001Okay, the meeting is now back in open session. Certainly got quiet all of a sudden. That was a signal. So that takes us to our number item number three, Return to open session. And tonight we're starting off with the NCCAT 2026 Burroughs Welcome Fund Career and Technical Education Award presentation to Patty Berge. If you all want to come forward, don't be shy. Good evening, Superintendent Dr. Rodney Trice and members of the Chapel of the Oil Harbor City Schools Board of Education. My name is Nancy Cross, and I'm with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. And I'm excited to be here tonight. Patty Berge has come forward and on behalf of the North Carolina center for the Advancement of Teaching, it is my privilege to announce that Patty Berge, a medical science teacher at East
002Chapel Hill High School, has been selected as a finalist for the NCAT 2026 Burroughs Welcome Fund North Carolina Career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year award. You brought your fan club. I this recognition highlights Ms. Berge exceptional contributions to CTE instruction and her remarkable impact on the students and community here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro City Schools. I'd like to recognize Jesse Casey, Principal of East Chapel Hill High School, and Mr. Michael Wood, CTE Director for their support of Ms. Berge. The career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year Award was established to celebrate the innovation, leadership, leadership and dedication of CTE educators across North Carolina. This award honors teachers who exemplify the highest standards of excellence in preparing students for both college and career pathways and supporting workforce development. Ms. Berge will be attending
003a week of professional development with her fellow finalists in December where interviews and portfolio review will be conducted by an expert panel of judges from across the state to determine the the next CTE Teacher of the Year. On December 4, NCAT will celebrate all finalists and announce the winner at a recognition event at the Cory Convention center in Greensboro. At NCAT and ncdpi, we are committed to advancing teaching as an art and a profession, and we are thrilled to celebrate Patty Burge as a shining example of this mission. I'd like to recognize Dr. Karen Sumner, Deputy Executive Director of NCAT, and Mr. Bob Gant from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Office of cte. They are here also to join us in honoring Patty Berge. Please join me in congratulating Patti Burge on this outstanding
004achievement. We are pleased to provide you with this certificate recognizing you as an NCAT 2026 Burroughs Welcome Fund North Carolina Career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year finalist. Thank you. I just wanted to thank everybody that I work with, so my colleagues, because obviously we can't do this alone. My principal, Michael, for supporting us with our funding, with support in every way. So I do appreciate that. But mostly that guy over there, my husband. So for 25 years, he's been my backbone, and I appreciate it. I love you. Thank you. Patty Ms. Berge, come back. I want to ask you a question. Yes, sir. So take a deep breath and congratulations. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about how you came to be into medical science and as a teacher. And every time
005I'm in your room, it's like you've got all these arms and legs doing things for things. Yeah. So I started off actually teaching at McDougall Middle School for seven years, and then I transferred over to East Chapel Hill, and I've been there now. So it's 25 I've been teaching total. And I was a biology and earth science teacher. And then I was offered the opportunity to start the CTE BioMed program. So when I started, I was the only biomed teacher. And we have grown it. Now we have four biomed teachers. And it has reinvigorated. I've been teaching it now for 14 years, invigorated everything about teaching. And I. I feel like it's my legacy that I'm leaving, and I'm really proud. The kids are awesome, and we have a great time. Well, I appreciate that
006little background when. When we were. I was talking to Dr. Trice about this, and I hadn't. We hadn't mentioned your name even. And he just said, she is so deserving, just like he was. Just like that. That's the one. Just like that. Thank you. And every time I'm over at East, I don't know what my board colleagues experience is, but Mr. Casey wants to take us to your room. That's all there is to it. Thank you. And even when you tell them I've been there before, we end up in the room, so congratulations. And I think Mr. Jenks has something he wants you to do or get a picture or something here. Thank you for being here tonight to celebrate this outstanding educator. We appreciate Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools for recognizing Patty Burge and
007the NCAT CTE Teacher of the Year program. Thank you so much. Thank you all. And that gets us on to our next item, which is to recognize Hispanic Heritage Month. We have a proclamation to share tonight. And I've asked each board member to take a paragraph and Ms. Jenkins will finish up with two of them. So, Mr. Sharp, we'll start with you. Great. Thank you. Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month also recognizes Latinx Heritage Month is observed nationally from September 15Th through October 15th to honor the histories, cultures and contributions of Hispanic Americans. And whereas the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools community is enriched by students, families and staff whose heritage represents Spanish speaking countries and cultures, bringing a wide diversity of traditions and experiences that strengthen our schools and. Whereas Hispanic Americans have made significant contributions
008to the arts, sciences, public service, business, education and every aspect of American life and their achievements continue to inspire new generations. And whereas we acknowledge the resilience, leadership and cultural wealth of our Hispanic students and families and we affirm our responsibility to dismantle barriers and ensure that every student feels seen, valued and supported in their learning. And whereas Chapel Hill Carver City Schools is dedicated to providing equitable access to high quality educational opportunities, celebrating cultural diversity and fostering inclusive learning environments that reflect and honor the rich heritage of our community. And whereas the Board of Education encourages all students, staff and community members to deepen their understanding of Hispanic history and culture and to honor the many ways Hispanic communities contribute to the strength of our district and to partner with families and organizations to
009build inclusive schools. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools Board of Education does hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th, 2025 as Hispanic Heritage Month in Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools. And we call upon schools and our community to celebrate this month with appropriate programs, activities and reflections that center student voice, affirm cultural identity and honor the contributions of Hispanic Americans. Adopted this 18th day of September 2025. Is there anybody on the board that wanted to add anything? Anybody? Okay, very good. The month is just starting. It's September 18th, and we'll have some time. I know that these are difficult times for parts of our immigrant community, and we're all recognizing that and reaching out to every corner of our community for support and affirmation. And I just wanted to
010acknowledge that. And with that said, we will move on to the next item, which is public comment. And nobody has signed up for public comment tonight. Is there anybody in the audience who did want to make public comment? Ms. Hamel, I'm not going to read the preamble since you've done this before, but welcome. Good evening. My name is Carrie Hamel and I'm here to speak on the discussion and action segment and ask that there be more information provided to the public regularly. I'd first like to thank the 2030 TOSA Task Force, who's put a lot of thought into what sort of public information can give us more confidence that a public school district is running well ethically and will be around for a long time. I would like to hear today, what is the lowest
011cash point, days, cash amount drawn, an average daily balance separating capital from operating and the actual student enrollment this month, and then moving forward, posting that publicly every month. It's my understanding that perhaps the school district is asking the county taxpayers to once again provide a cash advance. If that has happened, what is that amount and why? Also, in terms of where we are financially, what has been the impact of the reduction in force for the folks who were terminated? What was that total number and what's the total number now of people who also vacated those positions permanently? As for individuals who were transferred, forced to transfer to a different position, what was that total number, and how many of them do and do not remain Today? I believe you may recall that I asked
012that there be, moving forward any RIF be an advance notice of multiple months that happens in the private sector, but does not in the public. And then also, if you could please describe in the financial section what is the status of the travel ban, what travel has occurred by central office executives, what has been the savings and what has been the cost for the travel that has happened? Thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Hamill, is there anybody else in the audience that wanted to speak tonight? Okay. See, nobody will move on to our next item, which is consent agenda. The chair requests the motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved. And seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And that brings us to
013item six on the agenda, which is discussion and action. And the first item tonight, 6A, is recommendation of the beginning Teacher Support plan. Good evening. Hi, I'm Danielle Sutton. I'm the executive Director for Professional Learning and Development, and I am here representing the Human Resource Division with Chief Harris. We are going to. I'm going to go to this slide and then go back again. I'm Danielle Sutton. I am joined by Dana McCallum, who is our secondary lead district mentor and estimate ORR, who is our elementary lead district mentor. And so we are here to seek approval for our revamped Beginning Teacher Support Plan. It is a required plan, required by State Board Policy TCED016. The last iteration of the plan was published in 2020. It is required. It's a required Program and a required plan.
014And so since that, we have updated some very basic things, changed language, incorporated some additional requirements for mentors. We also. One of the mild tweaks was Dana and Esther's position used to be peer assistant consultants. So like PAC teachers, now they are district lead mentors. So just making that change in the plan. And so all of those things are required to be updated periodically. The plan process is that we send it to DPI first, and we have the beginning teacher ref there, approve the plan, and then we bring it before the board for final approval. So we've been through all of those steps and several drafts. And so here we are tonight to present our plan and tell you a little bit about our program. So the majority of this will be centered around our
015BTs, our beginning teachers, who are individuals, pre K through 12 teachers who are in their first three years of teaching. And so our plan is centered around, again, the policy that is stipulated by state board policy and some of the components that are required in that. So we are required to have a documented process for identifying who our beginning teachers are. We are required to orient them to their work task within the first two weeks that they first two days that they begin working. We have to train our mentors according to the mentor standards provided by the state, and we have to provide support for our mentors as well as our beginning teachers. And then I also wanted to highlight that we participate in the beginning teacher support peer review process that requires us to
016partner with another LEA in the state. We meet probably quarterly with our LEA partner. We identify goals, strengths, and needs of our program, and then we talk about what are some of the strategies we're going to employ to make our program better each year. So this year we're going to be partnering with Johnson county schools, which is exciting. Our plan was created in collaboration with several divisions, and we'll talk about some of that collaboration throughout. One of the big things that we do in our beginning teacher support program is we support our beginning teachers through the licensure process. And so before hire, we determine who BTS are. We vet their requirements, we look at their educational background, their work experience, experience. We just honored a CTE teacher. So we do have several teachers who come
017in with work experience, but maybe didn't go through a formal teacher of ed program. So we sort of figure out what components they will be would need in order to service teachers in our district. All teachers have to be licensed as a requirement, and there are different pathways to licensure. So we collaborate with our director of compliance to make sure that all of the teachers coming in are licensed teachers. And at some point they conclude at year three where their license is converted to an initial license and they are finished with the beginning teacher program. So just a little bit about what our numbers look like this year. So currently this data was set up at the very start of the year. We had 85 beginning teachers. Just this week we are going to have
018three more. So that's exciting. Just some things we wanted to highlight in regards to the work that we're doing with beginning teachers is that they come in with a lot of different backgrounds. So we have some of our teachers who come in who have been trained and have been in beginning teacher who have been in a teaching program. So they did student teaching, they have experience doing that. They had a formal training in that. But then we have some teachers who have different training, so on the job training, various degrees. And so those teachers are working towards getting that piece with working with K12 students. So those will be our alternative pathway teachers who could be on a variety of licenses that Dr. Sutton mentioned earlier. And so when you look at our data that
019we have, if we add in our new teachers this week, we are kind of right at 5050 with alternative pathway teachers and traditional pathway teachers. And that's exciting because everybody brings something different for our students. But what that also means is that we have to be strategic about the support that we provide for these teachers so that we can help them to be successful and stay in the profession. A little bit about induction. Induction is a required component as a part of our program. And so we host a three day professional learning event. You've probably heard of NTO in recent years we've revamped it a little bit. So it used to just be for novice teachers. We now incorporate new to district with experience and novice teachers. And the event covers everything from policy, state
020and local, which is a requirement, of course, the instructional component. So we go over content curriculum. A lot of that work is done with the support of other divisions. So we collaborate very, very closely with IC, have them come in, we break them into small groups according to their classroom content area and they get intensive training on everything from pacing, guides, content curriculum, whatever they need to be able to be ready to go into the classroom. We also host a community resource fair on day two and that is when we invite our new to district staff in. We have a host of community vendors like the credit union comes out, the public library comes out. This year we hosted community outside community vendors. But we also had this room set up with in house vendors
021finance, had a table if they needed to come by and make sure that their direct deposit was set up. We had Katie Cobb, who is our compliance director, come and set up a table if they needed to make sure their licensure was set up. And that was really exciting. And so it was a really nice welcome into our district. Dr. Trice recorded a nice welcome message for all of our new staff and it was a really nice event. During NTO we also model a lot of best practices, teach them a lot of AVID strategies, how to use graphic organizers. All of that is done and modeled for them during NTO. And again, unique to our district, we include new staff. A lot of districts are not able to do that, but we've been really fortunate
022to be able to include our new staff to that. One of the other requirements at the state level is to provide pre service for any teacher who is on a residency or emergency license. We currently have about 42 teacher on residency right now and so they are required to have 10 days of pre service. It is much more. It works out a lot easier when they're hired before the school year starts. If they are hired after the first day of school, then that is when Dana and Esther create individualized plans for them. They collaborate with all the different divisions and they come up with some intensive training before teachers are allowed to go into the classroom and work with students. All right, so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about mentor recruitment
023and training. So the recruitment process has evolved into an all call, so to speak. Prior to Dr. Sutton, Dana and myself coming on, it was more of an in house kind of thing where administrators would pick people from their school. But in order to be, in our opinion, a little bit more equitable in the selection process. We have advertised and folks have expressed the interest and once they've done that, they can come and join us at one of our mentor trainings that we provide throughout the year. And that has worked out really well because we are increasing the number of people who are interested in becoming mentors. And sometimes an administrator doesn't necessarily know that there is an interest from one of their educators. And so after the advertising and training process, we then take
024it to the school level and share with the principal the list of trained mentors that they have and then they select people who they think would best fit in terms of supporting a new teacher to the profession. Unique to us is that we provide a stipend for our mentors and our visits to other Counties has really shed some light on some of the things that are unique to our district. Some folks in other districts have one person per building serving as a mentor, whereas we have one on one service and one on one support. And we also, some, some of us have not some of us, but Dana and I, we provide support in that area as well. You know, we push into schools and we work to create opportunities for teachers to learn in
025areas that, you know, that they need growth in as well. So in terms of mentor recruitment and training, like I said, it was a solicitation. We meet regular. Mentors meet regularly, I'm sorry, with their BT to discuss the progress that they're making. We have a process for documenting that. And we check in with mentors regularly. We have access to a log that they have to document all of their meetings in. And we have mentors who work one on one with BT1s and they meet with them weekly. BT3s. They meet with their mentor monthly. Next slide. So the mentor role in the development of beginning teachers was created. The standards are aligned with the goals that we have for mentors. And these were all created by NCDPI. They are aligned with the teaching standards that we
026have. And mentors are meant to support beginning teachers in demonstrating leadership, establishing a respectful environment for a diverse population of students. Mentors support beginning teachers to facilitate learning. And all of these standards are touched on during our meetings. During our professional development, we reach out to mentors, ask them to fill out a continuum where they then take that continuum and use it to tell us how they want to grow in areas where they feel that they need to strengthen their capacity to mentor beginning teachers in our school districts. They also complete it at the end of the year, and it gives them an opportunity to reflect on the work that they have done with a beginning teacher. In our program, we plan robust professional learning for our mentors. Last year, for example, we started a
027book study. I initiated a book study with mentors at the primary or elementary and secondary level. And we used the book Coaching for Equity as a guide for our work in building our capacity as mentors working with beginning teachers in the district. So this year we have created what we call mentor academy. And our mentor academy again has a list of wonderful robust professional learning opportunities. Some of those are navigating difficult conversations. We know that that's something that comes up quite often with beginning teachers, whether it be with administrators or with members of their plc. We also are providing professional learning on supporting BTS and creating an equitable classroom climate. And again, our professional learn is collaborative. It doesn't all come from me and Dana. It comes from the wealth of skilled people that we
028have here in the district. Another example would be supporting with data analysis so that teachers can actually disaggregate their classroom data and work towards using that data to support their students so that their students can grow. So Esther highlighted a lot about our mentor support. But in addition to that, she and I, we work together in collaboration with various departments in the district. And one of those focus areas is to plan, develop and facilitate professional learning. And this professional learning is to help meet the unique needs of teachers who are just beginning in their careers. Also to meet state guidelines, as well as when we are doing these classroom visits, when we have observations, we return back on the teachers and follow up with them and create professional learning to address some of the things
029that they share with us and some of the things that we observe. And we've also had the opportunity to really specialize our support with them in doing learning walks with teachers in their buildings or oftentimes in different buildings to help them and then also presenting to school administrators different strategies when working with beginning teachers. Also we mentioned about collaborating with different departments and different divisions. So we do that and it creates opportunities to help onboard our teachers. So when Dr. Sutton spoke a little while ago about pre service plans like we reach out to the directors of those departments as those teachers are working under to ensure that they are getting the content specific support that they need so that when they start in this classroom, not on the first day on October, whatever, that
030they are not going into the classroom blind, but they feel prepared. Also I spoke about pre service, but with all this collaboration it allows us to have resources that our teachers can refer back to and it helps us to build teacher capacity on our district initiatives such as our big rocks we have. All right, so just we have some points of pride we wanted to share. So over the years that we've been working together, one big thing that we have really grown in is our processes for things. And so, so Esther already spoke about how we pair mentors. So that is a point of pride. But also working with our director of compensation and compliance, Katie Cobb, we have established a process to ensure that we are not missing any BTs. And also just with
031our HR division as a whole working with staffing, we also have a workflow to make sure that all of our teachers, when they start, receive novice teacher orientation and also they receive that pre service. Another point of pride that we really enjoy is our BT celebration So at the end of every year, we have a culminating celebration for all of our beginning teachers. All the ones, twos and threes come together. You can see the pictures up there. We were at Culbreth Middle School in the science wing and it's just a really good time. We had games. We do have door prizes. Dr. Griffin came and hung out with us at our last VT celebration. It is a really good retention effort. Just to remind beginning teachers that they are supported, celebrate their milestones, they made
032it through their first year, or they are graduating from the BT support program and now are considered veteran teachers. And so it's been really enjoyable and a lot of fun. You all are welcome to join us in the spring when we host our next one. The next piece is about our beginning teachers of the year. One thing we are really excited about is the past three years we have had the Burroughs Welcome North Carolina Teacher of the Year finalists the past three years. And one year we even had the winner up. So we really wanted to highlight, like, the hard work that our teachers are doing and how they're representing Chapel Hill so well. And we're looking forward to our current Chapel Hill Carrboro City School Beginning Teacher of the Year representing us as well.
033All right, we all know teaching is hard work, so we have a BT Mentor Spotlight every month. And again, it's an all call. Anyone who wants to nominate a beginning teacher or a mentor can do that. And we walk the halls of every school that there is a BT or a mentor who is being honored. And we present them with a certificate and we give them some, what do we call it, Swag. We give them a swag bag, we give them an umbrella, we give them a nice little cup, you know, things of that nature. And you know, to see the smiles on people's faces when you go to the school and you share with them, you know, who nominated you, who you know is really into and paying attention to what it is that
034you are, it's a really good feeling for them. And there's a picture there of one of the BTs with actually her mom who came to visit. It was random, it wasn't intentional. And she was able to share that experience with her daughter. And she too was beaming with pride. But yeah, we really enjoy doing that aspect of our work, making sure that people know that they are valued and that we appreciate them and their hard work. The next item is our BTSP support FAQ. It's a resource that we created, I guess about two years ago. It's like a quick One stop shop for anyone who may be new into our district and doesn't totally understand how the Beginning Teacher support program works. If you're a new administrator you can go there and it is organized
035by year of what you types of support and what levels of support we offer holistically for beginning teachers. So that is just there for your reference. This is a picture from our most recent NTO and our theme this year was make your mark and so it's all decorated with pencils and composition book. There is a link there for a video that hopefully you had a chance to look at so you could hear some feedback from our BTs directly from them about their information experience in the Beginning Teacher support program. Thanks to the communication team and Greg for helping us get that video together. Next steps for us. We are in our audit year so we will have a monitoring visit in December. DPI will come out with the team and they'll go through our plan.
036They'll look at all of our files and our records and they will determine how well we've been implementing this program. So we hope to come back at some point and share the results of that audit with you after the audit happens in December. At that time. At this time we are at the end. I'm happy to answer any questions or we're happy to answer any questions you might have about the plan itself or our program work. Thank you Dr. Sutton. Thank you all board members. Questions, comments? Teresa, go ahead. I'm curious. This was not in the presentation but for the I guess the staff members who are. It's not called lateral entry but that's what I remember. Yeah, residency. So after the two years, because they have two one year licenses, how are we looking
037for I guess those staff persons to I guess they have to get their teaching license. Are we converting at a high rate? We are. Shout out to Katie Kap. I know we said her name like a million times but she is more than just salary, placement and compliance. She walks every single person through. She creates an individualized plan for every single person. She keeps up with them. She supports them with resources. If they need study guides, if they whatever they need to get them across that finish line, she does. And so it really is a collaborative effort for all of us. So thanks Katie. I know you're watching. Thank you. How does the Beginning Teacher Support Program look different? If it starts with someone that's been in the classroom but not a certified teacher like
038TAS or things like that in the schools, how differently does that look? It actually looks very similar. We love people that have school experience because that just brings such a rich wealth of experience to the classroom. So, you know, we have our TA to teach program, which is also housed in hr. So sometimes they go that pathway into teaching, or sometimes some of our TAs or classified staff choose to pursue their studies on their own before they eventually apply. And then it looks very similar to someone who's on a permit to teach or emergency or residency, depending on what area they're going into. And then again, wraparound approach. Katie supports them. Dana and Esther support them. This year, we've been going out to schools a lot more and creating cohorts. So Esther has created a
039cohort at Northside Elementary. There are about 10 BTs there, so they're having, like, monthly BT support groups at that school, Carbo Elementary. Ms. Winslow does an amazing job with her cohort there. I just visited Carrboro High School with Dana and Diego Moreno. They did a wonderful support group at that school. So with the shift in the number of alternative licensure teachers that we're having, we're doing a lot more cohort work and encouraging schools to really wrap around and support those teachers. And it's been really great. Great. Thank you. Before you go, the chair does request a motion to approve the district's beginning teacher support plan. So move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much for not only the work you all do, but for
040the information tonight. This is very informative. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. And that brings us to our next item, which is scrolls down 6B. This. We have three items related to the budget and our contracting process. Yeah. Mr. Scott, come up, please. Never need my permission to approach us. I understand. Thank you. Dr. Griffin. Good evening, board members, Superintendent Trice, members of cabinet, and members of the public. Tonight we have three items for the board to consider. These items are typically presented on consent agenda. After going through the finance facilities and operations committee for review, we got into a little bit of discussion about some of this at the finance facilities meeting, and several of the members thought it would be a good idea to bring several of the items forward to discussion
041and action so that one, we could explain the purpose of each of the reports and also give the board and the public ability. Give the board ability to ask questions to add a little more transparency to the public around financial operations. So two of them were requested to be moved during that meeting. And subsequent to that, we had a request from several members to also bring the Vendor payment report forward. So what I'd like to do is kind of give an overview of each report, the purpose of behind the report, and then open it up to board members to ask any questions they may have about each of the reports, culminating with the financial report. I want to spend a little time in that just talking about the results of operations from local current expense
042last year. So to begin, the first report is our vendor and encumbrance report. This report was requested by the board, I believe, in February of 2020 as a way to ensure compliance with board policy 6420 and 6430 with regards to contracting and purchasing at certain dollar amounts requiring superintendent or board level authorization throughout 2020 and then through the subsequent contract review that the board conducted. This report was cleaned up through finance committee, and it's in the form that it is now. This report is presented every month on consent agenda for the board's consideration. And its primary purpose really is to just inform the board and the public of where all our vendors are above 50,000. If you look into 6,420 and 6,430, the superintendent has a responsibility to inform the board of any he's all
043he or she is authorized to contract up to 90,000, but has a reporting requirement above 50,000. So that was really the impetus of the report. So with that, be happy to answer any questions with the report in general. I don't have a question as well. Maybe it's a question as much as some background here. So a number of us on the board, Jonathan, have had discussions off and on about school systems in North Carolina that are experiencing financial stress and problems. And I get asked, and I think a number of my colleagues. It's probably one of the main questions I get asked in the community is. And after our RIF, there's still narratives out there about our budget, our process, our financial situation, etc. And I realized that, you know, the public doesn't have time
044to monitor our board meetings and that Ms. Hamill just put her hand up and said, I do. But you know, it's it. I get that. So when we discuss it here, sometimes I've had to. As I've grown into my role on the board, I've learned that just because we talk about something doesn't mean. Mean the public digests it that way. And so these items tonight that we're talking about are in that context of us as board members trying to do our due diligence, not because we think there's a problem, but we look at these things on consent sometimes. And we say, wow, do we have a mechanism to know that there's actually money in the budget for this item? Somebody we verified that they checked and they signed off on it. And sometimes the answer
045is it's there. And sometimes we don't ask or it's not there. So we either overlook to ask or whatever. And that's really what we're sort of getting at is this isn't based on something happened as much as we're trying to make sure we're doing our due diligence with finance and the budget. So as you speaking and in the weeks and months ahead, be looking to ways to put that information out there publicly all the time so we don't have to have any question. And it's not that there's a question, but that people are curious, like, do you have a double check? All I know about other school districts, what I read in the paper, so I don't necessarily trust that I have information that is actionable of any kind. But when I read some basic
046things aren't occurring, I just go, wow, dude. People ask me, do you guys check that? And well, we do and we don't, depending on what the question is. And so that's really what was behind some of this tonight. So I wanted to kind of set that out there so you can, as you're discussing and presenting things, us too can kind of speak to those big picture questions that come up all the time, if that makes sense. And I probably said more than I know, but. So we need, we do need to. A motion to approve the schedule of vendor payments and encumbrances over $50,000 for the fiscal year ending 2026. And these are as of August 31, 2025. So the chair would request a motion to approve. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded.
047All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. And it passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, so the second item is a fourth quarter budget resolution. Budget amendments to the budget resolution. Excuse me. So for the board's review and the public's awareness, every year the Board of Education adopts a budget. Right now we're running on a continuing spending resolution in light of adopting a budget, which we intend to do very shortly. However, when the board adopts a budget at the beginning of the year, there's a lot of changes over the course of the year that occur to expected expenditures. So once every quarter we come back to the Board of Education and request budget transfers. It's more or less lineup expenditures as to where they're actually occurring, as opposed to where we predicted they would at the beginning
048of the year. You know, a budget is supposed to be a roadmap of your spending for the year. A plan, if you will, not always does that plan, you know, survive first contact with the school year. Things happen, you know, things happen all over the place. And we're also kind of leading an effort in the finance office to get a lot more granular with our assignments of expenses so that our financials accurately reflect how we're spending our money. As every year goes on, we delve deeper and deeper in how we're classifying expenses so that we can report better accurate data to make decisions on. But anyway, as the quarters go on throughout the course of the year, we amend the budget with board approval in order to just kind of keep it in line with
049the financials. And then obviously at the end of the year, we don't want any budget violations when we get our financial report. So typically quarter four, we try and clean this up right up to the point prior to the audit. There may be one or two small budget amendments that will come in as a result of the audit. But at this point in the year, I feel like our financials are pretty much in auditable shape, even though they haven't been audited yet. So we try to bring this now and then we'll follow up with the audit. And again, I'm happy to go through the budget amendments if the board wants, but that's the intent and the purpose of the budget amendments quarterly. Thank you board members. I'm not seeing any questions or comments. So the
050chair would request a motion that we approve the budget amendments as presented for the fourth quarter of FYE 63025. So move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Thank you, sir. Okay, now to the financial statements, which is the best part. So again we report to the board quarterly on our financial position. Typically it's done through finance facilities and operations and goes onto the consent agenda. Those quarterly reports are very important as far as watching percentage of budget spent to actuals, you know, we're a quarter way through the year, we expect to see 25% of the budget spent. So that's the kind of stuff we look at. We look for outliers, not only my staff, but also the committee does so that we can get ahead of trends early throughout
051the course of the year. Regardless of all that though, these are the year end financial statements that we're bringing forward. Tonight. And as I mentioned, they are not audited yet. They're preliminary, but it gives us kind of a snapshot of where we think we're going to end the year. Typically, we don't see a lot of big audit adjustments. So I think these numbers are probably fairly close to what the audit report will reflect. I don't want to spend a lot of time into it, but I know there's been a lot of questions about local funds, local fund balance, results of reduction in force and what, you know, what the years ended up looking like. And then to remind the public and the board that last year we had a less than stellar year locally. I
052think we lost over five million. It might have been six and a half million dollars last year. Is that, is that right or was it six? So that was the impetus for the reduction in force. But anyway, to move past that looking this year, because of the measures we put in with Tier one and Tier two, we always, the district administration always understood that in order to really respect our employees and give a lot of them the time and the off ramp that they needed, we were going to do a lot of the reduction in force through attrition. And because of that, the main goal last year through that was to end the year revenue neutral and local current expense. So that was kind of the target we've been shooting for all year. Pleased to
053report, it looks like based on the numbers that we have now, again, pending any audit adjustments, that we're about $50,000 ahead for the year. I do have a couple revenues that are not recorded in here, so it looks like it may be more than that. You know, it's not a significant amount of money, but it does look like we're going to end the year revenue neutral. That's some good news. It indicates that the ship has started to turn. I think there's a lot more work to do. You know, we've alluded to, you know, fund balance that we've turned around to where we're not burning fund balance, but we're also not building fund balance. There was some talk earlier about cash management cash position. You have to have fund balance to have a cash position. So
054I think there's still much work to do to rebuild. But the fact that right now the local current expense fund is revenue neutral for the year end gives me a lot of encouragement. We're headed in the right direction. Other than that, you know, state and federal or break even, as always with special revenue. So their income matches their expense. We had moderate losses in capital outlet there was moderate losses in child nutrition and community schools. To remind the board and the public, we sought board approval to increase not only meal prices but community school rates for next year. So those were done in anticipation of getting ahead of those losses. So, you know, hopefully we'll have some better numbers to report next year on that. But that's really the financials in a nutshell. Again, the
055entire report is here. I'm happy to answer any questions if anyone has any specific questions as related to the financials. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I do have some specific questions and then some process questions. So in February of last year we did the tier one corrective action plan. And I was just reviewing this and this was alluded to in Ms. Hamel's comment, but most of it was about personnel, like an attrition. But There was a 5% freeze in Lincoln center non personnel and then there was also some travel restrictions. And I guess I did just want to ask about the status of that. Sure. So the 5% reductions are permanent as we built out the budget or we're building out the budget this year. That's 5% is no longer included. Last year we limited travel
056to in state. There was travel out of state with express superintendent permission if the person was representing the district in meaningful way at a conference. There was very little out of state travel. There was some, but nowhere near the magnitude we've seen before moving into this year because we are trending more towards revenue neutral. And we also recognize the importance of staff attending professional conferences. You know, that's where they staff learns about all the things required in education for their each individual, each individual subject area. The superintendent and cabinet in discussions decided to lift that travel ban. However, we do right now have a 25% freeze of all budgets across the district. None personnel, in anticipation of waiting to see what the state does. So staff is free to travel right now out of state.
057However, there's not a significant amount of funding in any of their budgets to travel. So I would think it would have to be a very high priority for someone to take a trip out of state right now. And perhaps like my colleagues, when I read the state audit report of Winston Salem Forsyth county schools, it's very scary. They had a $46 million budget deficit that accumulated over years and the board was implicated. And so it's just so. So I wanted to just go through the findings there of the findings of what they were doing wrong and ask you how we measure up. So the first was that the district didn't adjust its full time equivalent Staffing despite a decrease in the student population. Do we did that? We are doing that. However, tier two and
058tier three. Right. Recognizing that the student population is continuing to fall. So there may be more continued work on our part, not only the administration, but also the board to make some very difficult choices coming up about what that's going to look like. But that's true. When you read that audit report, there's a. A point in which the ADM is going down and the FTE is going up. And that occurred several years ago and that trend never reversed. But you are correct. Tiers 1, 2 and 3 began to address that. And they also used Covid Esser money to pay staff salaries. Yes. We never did that. We never did that. We used Covid money to pay bonuses only. Okay. And the district regularly approved purchase orders that exceeded our budget and did not later revise
059those budgets. So we don't do that. We're required to perform what's called a pre audit and it requires that we have budget available before we pre audit a contract. The majority of our deficit spending again came from personnel costs and reductions in student enrollment over the course of the last few years. Okay. And there was no reconciliation of budgeted and actual revenue and expenditures in a timely manner. Yeah. So again, that's what's done here. Right. That's what we just talked about every quarter. But we're on top of it way beyond that on a day to day basis. Okay. And then they also didn't reassess their Covid bonus payments, but we didn't give any. So we did Covid bonus payments. And really it all kind of. It was a strange time in that actually Winston Salem
060and was one of the first out of the gate with extremely large signing bonuses to recruit and retain that forced all the other districts to not match them, but at least be competitive with them. So we were, you know, by default we had to offer some type of competitive signing bonuses at that time to retain staff or recruit staff. So we did, we did provide quite a bit bonus compensation with COVID dollars. But it seems like they got dinged for not reassessing them perhaps ever. Okay. And then they also, they brought up suspense accounts, which are temporary holding accounts intended for transactions that can't be classified, that they were using them as fund equity or fund balance accounts. I mean, I don't even really understand that. But do you know what that like, can you
061help us understand what that. I do. So as you look at the financials that I presented to you, so this is essentially an income statement. This is going to get deep. Well, not deep but. So it's profit and loss, revenue and income over the course of a year. Okay. So in accounting you have double sided bookkeeping, debits and credits. So you have an income statement which is profit and loss. And you also have a balance sheet which is a state statement of we present it once a year and it's a statement of like cash and liabilities and equity. So your fund balance is on the balance sheet along with your cash and any money borrowed or any money received. Right. So when I, when I'm kind of taking that is suspense accounts that instead of
062expenditures expensing things through the income statement and being reported here against budget and actuals, they were expensing. Well, I'm assuming that there were transactions that were running through the balance sheet and just sitting there not being looked at. So it wouldn't ever be presented against the budget to actual statement. So when they use word suspense it would be like, well I don't know what to do with that. Just put it on the balance sheet and we'll deal with it later. I mean that, that's my assumption. But without being in the seat, it's hard for me to say that, to say for sure. Once a month we, my accounting staff reviews our balance sheet, informally reconciles it out to make sure that we don't have any of that occurring. Okay. And then the last thing is
063that they didn't adequately consider their contracts when making their budget. We just so we try really hard and that's part of this $50,000 and $90,000 report. But we try really hard on all office not to issue a pre audit. I think everybody said all the cabinet members sitting around this table will tell you that if you don't have the budget in your account, you're probably not going to get a pre audit out of my purchasing and contract manager, he's a stickler for the rules and he will send something back in a heartbeat. So we try very, very hard to make sure that the funds are there before we issue a contract. And I mean not that the goal should just be to not have a $46 million deficit, but I mean I think it's just
064helpful to hear about our processes that are. It was unfortunate that that happened. Anymore. Anybody else? Okay, then the chair would request a motion to approve the financial statements for the fourth quarter of fiscal year ending 6/30/2025. So move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scot. Appreciate the information. And that brings us to superintendent's report, interlocal agreement for 2024. Mr. Shirogi, good to see you this evening. Good to see you. So good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Dr. Trice and guests. So I'm here to talk to you tonight in a very brief discussion. This is something we have been talking about for feels like three to four months now, and that is the interlocal agreement that has been discussed by
065county staff, with school district staff of Orange county schools, as well as us in establishing a way in which we can take previous bond projects, previous capital projects where the county has been infusing money into schools, and we can create a very transparent, open process that is a binding document between three elected bodies on how that process will work. So that we're going in eyes wide open, as I've shared in the past. So back on Friday, September 5, right at the end of the day, the county staff provided us with what I'll call the first draft of this interlocal agreement. And this interlocal agreement is a document that they asked us to review and to provide some feedback. And I'm going to talk about that tonight. And they also acknowledged that this draft that they
066sent, it's a first draft. You guys as an elected body are actually seeing your it officially before the county board of commissioners officially have seen it in a public meeting, though I know they've had. They've seen a copy of it. But we wanted to do this because we want to do everything we can to come to a common agreement between the three elected bodies and have this approved, knowing that this is the document that needs to be approved prior to us being able to award our A and E contract for the replacement of Carrboro High School. So we're ready. And I've got some good things to share tonight because there really nothing is a surprise in this document. This document, as I was saying, really, is to encourage a collaborative consultative process for the acquisition,
067the expenditures associated, and is to promote efficiency and transparency with for projects to do their best, to be on time and to remain within budget. And I will say that this interlocal agreement, we just didn't create it. The capital Committee last spring focused on looking at interlocal agreements, and we used the Wake County model, and that's what the county used as a starting point. So we talked with some Wake county staff and talked about the process they had between the schools and the general government. And the committee at the time really thought that that was really where the committee wanted to head as far as moving forward. So some highlights within this agreement. This agreement, it expires June 30th of 2030, which is really tied into the financing plan for the referendum. When you go
068out and sell debt, it creates what's called a core team, which in the document will be called the joint School Facilities core team, but that will consist of county staff ranging from the county manager to the superintendent, as well as senior operations and finance budget staff members. It will not have elected body members within that core team. And again, the goal is to have the adherence to the planning policies that were approved by the Board of Commissioners back in January, which are very straightforward. And it's part of the document tonight where it just talks about things you have to consider when you build a school, be it the land sustainability efficiencies, very 10,000 foot elevation topics. So it's nothing that's really. We would be doing all of it anyway. So it's nothing that's restricting us
069as school district. It talks about communication between boards at least once annually. And what we've suggested is that the joint board meetings that occur twice, that those would be the forums to provide updates on the projects to all three elected bodies at one time, but that at the same time there is opportunities for regular communication to the public within the documents. And that's where I've talked with you previously about using dashboards, presentations, websites. One of the positive things that came out of this is that the county has been talking about possibly managing the dashboard, knowing that all of the funding does go through them. I told the Finance Facilities Operations Committee a few weeks ago that I was pretty excited about that because our concern has always been in managing a dashboard is that could
070become a daily task. And the fact that the bottom line is when the county reimburses the district for the expenditure, that's when the expenditure truly has occurred. So it makes sense, but that's still to be determined. But we are moving in that direction. It does give you as a board the ability to terminate the agreement and you can terminate 60 days after notice is given. You do have to give a reason though. And then obviously there are exceptions to where you're not able to invalidate other existing agreements with relation to any statutory requirements, any titles or deed changes that have to occur in order to get tax reimbursement, things of that nature. And that's really just the legal ease that's there to protect those agreements by statute. So our remarks are that the interlocal Agreement
071is very consistent with what we have discussed in the past. It does establish mutual guidelines. It encourages transparency and asks for updates at various stages of the project and its spending. We agree that the core team that we should meet at least once a quarter and then as needed if there are reasons to come together. But we should meet at least four times a year. And then we also believe that the Board of County Commissioners joint meetings would be a great way to have a forum for sharing of the information so that we're not making meetings upon meetings when for you as elected body, it's tough to get those meetings out there as it is. We did have this reviewed by board counsel as well. And I'm very pleased to say that the two recommendations
072are actually in your attachment this evening. It's called the second draft, and the county has actually taken the changes, which were basically adding the word extend or adding the word extend to using create instead of extend, excuse me, in the first part of the agreement, since we really haven't created one yet. But then also it talks about how the core team should consist solely of professional staff from the three organizations so that there was no confusion that an elected person should be part of that core team. But those revisions have been made. And when you meet with the boards next week, the draft that you see here is the draft that has been posted online on the county side as well. So we're very pleased. They've asked us for feedback from staff. They have honored
073our feedback and they have agreed. So it's been very positive in that respect. And we anticipate that at next week's meeting. And this timeline actually changed because they sent us a second draft yesterday that at that meeting. We hope that everyone agrees from all parties that what's been presented is good and that a timeline could be established. The county has talked about possibly approving it on their end, one of the two meetings they have in October next month. So I think it's either the first or the third Tuesday of next month. My. My recommendation would be that we try to see if you as a board could approve this at your next meeting. If everyone agrees upon it next Thursday, that would be at the October 2nd meeting, you could approve it. Once that's approved,
074then Orange county schools should approve theirs and then they can approve their. The county can approve it in October, October later that month. That would be our recommendation. But with that being said, I just wanted to kind of throw out there. You know, we've talked about milestones within the project. The first milestone that we had was to have an RFQ put out for project management. And I'm very pleased to say that we should be coming back to you within the next board meeting or the meeting immediately following with a recommendation for a project management firm. The approval of the interlocal agreement was the second milestone, and then the third will be the architectural RFQ that is currently out on the street. But hopefully we can bring that back to you immediately following the approval of
075this agreement. So realistically, that could be the last meeting in October or the first meeting in November for the architectural RFQ award. And at the same time, we're kind of concurrently developing our design team committee. We've been working with principal at Carrboro elementary, getting some of his staff to be involved, as well as working with Tharrington Smith, our board counsel, in looking at the documentation and the process that's necessary. So with all that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, sir. Board members, questions, not seeing any, not hearing any. It's an invigorating topic. Thank you. Well, it's a topic of interest to everybody, and it's probably the second most common question I get is when's the school construction going to start? Right behind when do we still have the money
076for it? But yeah, that's my question, too. All right, that was for information, so no action was necessary. That'll move us on to school transportation update. And I see Dr. Stewart jumping up and I know Mr. Olson's here tonight and welcome, sirs. Thank you, Dr. Griffin. Good evening, board members, Dr. Trice, colleagues, and the public. This also was a topic that we took to our FFOC committee, and we were asked to bring this forward to inform the full board and the public about the status of trans transportation as we begin a new year. Glad to be joined tonight by Mr. Austin, our outstanding director of transportation. We wanted to talk about a few things tonight and we will move quickly through this and then take any questions. There are two segments of transportation that we
077wanted to focus on. First was the impact of Infinite Campus coming in this year. And then we wanted to talk about our transportation's operations as they occur every year. So with Infinite Campus and the rollout, one of the things that we wanted to look at was the timeline and the crunch of the timeline that occurred this year. Usually kindergarten students begin enrolling in March, and that data is then moved over through PowerSchool to transportation at the beginning of July this year. Everything began in mid July, so that data wasn't moved over until the end of July 1st of August, which put our transportation and routing staff kind of in a difficult situation. On top of that, we had online registration occurring. There were over 1100 online registrations that occurred. And I have to give a
078shout out to Dr. Vilwalk, who's not here tonight. She literally, by hand put in over 700. Yes. Applications for transportation. So what we have found with Infinite Campus and one of the major issues is that when data was imported, not all of it came over and sometimes only student names were entered with no information. Also we're at 750 South Merritt Mill Road. Tonight, in Infinite Campus, we had to work through things like the word road. How was it entered into the system? Do we have the entire word? Is it RD? Is it RD. Those simple things kicked all information out of the system for transportation. So it made it very difficult and we wound up doing a lot of things by hand. So there is a household designation within Infinite Campus where siblings and people
079who live in the same house, their information was transferred over. Well, we also found that sometimes only their name was transferred. There was no information. So Mr. Austin and his team, as well as, as Tim McArthur, I have to give him a shout out for all of his hard work that he's done as well with Infinite Campus. They wound up putting a lot of things in my hands. So the danger with Infinite Campus was we didn't know what we did not know. So we've had to take a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails and a lot of one offs that we worked through as quickly as we possibly could on the transportation operations side and the actual depot. We then had some other issues that, that we face this year that we don't
080normally face and some things that came out a little earlier for us. So we had 27 families that were displaced by the July storm. So we found out the week before school began that those families were in two locations. They were actually in two hotels, one of which was actually in Durham. So Mr. Austin and his staff had to work and he will tell you behind the scenes, but not in front of the camera, the pressure that Dr. Stewart put on him to make sure that those students were in school the first day of school and they made that happen. So they had all 27 of them. He actually had to send an activity bus to Durham to pick up those students for the first two weeks. And we're proud to tell the board that
081since then those families have found some permanent housing and he is no longer having to send an activity bus to Durham. So we're just dealing with one residence within Chapel Hill. Also, we have about 60 McKinney Vento students that we started the year with, which is a high number for us. As we began the year, our Alpha list, which is the major list where all of our students that ride the buses are filled in. Usually we transport between 3,800 and 4,000 students a year. Our Alpha list currently has over 6,000 students in it. 6,000 entries. So we're working through with the route updates and we're actually clearing out students that have not ridden the bus thus far. We can't do that until the 10th day of school. So once we get to day 11, we
082begin clearing out the Alpha list. One of the things that Mr. Austin did to help this run a little smoother this year was here, his two TIMSS operators, they're assigned schools. This year they became interchangeable. So they worked together. They worked on both schools. He has one TIMS operator that drives a bus in the afternoon. So that second TIMS operator has been able to go in and assign children. As Dr. Stewart gets an email and he reaches out and says, hey, I need this child put on a bus. Can you get that for me? And they turn that around for me. It's been really helpful to have that individual in the office working with us. Thus far, the phone calls and the emails have now slowed down. Excuse me. Tremendously. And one of the reasons
083that Mr. Austin has said that is because we have a high driver attendance. So I wanted to show you this slide and give you a comparison. So we have 55 morning bus routes and we have 53 morning drivers. We do have two office staff members that are permanent drivers, drivers as well. So that's how he gets to his 100% fill rate in the morning. In the afternoon, we have 49 bus routes because they collapse routes that are not needed. He has 43 full time bus drivers in the evening. I would like to remind the board that we do have five to six district staff that work eight hours, that drive the bus in the morning, but not in the afternoon. So that is a part of that fill rate gap there. I made mention of
084the 60 McKinney Vento students as well as the 27 students that were displaced in the schools that they were located at with our nine office staff members. That also includes our mechanic. So when Mr. Austin says he puts everyone to work, he literally puts everyone to work, including himself. So he will drive in the afternoons or the mornings if needed. So in summation, we've had some issues with the conversion, we are working, working through them. I don't want the board to think that everything has turned up roses and everything has been perfect. It has not been, but it has not been an absolute catastrophe as well. We received a report about a week ago that said that there were about 1100 students that were still looking for transportation. And I responded and said there is
085no way because they would be in my office if I had 1100 students still looking for transportation. So as we worked through it, it was another Infinite Campus glitch. Infinite Campus did not account for students in walk zones. So we have found that we've worked through those things and things are working themselves out. As we work through the alpha list, we have found that our efficiency will pick up so our times will be closer to what we projected and we will continue to do what we can with all of those one alpha. And while I have the microphone in the board, I would like to publicly thank Mr. Austin, his team and all of our bus drivers. Their mornings start about 4am between 4 and 4:30 because they're in the office between 5:30 and 6am
086and they're on buses by 6:15. Their afternoons start between 1:30 and 2 because they're staging for elementary schools and they finish up between 5:30 and 6:00pm so they are people who, they don't sleep a lot and they have forced Dr. Stewart to be with them a few times. So I have true appreciation for them and what they do on a daily basis for our students. So at this time I'll take any questions or feedback from board. Thank you, Dr. Stewart. Meredith, go ahead. Thanks so much for all your hard work on this. I know this is a huge challenge. I can't even imagine the coordination it takes to manage this, this, this task. I wanted to ask about kids getting to school on time. Are we seeing that kind of ironing out now that now
087that you know, the list has been sort of culled a little bit? Yes. So the conversations that Mr. Austin and I are having is early on the first week or first two or three days of school, we had some issues, but we were also bringing in new bus drivers as well. So as our bus drivers have become familiar with their routes, timing has increased as students have declared that they're not riding the bus. The efficiency has picked up. So we have not seen a lot of that. And I keep an eye on the district webpage and those types of things as well. Actually had a situation where a parent had posted something on the district webpage and I was able to reach out to her, and we communicated, and we resolved it quickly. So I've
088put the word out that if they're having continued issues, they can reach out to me. I've kind of made myself the go between because I can feel calls and emails a lot easier than what's going on in transportation because they may all be on buses. So anyone can email me at AD Stewart, and I will make sure that they get a response. And then the last question I had was just about the Here Comes the Bus app. How's that been working? Have you received any reports that people are having difficulty with that? Is it pretty accurate? Thank you so much for that question. The Here Comes the Bus app is working. One of the things that I really would like to point out, when there is a mechanical issue and we have to have a
089substitute bus, it is a programming glitch. Here Comes the Bus will not pick up that secondary bus. So it's only going to pick up your primary bus. And we've had to send messages and let parents know that if your child is on bus number one normally, but now they're going to ride bus number two home. The Here Comes the Bus app is not going to pick up bus two. Okay. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the work that the transportation staff do all the time. I mean, my kids walk, but when they did ride the bus, it was just really great to be able to see the bus driver when we would walk down the stop, pull up, and get them to school on time and everything. So thank you so much for all
090the great work. I think it's the one thing I wanted to make sure. And that's why I asked that we do this every year is like, no year is the same with transportation. And so this year, unfortunately, Infinite Campus wasn't just about, like, what we saw with, like, scheduling and that stuff. It rippled out to transportation, and that's something that I don't think I thought of as a board member, that it would impact this. And then here we are. We started seeing things bubble up. So I appreciate how you guys worked through. We're open to. I saw things where people reached out to me. I was like, hey, talk to Dr. Stewart and Mr. Alston. Here you go. Let them, you know, kind of figure it out, because I don't know what the issue is.
091Right. So. But thank you so much for the work that you do, and hopefully everything will go smoothly, and next year there'll be a different challenge, maybe with less impact. Thank you. I will say to be proactive. One of the things that Mr. Austin and his team are doing, they're reaching out to different departments as well. So yesterday he and his team met with the social workers to look at the process with McKinney Vento students and how we're getting that information routed. We've reached out to Tim McArthur and to PL, our professional learning group. So we want to first have a brainstorming session with some of our data managers on what's the best way to make sure we get information into Infinite Campus and how we can turn those things around. So we're hoping that
092when we open school next year at the Teaching and Learning Conference, that we'll actually have a session for transportation for APs and teachers. So we put our whole process out. I have a couple of comments and a question. The first question. Well, the only question actually is for those who may be streaming and some who may be in the room. I can appreciate that the TIMSS managers are working together, but would you remind everybody what the acronym is? So the plain language for everyone, they will know exactly what you're talking about. Absolutely, ma'am. Thank you. Transportation Information Systems. So our TIMSS operators are individuals that actually take the information from Infinite Campus and build the routes for our students. The bus stops. They go out with Mr. Austin and look at where bus stops are
093located. They use the software to develop pickup times and those types of things. So thank you so much. Thank you. Next, I want to commend you all, for sure, with the movement of our folks who were displaced into the motels in Durham. I know that there are a lot of moving parts, and I like to say just be on behalf of the citizens in Orange county and listening to DSS and how they had to move really quickly to get them moved from the motel to some other spaces. I want to thank our transportation department and make sure that it was the vans, the buses, and whatever that had to happen. I've heard people in the community who drive and work with these young people talk about how they jumped into place to make sure that
094our kids got where they needed to be. So I wanted to say thank you and that I know the community appreciated it because I've heard different community members speak to that, whether they were county staff or people who were just benefiting. So I wanted to say thank you, and I also wanted to say thank you to let you know that there are a lot of staff of yours who really appreciated the time that you all spent with the superintendent coming out at the beginning of the year to take that time to spend with them. I don't know if you know just how much they meant to a lot of them, but I've heard quite a few speak to how much. And just even the pictures that were done that uplifted a lot of spirits among
095your drivers and your monitors. And I just wanted to say thank you because hearing them say that and there were no complaints about it, that that was a good day and I think just thought you needed to know it. Everybody needs to get the flowers sometimes. So thank you. Absolutely. And while we're giving flowers, we can't talk about those students that were displaced without mentioning Jacqueline Drumright and the great work that she's done with them in partnering with Mr. Austin and his team. And thank you to our superintendent who did visit transportation. Not only did he ride a bus the first day, but he met with the staff the week before. And he did some great things, some listening and learning. And one of the things that they told our superintendent is that they wanted
096to bring back first Fridays and eat. And so Mr. Austin and his team got together and they did sponsor the first Friday. Jonathan. We paid for it out of pocket, but to make that happen for the staff because that was something they expressed to our superintendent. So we're going to keep that going as well. Well, ice cream social. Ice cream social. The first Friday of February. Board is invited and the superintendent. Excuse me, October. I did say February. All right, thank you. Is there anybody else? Board members? Questions? Comments? Well, we thank you both and thank you all. Appreciate that. And this brings us to sharing tonight. And we'll get committee reports first with finance, facilities and operations. Risa Jenkins. Well, it looks like everything we talked about in committee we went over tonight. Yeah,
097I mean we did have a wonderful presentation from Dr. Stewart just highlighting project manager. So Dr. Stewart has been sharing different staff members from the operations department. So we got some sharing about project managers who work in our district. So thank you. And of course we did talk about the transportation. That's something I always like having the committee and the board to hear every year. But we did talk about the Chapel Hill High School track. That was interest. I'll share it here. The track is the work is being done. It should be almost done. Yes, ma' am. We're going to under promise and over deliver. Okay. So we have said that our completion date should be mid-October. Yeah. So that's for everyone to know and I think for the public to know. I know it
098has displaced the home football games for Chapel Hill High, but I think it's a Timing issue. This is an outdoor track. Obviously the work cannot take place when it too hot, too cold. So here we are in the fall because obviously we want the track done for the spring season for outdoor track. Let's see. And of course Mr. Shiroki presented on updates in terms of the Bond and the RFQs. There we heard the interlocal agreement and of course we go through the financials in some form or fashion every month and every quarter. So that was all of our committee. So most of the meeting. And then our next meeting is going to be Tuesday, October 14, 5:30pm the information's on the website. It will be virtual. I don't know. Barb and Meredith, Did I forget
099anything? Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Reza. Mike, Policy committee. We met on Tuesday, just two nights ago We did not have a meeting in August which resulted in us having 16 items in our agenda this week But we busted through all of them and did a great job. There are a lot of things that are coming our way and many things that are going to be on discussion in action in the near future. So we'll be on the lookout for that. Our next meeting is October 21st at 5:30. Thank you, Mike and Vicki. Student Success Committee. We have not met since our last board member meeting. Our next meeting is the 23rd at 5:30 and it will be virtual. Thank you. And are there any board committee liaison reports, anybody, Any other groups
100you belong to that you wanted to update us on? I do have one sharing item tonight. And Dr. Trice, we haven't introduced your new chief academic officer. I want to kind of get Andy Jenks in that communications voice of yours where you go. And over here we have. I'm not sure how now I'll do without a script. But if you would please welcome Dr. Bob Bales, the new Chief academic Officer for Chapel Hill. To be fair, we'll create a more formal opportunity for him where he can bring his family in. Thank you. Appreciate that. Couldn't help, but every time I look over it's oh hey, that's right. All right. Any other sharing tonight? Hearing none. The meeting is adjourned. Stop. The meeting's on adjourn. I just wanted to highlight and uplift to remind everyone that
101it is Suicide Awareness and Prevention month and that 988 is there. It works. 24, 7, 365. Someone is there for you. Check on your friends. Check on our students. Thank you. Thank you, Vicki. The meeting is really adjourned.