Board of Education - Sep 04, 2025

001The meeting of the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools Board of Education will come to order. The chair requests the motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed and it carries unanimously. The chair requests the motion to move in closed session for the reasons stated on the agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved by Reza Jenkins and seconded by Meredith Malou. All in favor? Aye. Opposed and passes. George Meredith made the motion. I'm sorry, I got it backwards. Meredith made the motion and it was seconded by Riza Jenkins got it backwards. Thank you. And we will return from closed session as close as possible to 7pm thank you. [ CLOSE SESSION ] So the meeting is now back in open session. I don't see

002any agenda under item three, open session, so we'll move on to public comments. Ms. Holloway, are there any public comments signed up? None signed up Is there anyone in the audience that was going to make a public comment tonight? Please come forward. Mr. Link. Good evening, sir. I'm going to dispense with the normal reading of the rules since you've been here before. Yes, sir. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Good evening. My name is Brian Link and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill Carrboro association of Educators. And I rise this evening for two issues. The first is to thank the district under the leadership of Dr. Trice and in particular the HR department under the leadership of Dr. Harris for a very smooth opening and welcoming of school. Making sure that our buildings are staffed with

003appropriate personnel, making sure that they are trained properly, and making sure, given all that is going on, that is new this year, that we have the skills to do what we care about the most, which is helping students learn and grow. I also would be remiss if I didn't speak tonight about what is going on in Forsyth. We empathize and we reach out to our colleagues there who are going through the very difficult cuts faced by the significant budget cut that they're facing. We stand in solidarity and support with them. It's also a reminder, right, that we've had our own experiences here with that. Although a credit that it seems we handled ours much more delicately and gracefully than is going on now. But it's also a reminder in an environment in which, right, the

004state health plan is raising prices, a state budget is still not enacted, that if public schools are at the center of our communities and it's about educating all students, we need to do whatever we possibly can to find ways to create environments that are going to welcome those who are willing to give up perhaps financial remuneration for a lifetime of service. And so as we go forward, and we look forward to not only the elections this fall, but working into a new board, a new year, new superintendent this spring is finding ways to come together that we can recognize, acknowledge and appreciate. And in fact, if we're following our new state superintendent's strategic plan to really honor right and cherish educators, I believe that's bullet point two. We look forward as an organization to working

005with you all to accomplish that, given the limited constraints financially that we face. So again, thank you to administration for a smooth opening of school and getting us all underway as a message to parents and students, thank you for your grace as we learn a new attendance system, grading system and at the high schools, a new schedule. And as always, thank you to educators around the state of North Carolina and around the country for standing up on ensuring that our citizenry is going to be well educated and understands the value of lifting every person in every boat up rather than trying to divide them out. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Link, and welcome back to a new school year. Anybody else? For public comment tonight and hearing nobody will move on to item

006five, consent agenda. The chair would request a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded All in favor say aye? Aye. Oppose? Passes unanimously. And that brings us on to discussion and action. Items, scroll down here. And the first one, we've got some contract items up here, beginning with a 6A contract with Sellient Health. Who is handling that tonight? That's my item. And I understand this item was pulled. So are there any questions that I might answer for you? There were three. Good point. Let me just. There were three items, items pulled from consent that had to do with contracts. And they were just some general questions we had. And so let's just find out. Board members, I know you got some additional information this afternoon, but there were questions about

007our procedures and they weren't because there was an issue. We just were wanting to double check what is our procedure when a contract costs x hundreds of thousands of dollars and these three items were in there. So we're trying to get an update on that. Does anybody want to have an item question for part A? So the abstract said that there was an RFP, the request for proposal, but then it doesn't say what happened. And then I did get information about that subsequently and it seems like everything's fine. But maybe if you wanted to just share why we went with Solihant and not the other. Yeah, Absolutely. So there we did an RFP request for proposals back in May 2024. There were nine different vendors that submitted to help us with our students with disabilities,

008specifically speech and language. This particular company had a bilingual service that we were not able to have at any other place. And so that's ultimately why we selected this one. And it's also a company that we worked with in the past. And so instead of having a hodgepodge of vendors, we were able to go with someone that we already had. So we need a motion, then to approve this recommendation as it's stated, for the purchase. So moved. Second. It's been moved. And seconded. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, that takes us on to B, which is recommendation for an additional $100,000 for fortress fencing. Dr. Stewart, I believe that would be on your side. Yes, sir, and, Chairman, this abstract was basically for work that we have with a contractor. This was not a single

009contract that we had. But these are multiple projects that are going on throughout the district. We had work that started in the previous fiscal year that then carried over. So they were paid in this fiscal year. Work at projects at Ephesus, Chapel hill High School, McDougal, Glenwood, and some temporary fencing at FPG due to the flood in July. Early July. So in order for us, we wanted to be extremely transparent with the board and how much money we're spending with a particular vendor. None of our projects with this company have exceeded $30,000. And, you know, under the advisement of our attorney, we understand that between $30,000 and $300,000 would need an informal bid. Over 300,000. Of course, with construction, we would have a formal bid. So all of these projects are under $30,000, but cumulatively,

010we're approaching 90. And therefore, we wanted to bring it to the board for approval. Appreciate that. Board members, are there additional questions or need any more information? I'm not seeing any. Then can we have a motion to approve this? So moved. Second. It's been moved. And seconded. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And that takes us to item C, which is purchase orders with Buckeye International. Yes, sir. So that's me again. This was our attempt in the division of being proactive with custodial care and Custodial products. Throughout the year, usually over the last three years, the district has spent, on average, about $250,000 in custodial products. We've made some moves. We've put some strategically. Some hand dryers and blowers in schools to try to reduce the cost of paper products.

011But we wanted to bring this to the board early this year instead of really being in a scramble mode late in April and May and running the possibility of running short on products and not being able to get them to the schools as they need it. With Buckeye, we've made an attempt to consolidate vendors to save some money. We know that they are timely. It does not mean we're not under contract with. With Buckeye, with this. This is more or less a blanket that we could use if needed. With them. We also. They have a. Let me make sure I say this correctly. They are not on state contract, but they have a partners, a choice partners agreement which would allow us to piggyback on other contracts and bidding processes that other districts have used,

012such as Guilford County Schools, Charlotte Mecklenburg, and also the city of Raleigh. So we'll get the competitive pricing because of that, and that'll keep the price low. This was just for us to be able to get out in front of this. So I'll answer any questions that the board may have. Thank you, Dr. Stewart. Board members, additional information needed or questions. Right. So I guess I just was trying to understand if the competitive bidding rules apply or not. And if they do, it sounds like we'd sort of followed them. So if there's a purchase that's over 90, then it would need to be bid. Or if it's like an open for, you know, 200,000 or something. But if it's, you know, throughout the year, as you need more paper towels for your order from this

013place and individual purchases that may not fall under formal bidding. I haven't looked at the specific practices here. I think what he's speaking of is there is an exception in the law if the vendor has. If it's through a competitive. What do they call it? A competitive procurement. A collaborative or something, this vendor may fall under that. Which would be an exception to the bidding rule. But as far as whether. So the answer is. I don't know the specifics of this one. But in general, unless an exception, which I think there might be an exception here, at least informally. Seek multiple quotes if we're making a purchase over $30,000. Now, you don't have. I don't think you have to do that every time you make the purchase. You know, like if you compare prices for

014custodial products at the beginning of the year, those prices are going to be what they are for the year. You know, compared your quotes and Then I think you can rely on that for a certain period of time, as long as the questions are the same. And part of the reason that we're aligning with this company is we did do the informal bidding last spring. Okay. So I guess that would be right. So there's nothing over 90 here. But once again, we're bringing it to the board so we can get ahead of it and be proactive here. I think if the multiple codes were solicited on prices. Anybody else, do you have any more questions? Okay, we need a motion then to approve this contract. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in

015favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. That takes us to item D, which is the curriculum and instruction management plan approval request, which is why I'm wearing this t shirt tonight. Dr. Bales. And before you get started, I've been asked you're going to break this presentation up at times so the board can stop and ask questions. Yeah. So anytime through here if there are any questions that come up. We've actually divided this up a little bit differently this time to one, showcase our IC team. Previously we have all came and there's been a couple of people that presented and then at the very end we'll go through and introduce everyone. So we're actually going to break it up a little bit. Probably half of the team back here, but even have

016our supporters who just came by to make sure that they're supporting the team. So there we go. So tonight is our general overview of the curriculum instruction management plan. Kudos to all of you that have actually taken the time to read all 104 pages of that. In addition to the 10 page parent companion guide and looking at the presentation, we really look at this as the bedrock of what we do in our IC department. So tonight we'll be looking at key updates and strategic shifts and then looking at some curriculum updates. So again, this is really our commitment to providing a well coordinated and comprehensive educational experience for all of our students, for our teachers, aligning our curriculum, instructional practices, assessments across all of our schools and classrooms. And I know, you know, when we

017think about that, it just says, okay, we're going to align. But why do we do that? We align our curriculum, instruction practices to make sure that it's not a guessing game. When you walk into a classroom, a Math 7 class is going to look the same at this school versus what looks down to hall versus what looks like across the city. And in doing that, it allows us to support aligns the work to ensure that we're able to look at best practices, look at some of our areas of weakness, and figure out ways that we can actually navigate moving forward. And then lastly, we're going to outline the expectations of procedures regarding the written curriculum, the taught curriculum and the assessed curriculum. Anyone that's ever been in a classroom knows that you can have a

018great written curriculum, but if you don't actually teach what you write, it's, you know, the things that we're putting into place are not going to be there. The assessed curriculum, you know, the number of times I heard from my own kid, I took this assessment and there was three questions that we never went over. So we want to make sure that those things are aligned, that the written curriculum matches the taught curriculum and it matches the assessed curriculum. So with this, we're really, we're returning to a regular curriculum adoption with the state. We're focusing on our core resources and in the past we've kind of had to focus on supplementary resources, which is usually tech related. So a little sidebar to this. Dr. Trice has convened an internal group to help develop a digital learning

019plan moving forward. And you guys will hear a little bit more about that in October. But we're in the works of establishing that group right now. So we'll establish an advisory group to show you a plan with stakeholders and that'll be teachers. I mean, we went through a list today and we started off, we had 60 people we had to narrow down, like how do we actually get our biggest bang for our buck? So we've looked at across all of our schools, administration, parents, it's coaches. And like I said, we'll bring some of that back to you in October as a part of our curricula or our audit results. Just an update on that. And then with that too, we're going to be onboarding a couple different committees that we've had in the past. So

020our technology advisory committee and our curriculum advisory committees. Those committees are in place one to make sure that we're getting stakeholder input from our stakeholders around us and ensuring those voices are included when we look at instructional tools and curriculum as we move forward. So again, the 2025, 2026 plan is the third iteration of this document. There are pieces of it that may remain static. There are other pieces that may shift a little bit. It's really helping provide that structure for all things instruction, making sure that, you know, what we're looking at, the district office is happening in our schools and then also with our students and parents again, the plan's primary audience for the 104 page document really is looking at our teachers, school leaders, district departments, district leaderships and the school board. And

021we'll dive a little bit more into some other pieces of it later tonight. So some key updates and strategic shifts. So some of these things that we've kind of talked about and some we may have people wearing shirts with the bottom. So with it, you know, we've really focused in the last year on looking at how we teach, being our Tier one strategies. And we've really been able to this past summer and this upcoming year looking at AVID as a way to, you know, really create that common language. Our PLCs is how we collaborate and we'll dive into that a little bit more. And then we've really spent a lot of work the last three years looking at our MTSs and how do we support all of our students and the many needs that they

022may have. So we call those our big rocks. Our big rocks. One is AVID again, how we teach. The big thing there is that it's Tier one. It's Tier one for all. Every single student should have the same experience when it comes to what their classroom looks like. We've looked at that in terms of some of the AVID strategies that help really dive into that core instruction so that every student benefits and not just a select group. Again, that common language and expectations for some of our students that may mean that they're going to be in an elective, that doesn't mean that every student's going to be in an AVID elective. And we can talk a little bit more later on in the year in terms of what that looks and feels like. But that

023AVID elective provides targeted support and leadership opportunities for students who may opt into that. In our middle and high school, we're really looking at that school wide Abbott approach to make sure that every student has that equitable access to college ready practices, making sure that every student is ready for, you know, whatever they choose post secondary and really looking at those practical solutions. So looking at Socratic seminars, organizational systems, collaboration structures, really what AVIDA is really based on. And they do an amazing job collaborating with schools to navigate that. Our second Big Rock MTSs, again looking at that. We need to make sure that our Tier one is strong so that we can devote our attention to our Tier 2 and Tier 3 students. Once that Tier 3 or Tier 1 is really strong, we

024can start building out Tier 2 and Tier 3 for students that may need a little additional support. I'm really making sure that we're diving into the data. I know we've talked and heard feedback previously. We test students all the time. I think sometimes we may need to take a step back and look at is it a test or is it a universal screener? Is it a checkpoint? We all go to the doctors and you know, get some check ins every so often to make sure that everything's going well. We don't necessarily go all the time, just when we're feeling bad. That's really what those universal screeners and progress monitoring are in terms of. Let's actually come in, let's see where we're at, see where we need the, you know, eat a little less of this,

025eat a little more of that. And making sure that we're, you know, using an expert to look at that data and ensure decisions are rooted in evidence and not what we may feel. It's really again that systematic support for all, building that systematic structure. Our teams, our schools and leaders have done an amazing job with MTSS the last three years. The growth that they've had in leadership shows up in our FAM s and our FAMD which are dpi basically assessments of where we're at. And we're seeing that those structures show up in our schools every day. And then lastly, Student Centered in Action. You know, making sure that we have intervention cycles, small group instruction, behavior supports, regular progress checks. Those are all the things to just kind of check in on our students and

026not necessarily have it be something that we look at the end of the year. This week we had end of year results come out. We don't want to wait till the end of the year to figure out where our kids are at. When we talk about, you know, really monitoring students like we really. Every couple of weeks you should be able to check and go like, oh yes, Johnny's getting this, he might need a little more help with this. And you know, by us going through doing the IXls, doing some of our progress monitoring allows us to do that. PLCs. This is how we collaborate and how we have our teachers together to talk about how all students will be successful. Our commitment is to effective PLCs while walking alongside our teachers to provide them

027with support and resources they need. What we will continue to do is build a district wide culture of collaboration and collective responsibility, align our practices to the PLC framework to guide consistency in the culture classroom and also focus and also thinking about effective PLC's equal student success utilizing the PLC toolkit that a guided coalition is coming up with to support protocols, resources and also exemplars to help our students and our teachers and also working closely. We have a district guiding coalition that consists of teachers, district folks, principals and also our IC team that will help guide and monitor progress and also the alignment with professional learning communities and also strengthening teacher teams. That's the most important part to give teachers that collaborative time to talk about what students are doing, how we are meeting their

028needs, providing them with time to look at data and ensure students are getting that, but also shared ownership for students success. We will embed PLC work into our instructional walkthroughs, into our coaching and also through our leadership practices. We will also continue to focus on improvement cycles to maximize student learning within our PLCs. Sorry, that was going to move for me. Atlas. So again, this is also a part of our big rocks and also aligns. ATLAS is something that we've had in CHCCS before. It is a platform that will house all of our curriculum documents. It will provide a centralized platform for unit and lesson planning so that we are not searching for information through Google Docs. It provides one centralized location and we will also be able to be transparent with parents as well

029that it will be a parent system they can look at as well. It also integrates district priorities for our PLC framework, MTSS and avid. We will have professional learning communities also involved in looking at ATLAS as well during their planning time. We will provide professional learning for our teachers, for our administrators on the platform and how to use that as well during the 2526 school year. And again, this is a way that we have all documents in one place and we can also look at them at any time that we need to. Again, we will have ongoing support for our teachers, our students, our coaches, our administrators to ensure that they are trained on this process program and it's not a program but the platform to ensure that they know how to utilize it and

030the systems that it works within our structures. So again, the ATLAS platform, we've had it before, we are bringing it back and it is really a good platform. We want to make sure that people are utilizing it but also having the support they need to be able to do so. Just a point of clarification, we had ATLAS before but it's been in maybe 20 years just so that you know. Okay, Curriculum update. We will start with science. Valerie and I are here today to thank you all board members, Dr. Price I have a loud voice, Dr. Bez and Dr. Dubois for allowing us to go through this tough implementation of brand new science standards and allow our Students to be scientists in the classroom. We would like to thank all our teachers in the classroom

031who really learned by doing and exploring with the kids. New curriculum, new standards, new science and engineering practices. We would love to especially thank the fifth and the eighth grade teachers who knew there is EOG and biology who knew there is a test at the end and they are learning with students how the test is going to look like. Special thank you is the curriculum team K12 teachers and coaches who were sitting together monthly and writing the curriculum the unit tediously to all our teachers. A quick reference to what happened all year long. In July 2024, the state of approved the new standards. In September 2024 we started the process of the RFP. And in September through October we pilot with Carolina Biological Smithsonian curriculum for elementary and science education for secondary. And in November

032we you approved the curriculum and we implemented it to the year. And so on August 25th of 2024, I remember it vividly because it was DNA day. We were meeting with the K12 team and we put this simple claim that you see on the board that student performance on aligned assessments indicate that we have successfully implemented the new standards. And so we do have some evidence that we are so excited to share. And those are our state results that just came back. As you can see, fifth, eighth and biology were all 70% or higher. And beside those you can see what our state results are and super excited that 15 of our schools scored at 70% or higher proficiency. That says 83% of our schools. So we believe this reasoning for this occurred is because

033we had a very strong curriculum and aligned support documents throughout the year. We had ongoing professional development. We used lots of formative assessments to guide our instruction and students were able to walk into their science classes every day to think and act like scientists. So we thank you all so very much for supporting us. Okay, hold on don't go away. I want to give the board a chance to digest and ask a few questions. And then I want to even Back up to Dr. Bale. Mr. Bose a minute and get some clarity on a few of the big rocks. I meant to stop you no worries. Okay. Okay. But board members, because I know the science curriculum's been a big deal. We've heard a lot about it over the past year, getting ready for it

034and implementing it. And do you have questions or comments, board members? I have a comment. Yeah. I would like to say that it was exciting when we were in the classroom with you, hands on you made sure that we were able to see the Students doing exactly what they would be doing if we weren't in the space. So it was really nice to see them actually ignoring us and doing the exciting work that they were doing in terms of being scientists and documenting it on their own. And by the way, they were documenting it in their journals and notebooks, not on Chromebooks. So just to say that that was an exciting piece. And I just wanted to say that I'm excited in seeing how the implementation took place, let's put it that way. So thank

035you. I would just say kudos for the great work. I love how you presented this like you were presenting a science experiment. So I like that. And I'm excited to see what our scores are going to look like moving forward as we look at how, you know, where the students probably have some opportunities to improve. We'll tweak the curriculum in that area, and I just anticipate we'll see all our schools above 70% and higher. So thank you. Anybody else? Yes, Barb? I've never heard about big rocks before, so could you just explain that a little bit? Why? What? Yes, the significance of that to science. Yes, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about the three big rocks in plain English so that our constituents can understand what we mean. So in the instructional world,

036we could go a thousand different ways. And the feedback that we have received from teachers, even talking with students, from administrators, it's like, let's pick a couple of things that we can actually really focus on and move forward. And then I'll go back a couple slides here in that, a little graphic. These things all lean on each other. We took a step away from saying, like, let's figure out how math teachers teach math and how a reading teacher teaches reading. And let's get all those people in the same space and on the same wavelength. We have visited some AVID schools where we have seen where schools, like, when you go from class to class, like, it doesn't feel that different. Like, you go to a math class, they're organizing their notes this way. You go

037to an ELA class, they're organizing notes this way. The language that the teachers are using, similar. And for us, like, that was just the way. For us, it was a real eye opener. Like, this is what a lot of our students need. They don't need to, you know, as, you know, middle school student goes through seven periods a day, code switch seven different times of how do I learn in this class? Similarly with a high school, how do I code switch in this class through multiple, you know, multiple different ways with that. You know, we really said that's our tier one. That's like how we teach. You know, we're using this year as kind of a year zero, because for our elementaries, they've heard about it. They have, honestly, they've done a lot of the

038strategies that we just may call them different things, but it allows us, when we're meeting with principals, to actually have all of our elementary, middle and high school principals together and not say, like, all right, elementary, you're going to come over here. Middle and high school, you're going to come over here and we're going to have discussions about. About how we teach going into classrooms in the past, like we've been. It feels like you switch districts when you go from elementary to secondary. And we don't want that. We don't want that to be a barrier for some of our students. That's a huge transition as it is, and being able to have that curricular piece kind of aligned with that. So our team, when we're developing scope and sequence, we're incorporating some of the AVID

039strategies. Our elementary schools, we had a several principals that went to a training that we had at Carvero High a couple of months ago, and there was a plethora of resources. When you are an official AVID school now, it costs money to do that. And, you know, it is actually not that much of an expense when we look at the grand scheme of things, but it's really just aligning our work to make sure that we're doing things Pre K to 12. I really feel like we're going to be able to hit the gas with our elementary schools once we get going because they're doing a lot of this, but they may have some different resources and strategies that they're able to use. MTSS, like I said. Yep. Please. So on avid, you mentioned note taking.

040Correct. So is that an example of where our students would all learn a consistent method of taking notes that would translate regardless which classification were in and as they moved through grades. That's what you're saying. Right. There's examples of those kind of things that AVID has already been doing for 30 years. Correct. That you wanted to scale up to everybody. And so when we go around and see a sign on a teacher's door, it says AVID trained. That means they participated in this training through our district. Correct. And AVID is this unique to our district or other districts adopting AVID as how we teach model. So I'll be honest, the way that we teach and the want for this has really came out from our principals, especially our secondary principals are like, we've experienced this.

041It's something that works. We want to really move forward with this. I'll go back to the note taking example and the way that avid's even evolved. So back when I was a teacher and assistant principal, principal, there was one way that AVID said, you're going to use Cornell notes. And this is how we're all going to take notes. They've also learned that we need to give students options. We can't just say, like, here's the one way that you do things. So they may have two or three different options of like, here, we're going to teach you these three and we want you to pick the one that works best for you. And they all kind of land in the same place, but they give students a little bit of an option. And then with our

042AVID training too, it's not a. You go to AVID training and now you are officially like the guru of AVID training. There's many different versions of it. Like there might be. This is for math teachers. This may be to work with our Newcomers. So we have sent. Last summer we sent some of our ML leaders in the district and some of our ML teachers to a training and they were able to come back and they were able to work with our students with AVID Excel, which is a program too. When we're looking at our data, we see that our ML students are struggling. But the AVID Emerge, or Excel, sorry, why they named them Close, I don't know. AVID Excel is a program to take some of our students that may have been in our

043district for a while in ML. Put them in this AVID Excel class in middle school, and it really accelerates their language acquisition skills. And then the idea is that those students will eventually go on to the AVID elective in high school. This past summer, we sent some of our Newcomer teachers because they just started AVID Emerge, which is a loose curriculum because we've got to make sure that we're meeting the students where they are. For our Newcomer students, we've had to create every single piece of Newcomer curriculum that we've had in the past. But now we have a resource to go back to. We have people that, you know, have went through the process. This is developed in California, and I think this is year 45 for Avid. It's year 30 that we've had in

044Chapel Hill High. Shout out Joanne McClellan, who started 30 years ago at Chapel Hill High. So it's something that I feel like we have used in spots. But if we're going to lean into something, this is a real opportunity for us to lean into something that makes sense. It's best practices. You know, we have done these things before in some capacity, but this is going to have the common language moving forward, which is also something that came up in our audit. I hope that helps a little bit. Thank you. You're welcome. So going back to mtss, like I said before, we've really dove into the systems that that incurs. So we have MTSS teams at each of our schools, K12. And every year we go in, Nicole Walker and a team of people depending on

045the building go in and actually have the team evaluate themselves on something called the famas. And it measures several different areas. And you can ask her when she comes up here because I'm blank on it right now. But that piece allows them. We really focused on leadership this past year and our leadership scores skyrocketed again. It's setting up those structures so that we know that students are getting the support that they need. Leadership is looking at data and they're able to say like, okay, I can look at the data again. If we're strengthening that tier one, we're going to have less tier two and tier three students. We can really focus on those students to give them what they need. I will tell you it is extremely difficult to not jump from tier one to

046tier three. And what that means is, so tier one is your everyday instruction. Tier two is, you know, you may get some additional support, 20 to 30 minutes a few times a week. Tier three is like you have, you know, a 45 minute need every single day. And sometimes we jump from tier one to tier three and that's not good for the kid who is getting pulled out of something else. So being able to really use data strategically and that goes into our IXL data, our Irady data. And that's the reason we do those things. I mean, it gives us an idea of where our kids may have gaps. We do our NC check ins and that kind of gives us an idea of during this year for math 7, where is my kid? Or

047where's my student understanding the content. IXL looks at it from like our year pre K to graduation. Where are some gaps that you may have? And it's essentially important for us to make sure that we're not just saying, okay, well if you didn't get that in second grade, you didn't get it. That means that we need to use that data to say, okay, how do we build that into what we're doing. How do we build scaffolds from where you're at to where you're going to be, what you're going to need for that class? And we are getting to a much better place of identifying what that is instead of just saying, you didn't do well on your end of year assessment. So we're going to put you into these support classes. And then the PLC

048work, like Dr. DeBose had shared, it's really coming in and looking at all right, when you have that time, you got to have the time. But when you have that time to sit down with, you know, all of your math seven teachers, all of your third grade teachers, are you bringing data to the table? Are you talking about, you know, what students are doing, what, you know, what gaps are we seeing as a whole, providing that feedback back to our district teams to say, okay, we're noticing that in all of our third grade classes, this gap's happening. So that allows us to go back and change curriculum. But we need to have that feedback and they need to have the time to say, like, what's working and what's not, and planning, and there's lots of

049pieces that go into that, but really, that's how we collaborate. We organize to make sure that we're building that solid Tier one, that avid, and that Tier two and Tier three for our students that may need a little more. So I may have missed it. This MTSS is mandated through the Department of. Of Public Instruction? Correct. So you're describing our version of how we're implementing it. And I believe you said we've made great progress in the past three years from where we were to now. Correct. And I just wanted to reinforce. Thank you. Thank you. And you, I'm sure you're probably jumping to the third rock. Well, that was our third, so that was our avid, our MTSs and PLCs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you got it. Question down here. Yeah, Barbara? I don't know. I

050feel like I might not get a chance to say, this is so good. I mean, this is really, really excellent. And for many reasons. I mean, it's very easy to understand. Even though it has a lot of acronyms, like, you explain what they all are. It has just a lot of vision. And I really like in the beginning, where you explain how each group of stakeholders is in charge of curriculum and you tell us what we're supposed to be doing, which is just super helpful, referencing the policies and the state laws that are applicable. It was all just really super helpful. But my biggest compliment is how responsive this is to the audit. So, for example, I mean, which, as you know, was not like full of praise, so to say the least. And there

051were lots of scathing anonymous quotations. And one was focus in on data. We look at data, but we don't make decisions based on data that was from a central office administration administrator. And I mean, it seems like that's what you're saying MTSS Is supposed to be responsive to. And then the other one that really struck me, and I guess this is like more of a question is a comment about somebody who was identified as being on instructional support staff saying we get rid of things before we have given them time to see the outcomes or not. And like having talked to longtime teachers, you do hear that, like, we just. It's a new thing, a new program, It's a new requirement. And so I guess how is this seems like this is different. I mean,

052it seems like it's ambitious in scope and also the amount of time it's going to take. And I guess just would like to hear your thoughts about that. Yeah. So I mean, I appreciate the fact that we were given permission to, like, let's not change anything. Like, let's make sure this works. And this isn't even. By the end of the year, we're not going to have solved education using these three big rocks. We are absolutely going to make progress. And we saw some of that progress last year. And some of we may not be able to necessarily see in the test scores, but we're starting to see it in our F.a.m. s scores, which, looking at other areas and, you know, maybe more so our elementary, when they've had some of those higher scores and

053they've sustained that for a little bit, the results for students kind of lag a little bit further behind than they follow. So for me, like, really, you know, we will be bringing back by the end of the year too. And to our principals, we want to get their feedback before we bring it back. What does. If we say this is almost year zero, like, okay, let's almost make sure we're on the same page. We know what everything is. We know what the acronyms are. What's the expectation for a year from now? What's the expectation for two years from now and three years from now? Now, I know that's going to fit into our strategic plan as we go into 27 and beyond, but we have to stick with something. And I'll be honest, like walking

054around the past two weeks and seeing, you know, different classrooms implementing this, like you can, you know, that it's trickling down like we're speaking the same language. It's not, well, the district's kind of doing this, but we're going to do this differently in the school. The fact that this is year two, like our teachers, our administrators know, like, this is the direction we're going now, we might need to be a little more explicit on some of it, of what that means for them, which is why we've told our leaders, especially our elementary, this year, it's year zero, especially for Abbott, because we need to make sure we. We understand it as a leader before we go in and have expectations of teachers and what does that training look like? But for me and our team,

055like, we really looked at, again, we have all these standards revisions coming out the next few years. It's an opportunity for us really, like, latch into something. Our science team did an amazing job with the way they implemented. And if we were able to go and I could share with you, like, the particular teacher by teacher data, like, those who really bought in and followed the recipe had a lot higher scores than some of our other people. So that gives us some places to work on this upcoming year. But I know that our team has the recipe. They know what to do. And as we go through with our ELA English Standard Revision, we'll talk a little bit about that. Like, I know we have the recipe to replicate that, and being able to kind

056of use these as some pieces that kind of stick in, like, this is what we do. It's going to help for our students because everything's going to be consistent. It's not going to be like, all right, we're kind of doing this over here. We're kind of doing this over here. Like our team meets. If you just walk around Cheryl Mart, any given day, you're going to see, like, four people in a room talking about something, whether it's elementary, secondary. It's the teamwork that happens there. And we want to make sure that we're getting teachers in on that as well without pulling them out of classes all the time. But that is a thing, and I'm excited about the work moving forward. Thank you. Good evening. I am here to provide an update on the World

057Language Department. And I will just say that back in July of 2024, the State Board of Education. Can you introduce Ms. Atkins? Can you introduce yourself, people watching, and they're like, what is that person's name? My Apologies. HELEN Atkins, Director of Multilingual Learners, Dual language and World Language. And so I'm here to kind of share updates about world language. Back in. Excuse me. July of 2024, the state board of Education approved new standard quality course of study for world language and to be implemented this year. And so it was kind of a large shift. If you're of a certain age, that is my age, you probably remember verb conjugations, a lot of rote memorization, and a lot of grammar. So world language has thankfully shifted a bit. And so the more updated focus has been

058around real world applications. And so we've spent the past year transitioning and unpacking standards, revising lesson plans, revising assessments such that they are more focused on these real world applications. In terms of highlights. I'd like to share that in 2425. And that's. I don't know how to get. That's okay. In 2425, we had 340, 40 students who earned the global Language endorsement, which is the North Carolina seal of biliteracy, Encompassed six languages being Chinese, French, German, Latin, Spanish, and French. And 189 of those students earned the GLE in Spanish. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there is a national labor exam each year, April of each year, and 100,000 students across the country participate. Chapel Hill Carrboro city schools had 69 participate this past April. And I'm happy to report that we had

05941 students receive a medal, 14 were gold medals, and 9 were silver. My name is Jonathan Hamill, and I'm the arts coordinator here for the district. Last year, we installed some new standards for our all of the arts. The standards are supposed to be updated every five to eight years. The last time the art standards were updated was 2010, especially after Covid. We noticed that a lot of things, especially engagement in the arts, had fallen. So we wanted to realign our standards. They align more with our national standards, and this really assists our transplant, our transplant students and families. So the folks who are coming in and who are leaving Chapel Hill, it helps them to adjust easier. It encourages collaboration with all arts disciplines, and it adds administrators and more. More. I'm sorry, it

060aids administrators and a more valid observation. What I mean by that is each subject had basically four or five standards. Now every single arts has just four, and they're the same four. And it's. What do we want artists to do? We want them to connect, create, present, and respond. So everyone has it. Whether you go into a theater class or whether you go into a music class. It's all Connect, Create, Present and Respond. So last year NCDPI provided professional learning and webinars and CHCCS Arts. We participated in all of those. So we had a framework webinar in September 17, the Connect webinar was October 3, the Create webinar was November 7, the Present webinar was December 12, and the Response webinar was January 9. These webinars are on demand and are available at any time

061for CEUs. So if a teacher was not able to make it, they can check it out at their leisure. Additional training that we used were and that we had was not only with our standards, but we were going into the 4x4. So we wanted to make sure that we taught our teachers how to implement the new standards while implementing a 4x4 schedule. So in February 10, CHCCS hosted a registration and scheduling workshop for secondary school counselors and secondary visual and performing arts teachers co led by the CHCCS arts coordinator, myself and director of School Counseling Rebecca Atkins and NCDPI art specialists. And we recorded that and we have the presentation and we put that in a certain spot in the realm of music. We hosted a training with Brian Myers and that's the band director

062and fine arts lead of Green Level High School on successfully implementing secondary music instruction in a 4x4 block schedule. And we did that virtually and we recorded that as well. In the visual arts realm. A lot of our visual arts teachers have taught in the 4x4, so we did PLC's highlight and highlighted strategies from teachers with prior block experience, focusing on lesson plans, classroom management and pacing. And we created that in a video that was virtual as well. And we basically all of the resources that we had, we created a hub for everybody that's so if any teacher has a question about 4x4 about scheduling, about the new art standards, it's all in a hub available for them if they need that. Some key accomplishments that we were able to do last year was we

063provided content specific professional development for all arts teachers K through 12. We awarded our first 20 North Carolina arts proficiency endorsement this past June. Carrboro High School had eight, East Chapel Hill had eight and Chapel Hill High School had four. We strengthened our community partnerships with over 10 community associations. Our visions art show is getting larger every year and we've collaborated with cte, especially the CTE Culinary Arts at East Chapel Hill where they provide snacks for our parents and our students. We also brought back the All City Orchestra and All City Chorus. Those events were they were gone since COVID And so we are able to bring the. And had about 500 parents and students at East Chapel Hill. And it was a really great event. We also received $88,646 worth of grants from various

064local organizations and the public school foundations. Is there any questions or comments about the arts. Board members? Questions? Comments about world languages or the arts? I want to say thank you for bringing back the choir and the choruses and especially when we had the combination between east and Orange. And I highlight that because for, so many people that were worried about how the arts were going to be survived, four by four. Orange High School was already four by four. And here they were standing on that stage doing a beautiful job with our students from our district. And you couldn't look at one and say, you're standard, you're four by four. They all did a wonderful job. So, I think that was the best way you could show without having to say anything. And then with

065you letting us know that you have all these items in the hub, these resources that teachers can go to, I think that helps counter when we have young people that are saying, my teacher said all they got was 30 minutes of the PLC to be able to do block. So, I appreciate you telling us that too, because that is tangible. We know where they can go and we know that that resource is available to all of us or all of them, because you just showed us how the window where. So, I thank you for all of that. Thank you. She took your -- Anybody else? Okay, Ms. Atkins, thank you. I know you went and took your seat but. I wasn't sure one of the instructions. We didn't know either. So, we appreciate both you

066and the work you've done. Thank you so much. Good evening. I'm Tammy Eddins, Director of Elementary Humanities. I'm here to talk about the English Language Arts standards rollout. So, late last fall, the Department of Public Instruction introduced draft one of our K12 English Language Arts standards. We anticipate the release of Draft 3 any day now, which will be our final opportunity for feedback and before they will be finalized in December. Once the standards are released and finalized, we will begin working with teacher teams to edit our curriculum documents and vet curriculum. Implementation will be the 26, 27 school year for these new standards. One point of pride through all of this is we have remained within the top three districts for submitting teacher feedback surveys on these standards. Hold on. Yes. Questions about ELA. So,

067this would be a good quick moment to say these are the standards. Yes. And then we need talk a little bit about, just real quickly, curriculum. Our curriculum development, how that relates to standards. Because I think a lot of times people get confused with that. Yeah. So, there are five pillars of reading instruction identified by Science of Reading Research. That includes phonics and phonemic awareness, comprehension, fluency and vocabulary. And so in terms of curricular materials, as you can imagine, there is no one gold standard to teach all of those things. So, currently I can just give you an example in elementary school, because that's sort of my wheelhouse. So, we use foundations to help us teach phonics in a very systematic, explicit and multi sensory way. We use Heggerty to help build phonological and phonemic

068awareness of sounds. Just oral manipulations of sounds, no letters. And then to teach comprehension and fluency, we use many things, but mostly one of our resources is American Reading Company units. We have two units largely based in fiction, and then two units are largely based in nonfiction in which our students are reading in those genres and also writing in those genres. So, these are just resources that help us teach the standards. Right. And so, it'll help us address our foundational reading skills, our comprehension skills, literacy skills and our writing skills. Great. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. Alright, so just kind of wrapped up and I kind of did this. The last one was up. Just a reminder that like a strong, valid curriculum for us is a value statement. As we have the opportunity to

069go through these standards updates and we're building that curriculum out, it really sets the standard for what we are doing as a district. Again, you know, equities are the forefront of our decisions. And these strategic adoptions allow us to really dig deep. It allows us to, you know, the state does allow us to take some time once we have some of the standards released again, our teams are chefs and have created some fantastic, repeatable recipes. We just have to make sure that we're doing it. And again, it requires a commitment. So, I, you know, I know it was especially hard last year in a much larger budget crunch to adopt science standards. So, I, again, thank you all for that. And I come back to say, like, we need it again, as we get, as

070we move forward. I hope that we've demonstrated the fact that, like, we can provide, you know, what's needed for our students. We also did the science curriculum by really looking at what do students need. Some of the easiest adoptions would have been, like, going with other companies that said, like, all right, well, we have this online resource that has all the things on there and the kids will be on a computer frequently. And we said we want our kids engaged, hands on. That also was a lot more expensive. We are going into this really looking at things from a financial lens, but then also making sure that it's what our kids need moving forward. So, again, that financial commitment's there. It requires us to be very strategic as we're moving forward. And as Dr. Trice

071has shared many times before, like, we move together. So, that adaptive mindset means that, you know, it's not just we do things together, we move forward together. We have to make sure that we're doing that moving forward. So, again, thank you to the board, community, and districts for the trust that we have. And we will jump into just a couple more small things, and then we'll get around. So, I'm just supporting some of the things that are supporting our teaching and learning. So, our professional learning plan and partnerships. What we're doing with this is ensuring that we're meeting educators where they are. That's providing choice for our educators, voice for our educators, and also role specific pathways to help them. Strong onboarding and leadership pipelines, from our beginning teachers to aspiring leaders to make sure

072they are equipped for success. Also data driven and systematic, making sure that we ask people for feedback, making sure that student outcome data allows for that professional learning to take place. And we always say adapt, not adopt when we're looking at programs and also district goals, collaborative structures, professional learning planning teams, also PLCs and PLC time. That is one of our big rocks. And then also making sure that we continue to foster a culture of growth and collaboration. And again, what we're all Here for is direct impact on students, ensuring that we are providing job embedded professional learning and training and also accountability and support for our teachers, for our instructional coaches, for our instructional assistants and leaders. That translates into stronger instruction that will make an even bigger impact on students. Good evening. I'm

073Nicole Walker. I'm the director of MTSS and Academic Programming. I want to give you a quick update with where we are with MTSS and our standard treatment protocol. So, we are in year three of what we're calling our MTSS reboot. We started in year one as Dr. Bales talked about earlier, with creating leadership at each of the schools and and making sure that we had people who understood MTSS and had the abilities to implement it at the school level. Last year we really focused on instruction and intervention with refining our K5 standard treatment protocol and then introducing a standard treatment protocol for 6 through 12 as well. This year we're keeping our same three big rocks and we're really focusing on strengthening the fidelity to our standard treatment protocol. As Dr. Bales said, we cannot

074properly implement Tier 2 and Tier 3 if our Tier 1 instruction isn't strong. So, making sure we have that fidelity at Tier one, then that we are targeting our Tier two and Tier three supports appropriately and also making sure we're expanding our MTSS structure to include a more a gifted lens. When we're looking at data, we can't just look at which students have gaps. We also have to look at which of our students are exceeding expectations and how are we making sure that we're meeting their needs. Part of that we do through our standard treatment protocol. We in our PLC meetings have four questions that we answer. One of those questions is how do we respond when students are experiencing difficulties in learning? And the other question we answer is how can we extend and

075enrich the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? So making sure when we're having those data discussions in our PLCs that we are looking at this through a lens of how are we supporting gaps and and how are we extending for students who have already learned the material. With that, we've made a few changes to our standard treatment protocol this year, having a standard treatment protocol basically helps teachers to answer those questions. But each year we review it to make sure that it is working and to see if there's any changes that need to be made. So, with our K5 math and our K3 reading, we are continuing with the protocols that were implemented last year. With four or five reading, we have added Mclass to identify students with foundational skill gaps and to progress

076monitor the growth of those students. Six, eight reading is continuing with the protocols as well. And nine, 11 reading and math. We have added all 11th grade students to our IXL progress monitoring. Previously we were doing it by course, so we were looking at our students in English 9, 10, 11 and our students in Math 1, 2, 3. Discussing with our admin teams at the schools, they said we need more data on more kids so that we can make sure we're meeting everyone's needs. So, we expanded it beyond course to include all of those grade levels and then for 6 through 11, tier 3 math. We have made a lot of changes with additional supports that I am excited about and Mary's going to share that information with you. Hi, I'm Mary Rogers. I'm director

077of Secondary Math. Glad to be here with you guys. I love how my team has laid all this out and I'm excited to tell you some examples of how this has come into life in our math classrooms and all the way down to the hands of our students. So, thank you for laying that out. Some of our students, like the Tier 3 support classes and our multi language learners, our newcomers, have not received a lot of the curriculum supports that some of our other students have. So, we've been able to reallocate some monies from the curriculum to support those students. This year, for example, we bought a new curriculum called Mindset Mathematics and it's based on big enduring understandings that are going to help fill in the gaps that's going to carry them through all

078their career through secondary math. And it's super focused on the things that they really need to be able to do and understand in order to be successful and access the higher grades in math. So, we've purchase that curriculum for our Tier 3 classes in Middle school and also our sheltered newcomer classes in middle school as well as two high school classes, the Foundations of Math one for newcomers and a new class that we're calling Numeracy with Language to support our students who are coming in with interruptions in their formal educations and we are having a hard time getting them into math 1 on grade level as soon as they get here. And so, this is meant to support them for that. Another way that we are investing in these students is we have contracted with

079two Chapel Hill, Carrboro City Schools teachers to help create this alignment between the new curriculum that we have and the curriculum that we already had, which was Bridges and IXL, to make sure that the teachers have a depth of resources to be able to use to meet the needs, very diverse needs of the students that are in their class. And finally, which started today, which I'm really excited about, was we're bringing that team of teachers across the district together. So, today we met with all teachers who have Sheltered Newcomer classes, and we also met with all teachers who are teaching tier 3 classes in middle school to form these PLTs across the district. We really haven't had that team approach yet. And so, I'm looking forward to aligning the work at all of our secondary

080schools to really hone in on what's working and give those teachers opportunity to work together and collaborate and really, you know, the scope and sequence has been developed. But, like, how do we sure that that's a live living document that is responsive to the students that are in our rooms? Excited to tell you all about that. Excited to tell you about how it goes. Barb. I don't know. I have two questions. So, I mean, I know what Sheltered Newcomer is, but maybe just explain that. And then I'll ask myself. So, when students come to this country and they have a certain WIDA score, access score, we want to support them. And so, these classes are just classes with students of that need. So, it's a math class with all students who are speaking another language

081predominantly. So, we have lots of language supports for them. The second one might be for you, Ms. Walker. I'm not sure. So, the things that would trigger Tier 3 interventions in MTSs are pretty similar to what would trigger Child Find under the idea. So could you just talk a little bit about how those things work together? Sure. Absolutely. Of course. Child Find goes above and beyond anything. MTSS cannot stop Child Find. So, with Child Find, if you don't know basically it is that we. There is a belief that a student has a learning disability and that that learning disability is impacting their performance or their ability to access the curriculum. What MTSS looks at is we're trying to make sure that we're catching students that are just lacking skills, but also that we can identify

082students that have a specific learning disability that we may have missed at some point. So, with Tier one, that's our instruction for all. That's what everyone gets. That's the standards that we adopt, the curriculum that we use. If a student is not growing at the same rate as their peers in Tier one, then we look at that data and we say, this student may need a little bit more support. So, some students get a little bit more support. That often happens in the classroom with their core teacher or with our new Daily Flex Period in high school, it's going to happen there. We have flex periods in middle school. We have, you know, flex times that are called different. So, we have gator time at elementary school or we have dolphin time or different things.

083So, they get a little bit more support in those tier two groups. If a student still is not making academic growth at the rate that we expect, then at that point they may get more specific tier 3 intervention which comes with greater intensity of support as well as a higher frequency. So, often they're getting that five days a week in middle school and in high school, it may be a class that they're in, a reading support class or a math support class. If they are still not growing with intensive support, that's when we begin to suspect that there may be a learning disability. And at that point, the MTSS team can refer a student and their family for an evaluation to look at child find and say we have a suspicion of a disability. They

084have not responded to intervention in the way that we would expect and we begin that process at that time. But child fine can also happen at any point that there is a suspicion of a disability. Okay, I have a, I think a multi phased question that can be for whoever wants to try to jump in here. I will start by saying I know that nothing can be finished that isn't started and I'm a big proponent of us and not continuing to restart and sticking with the process. But I do have a question about. I heard you mention that going to our AVID style of teaching across the board, which I think is excellent, will help. And I heard you specifically say, hopefully all students and multi language learners will definitely impact. I'm wondering, have you

085saw any evidence or can you share this evidence as to how it's helping our black students that have been falling through the cracks consistently and what's being done in terms of social, emotional learning to be able to help bring them along? Because frankly, I can tell you that no student will care what the teacher is teaching until that student knows that the teacher cares. So, I'm wondering how are we addressing that in terms of with those particular students that look like me who have been here all the time, they may not be new to our country, but they are definitely falling behind. Well, I'm not saying they've fallen, but they have been left behind for so long. What are we doing to make sure that we're putting things in place for them to help being

086caught up as we're helping bring other students along the way? Do you want to answer that, Dr. Bales. So I would say one, in all of our curriculum development, there is an SEL component to that that is integrated into each, you know, a daily lesson plan, all those different things. 1000% agree with you that any curriculum we have is really going to boil down to, you know, what's the implementation look like? You know, is it consistent? You know, if again, if we have the right recipe, is it actually happening in class? And that's where, our accountability and support for teachers, for building leaders really comes into place. And it comes into our walkthroughs. And I'll be honest, like going through and being very intentional of, okay, you know, we know that, you know, these students,

087you know, our district community may have traditionally left this group of students and pinpoint, let's go look at like these three students classrooms. What's the experience for those kids in those classes? And is it different than what it is in another space? Again, when we're aligning all these pieces, like it shouldn't look and feel different for our students, but being very honest and transparent of when we see these things, we have to address them, come up with solutions. And if we are all in a circle and then we have two students of color that are off to the side and they're not being addressed like, okay, what's happening? Amazing work may be happening in the circle, but they're not part of that. And continuing to have that conversation, I'll be honest, as a former principal,

088that's like one of your main roles is going into those spaces and saying, okay, if I don't see that, how can I support that teacher? And in all honesty too, making sure that, you know the teachers in your buildings that are rock stars and making sure that they're not always with, you know, your advanced class or this group, but you're spreading that out. Like, if you've got amazing teachers, like as a principal, you've got to put your money or mouth as in, those teachers need to be teaching students who may need a little bit of a different approach and it shouldn't be something. And that's where building that strong tier one really builds into. Okay, tier one is the solution. It's not the student's fault. And I'm going to put them in tier two and

089tier three. When it's a relational issue, it's not, you know, that student's issue. It's something that we need to fix on our own end. And if I could jump in as well, because I think our curriculum audit has been mentioned a couple of times as well. And I can't remember the exact percentage, but our consultants took note of how many classrooms focused on just whole group instruction. And so when I think about, you know, AVID and the work that we're proposing, it's really special because curriculum is what we teach. When you think about avid, it's how we teach and really opening up classrooms so that, you know, students can express their thinking, their knowledge in different ways. But when Dr. Bales talks about common language, it's also common practice. And it's fair to our teachers

090because we're going to spend time helping them kind of understand what this common language and practice is all about. So, it's not just curriculum on the paper, which is good. But if you don't have the type of instruction that will bring that curriculum to life, then you really don't have anything. And so I really see this as the next iteration of, you know, moving our work around curriculum to a higher level. And I know you asked specifically, you know, about black students, but what I believe is that this is exactly what we need. Because when it's when classroom instruction is not aligned or you have PLCs that aren't using the same practices, if you have a lot of resources coming up, you probably won't be too much impacted. But if we are consistent in our

091strategies and the opportunities that we provide in our classrooms, achievement has to go up. And I think there's a lot of research that suggests that. So, I'm really excited about the move to, you know, how we teach and having a focus on that, you know, K12 is really exciting. Yeah. Thank you so much for all of this. It's sort of a. I was just taking it all in, listening. It's really helpful to get this kind of an overview. Two things I wanted to ask about. One is more straightforward. If you could describe a little bit more specifics about the ATLAS program. I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about that. Specifically, you mentioned that we're readopting it after not using it. So, how does it compare to what we were using and kind

092of what does it look like in a practical sense? Right. Oh, I'm sorry. You can go ahead. Maybe I should. You can go ahead. Well, I just, I jump in because this is a platform that has been in the district before, like I mentioned, but essentially it's just a one stop shop for all curriculum resources that teachers would have access to. And so, I'll give you an example. If I'm a new teacher that was just hired a month ago. I don't have this wealth of experience of resources that I've built up over the years. Typically you've had to lean on, you know, veteran teachers or, you know, your PLC teachers to receive materials, which is okay. But you know, that's not a systemized way of making sure that all of our teachers have access to

093all of our resources, our most current resources at any given point. And so Atlas is a platform that just puts our curriculum guides, our curriculum maps, you know, assessments, all in one place. I think the benefit also is that it can also be a platform for parents to see, well, what is my kid required to learn in the third grade? I've been a parent for a very long time in this district and I don't know that I've ever had access to that. But this is a more explicit way to say from August to June, this is what your child will be learning. And, and essentially, given some of our MTSS work, if a child begins to experience difficulty in a particular area, it might even outline how they're able to receive support. So, at the

094end of the day, it is just a one stop shop, a platform that you log into and you have access to your curriculum, like if I'm a third grade teacher, but you also have access to, you know, the fourth grade, the fifth grade or below. Currently what happens is we have a number of Google Docs that house our curriculum, which is okay, but let's say if you're in high school and you're teaching English, but you want to focus on a particular topic and you might want to partner with the arts teacher, you know, with a platform like Atlas, you can Google in, you can type in topics to see what resources are available within the district, what standards you might collaborate on. So, it also brings a level of collaboration that we wouldn't have if

095you're just opening a Google Doc and you can't really query it, there's also metrics that it keeps for. So, if I want to see, you know, how many lesson plans did we execute on the teaching of, I don't know, fractions. And we log in and as an administrator I see, well, only 50% of my classroom teachers taught that, then that's. A principal has to respond to that. And if we're using the platform to kind of outline, you know, our daily practices, you know, determining whether we're actually implementing the curriculum, you can't do that in a Google Doc. You can do it in a platform that is more current and to date in terms of what our teachers are teaching and it's an accountability piece as well, because as a parent you can say, well, it's

096November. This is what we say, that our kids are learning. Are we actually seeing that in our classroom? So, yeah, I think it'll take some getting used to. It was well received in the past. I'm not sure why we got away from it, but it was a tool that we used to make sure that our curriculum was accessible. If you read our audit, that's one area that we really got dinged on is just, it's just not accessible. If I leave the district and a Google Doc belongs to me and there's a whole fight you have to kind of go through to make sure others have access to it. So, it just democratizes our curriculum for parents and teachers and central office staff. That's the way I would put it. Thank you. That was helpful. And

097then the other question that I had was sort of, how does all of this really relate to students with disabilities? We know in our district that most students with disabilities are in the general ed classroom. It's a fairly small percentage that are in adapted curriculum. And so I'm curious to sort of understand, like I appreciate the MTSS framework because that, you know, up to a certain point that covers that. But once you get into IEPs and kids who have more substantial, like whether it's cognitive delays or, you know, there's a lot of different things that they could have. But I just worry sometimes that all of this is great for kids who kind of are between, you know, 1 and 8, but 9 and tens are sort of getting lost. So, just maybe how this

098applies to students with disabilities in a more specific way. Yeah, so I will say like all of this, like we brought in our EC team to look at and the thing that I will say just, I know they're not here necessarily talk about it, but the thing they're most excited about is the fact that if we're looking at Avid, it's research based best practices. It's not what I think may work for some of my students, but what actually works for most students and what's going to work for, you know, when we say most, like that's where our tier one really comes into play. Like there is, if you are a student that has some special needs, you may need some different supports and that's where, you know, your IP comes in and all those different

099things. But for our EC staff, it's really that research based best practices they've been searching too. Like, what do we land on? So it's not just like, okay, well, I have an EC teacher in the classroom. They are the ones that are going to provide the support. But how do we kind of speak the same language in terms of I'm the English teacher in the classroom. We're providing this strategy. Our EC support may be able to scaffold it a little bit and say, okay, let's look at how we may be able to do this a little different. But that's where that plc, that collaboration comes into play. Like, you have to have the time to be able to sit down and think about, I know I have this student in my class. They're gonna need

100a little different support, talk about what that looks like and really being able to dive into that. I'm excited about the 4x4 because you do have an opportunity to have an 80 minute block. And I know that means it's your entire planning for the day. But if we're doing that once a week with fidelity, it does give that opportunity, as long as everybody's at that table, to really come in and talk about how are we supporting this group of kids or this student and really using some of those best practices and tweaking them as we see best fit with atlas. You know, that may be another opportunity to store some of those notes in there. Like, all right, this has really worked for these students. We have amazing teachers who've got tons of skills and

101I would love just to be able to take everything out of the brain and be able to put them in a pot for people to use. And ATLAS is a way for us to do that. K12 and being able to really share that out. I think it's going to be vital for us to make the gains on scores, but ultimately making sure that we're giving students what they need in the classroom. Anybody else? I guess you've got a little more to do. I'm going to drive home. All right, so, because we know that this is an extremely long document full of acronyms, which I think we probably have spelled out most of the way. But there are of course, sometimes that maybe not. We really wanted to narrow that down to a 10 page document.

102This is the first attempt. So, I will just say parents out there that are watching, and I will remind parents later on, please give us feedback on this. Is this valuable? But we really tried to narrow down that huge document into a 10 page. Why does this matter to me as a parent? Because in all honesty, we're trying to have that transparency in what we're doing. Having a partnership at home, make sure they're providing proactive student supports. Our teachers as well. I'm not going to expect them to go through all 104 pages. They've got little bits of it. You know, we've got to make sure that we're supporting our teachers. When our teachers have a curriculum, they have the resources they need and they're aligned, that builds stronger classrooms across our district. And again, you

103know, just making sure that we're being very clear in what we are actually doing. I will say I've been in this district for 20 years, and sometimes I've been like, I know exactly what we're doing. Other time, like, I kind of think. I know. And I really think it's important for us to be able to sing from the same sheet music as Jonathan Hamill would tell me. But being able to really navigate this together as we move forward. And as always, you know, having that commitment to equity and joyful learning as we move forward. I know I have questions here, but I would be remiss if I did not just shout out, we have our cheerleaders back here. Scarlett Steiner, our athletics director, who, if you ever just need to talk to anybody about anything,

104she's your person. Rebecca Atkins, who's gonna make sure that everyone is in line and we're in a good space. But she's been a great addition to our team. Michael woods, who is doing amazing things with our CTE as a CTE director, really thinking outside the box. And we have some great ideas that of course make lots of money, but we'll be able to share with you as we move forward. And then Kate Kennedy, who is, you know, leading solar AVID work. But then also, you know, whenever we do any of this, always ask, all right, well, what does that look for a student that already gets it? You'll see that there's been a lot of changes in the curriculums planner for students that, you know, already understand it. So, how are we using that MTSS

105lens to really strengthen and grow all of our students with that growth lens? So I will open up for questions and feel free to call anybody else. Tell them to come back up because I've been up like seven times now. Thank you, Dr. Bales. Board members, are there additional questions, comments, closing comments you wanted to make about the presentation? People seem pretty satisfied with. There've been a lot of questions tonight, a lot of information, and we certainly appreciate it. And I don't know how to say that more sincerely than I know the board appreciates it. We've talked a lot about our curriculum needs and our instructional program. And this really is the heart of what we do. Without a strong core, then there's not much to build on. So, you know, we appreciate all the

106work that went into it. Dr. Trice, I wanted to direct one just final question to you or Dr. Bales. After the professional knowledge development presentation last week, we got some questions about the role of technology and you and I talked about it and it sort of tipped you that you might make a comment or two about how you're going to deal with that whole issue that is just keeps coming towards us these days just so people will know there is a, there's a connection. But it wasn't for tonight. Right? So, as we've said before, like this is part of our curriculum audit. You know, we wanted to, you know, every year we, and we'll have, we'll vote to actually approve the curriculum management plan. This is a piece that we look at every year but

107for our curriculum audit. You know another piece that they do talk about is in terms of our technology and you know, what are we doing? Looking forward to that. As we stated before, we haven't had a strong core in terms of our curriculum and this allows us to really take that time to do that and not really lean on our supplemental resources, which are your really easy, quick fix. Like, oh, this really looks like it might be something interesting. Here's this program that we could have for students and it's a technology program as evidenced with our science rollout. We're really looking at how do we use technology appropriately and use it when it's appropriate for our learning. So, like we shared too, we're convening a group to help develop a digital learning plan, which as

108we said before too, the October 2 board meeting will come back and share a little bit more about the curriculum audit and, you know, a wider scope of what that has entailed over the last couple of years. But with that too, establishing an advisor group to help shape the digital learning plan with stakeholders, a lot more of that information will come in October. I also think bringing back the technology advisory committee and being able to have stakeholders on a team that are able to just share feedback, whether that's teachers, parents, and I'll hand over Dr. Trice if he's got a couple. So, I thank you for that. So, I think also is the curriculum advisory committee is another committee that I think would help with the technology piece. So, the media and technology advisory committee

109that Dr. Bales mentioned was a group that was established in Our district some time ago, made up of parents, school leaders, there were even students on that advisory committee. But before any major purchases or decisions were made around technology, you know, that group was instrumental in kind of asking the hard questions. What I would say is at that time, technology was looked at as all positive. You couldn't necessarily go wrong in terms of purchasing technology. There were entire districts that were put up on a pedestal because they did one to one, very early. But I think we're in a much different place now where we understand some of the drawbacks that we technology. And so making sure that we have representatives on the media and technology advisory committee would help kind of mitigate and, you

110know, hold us accountable to the type of technology that we're using in the district. I mentioned the curriculum advisory committee that we also had in the past, which was all parents. But again, before any major curriculum adoption took place in the district, each school had representative parent representatives that again, vetted, you know, a lot of the vendors that approached the district for curriculum adoption. And, you know, it wasn't just teachers or our colleagues sitting behind Dr. Bale's, but there was true parent input in terms of, you know, is, are these resources best for our children? Like and so often mentioned, you know, just return to regular order. And I really see that as helping us, you know, deal with the technology issue in our district. Thank you both. Barb. And we're saying technology, but do

111we include generative AI in that umbrella? Oh, absolutely. I mean, and we have to, because many of our ed tech programs, I think there's been an influx of AI use in those platforms. And so that has to be a part of kind of what we looked at. And in our initial meetings that we've had around developing a local technology plan and getting an advisor regroup together, you know, specific, you know, discussions around how do we, you know, make sure we can lean on experts who kind of understand the whole AI, generative AI piece of it. And in fact, I had a conversation earlier this week with representatives from it was the Winston center, who's going to, you know, begin to work with some of our principals on understanding that, but have also agreed to be,

112you know, strategic advisors to our local advisory plan. Like I said, new. You'll hear more about that in October. Just to, you know, I don't want to take too much time, but in October, what we plan to do is give the board a sense of kind of what the plan is that leads up to a local technology plan so we can get feedback from you. Like, what are the Advisory groups. How do we get input? You know, how do we inform the community that this is a thing, you know, are there multiple iterations of the final plan that the community can weigh in on? We just want to have the roadmap very clear for our community before we kind of dig deep into, you know, developing the plan. And so that's what you'll hear in

113October. Okay. I had a comment that I wanted to speak to about your last slide or two. But before that I do want to speak to the technology and say that I can remember when we were looking at whether or not we should have one to one in our lower grades. And I remember speaking to I remember the days when we had the cows, when we had the and they would be in charging and if you had parents who could come in and volunteer, they would push it around and take it to the students and they would share it. And I would just say I can remember an and I would just heed to the district and caution that I can remember hearing students reference how often they weren't given a device at different times.

114So, let's be mindful and think about who may or may not have devices when children are sharing because it's the person in front of that class that's determining who's going to get what device and when. So, it's a positive and it's a negative to having and not having one to one. If you have the one to one and don't use it, that's fine. But you know that when it's time to use it, each child is going to have what they need without a barrier. And that's what's important. If we're going to be looking at equity in education and more importantly, if we're going to be looking at what's justice in education, then I wanted to go on to where you have the new at a glance for families. And I would say that at a

115glance for families, but probably not so much new. But I'm thankful for that. Your bullets that are on why it matters to families. Well, the major reason that these items need to matter or do matter to us and I'm going to quote a person that I know and love dearly because families are the experts of their children. So, that's one why these things matter. And I can say that I can follow along with your first four bullets with the consistency and clarity across the schools, transparency, proactive and all of those things. But I would like to and not necessarily tonight, but as you're going on and pushing this out to the district, entire community to let us know and bring us along the way, how you're going to have the commitment to the equity and

116the joyful learning, how parents are going to know that and how we're going to be able to push that out in order to pull our parents back in to our district. Because there's a disconnect here lately, and that's what I'm hearing from parents. This is not Vicki speaking. This is community speaking to Vicki. And I would definitely like to say that that's something that I'd like to see being improved upon and I'd like to hear more about how we're going to do it and implement that. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. I keep saying okay, but I think this is really okay. Thank you all so much. Yes, thank you all. And do we need to approve? We have a motion to approve the curriculum plan. Yes, can we have a motion to that effect? So moved.

117Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Unanimously. Thank you. Appreciate it, Dr. Bales, Dr. Trice, and appreciate all of you for what you do and for being here tonight. We have one more item tonight, and that is planning for the fall 2025 board retreat. Is this one coming to me? Thank you. So, we're on schedule to board members here for a retreat two days in October, and that's just a month away, Less than a month, really. And I was talking with Dr. Trice about it, and what we'd like to suggest is we move the date back. We have a new board member coming on in December, early December, and possibly move it back as far as to the first month to December after we have a new board, rather

118than try and put something in place and then make a change out. So, that'd be. First item would be, is the board agreeable to just considering, just moving it, and then secondly, a process for looking at some topics that if anybody wanted to get us started on that tonight. But let's look at how are people feeling about. Are you okay with moving. Moving this to date to sometime after December 4th? Yes, Ronnie? Yeah, I think that would be entirely appropriate to give a new board member an opportunity to be part of the discussion. And then in terms of topics, one of the, I had an opportunity to talk to a community member today, and one of the things we talked about was increasing opportunities for the school board to engage with the local councils. And

119so, like, could we invite the mayors and, you know, maybe one or two council members of Chapel Hill and Carrboro councils, and I know, we had talked about more regular engagement with them, like quarterly meetings. I don't know if that's happening, but like, I'd like to have us discuss how we continue to communicate better across our governing bodies. Okay. Other board members? people okay with I'm sort of getting. Yeah, we can move the date. Move in the date. Yes. So we're just, we're so agreeing to move the date then we'll do that. We'll look for some time after the new board members here, Dr. Trice, we can kind of propose a few things, other topics before we close out, just to get us while we're on the topic. Yeah. Well, I just want to bring

120up the return on academic investment. We've been talking about it, but I'd like for us to put something on the calendar so we can start looking at that process. Return on academic investment. We've been talking about it, but I think it's time we actually put a plan in place to, for us to start thinking about how we're going to look at it and direct staff and give staff direction so that we can start hearing from the staff like what they've been working on updates on some of the programs so we can start getting the information. Not necessarily acting, but we have the information. So, if we need to start thinking about decisions with constructing a new school, there's a program or programs in that school. We understand who it's impacting and, and all those things

121too, at the same time. So we're not trying to learn all that stuff like real time. Okay, Anybody else for tonight? Barb? Oh, I'm sorry, Meredith, go ahead. I'm fine with moving it to December. I think that's probably wise. And I was actually going to say what Risa said too. I think the AROI we need to look at some of these programs, programs and really kind of have an open discussion about some of them. So, I would definitely endorse that. And then I don't know if this is necessarily a topic for retreat or not, but one thing, the word innovation keeps coming up and I would love to have an open discussion about what that means practically and what kinds of innovation that we can, whether that means partnerships in the community, with organizations in

122and universities and other things, whether it means programs that are going to give us a better AROI. But just really thinking about what is out there, I keep hearing about these really exciting things happening in districts across the country and I just want to talk about that openly so that we can kind of get feedback from the community and from the leaders in the district on certain things. I know that's broad, but I feel like I haven't gotten into the meat of that as much as I would like to. Great. Oh, this for tonight? These are fine. Yeah, Barbara. So three things. Enrollment, specifically, how to increase it. Specifically how to remove barriers to enrollment. And I'm thinking specifically of students experiencing housing instability, newcomers. And I'd also like to, within that umbrella, talk about

123transfer appeals. Transfer, our transfer policy. My favorite topic. Two, student privacy. And specifically use of students personally identifying information and images in this political climate. Whether we need to be more protective than we have been. And then I'd like us to have a closed session and talk about how we're doing, like interpersonally with each other. We've never done that. And particularly with a new board member. I think that would be good. Everything has been noted. I think that would have to be open session. But it was touching on a topic that I wanted to have too, about the board assessment of our performance. And I think that could get us somewhere. And I think we just have to be courageous and say the things, even if it's in public. You know, we have the opportunity

124to have one to one conversations, but we don't have the opportunity to have full board discussions about those kinds of issues because those aren't topics we can talk about in closed session. That's correct. What if we put the word personnel in front of it? Because board members are not employees. Eva, what day are you out of town? Anybody else? Okay. These are great ideas. And this won't be the only chance for sure. So, to the board, as you think of things, send them our way and we'll start to figure out how to get on topics for the day or days. And the same would go. Dr. Trice, of course. You know, I'm sure you have some thoughts too, on board. So, George, are you thinking about a date or month that we're trying to target

125our retreat? Well, the earliest would be in December sometime. Okay. Because it would be after the new board member is seated. Okay. And so, we could do it in January. Okay. Do you have a thought about that initially? No. No. I mean, I just don't want us to keep like pushing it further and further back. Because before you know it, it'll be June and we'll be trying to. Yeah, it'll be a straight spring, summer. Well, let me just ask now would. Because it'll probably be December, January. Does the board have a, because you know, we get there in December and it's like, oh, we're getting ready for winter break coming up. Things are quieting down. We thought that might end up. We have a brand new board member that that might be a time to

126do it. We're trying to coordinate a month where we don't have four board meetings in three weeks just for everybody's benefit. But would you rather do that or would you rather move into January when we're back at it and we can just look for December dates? Unless somebody says, no, I really want January. So, in December, we only have one board meeting. That's correct. And that's typically, typically we've tried of recent times to keep that board meeting light and just have the swearing in. Very basic agenda. We don't have another board meeting scheduled until January 15th. And it looks like that is also the only meeting in January. Right. So, we're a little, you know. So we were kind of thinking like the December that 10th ish or something, whatever that Tuesday, Wednesday or Wednesday,

127Thursday would be. And we could have topics where day one is on one topic and day two is on a completely different. Like we've done before or maybe three topics in two days or whatever. We typically hold them from like 4:30 till 7 or 3:30 till 7, something like that. Okay, we'll go for December. George, just thinking about. Not the retreat specifically, but as we talk about the new board member, I'm reminded of our handbook. Is there a need to revisit that to see if it needs any updates? And we've also had some preliminary conversations about onboarding, knowing that, you know, we'll have at least we'll have one new board member. And how does that look, you know, moving forward? Okay, so let's just get together and agree on some December dates. And that way

128people can get it on their calendar. Yes. And you know, and at some point, you know, the direction for the board. So, you mentioned academic return on investment between now and whatever that date is. I mean, the administration can be doing some work so that, you know, we're productive in that, in that space as well. Yeah, I think we should put it on our next board meeting as an agenda item and we'll collate some of these topics and then that way we can narrow it down and get on it. Work session that agrees it'll be a work session item. Yeah, yeah. Just for. In two weeks. That way it keeps us moving on it. And George, you may want to. You guys may want to take a look at what when the school board association

129will be doing core in December, because two years ago they did core like right behind people being seated. So, that also kind of can tighten up a schedule and trying to do it in December before you get out of get out for break. Okay, we'll check their days because I know our turnaround was like, was right like the very next week almost. Okay. Anything else about this topic? Okay, this could real quickly then. Are there committee reports Reza from Finance or? No, no reports. We just have our committee meeting next Tuesday, 5:30. Virtual. Student success. We had a wonderful presentation about starting back to school and how things are looking. So, I commend everybody. But I think that's been said here tonight as well. Our next meeting will be the fourth Thursday at 5:30. It'll

130be virtual. Thank you. And Mike was not able to be here tonight. Is there anybody got a committee report or anything they wanted to share tonight? I just wanted to share. Thanks to everybody who made Infinite Campus be good. I think, I mean I think a lot of them are here but I mean it's been so smooth. Thank you Rebecca. Yeah, I think I've heard a lot about is there an amazing amount of work that's been done this far. Incredible amount of work. And we're also kind of working on a future board meeting where we're going to bring some of the those people here so that you know we can just pay tribute and acknowledge the heavy lift that they, they did for us. Meredith? I just wanted to thank all of the staff and

131schools that were so welcoming. I wasn't able to go to all of them but I went to on two separate days. I went to four different schools during the first week of school and I walked around with Dr. Trice and Dr. Griffin and it just was. Was really wonderful to see the back to school energy and I just really appreciated everyone being so open. And the last school that I was able to see, which I think was the last school that Dr. Trice and Dr. Griffin did, they hit all 20 schools during that week was the hospital school. And it was actually my first visit ever to the hospital school. And I have to say the work that they're doing there is remarkable. So, I wanted to give them a special shout out because it

132was just really impactful work that they're having for these kids who have, you know, a whole range of things. But it's such an important institution in our district. And so I'm really grateful I had the opportunity to get to see the work in action. Thanks Meredith. Anybody? Vicki? I would like to share about the orange ribbon cutting for the Orange Partnership for Drug Free Youth here in Orange County. They have a new space that that's in Hillsborough on corporate drive. Orange Partnership is a wonderful collaboration among the county of different organizations. They are doing awesome, awesome work and it was a wonderful ribbon cutting today. Representative Renee Price was there. The mayor from Hillsborough was there. The sheriff was there. There were other some elected officials that were there. A lot of young people. There

133were people who were from different programs doing work to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly that's going on with youth and what they need from us. And I just really wanted to highlight them and what Guyanne Chambliss is doing with this organization. It's a wonderful coalition and I would invite anyone who has the time to go to their website and see what's going on and what they're doing to uplift our young people in keeping them substance free and making sure that their mental wellness is uplifted and highlighted. Thanks, Vicki. Anybody else? And so, hearing nothing, the meeting is adjourned.