implementation. We certainly support the idea of some way of analysis or metrics with it. We would just like to point out that it's going to be very hard to do an apples to apples comparison because of our numerous changes to attendance policies, degrading policies, right? And we would like you to ask you to think to go broader in terms of your metrics, right? Are we looking at, what is our enrollment for, say, the arts? What are the effects of students who have missed multiple days because of sports, right? And so we would love the opportunity to work forward with the board and with administration to come up with a

006sort of a larger vision in terms of how we can go about valuating and making sure that when those evaluations occur, they are in fact apples to apples. And with that, I will yield the rest of my time. It's great to see you all and have a wonderful meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Link. Is there anyone else in the audience that did not sign up that would like to speak tonight, Ms. Hamill? Good evening. My name is Carrie Hamill and Have a request that the board look to reunify all the public meetings that you've had since the committee structure has taken place so that a member of the public can come to the webpage and you look in reverse chronological order, all the public meetings that have taken place, work session, business meetings, special

007called. Meetings, finance, student success, and policy. And with it, it would include the agenda, the packet, the recording, and the approved minutes, and that the approved minutes will identify by name if one or more members disagree that the minutes do not reflect both this district's surprise finances and prior shenanigans. This request is being made in good faith by me. It is time to further improve the accountability to the public about the public business that this board is undertaking and I'd be happy to answer any questions after the board meeting if it's not quite clear what I'm asking for. Thanks so much for your service. Thank you, Ms. Hamill. Is there anybody else who would like to speak who did not sign up? Okay, very good. Thank you. We'll move on then to consent agenda item

008five and the chair requests a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. A second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. That passes unanimously. And that takes us to item six, discussion and action. And first up tonight is a revision of policy code 3420 student promotion. And I have Dr. Robert Vales here on my notes. Good evening, sir. Good evening to you, the board, Superintendent Trace, cabinet and the members of our community. We brought this policy up to our policy committee and it was a policy we wanted to make sure that we brought back just so it was a fuller knowledge in terms of the changes that are being made. So there are two different changes that are in our policy. The first one we've talked about previously, the

009adding in language about our required career development plan. each of our rising eighth graders or our rising ninth graders, that's a graduation requirement put forth by the state that they have a career development plan for that promotion requirement and then to promote from 10th to 11th grade that that revision does take place. We've talked about that before, but that's in there. So I just wanna make sure that we have that in there. The bigger change is a change from our state for our course for credits. and this was updated in January. Some language shifted a little bit in March and then from March until about now, really trying to interpret to the language that was in there. So essentially we are no longer able to give a student AP, a passing grade when it comes

010to credit recovery. So the new policy states the numeric grade assigned to credit recovery shall be factored into the pre-existing incomplete or failing course grade. on a student's transcript to a degree that is proportional to the percentage of the course completed through credit recovery, resulting in a new passing numeric grade for the course, and then the original grade will not remain on the original transcript. So that's a significant change from what we've done previously in our summer school where traditionally our credit recovery happens. So with that, it does make it a little more difficult in the fact that in the years past students would come in and they might finish a couple of different units that they may have missed along the way. And while their failing grade would actually stay on the transcript, they

011would get a P for the class for passing. Moving forward, and we started this this week with our summer school students, our students come in and they'll take one individual course during summer school. So that's a three week time period. And then basically we do a 50-50 split. So the grade that they earned during the school year, and then the grade that they earn during summer risk will be averaged proportionally so that 50/50 to result in a new grade. Additional things that kind of come in play outside of that is traditionally we have not really promoted a ton of grade or credit retakes, which is actually of great benefit to our students in the fact that they get to retake the course, have a little bit of background in it, but then the grade that

012they got is actually suppressed and the new grade is another new grade. So if a student retook a course and they got an A the second time, it wouldn't be necessarily averaged in if they retook it, it would be with that credit recovery piece. With our move to the 4x4 schedule next year, that will allow a lot more options for our students to retake some of those classes. So those grades will be suppressed. And then moving forward, we'll look at how things went this summer. It's our first time implementing this. and we will come back to the board and share what results look like. But we want to make sure that the larger community was aware of the changes and I will answer any questions if you have any. Thank you, sir. Board questions? I'm

013just seeing some heads shaking, no questions. Then you're asking for approval of the revision of policy code 3420. the changes that you posted here in the agenda tonight, which is under student promotion and accountability. So could we have a motion to that effect to approve this, these changes? So moved. Second. So it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed. Passes unanimously. Thank you, Dr. Bales. and that brings us to an update on cell phone expectations and first reading of draft policy code 4318. And I have down here, Miss Reeves, Miss Buckram, who's doing that tonight? Miss Reeves, looks like it's you. All right. Good evening, members of the board, members of the public and my colleagues. So I last last year in August, we came before the board to collectively have our

014schools impose additional expectations for cell phones as a matter of enforcing schoolwide expectations and to address the student safety and well-being of students. During that time, we shared that we would be collecting data out throughout the course of last year, and so I'm here to share that information with you. our data that we collected in partnership with the Winston Center. We were also able to add a couple of questions on our panorama survey that our students already take to gain some more information. We looked at our discipline data as well. But as we were working through this, the general assembly was working through this as well. And so there is also a policy that we are being asked to look at this evening. So you'll see this information in terms of data that I'll go

015through rather quickly. but I will say that it is used to inform where we stood around the policy. So we are bringing this policy to you tonight. We did not in our policy committee meeting this last time, we shared that we would bring a draft policy before the board. So this policy has not gone to the policy committee, which we will sometimes do because of timing. And we know that this is a policy that we want to have in place for the start of the school year. So I'll go to, I mentioned that we looked at Panorama Survey, DARE does student feedback. We were asked to get parent feedback as well as teacher feedback and so we were able to do that as well. This question, you'll see how clear are the school rules about

016student cell phones? About 50% said that they were clear. One of the things I'll note is that after spending many years in a high school, you'll get some a little bit of indifference from high school students. And I don't know if you've seen that maybe with your own high school children, but that somewhat clear is kind of what I call the like, yeah, you know. So you'll, it's really interesting because you'll start to see that grow. So for instance, if an adult at a school sees a student not following the rules about cell phones, so about 50%, but some also say somewhat likely. So that's that little middle area that I talked about. The rest of the slides look a lot like this where you'll see a good bit of that, like, you know. So

017how well do most students follow the school's rules about cell phones? So you'll see that. It's not really, so the 16% know is like very strong and then the darker sides will say like to no degree. Same thing here. So how much easier or harder do you think school rules are about cell phones? They're right in the middle there. They're right in the middle around how much do you think school rules about cell phones hurt or help you in your learning classroom in the middle? They're kind of in the middle there in terms of how much do the school rules about cell phones hurt or help school safety? And then same here, how much do the school rules about cell phones hurt or help friendships in school? So you'll see that. What we did in

018addition to that, I mentioned our partnership with the Winston Center, and so we asked students what they really wanted. I'll just highlight a couple a couple of pieces from here. So they wanted emergency access to their phones, and this is elementary school students, and this is where we want to make sure that student voice is captured. And so the privacy and dignity, they also felt like what matters is they wanted to avoid a public announcements and intrusive searches. So, for instance, if the phone needed to be taken, they did not want it to be a big ordeal or to be called out for that. They also continued and said that, you know, their mental health does matter. They still see phones as somewhat of a positive, and they also wanted to limit extreme punishment. So

019in terms of what our high schools would want, students want. And so that's that balanced approach that we spoke about, consistent enforcement. They also wanted the respect and autonomy. One of the things that we noted here with our high school students is they felt like there was a level of autonomy that they wanted. Like they wanted some autonomy around their cell phones. In terms of some of our teachers, they also asked for age-appropriate policies. They wanted to make sure that there was a positive culture of climate there. You will see that for our middle school data, this was the first year that McDougall Middle School had this data or had cell phone policies. And so they are, were our highest in terms of minor referrals. You'll see that schools that have had this for two

020or four years have seen less and less consequences with this. Okay. The high school discipline data, all of our high schools were in first year of implementation of this. And so you again will see just a little bit more of the discipline referrals there. Phoenix High School, our alternative school is also a school that has always had a strong cell phone policy where the students turn it in as they come in. So that's why we don't see anything there. So staff priorities, they wanted consistent enforcement, they wanted phones fully out of sight, they want strong parent communication, clear guidelines around smart watches, and you'll see that our policy addresses that. They spoke a lot about earbuds though, our teachers, about how we can address that. And they wanted to have the procedures to be simplified.

021You also will see what staff they asked for. We did a quick start stop with them. So parents and texting the student during the class, consistent enforcement across all staff, the phones in plain sight, this leniency of the smart watches and just kind of getting clear there. So staff priorities in terms of continuing. They really wanted no warnings and immediate confiscation. They wanted the use of a phone jail and they wanted administrative support. The other pieces that came up during the conversations with students is strict rules about prohibiting phones during instructional time was really clear, consistent consequences and inclusion of those smart watches in the earbuds. So then in hearing from our parents, there was strong support for the away from the day. So many of our middle school parents felt like the away from

022the day policies that we have in place for last year worked and that overwhelmingly they saw positive results from that. That is exactly what our administrators echoed as well. The use of lockers or designated spaces for smartphones tended to work. Maintaining and increasing restrictions on phone access during instructional time. And again, they wanted this to include devices like their smart watches as well. It's not here because we didn't necessarily have a policy in the elementary school level, but we did start to hear this year that there was some desire at the elementary school to address the smart watches or something of the like. So then in terms of parents stopping, I highlighted here phones being used to take photos of test questions and the use of AI for cheating. So parents were concerned about that.

023And then some questions about the relevance of lockers. And so like really where would they put them if we go to schools that don't have lockers. So then the parents for us next year keeping again this continuation of current policies that limit phone use during class. They did start to acknowledge that there was some flexibility that might be needed at the high school level. They acknowledged their appreciation to teachers and staff for taking on these efforts. And then the middle school parents especially wanted current policies to continue with strong enforcement. So the summary of our findings to establish a school-wide uniform cell phone policy, which we will look at doing, adopt a physical phone storage system. and so is there something that's outside of putting in their locker could we look at? I will note

024that that may we would need to incur some cost on that and so that's something we're continuing to look at. There will be some individual schools that are doing I've already spoken with principals about this so principals are considering purchasing some of these things on their own. So support teachers with enforcement authority and resources and allow a limited scheduled phone access. So this was the summary of our findings with our work with the Winston Center. This work continued, the summaries continued. So launch parent education campaigns. There was a great deal about how can we educate both our students and families about, you know, just responsible use. Provide staff training. We talked about just in addition to providing staff training, there's a piece in the policy where staff can bring in cell phones for their lessons,

025but we want to be very clear about when and that we talked about that would have to be that it would be part of a teacher's lesson plan. If they looked at it in advance and they felt like it was appropriate, that's how the administration could authorize that. Extend our policies to cover the smart watches, the earbuds. And right now you'll find that it doesn't necessarily call out earbuds when we get into to our policy, but part of that is that it is a, it's not, you can't use a earbud without a device. So we didn't necessarily feel the need to call that out, and so, but we're gonna encourage our principals to address that in their school rules. So explore the technological, technological means to restrict. So there was a lot of wonderings, can

026we like, can we just make this a dead zone, you know, and so that phones do not work care. I think the complications with that is that that wouldn't be for everyone and that that could be troublesome to some of the adults in the building that might need to reach out to their families. So regularly review policy effectiveness and so that is a commitment that we'll make with each of our policies. But to come back to this policy, there's a real natural pause that we can come back and look at this as a community. and that would be the legislators asking that we look at this by having in place by January 1 of 2026. And so we'll start the year with our plan and what it'll do is give us a nice opportunity to

027look back at that or look at it at that time to see how our policies are going. So in terms of recommendations, the feedback underscores a strong desire for to reduce student dependence on cell phones, mainly because we want to increase our academic focus and our student well-being. And then we recommend adopting a balanced, consistent, enforced policy. And again, this is what came out of our partnership with the Winston Center. So with that, I'm going to look at the Policy 4318, which is available online and we've shared with members of the public. And with that, it mirrors what we have come to understand about House Bill 959. I'm going to look over it, even if I we don't need any support. So it mirrors what's there. What is not there is that the North Carolina

028School Board typically makes our suggested changes around policy and that has not come out yet. And so we're really hoping that this time between now and our next board meeting, because essentially this is first reading and maybe we'll get some additional information between, I think it's our August 14th board meeting, that if we need to make any changes. But the sentiment and the essence of this policy will remain. And so there's two key areas of question that I wanted to bring before the board tonight. One was the idea of smart watches. And so right now in our policy, we have it outlined that K through eight students will not be able to have smart watches or bring them into the school. We do still have that our 9 through 12 students and as it's outlined

029in policy, can have them, but they're not able to be used as smart watches may be worn, well, it says middle and high school level only, I'm sorry, and used as watches throughout the school day, but any features that permit sending and receiving messages must be disabled. And so it actually is a K through five piece. And then the other piece that I wanted to call out to your attention is the instructional time. at the high school level, we landed there just because of the balanced approach that our community asked us to take. And so right now it is very clear that it's during instructional time and instructional time we defined as begins with the first tardy bell ends at dismissal, but does not include the student's scheduled lunch period or scheduled transitions. Start narrator

030dialogue. Okay. Button, Alt + O, heads up. Narrator Keyboard Changes We've updated the Narrator keyboard layout so it more closely matches. The experience you may have had with other screen readers. If you want Narrator to tell you. What commands are associated with the keys. You'Re pressing, you can turn on Input Learning by Narrator heading Exiting Narrator. They certainly see students being active during that time. We also are a school district that has an open lunch policy. So some of that we just can't call out completely in policy. The other thing that our school leaders brought up about the lunch time is that, I mean, the student to staff ratio in terms of supervision is sometimes like 1 to 100 at a high school, if not more. And so really just kind of supervising that may

031overtax. staff during that time. So that was where we landed in terms of the lunch time. If I may remember, so the, what. The legislature has mandated and the mandate doesn't go into effect until the end of December, right? So, but there was interest in going ahead and getting something in place that would be consistent throughout the year rather than in waiting is that every school district will be required to have a policy that any wireless communication device may. Not be used, displayed, or turned on. During instructional time at any grade level. And so the sort of room for discretion here is how do you want to define instructional time? And so as she said in the discussion about, you know, at elementary and middle, The staff felt all day, high school, we felt like

032we could carve out lunch and scheduled time between classes, so the idea is like during that class transition, not just any time you're in the hall, that they could be used. But that is an area of discretion. So with that, I will hold for any questions. Thank you very much. The board is okay. There's a couple things I'm going to say first, just if that's okay. Normally I let you all go. I want to, first of all, thank you. And lots of input here. When I was reading this, what I was listening for and looking at was not only the behavioral consequences and the social interactions but the whole field, the Winson Center delves into with adolescent development, adolescent brain development, cognitive development, in this case, social development. And I thought I would just put

033it out here for the sake of discussion here tonight, is that we just look at doing an experiment now August 25th until December 30th, But it would go in reverse of what we're talking about here. And that is just put phones away for the day, K-12, and see what happens. And then back off of that rather than put in place a modification of what we've already got in place, which people are saying the same things they said last year. Some of us are enforcing it, some aren't, some teachers are, some aren't. You know, I look at the data from the middle schools that you presented, and I've got to think they're applying different rules. It's hard to imagine 250 incidents in one school and nine in another. And at the high school, it's hard to

034imagine 25 and 200. Right. But it could be. I'm not ignoring the data, but I wanted to kind of put on the table here for discussion tonight the notion that we just do away with phones. And let's give it a go for lots of reasons that are not just behavioral, but I suspect if we're using the word behavior to mean social interaction of students, then yes, it's going to change behaviors. And this is a case where the adults need to make the decisions in the best interest of the kids. not in a way of just trying to see how many people can we can involve, which I appreciate. And I know what I'm saying may not land sort of typically how we do things, but I'm going to put that out there to the board

035and to you tonight. Yeah, absolutely. To consider that. I think the only thing I- To. Fine tune what we have. No, that makes sense. I think the, in terms of the data, what we saw is that the schools that have had this in place the longest are the schools where we're not seeing any issues. And so I think we believe that to be the case whether, wherever we go. So that's fine. That makes sense now. Yeah. We're here. Go ahead. This is sort of a question, sort. Of a comment, but I would be. Open to either way. What George is suggesting kind of does make sense to me. But as the parent of a teenager. I know that teens are really good at workarounds. And so I would only caution that. If the phones are

036going to be. Completely away for the day, we're going to have to take a closer look at the other devices that are in the room because they will figure out. Ways to utilize those to do what. They would normally have done on their phones. Yeah, and I will say that was actually something that was bought up by one of the high school principals is just that, even if they have it away for lunch, then they will just pull out their Chromebooks that we give to everybody. So that was one of the things. And so again, in terms of the workaround, they felt like that would be their work then as opposed to giving some time. But I agree either way. Sorry, then just connecting that, I was thinking more about what you said at first

037about earbuds. that you need a device to do it, but a watch is a device that can play music. Correct. And a Chromebook too. And I feel like since that was something that, like it was in the thing from teachers three different times about earbuds specifically, that I feel like that should be a part of the policy. Because if a kid is sitting in class with earbuds in, even if they say, I'm not listening to music, you don't know. And it's too much of a burden to put on the teacher. Teachers to be, you know, administering that all the time. And it did come up a couple times, so I think it, yeah. So I feel like it's okay to go ahead and include them as devices that we should not be seeing. Okay, I

038like that. I don't know. You know, this is a tough one, right? Because we don't buy the cell phones, right? The school district does not buy the thousands of cell phones that are in the kids' hands. And I've always been intrigued. I've delayed getting my kids' phones until they were older because I want them to learn how to manage the transition as adults. So that for me is like the first thing. So I can go either way at the end of the day because we don't buy the phones for the kids, right? But one thing for me is, and again, this is coming from the state, this is coming from everywhere, the more we villainize cell phones and we don't teach young people how to use them responsibly or how to use the technology to

039advance other things in life and things like that, then we're going to keep having this fight. So I don't care what we decide to do, because at the end of the day, they're going to figure out a workaround. They already figured out how to go around GoGuardian. I'm sorry, to the IT department. Right? And so we're just going to see them using the Google chats and all that stuff if we put the phones away, and then we're going to be policing that. So I just want us to think about, like, Fine, they'll get away from the phone, but again, I keep driving home this point. We've got to figure out how to get kids to learn how to engage with technology safely and also how to use technology to get them ready for the workforce.

040Because I can tell you, even though these kids have phones in their hands, they do not know how to come into the workforce and work with me and use the technology. I still spend so much time teaching kids who came out of the womb with this technology, whereas I came out with a quarter going to the pay phone or a 25-foot extension cord to use a phone. And I know how to do more things with technology than these kids who have come out and they have phones and all that stuff. So that's just the balance. Like, we're going to spend all our time trying to police this. But as a district, I want us to continue to think about how we engage people in CTE programs where they actually learn how to use technology. They

041learn how to build apps in middle school and high school and things like that. so that they can join the rest of us who use technology in the workforce, or I'm not going to have to stay in here and teach these kids who grew up with it how to use it. So that's just my one comment. And I think that there's a portion of House Bill 959 that does speak to the education that will now be necessary. And so we might even want to work some of that into the policy as well. So that I appreciate that. And the bill does require that social media specifically and many other types of websites be blocked. Social media is already blocked in Europe. But I know no system is perfect. So the ability to use things through

042the school network will be somewhat limited. I really appreciate the discussion and thank you for bringing this draft before us. I think this is a really complicated issue because we are battling something that's fairly entrenched. And so I want to go back to George's proposal. I can agree on banning the time in the hallways because I can envision that that will lead to kids being later and later to classroom if that's their only access to phone during the day. I do wonder about lunch. I think the reality is that the way that we live today is heavily dependent on technology and then specific the phones. And so whether it's I gotta let my job know whether I can make it after school, whether it's I gotta check in with my club coach and see if

043we have practice tonight, I wouldn't want to go kind of cold turkey with no access during the day. And so I think where I'd like to recommend is that we would incorporate the restriction during the day with the exception of lunch. And I say that with some. Pretty. Big reservations because my concern is that then lunch becomes heads down, fingers poking, right, and no conversation. But I think the reality of the way people socialize today is technology is such a part of that. And I do think also for like just access to, you know, families and the way that, you know, we've sort of been engaging with students. Yeah. So I appreciate that too. One of the principals at an opportunity spoke with to that, you know, some students will use that lunch time as

044like a down time and just to kind of, you know, listen to their music and listen to their eye buds just to kind of, you know, not talk to anyone because that's not necessarily what they want to do. They don't want to socialize, which, you know, some people may not want to. So I think that goes along with that. And when you mentioned complex and that I looked at this policy was adopted in 2012. And so you're right, like we have been, working through this for a long time and it is entrenched in our ways of being. So that's when it came to being. So I appreciate that. Yeah. I have a couple other questions about the specifics of the policy. There's no other. Okay. So the first one is, I really liked, Mike, your

045point about the earbuds. I was going to say the same thing because I could imagine, like, how do you enforce that and then it's like, what's, you know, something in your ear and that becomes a thing for teachers. And. The policy big A under C, I think there's a repeat at the beginning. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Okay, thank you. And then-- no, I appreciate it because I'm having trouble seeing today, y'all. I left my real glasses at home, so I'm struggling. And then. I think in NC, so thank you, Mike. That was me. NC, it says smart watches may be worn at the middle, and I think there should be or high school level only. Okay. And then in that same, I think it's in C, it says students should be able to hear

046directions from the driver or district staff. I would like to change that to say students must. I think it's really critical from a safety perspective that we make sure that they're aware that, you know, a driver may need to communicate something urgent that people, you know, wear it off one ear or, you know, wear one one earbud, but that's a safety issue. And I want to reinforce the importance of a campaign around communication early, often, often, often. You know, thank you. I appreciate that. That was spoken like a true policy committee member. That's what we do there. We workshop, so I appreciate it. So where does that leave us? Okay. So at this time, this is for first reading. We'll take your input. I do want to just call out too that normally when we

047change policies, we use red and it denotes that the North Carolina School Board Association has weighed in. That is not the case with this policy. We did change our key to let you know that this is really just our staff and board. attorney policy changes. So if we receive changes from the North Carolina School Board, we'll select a different color and make those changes, and then we'll incorporate your feedback from today. And then we will bring this at our August 15th meeting for our second reading, which would allow it time to go into effect before school starts. And we can start with our campaign. So the, the Meeting is the 14th, but 14th, yes. Sorry. Dr. Trace, did you want to say something before I do? Just a point of clarity. So did you recommend

048that we just do a trial as opposed to adopting a policy until the first, or did you want us to adopt a policy as a board and administration starting the beginning of the school year? and perhaps within mind to revise that based on data that we have on January 1st. Well, my original thinking was that we have to have a policy by January 1st. Right. And so I was using the term let's try something, let's not wait till January 1st to put something in place, and let's not just fine tune what we had. So that my proposal was just let's go to the other side here. and just start the year without the phones. And then, you know, I'm certainly not wedded to lunch or not lunch in the, at this point, if people are

049willing to give something. So it would be policy or it would be practice, however is best for us to do it. We can a degree, it's an interim and we're going to revisit it in December or we can leave it as policy and revisit it anyway, whenever we want to. I mean, we always have that prerogative. Do you have a thought about that? No, I was just wanting clarity. I mean, I would be inclined to say we probably need to pass a policy, especially if we get into confiscating phones and that type of thing. Okay. So is it realistic that we're even having this conversation today and we're gonna wait until August 14th and then we're down to nine days till school, 10 days till school opens. One thought I had, if you want to

050be able to start messaging to families, because we don't have like a final draft of the policy necessarily. But. Although it's close, it sounds like. Yeah. So either we could try to recite the changes we've heard and someone make a motion to adopt it right away, or you could have a motion. To. Start the year with a policy of phones away for the day K through 12, except for the high school lunch period, if that's what you want, and go ahead and pass that motion. And then we'll bring back the written policy, but then at least that public statement can be made that our policy is going to be away for the day, except for lunch at high school. starting at the beginning of the year. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. The only thing

051I will note is that April, April, August 14th, I did check in with school leaders because most of this communication will come from the school. You know, any of their back to school communication is typically when parents start keying back into the school, starting in what we need to do to prepare. And they still felt like this, that would give them ample time, the 14th through the day that we start for school. So either way, I think. Then it would give them ample time? Yes. It would. It would, correct. Okay. I just was wondering if this is going to land hard, particularly at the high school level. In sudden. Yeah, I don't believe so. What we've asked for school leaders to do is to start to look at the policy to share it with their

052school improvement teams over the summer. The biggest change right now will really be for our high schools. So. And I'm sorry. I would say from a curriculum and instruction standpoint, I know it's a different line, but I think we also need time to think about messaging and if we're required to provide training to staff and students and families, you know, we don't want to wait until August to do that. That's something we probably want to think about sooner rather than later and start to organize our staff to kind of put those things together. Correct. I was sorry, y'all. I was just going to note that it feels like we have consensus around the policy, so I would be okay with going ahead and making a recommendation to approve it today. And then we have time

053to start doing communication. If that feels comfortable. So would the proposal be to, and this is for whoever wants to make a motion, but what I heard was with the correction of typographical errors and the removal of class transitions from the. B on page two. At the earbuds. And tell me the detail. Earbuds in what way? Okay, that's what we need. So I motion that we approve the policy as presented with correcting the errors as discussed and removing the class transition and earbuds as allowable devices and times. Including watches. It's already there. It's in there. Okay. And to waive second reading. And to waive second reading. Thank you. I'll second that. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. I would just ask

054that no one tell my kids that. Thank you, Miss Reeves. And this brings us to the item seven then, superintendent's report, specialized instruction support personnel update. And Miss Reeves, I have you down as up next. Oh, I see you've got a team here. Okay. Your name was on the up. Yeah. Don't be shy. Step up. Good evening, everyone. I am Terri Smith, Executive Director of Whole Child Services. 0 I'm Tracy Sanders. I'm lead for School Health Nurses and Homebound Services. And good evening. I am Teonca Day and I serve as the Director of Psychological and Support Services. So we have a presentation for you this evening to share some information about the work that formerly known as School Support and Wellness, we kind of say student services now, but that we've been doing throughout the

055year to support our students. Oh, dear. I mean, I could, but then they. Don'T see what I'm talking about. That's moving extremely slow. It is, it's like slow. All right. Okay, so you'll see that it says Specialized Instructional Support Personnel. So one of the reasons why we have that listed is this year, Well, starting for the 2025-2026 school year, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction classified this group of professionals as specialized instructional support personnel. So that includes school counselors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and mental health specialists are included for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. However, that is not a position that is statewide, so but they are included. And so this is the group that we lead and that work to support our students within the school building. Oh, okay. Thank you. So some of our

056key areas for 2024-2025, so one of the things that we continue to do is support a culture of safety and wellness for our students here. And so the Behavior Threat Assessment and Suicide Risk Assessment trainings happened this year for all student services professionals as well as administrators. In 2024, that became a mandate by the Department of Public Instruction that all of our schools will have Behavior Threat Assessment teams. And so we want to make sure that our administrators and our student services personnel understand what to look for and how to keep our schools safe when they are assessing threats and as well as supporting students who may have suicidal ideation. In addition to that, other key focus areas included our DART teams, or the district activated response team. So this is a team of school

057personnel who are designated to respond to crisis situations. So when we have unfortunate situations that happen around the district, we have a team of professionals who have been trained to show up on our campuses to support the school who is in need. Lastly, we have increased our community connections. So we are looking at how wraparound services support our students, what our community partners look like, and how they're able to come into the schools and support our professionals, our students, and our families. And so this year we held a community agency fair during our district leadership team meeting, and we gave principals an opportunity to learn more about the agency and the organizations in the community, how they are designed to help and support students as well as staff. We had agencies attend various PLCs for

058counselors, social workers, psychologists to make sure that they are aware of the services. And lastly, we did have a drug impairment training for educational professionals. So we partnered with Freedom House Recovery, and they came in and did a training for all of our schools. school administrators about what to look for when our students are under the influence of substances and how they can support educating students about substance use and abuse. So as we get into our discipline levels, first we have our school counseling department. So Rebecca Atkins is our director of school counseling and support. She handles school counseling in 504. Our school counselors work through the American School Counselor Association national model. One of the great things about this model is that it uses data to determine how we support needs and how we

059work with students. And so there are three areas that the national model focus on, and that is academics, behavior, and attendance. And so through the national model, school counselors are able to create annual student outcome goals. And with the goals that were created in the previous year, here are some results of how those goals work to support students, how they contributed to reading scores, attendance, and academics, as well as sense of belonging for our students. 0 Good evening. I'd like to start by saying how humble and proud I am to be considered the leader of an amazing group of nurses that we have in our school system that work diligently to keep our kids healthy and safe. and thank you so much for allowing us to share tonight. So. 0 The North Carolina Department of

060Health and Human Services reports that one in four students come to school every day with a chronic health condition. And we are very fortunate to have a registered nurse in every building that can help manage those conditions, not only for their health and safety, but for the peace of mind for parents to help prevent things like chronic absenteeism, for these students. And the National Association of School Nurses reports that 79% of parents surveyed when they were asked if they would consider whether or not they had a school nurse in every building for a district, that they would consider that in choosing a district for their child. And I'm very happy to say that in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, we have had a school nurse in every building for more than 20 years. and that is

061a very proud point. School nurses also add to our overall safety of our school buildings by teaching CPR, training our first responders and our diabetic care managers. They also develop health and emergency medical plans that they share with teachers and TAs so that they know what to look for and they know what to report to school nurses when a student that has a condition gets in trouble. And this helps increase seat time. A student that is sent to the office to call home, a school nurse sends 90% back to that classroom compared to other staff members in the building. So that increases seat time for these students. They also increase the quality of seat time for students by doing vision screenings, occasional hearing screenings, as well as dental screenings and actual dental treatments that come

062to the school buildings because we all know that a child that cannot see or cannot hear or is in pain cannot learn. They decrease the workload of our principals and our teachers and allow them to have more quality time to do the most important thing, which is the instruction. And the School Nurse Association of North Carolina reports that for every dollar spent on a school nurse, $2.30 is returned back to the district as a bonus. For the 24-25 school year, we really focused on having a more structured and formalized case management system and chose students to follow throughout the year. We managed 66 students with chronic health conditions for the 24-25 school year, helping them learn about their condition, prevent problems with their condition, and manage their condition. For the 25-26 school year, we hope

063to expand that to include students that are at risk for obesity or who are obese, which is approximately 17% of our elementary students and 19% of our secondary students. also in the 24-25 school year, our school nurses managed five official outbreaks of pertussis, and we have already begun in the 24-25 school year learning about measles so that if it does come to our County and to our school system, we will know how to recognize it and how to respond to that communicable disease. Thanks again for supporting parents. students, staff, and for having a school nurse in every building. As the Director of Psychological and Support Services, I am proud to stand before you and say that Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, we provide the full continuum of school psychological services. And as such, that positions us

064both as student services team members and exceptions national children's staff members. And so while we do provide the full continuum of services and we do support the whole child, it is important to note that that is based on the number of referrals of exceptional children's referrals and testing responsibilities which have federal mandates regarding timelines. And that's an important note to make because the National Association of School Psychology School Psychologist makes a ratio recommendation of one school psychologist for every 500 students in order to provide the full continuum of services with fidelity. And here in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, we have a ratio of one school psychologist per roughly 1,100 students. And so we have an excellent team of school psychologists that are each committed to providing the full continuum of services. and that means that

065they have to be very strategic and very intentional about mapping out their exceptional children's duties and responsibilities in order to create the bandwidth so that they can support students with and without IEPs. And so this slide here shows an example of some of the student services that they provide to students across the district. These are continued services. These are not new initiatives. all of our secondary psychologists are SPARKS trained. And so SPARKS is an acronym because we love acronyms, and it stands for structured psychotherapy for adolescents experiencing chronic stress. So all of our secondary school psychologists are trained on that because that is the band, the age band for which that therapeutic intervention is normed for. They lead groups in their schools at least once a year during their training and certification year. They lead

066two groups, one in each semester. The psychologists continue to serve on the district activation response teams, providing crisis response to our school communities as needed, serving on their behavior threat and suicide risk assessment teams at their individual schools, providing those SEL interventions of which Sparks is an example of at the secondary level. and not only do they assist with the functional behavior assessments and the development of behavior intervention plans, but they were a part of the district team that created those protocols and that also provides that training across the district for all of our educators. I did want to highlight for you all that we currently have one vacancy in our programming. We have had that vacancy for the duration of this school year. The psychologists that served Chapel Hill High School resigned at the

067end of last school year, June 13th, and we have been unable to fill that vacancy. The team has done an amazing job of providing support so that the students and staff and families at Chapel Hill High School have not experienced a disruption in services. Not only do they provide the functional behavior assessment and the behavior intervention plans. But the last time I stood before you all, when we shared our exceptional children's update, I shared a much more in-depth list of the professional learning opportunities that our psychologists share for not only their exceptional children's staff members and colleagues, but also our general education teachers and our school leaders. And so we also have our school social workers who serve in an amazing role where they're able to support students' home life. So they are the bridge

068to ensure that students have what they need at home and in the community to remove barriers so that our kids can get to school. When our students are not coming to school, they're really working with their school teams to determine why they're not coming to school and the supports that they can develop to help students get back in the building. this year we did have a shift in some of their responsibilities. So through working with the leadership team as well as, you know, my supervisor, we talked about how social workers can help support students that are most vulnerable populations. So they are now taking on the responsibility of certifying and identifying McKinney-Vento students. And so they are the school-based McKinney-Vento contact that families will reach out to to when they have a concern. They are

069working to lead the attendance teams to make sure that the schools are looking at their attendance data and working to actually make sure that plans are put in place so the social workers are going to be the people who are in the building who are working to develop those attendance support plans for students. This year, the social workers took an opportunity to work in small work groups where we were looking at how can we better serve students through McKinney-Vento, how can we better serve students in the area of attendance. They were crucial in providing feedback on some of the attendance policies that were updated this school year. We looked at how to effectively collect data that really looks at the core responsibilities outlined for social workers and what those practices look like as we serve

070students. and our mental health specialist. So this is one of those positions that are not statewide, but we have in our district. And so we are really fortunate to have this position to work to provide tier two and mostly tier three services for our students. They work really well with understanding students' needs, connecting students to community resources, and then making sure that they are educating staff and parents about mental health needs. One of the things that they lead and do is trying to remove the stigma surrounding mental health and looking at mental wellness overall for students, as well as educating the staff. And this year, they were able to provide two opportunities to engage with our stakeholders, working with the Winston Center, working with Mary Beth Roach to create two digital wellness education series. So

071we had an opportunity to deliver one at Chapel Hill High School, where we invited our community out to learn more about digital wellness. And there was also an opportunity for elementary parents to learn about tech mindfulness. We hosted it at Holbert Middle School because we invited all the elementary schools to participate. They work to promote Mental Health Awareness Month, where they are providing information on mental health, wellness, and education, what that looks like, things that parents and educators can do to support students, and they are the individuals who support substance abuse prevention. And so this year we had the opportunity to look at the Substance Abuse Prevention Manual and Protocol, how it is outlined through policy to ensure that we are following the policy and the recommendation for best practices. And we landed on a

072curriculum to support students with substance abuse violations to educate them and better prepare them as they learn about substance use and how to avoid substance use. So last but not least, we also have co-located therapy, which is school-based mental health therapy, and we utilize this program to increase the availability of evidence-based mental health programs. We want to work to continue to improve students' emotional well-being. And so right now we work with two primary agencies, Renaissance Wellness and Carolina Outreach. I'm not sure why that says 14 schools, but they are in all of our schools. We had a deficit of five schools this year, and what you see on the screen is these are the diagnosis that we saw most with our students. So Renaissance Wellness had about 41 students that they supported and Carolina Outreach

073has 75 students that they supported throughout our district. And so these are the areas that they were working to support students this year. We are in the process of doing a request for proposals to add additional agencies to ensure that all of our schools our staff with school-based mental health programs to make sure that students are receiving services in addition to the specialized instructional support professionals that we have. And one of the programs that we are considering is Daybreak. It is a virtual mental health and wellness service. We've learned that a lot of our neighboring counties are utilizing the virtual services for students. So. [Failed]. So in addition to all of that you heard about our student services professionals, one of the things that we worked on was ensuring that our staff were fully equipped

074to support students. And this just shares some of the additional trainings and support that we provided to our administrators and our student services personnel this year to ensure that they were prepared to support students. One of the things that I do want to highlight is that we are utilizing the R3 spaces in our secondary schools and we ensure that our secondary administrators and the R3C coaches had specific training to support things like de-escalation, working with parents, and intervention support, monitoring, and daily attendance. So last but not least, I think this is last. Our, like I said earlier, our Student Services Leadership Team, we meet on a regular basis to ensure that our services are being delivered to students with fidelity. We want to make sure that we are utilizing best practices. We've had specific trainings

075offered through the grants. We've had two grants that we were able to obtain this year, so we utilize that to pay for SPARKS training, community resilience training, We did a pilot program for co-located services at two of our elementary schools, the safe touch course completion, and then some of our courses through the post center. And we're also continuing to utilize our safe, I mean, our second step curriculum to support our social emotional learning of our students. And we did have an increase in the completion of those lessons this year. So we were very excited to see that schools were diving in. utilizing those lessons to support social-emotional learning. And so as I close, some of the things that we are looking forward to next year is working to establish our Student Services PLC. So our

076district leadership team outlined specifics on what that Student Services Support PLC should look like at each school. We prepared a student safety presentation, ensuring that our school-based teams understand when students may be in need of additional support and what to do to support those students. We are working through how to support students through re-entry meetings when they have had a hospital stay, whether it be for a medical or mental health concern, and then increasing parent outreach through our mental health specialists and the education series that they are working on this year. And that's it. Any questions for our team? Well, that's a lot. We've been working as student nurses. I think we can all see that. That's very impressive. Board members, do you have questions or comments? Risa, you got your hand. Yes, thank you

077so much. I have gotten to know the nurses quite well at my kids school, they call me all the time or they use talking points. So this was a wonderful presentation. I know some of the stuff you highlighted or you mentioned it, but it sounded like for some of our co-located therapy, they're like a capacity issue. I guess we just didn't have enough, I guess, providers available to support the need. Yes. So what ran into, there was a shift in how co-located services are being-- oh, I'm sorry, I forget about that part. There's a shift in how the services are being delivered. So, for example, your co-located therapists are now being billed based on clients. And so there has been a drop period across the state in the number of providers that we have. And

078so we did have three vacancies at the start of the year. And then as we closed the year, we had a total of five vacancies. schools. And so what I've been doing is working with the two agencies that we have to ensure that they have the staffing to support our schools. But I also posted a response for proposals to bring in additional agencies so that we can make sure that schools are getting those services. Yeah, I think that would be my question for kind of each of the, I guess, buckets of staff across this, our specialized instructional services. services team is to understand how many students are accessing these services. I saw it in some of them, but then understanding where's the gap? How many students are we not able to support due to the

079various limitations? So whether it's from a provider standpoint, which I know for a lot of mental health specialists, that's a challenge right now, but then also maybe some of the skilled or specializations as well. Like maybe, yeah, we've got plenty of staff in this group, but not enough in this one. So that would be helpful to understand just from like a, when we're thinking about it as a board, like do we need to provide additional resources there as we're thinking about, you know, what is the demand, right? Because we get the push-pull of like focusing on classroom and education, but if a child isn't able to be present because of all the other things that are going on. It doesn't matter if we have a classroom teacher there. We've got to make sure that they

080are mentally there, too. So I think that's, that's one thing I think would be important for me to know. Thank you. I do think that it's worthwhile information. I will say that our student services personnel, they utilize the MTSS framework to ensure that students who are in need are being being serviced. Some of our mental health specialists, elementary and middle school are split between two and three schools. Our high school mental health specialists are one to each high school. So with that layout, it does sometimes present some challenges, but our student services personnel really work to make sure that our students get their needs met and they are providing referrals to outside agencies. So even if they don't have co-located in their building, they're making referrals to We lose the convenience of the student not

081having to leave school to get services, but we are making the referrals. But thank you for that, and we can get that information. Thank you so much for making this visible. I think one of the things we sometimes forget is how much all of these services and supports matter to education. Like, we can't instruct a kid if they are not mentally and physically resourced. And so I just want to thank you all for what you do every day. I also want to appreciate the Orange County Board of County Commissioners for providing the funding for us to have a nurse in every school. It is so critical, and I'm going to particularly call out Chair James E. Bedford, for whom this has been a passion for a very long time. I've heard stories from families where

082their only contact with the medical professional is when their child sees a school nurse. And I think we can see that cuts to other resources might make that become an increasing reality to family life. And so, like, it just highlights the value that schools bring in the work that how important the work you do. I also wanted to note a statistic you shared, which is the recommendation for psychologists is one for 500, which like who could even manage 500 patients? But we are at 1 for 1,000, right? That's what you said? We're at 1 for 1,100. 1,100. So like the reality of the lack of resources really is impactful. And I think that's an important thing to highlight out of what you shared. But thank you all so much for everything you do. Dr. Smith,

083you had mentioned that one of the new responsibilities for social workers was helping deal with McKinney-Vento issues. Could you explain for our watching public what that is? Because I think that's something that should be widely shared. Absolutely. So our McKinney-Vento students are students who are facing homelessness. So these could be students who are, In transition, they've had a loss of housing or they do not have fixed, stable, adequate housing. So that can be your families that a parent or family has lost their housing and they have to go live with another family member because they don't have any other options. This could be your families who are living in hotels, living in their cars, living at shelters. This could be families who you see students who are frequently moving a lot. They're very transient. Typically,

084that lets us know that sometimes they do not have fixed or stable or adequate housing. And so our social workers, because they work to remove barriers and try to make sure that our families have what they need, especially in relation to the community, they're working to make sure they appropriately identify students because sometimes parents don't want to share that information with you. And so it is a safe space where they're able to identify students offer these services to families and ensure that our students are getting what they need. So what comes with that is access to transportation wherever they are so that we can make sure they are getting to school. They are receiving free and reduced lunch and they are getting access to other services like tutoring. They may have support for field trips,

085cap and gowns paid for and things of that nature. And they also are eligible for a specific scholarship when they're McKinney Vento. In part of the presentation tonight, you mentioned some data from the ASCA impacts on, because of ASCA you had to collect the data on impacts on student performance and stuff. And my recollection is about three years ago, many sort of iterations of personnel back a little bit. We were struggling to get started with adopting ASCA as a model for counselors. Is that, and we just, I've either, I don't know why, I sort of lost track of that. Has that made a profound impact in terms of the role of counselors, particularly at secondary level? Well, at all levels, really, K through 12. So in 2022, we began the process of having all school

086counselors go through ASCA training. so we had presenters from the national ASCA Center to come here to train all of our school counselors. And that was a two-year series of them going through that training of utilizing data to make informed decisions on how school counselors support students. And so now with our director of school counseling, Rebecca Atkins, she works really well to ensure that the PLCs are formulated around the ASCA model, how we're collecting data and how we're looking at data to make better decisions for students. So, yes, we are working to make sure that we are extremely aligned with ASCA. Thank you for that information. And thank you all. Second, what Ronnie said. This is just very useful and helpful, and you all are appreciated. So thank you. Thank you. That brings us on

087to our next item tonight, which is high school schedule implementation updates. I see Dr. Bales and Dr. Vilwock maybe getting up. Welcome again. Good evening again. So I'm here to share an update on our 4x4 implantation rollout as a reminder to our community. We've had these updates throughout the past year with implantation steps, adjustments and outcomes over the past year. We've had several updates tonight that share some of the behind the scenes work that's been going on, a reminder of some of the points that were decided earlier this year, and then also some additional information around transportation and our evaluation of the 4x4 as we move forward, as well as some updates on the steps that we're taking to ensure a successful start to the year. This is a significant undertaking, and I'm confident that

088we are well positioned for this transition to be successful, not only for our students, but for our teachers and our community. So we're going to jump first into our NC Student Information System update, which is very interesting in the fact that I worked on this presentation last week, and as you'll see, a lot of these dates have passed, and these were really good guesses in hopes that these things actually happened on time with our update. So over the course of this week, leading up to today, I really we've been kind of getting into our NC-SIS. Today we had student scheduling training webinar by Infinite Campus with our data managers and our school counselors. We're starting to get Infinite Campus availability in our NC EdCloud, leading up to August 4th where all of our counselors will

089get scheduling training and you'll get a work session in with our NCSS. There you go. Our counselors, as you guys know, we were able to obtain an extra duty contract for them. So, you know, we have a couple of counselors that are receiving two weeks of extra duty pay to support some of the implementation. We thought it would be important to kind of talk through what some of those updates are. So again, by doing that, we're able to actually have all of our counselors participate in that infinite campus training, scheduling for new families. We've had about 60 families per school that enroll over the summer. And then these students can be registered for coursework until they're actually enrolled in the Nippon campus. And then master scheduling support, adjustment for personnel changes that happen over the

090summer, making sure that we're setting up our co-teaching classes correctly, et cetera. And then, you know, I was in the school today and, you know, we see some people that were working on master schedules and looking at the accuracy in the campus as we're getting closer and closer to the start of the school year. With that too, a lot of things have come. It's really that schedule corrections. We tried to get as close to perfect as we possibly could before we finished off with PowerSchool. But there are some transcript audits that are conducted in June that can't be updated until Infinite Campus is actually available. The volume of course change requests from students and families before the August work days We had two schools we're just looking at last year, had about 250 requests per

091school. And if we didn't have those extra two weeks, that 250 requests would kind of land on counselors the day that they showed back up. Especially with them going into a new system, we needed to kind of get those fixed ahead of time. Also, you know, going back and rescheduling our students in our occupational course of study and then also making ensure that our dual enrollment pieces are in line because a lot of our students don't find out what their dual enrollment schedules are until sometime during the summer. So, you know, those schedules have to be adjusted. And then lastly, looking at that student transfer or transfer student orientation and rising ninth grade activities that they're able to work through. So I just wanted to remind our community and those in that we have some

092decision points that we actually went through probably last December, January. This is, you know, our school administrators were able to sit down and make some decision points in terms of things that we're going to help guide our schedule. So I just want to kind of go through these again just so people have them readily available. So this is our bell schedule. We have, you know, two classes to start out, a lunch, third block, flex time, and then we have our fourth block. So a couple of things here, with the exception of a couple of our science courses, for our first year of implantation, you know, we are sticking to a 4x4 schedule offering AB classes for a couple of courses, particularly our Avid courses that are kind of linked with another course. Our science courses,

093in addition to that, they have a lab component. If you had an AP Bio class under the lab with it, it's an AB schedule throughout the entire year. You're not taking one in the lab the entire second half of the year. one of the nice things that we talked about with going to a 4x4 is that we're able to be a little more flexible with some of our classes that we're not able to make on their own. So when we looked at some of our lower enrolled AP courses such as Latin this past year or this upcoming year, we were able to actually schedule that during the fourth block and find different ways for our students to be able to access it. Whereas in the past we may not have been able to because the

094course wasn't large enough when you combine the classes together, we'll be able to do that. And further in the presentation, I'll talk a little bit about some updates on transportation and what that may look like. We also did share that students may be able to take consecutive classes in a given school year. It really depends on availability of that course and that we'll try to the maximum extent possible. You know, as we get Infinite Campus up and running, this is the time where we'll see what classes as we do have available. And I know that some schools took requests ahead of time and I know that there are requests that come in over the summer of, you know, I'm taking math two, I'd really like to take math three as well. So reaching out to

095school counselors and school principals to see is there space available for those courses? Again, we're not going to create an entire additional course, but if there is that space there, it doesn't make sense for us to tell someone no if the space is there. We talked about the AVID, And then again with AVID, our long-term goal is really that we're able to create some partnerships with Durham Tech so that they're taking some of those courses. And actually we have for our juniors and seniors this upcoming year different levels at different schools and different courses based on what students decided on. But our AVID students are able to either take an AP course or a Durham Tech course on that AB schedule so they're able to be one in the AVID class but then also get

096that college credit. that's the room forward. A couple of just things on service delivery reminders for our EC students. Again, a student's IEP determines the location and duration, not necessarily a schedule in terms of the service delivery that they have. If a student specifically design instructions designated in general ed, it's going to be delivered in our general ed setting. It's not necessarily in this particular class. every single time. And our EC department has collaborated with schools to help develop schedules at each school during the spring. I will say if you ever wanted to see a scheduling workshop work with our EC department, they've got sticky notes all over the place and it's a really in-depth process that really benefits our kids in many ways. And then our tier three, so looking at our MTSS piece,

097these classes are intended to be paired with the academic course they support. So we're looking at either having them during the same semester or across two semesters. One of the examples of that was looking at our Math 1 and our Foundations of Math 1, that you would actually take that Foundations of Math 1 first and then move into the Math 1 class the next semester. Our data right now shows that there isn't necessarily that need for the Foundations of Math 2. That's something that we're going to be looking at on this upcoming year. We found that, you know, students that take that foundations of math one course really get kind of caught back up as they're moving forward. Our PD update. So as we've shared before, you know, one of the pieces that we really

098wanted to offer to a lot of our teachers is branching minds. This is an asynchronous method for teachers to access different pieces of professional development. And we've had forward different courses this year, the basics of MTSS, fundamentals of block scheduling, core instruction and block scheduling, and differentiation in a block schedule. We also, as a IC department in collaboration with our schools, actually taught that core instruction and block scheduling in person on December 10th during our work day. And then we give all of our teachers that afternoon to go back and plan after seeing, you know, a little bit of professional development. So far we've had 94 asynchronous courses completed. There are many more that, you know, have went in and kind of pieced that couple different pieces of it. And then we have a new

099course that is currently being reviewed by our district team before being rolled out to our full team. It's leveraging extended time in a block schedule. Next steps with professional development is really just looking at focusing our PD throughout the year. As we saw in the previous slide, we offered up branching minds, which was that asynchronous piece, kind of get what you need when you need it. And we had less than 100 people that took full advantage of that. That could be that a lot of our teachers just feel confident and they're ready for it. Some could feel like, I'm just not ready to deal with that yet. So a lot of this is going to be making sure that we're focusing that PD on what teachers need at the time. When we've asked staff, they

100said, well, we got what we needed. We will see as we move into next year what particular pieces they may need. Some have gotten a lot, some have not necessarily gotten as much. We also have to realize that a lot of our staff is coming to us from schools that have done a 4x4, so this isn't anything new for them. So moving forward, that continued work with ranching mines, giving flexibility, able to input individual needs, a PD shift from the district to more of a job embedded. When we deliver to a full staff, teachers aren't necessarily as willing to engage in some of those conversations and some of the best professional development that you can have is job embedded. That's been a request from teachers and admin. So our support from the IC department where

101we usually have our Wednesday PD, sessions is actually moving more to a school-based what does the school need? And we're working with our department and instructional coaches to actually deliver individual PD per school and what they may need, actually during the day and not in the afternoons. I'm also building a library of just in time PD. So one of the things that we're working on as a department is working on a PLC document that's delivered each month, kind of here's the scope and sequence, but then also having links to many different things on the top of like if these are the things that we're teaching, here are some different resources that would be readily available for you. And this is not something like just in time, hey, you've got three hours to watch this. This

102is just in time. You have three minutes to watch this. So it's a three minute quick PD. This is something you can try. We actually have had over the last two days, we had an AVID training over at Carver High School, where AVID came in and worked with probably seven or eight different districts. And we got a lot out of that. Some of our high school principals are like, this is the stuff that we need make sure that all of our teachers have access to. So we're working on that. And then continuing to build cohesion between learning and curriculum pacing development. As you guys know, we have new standards that will be rolling out over the next few years, and that's going to change a lot of our pacing. So we also have over the

103summer a flex committee group that's going to be starting up. so each of our schools have identified, you know, a couple of different members of their staff that are going to be integral in terms of, like, planning what the flex looks like in the upcoming year. So, you know, previously we were able to go and visit some surrounding schools and seeing some of the impact that flex time has had in their building. You know, that was one of the big concerns from our teachers of it needs to be structured, but I need to have flexibility. so that structured flexibility is something that we're really trying to define over the summer with our administrators and our school leadership. So if you really look at this, this 40-minute flex that we have isn't just 40 minutes of

104free time during the day. It's actually when you look at it, it's equal to what one of our core classes would be in the day. So it's something we want to make sure that we're really taken advantage of. and that we're not letting it just be that pre-piece. So as with any new initiative, there will be areas for growth and refinement, but we've really pushed that this needs to be something that's very significant and impactful for kids. Our administration, our school principals, have really talked about flex time being something that needs to be very clear in terms of the expectations from day one. They don't want to jump into flex and just say, okay, you're going to start going to all these different things, setting up, exactly what needs to happen in those first couple

105weeks in terms of expectations. Our IC department and other support teams will assist with hallway monitoring and logistics to ensure that all students are where they need to be so we can actually roll through with that. With that, each school, like I said, developed a core team, and each team will determine how they'll schedule a tutoring and remediation day by subject. So that's where that flexibility comes in, but it's also you know, some of the tight in terms of, you know, you need to have a tutoring and remediation day by subject, and then you have some flexibility on those other days. Again, you know, it's not required for all students to go to one of those tutoring remediation days. It's really dependent on some of the data. And we'll be able to really dive into

106some of that MTSS work that'll help guide where some of those pieces are going to be. There absolutely is flexibility for each school to utilize how flex needs to look like in their building, but it's also important that it has to actually be utilized. And that's one of the consistent pieces that we've heard from administrators. And then after the first semester, the administration, their Flex Team Committee, we asked them to look at creating some sort of presentation on what's working, on what results are being seen, what needs to change for the next semester and year, and then be able to share that with their colleagues during our DLT time and principal PLCs that we have. We anticipate that principals will find out very quickly, like this is really working, I want to amplify this. We

107need to roll this back a little bit and we're committed to make sure that they have that time throughout the year to make those changes, but then also giving it time to actually naturally grow into what it needs to be. Transportation. So currently we have, you know, we have the practice of having transportation halfway of the day. So if you have cross enrollment, you spend half of the school day at, let's say, East and then the other half of the day at Chapel Hill High School. So Chapel Hill actually transports students from school A to school B and it allows next year for students to take courses at one school, two courses in the morning, and then two courses in the afternoon. We've talked a lot about our flex period transportation and how we can

108actually do that. One of the barriers that we have is one, that's a lot of transportation to try to create. And then two, the timing of the day. Afternoon transportation is kind of unavailable for us to do because that's when our elementary schools start their routes. So one of the pieces, and I'll get to that on the next slide, just wanna make sure. if students do use the midday transportation, so let's say that they came over at the middle of the day, they could actually use that flex period to get back to their previous school if they wanted to take a class during that third block. That's something we kind of unwrapped and it's kind of a benefit. So if you had a student that left right after second period, went during lunch to their

109school, took a course, they could come back during flex. That really mitigates students that may not have a car, because usually what we do is we we ship you over there and then you take the bus home from your new school. But if this is something that we're able to navigate, that'll be something that we can do. And then Durham Tech, we've been continuing to work with them, trying to find ways to fund transportation and give students some flexibility. Who talked previously about using some scholarship funds, but that's something that Durham Tech is exploring with the state in terms of ways that we can do that. We also have an increased number of classes. We probably have about three or four different classes. they're actually being taught on our campuses next year, so transportation is

110not even in the need for a derm tech. We've got classes that are being taught at Carborough and East, and then a couple at Chapel Hill as well, so that our students are actually able just to pop into the class next door and then all of a sudden they're in a derm tech class. Dr. Bezzie, I don't mean to interrupt, but I mean I do mean interrupt. But this is the this will be the first year if I'm not mistaking that Durham Tech is in all three of our high schools, comprehensive high schools. Yep, thank you. So I've been working with our Chapel Hill Transit friends for the last month. We've been kind of going back and forth. We started the conversation back in March. I'm kind of dug in a little bit more. We've

111looked at a couple different options for us. One of the things that you had asked me to look into. So one of the pieces that we looked at was just trying to see if they could shift their current routes to match our needs in terms of like, do I have a route that could go to Caro at that time and get a kid over here to East at that time? I will tell you that it was extremely difficult to tell it's our Chapel Hill Transit that they need to change their entire schedule around us. I mean, I think it's eventually something that if we had the numbers, it would be something that would be worthwhile. But if we're looking at, you know, 10, 15, 20 kids to start out. That was a piece they were

112a little hesitant on. One of the options that they did bring up though is that they could actually create routes for us that would be exclusively for our Chapel Hill students. So it wouldn't be a route that would be open to anybody else. They would actually, and I kind of, we mapped it out in terms of like we'd have a student that would start off at Carrboro, the buses start at Carrboro, then we go to Chapel Hill and then go to East. and then you'd have another bus at the same time that's going backwards from that. So kids could get to wherever they needed to within that time frame. The really great thing with Chappawalla Transit is that, you know, the partnership with us that we would only have to pay their driver hourly rate.

113They would cover the rest of the expenses for that. So, you know, when we were trying to get a ballpark number of what that would look like if we had a route, you know, those routes that went back and forth every day, it's going to be somewhere between 20 to 25,000 to have that route happen every single day. Which when we were looking at it at the beginning, we thought, well, this will never happen. And when you start looking at that, that's actually a number that I think is worthwhile to explore. And especially, I think if we told our students and our parents that this was an option and this was the extra transportation we had, I think we would have more students that would take advantage of it. Curriculum updates? So during the spring

114and summer, we've had our secondary staff has been working on our curriculum, you know, pretty much throughout the entire year. But our secondary staff will have dedicated PLC time at the teaching and learning conference to discuss some of their pacing goals. And then we have a mid-semester check-in regarding pacing that's planned for the October 17th district workday. As we shared too, like, as our new standards are approved. And for our K-12 ELA standards, they're expected to be approved sometime in July. Once those start to roll out, we'll be able to develop and share some of those documents with our teachers and start building that curriculum. But then being able to actually build it into a 4x4 model and not trying to retrofit our old pieces. I think as we are going through this year, kind

115of figuring out what may piece together here and there, it's going to make that implementation and the writing of the new curriculum and standards even better. So this is just, we had used this one previously, but this is basically the difference in a pacing guide on the top. That was what our traditional schedule looks like and on the bottom when we combine them. That's what a 4x4 so it goes a little quicker, but that shows you kind of what that looks like. It's not an even match of like 14 days of regular instruction in traditional schedule isn't necessarily seven days because we can overlap some things and combine. And then the last piece I wanted to share, we've shared a little bit about our Atlas curriculum management. This kind of came out during our curriculum

116and instruction audit of having somewhere that we can kind of house all of our curriculum. Right now we do that on Google Docs, which is great until you have a teacher that leaves and we're trying to recover files or someone's using it over here and you didn't share it with the right person. and it ends up being a scramble. And, you know, our technology team loves me when I'm saying, like, can you please find this teacher that was here three years ago who had this document that we didn't know we needed until today? So over the past year, our IC team has been prioritizing, utilizing the platform to begin to develop a long-term plan on how to actually implement it. So all of our core instruction, pacing guides, lesson plans, Etc. Will eventually be housed

117on the platform. But as we're getting ready to get those new standards doesn't make sense for us to put the old standards on and then put new ones on and have a lot of that extra work that goes in. So it's not a one-year rollover. The plan is that as new standards are released and the curriculum is developed, writing will actually occur in Atlas and not in Google Docs. And then additionally, you know, for our community, over the course of this upcoming year, we're going to be sharing for all of our contexts, regardless of if we're in the standards revision or not, A public facing document for parents in the community to view. So this is kind of that thousand foot view of what is taught and when. And that kind of gives our parents

118a better understanding of where we are curricular wise. I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Bilowick to close us out. So one piece that wasn't on the NC SIS update, not super relevant to this conversation but important We're on track to open the online registration system early next week. So they've done some testing. One of the staff members had a child who was entering school and so they did her application all the way through, including getting her in the system and figured out all the steps. So that went really well today. you know, the pre-work that Tim and his team did coming into this is making this part of it so much better. And we keep reminding data managers that you learned PowerSchool. You can learn this one. And in fact, it's easier because

119you know what it should do, which is always part of the problem when you're trying to learn a new app entirely. All right, what, but are you pushing buttons? You're pushing buttons. I'm pushing buttons. There we go. I have one slide. This shouldn't be too terrible. I'm good at pushing buttons, actually, but we'll move on. The evaluation should span a three-year period. We could decide it needs more, but I think that any substantive evaluation in education's got to be three years long at a minimum. So we're going to be measuring improvement over time. So we're coming in with an approach. That approach will get adjusted as we learn and that way we'll be able to watch those adjustments and how those are affecting the outcome data. There is a list of scheduling criteria and risks.

120It's associated with the 4x4 option number 2, Daily FLEX schedule. that Dr. Bales just did a great job explaining. It starts on page 110 of the document that's linked there. And that's the foundation for the implementation. So to give you context, there were meetings with an external consultant. We came up with criteria. We measured this plan by that criteria. And so there was a scheduling criteria, and then there were Consideration of risks that occur, like what kind of risks could occur when we make this change. And so we're focusing on both the risks and the criteria as we're building this analysis. So we'll be checking to see if we in fact mitigated against those risks in effective ways and then whether or not the pieces that were part of the criteria were working or not

121working. So one of the ways we're going to do that is what I'm calling I called them dipstick surveys. Apparently the fancy name is pulse surveys. I must be from Texas. But the short surveys are going to be done twice a term, so midterm, end of term. I think we might begin the year with one and just get at expectations. And so then at the end of the year, there'll be a little bit longer one where they can give us feedback, right? And so we're going to be monitoring shift of attitude, we'll be monitoring what kids report as the kind of instruction that they're receiving, whether they like it, whether they're feeling more successful, those things. And then we'll also be asking teachers surveys at the same time. So how's their planning time going? What

122do they think about teaching for a whole 90 minutes, etc. We're also going to use the classroom walkthrough tool. Now we have a tool that's going to get changed up a little bit to be of good service into doing walkthroughs through block classes and looking for essential pieces of excellent block teaching. And there'll be a way that'll get scheduled and that data would be part of this. Well, certainly we do Review academic outcome metrics and of course test scores, ACT, AP, graduation rate, attendance, discipline grades. And to Mr. Link's point, and it's on our other document but not on the slide, we're going to really review course enrollment patterns. So we're going to be monitoring what the electives look like, whether the arts are falling off or growing. How many students are retaking classes, those

123things. So we are building a daily export of all the kids in every class out of the new system and so we'd be able to do a check at any time with some pivot tables about what's going on in courses. And then to the work that I shared with you a little bit earlier, When it makes sense we'll use longitudinal data, certainly attendance discipline, those things could be longitudinal. ACT-AP is not. If I use a personal example, we had a child who was out for a week with an illness and then they missed a week for sporting events. And so like that feels like a lot in the block schedule. How do we think through how to help them plan for that? Yeah, so I would say some of that's going to come from just

124being intentional and normal with our flex periods to be able to bring have someone to come back. Part of that too is the fact that in a seven period day when you miss the full day, repeating, you've got to catch up on seven periods worth of classes. On a 4x4, it's going to be the four. So it's going to be more intense in those classes, but it's going to be less overall. You know, that's kind of the piece that we're looking at. You know, with our teachers, when we're looking at our planning documents, that's something that I've asked our teams to look at in terms of if you do have students that are out, what are ways that we can mitigate and in terms of like, okay, you weren't here for this classroom conversation. How

125do we not make you do that entire piece, but be able to, you know, summarize it up in a different way? A lot of our teachers do that work anyway with students, but being able to, you know, provide some of those supports and options for our teachers will be something that we develop, you know, in collaboration with our teachers as we move forward. I would just add, I think the looking at the flex period is going to be critical for us. The idea is not to kind of. Schedule out every minute of flex in a particular subject area, but making sure that there is ongoing time and space. For students to access. So if I've been out a week or three days being assigned to flex to recover would be important. that's a mechanism we

126don't currently have in our system. So that's something that has to kind of be built into our structure. And something that our principals have worked on is that tutorial remediation day, that's two of the five for a teacher. So the other three days that you would be able to pull students in, and honestly even during some of that remediation time, students that maybe didn't understand during the week, you can have students that just weren't even in the classroom. being part of that conversation as well. Yeah, I'm wondering also, like, as we began the school year, having more communication about the importance of making the schools aware when we expect to have absences. So, for example, when we knew the sporting event was happening, like, go to your teacher ahead, you're going to miss a week,

127you're going to miss some significant instruction. I still am struggling to figure out how, you know, an hour or 40 minutes of flex catches up with eight hours of lost instruction time. Yeah, and I will say that 40 minutes of flex is more than we have now for the exact same amount of instructional time, just more classes. So yeah, I completely understand. I do think that front loading of I'm gonna be out, what can you give me ahead of time so it's not catching up on everything, it's just preloading it a little bit. Reesa, followed by Mike. I'm curious, how are we looking at. Transportation for students at Phoenix who might want to take classes? I know we saw the other high schools, but what is the-- They could honestly, when we're looking at the

128route, it could be before or after Carboro. I've talked with Dr. Dixon about that, too. Okay, wonderful. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. Nope, I appreciate that, yep. And then, Dr. Vilwok, you got a vote in favor of that beginning of the year survey? I know you were thinking about it, but I do like the idea of just like getting some type of temperature. Check from-- I want to know how many people are excited or really not and a little open-ended about, you know, the top reason you like this idea and the top reason you really don't. And then we'll ask that again at the end of the year and kind of see if we haven't closed some of that. Yeah, I'd be interested to know. I ran into somebody who's kiddo was at

129East and they had the chance to test out the block and that really helped them kind of come around to it, not that they weren't. And so I wish my kiddos would have been able to try it, but they're excited about it. So I've been hearing a lot of conversation now that all three of my kids are going to be in high school together. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this is, this is going to be fun times. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I do like I like the idea of doing the beginning of the year survey because obviously that's going to show if we had any shifts, right? So if somebody thought one way, then maybe we shifted some perspectives and items. And then in year two and three, we would do a midterm and an end

130of term. Yep. Thank you. That's it. Thanks. Dr. Bales, earlier in your presentation, I strongly agree with your thoughts about flex time that needs to be intentional from the get-go and purposeful rigor. And we know that it's also a time for remediation. But then later we're also talking about busing during that time. And I'm really impressed with all the work that you're talking about doing with, and I'm excited about that prospect of working with Capitol Transit. But I worry that kids who are doing that on a daily basis are then missing out on the benefits of like, stop. And I don't, I've just been kind of going through my head of like, is there some kind of packet? Is there some work that they could be doing? Are they reading something? You know, like, I

131think there's, there's probably ways to do it to an extent. But I, but I do worry about having kids. And we're talking about, like, that the Chapel Transit would be more excited if we're more students. And so we don't want to encourage, like, everyone to be doing this and then we're missing out. So it just, I'm just asking you to kind of keep that in mind and, and maybe get creative about ways that kids can be in transit and still be getting some of the benefits of Flextime, if that makes sense. No, absolutely. And I will shout to the skies, like our teachers do an amazing job of being flexible and they bend over backwards all the time to support our students. So, whether that's having someone come in at lunch, I mean, if you

132go into a high school right now and you see like our teachers don't eat lunch. They work with students all the time. So, you know, I know our teachers are willing to do that. And, you know, I think that's part of the piece too. Like that's the academic counseling with our counselors. Like, is it the right move? Like, are you utilizing that flex? Is it a need? And then you've got to have that conversation with parents of, okay, if you need the flex, that may not be it for you may not need that transportation now. You might want to look at it. the following year or something of that nature. So the whole conversation is, but absolutely, yes. Okay, great. The other one is, this is just how my brain works. I'm putting together things

133from earlier as well. Kids that start at one school and end at another are going to have their phone put away at some place, and they're going to have to get it and then take it and then put it away again. There's some logistics there that needs to be worked out for kids who are transported between schools. Thanks. Thank you. I have a question for Dr. VilWalq. I think it's a short one. I really loved seeing the implementation evaluation list and criteria. And I remember last year when we were just, everybody was Googling everywhere, how can we assess this and what It's just not there to find the data. Did you all just put this to, because this could actually be pretty amazing data. Did you all just put this together out of your heads

134or did you... The criteria? Yeah, because you've got the risks here you've listed. So that's a Dr. Bale's question. The Trigo Ed folks set that up. Yeah, the committee looked at the risks. and then we compared-- no, but he's. Asking where did the criteria and the list of risks come from? Oh, that was the 4x4 committee that originally-- yeah. So the committee-- that was the committee. In the first place. I mean, we would have loved to have had-- it just didn't seem to. Exist. In the data out there in the world as to how the block schedule impacts various aspects. Well, then maybe it won't get famous. I think you will. I think you will. Well done, thank you. Anybody else? Thank you, Dr. Bales and Dr. Vilwak. Appreciate that. That brings us to sharing

135time, which is committee reports first, if we have any. Nothing from finance, nothing from policy. Vicki's not here tonight. Any liaison committee reports? Any sharing at all? Seeing nothing, then the meeting is adjourned.