Board of Education - Nov 06, 2025

001[GAVEL] The 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. Motion carries. The chair requests the motion to move into closed session for the reasons stated on the agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. The motion carries. We will return from closed session as close as possible to 7pm Thank you. [CLOSED SESSION] [GAVEL] The meeting is now back in open session. That brings us to public comments tonight. Do we have people signed up? (INAUDIBLE) Okay. Before we get started on public comments, let me just review our expectations. The board recognizes the vital importance of listening to varied points

002of view on programs and issues facing the board or the school system and encourages public comment about educational issues. Speakers are reminded that neither personal attacks nor obscene, abusive or defamatory language is permitted. Board members may ask clarifying questions but will not engage in dialogue with the speaker or the public. So, each speaker will have up to three minutes to present comments and the remaining time and the three minutes is on this tablet clock to my right in front of Ms. Jenkins. To begin, we will recognize school improvement team representatives, teacher organizations and or high school student government reps, followed by public comments. Are there any representatives of these groups? And if so, please come forward. Mr. Link. Good evening, sir. Good evening, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the school board, our esteemed

003superintendent, cabinet members, members of the public. My name is Brian Link and I am the president of the Chapel Hill Carrboro association of Educators. And once again I am delighted to stand before you to first and foremost congratulate all those who participated in our democracy on their hard fought races and campaigns. It was a wonderful thing to see, not only in our local community but around the country that folks right were heeding the words of Dr. Franklin when he said at the end of the Constitutional Convention when asked, what have we created? And he responded with a republic if you can keep it. And I think the results from Tuesday night are clearly evident of the people are alive and well and wanting to keep our democracy and our representative form of government going forward.

004And not only do we have that, and of course the organization looks forward to continuing our work with our two returning board members and welcomes our future board member and working with her as well. I also want to thank the district and the leadership of Dr. Trice and to congratulate the whole team that came together with the logistics of that and hosting the state superintendent. It was a lovely, wonderful evening and I want to reiterate both personally on behalf of the organization, I am. And we are champions of public education. It's a fantastic message and one that we stand ready to work with everyone in this room and around the district to implement going forward. I also want to thank the folks in the room this evening. One of the items that is listed before

005us is to talk about here we are in November and both the federal government and the state government are out of session and the federal government out of money. But we are going to move forward with a budget and we very much appreciate you doing that work. And we hope certainly our state and national organizations will follow this lead and do that work as well. We also briefly want to say thank you to a lot of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. I want to give a shout out to Dr. Stewart and the effort that's going on right now with the contract negotiations around our food services and the excellent work that's done there and the preparations for calendar committee, as always. So, you do an excellent job. Thank you to Dr.

006Harris and her team for continued discussions right around staffing and how that will work next year. And we very much appreciate you. And so it's a night, right, that we can all take a collective breath. Hopefully it's a relatively light night, but it's also one that we can continue these conversations going forward. And we appreciate the district being transparent and starting their conversations around where we go next based on the last board meeting. And we look forward as an organization to helping host sessions to help answer people's questions, questions about that. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Link. No, we were appreciating your time. Oh, yeah. Next, individual speakers will be called to come forward to the podium. When you're recognized, please introduce yourself, state your name and if you're still speaking for an organization,

007the name and identity of the organization. And I believe we have one speaker tonight. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening to the board and administrators and everyone, all of you. I'm Elizabeth Ironside. I work in operations right here in Lincoln Center. One of the best parts of my role is working closely with our crossing guards and the crossing guard program. On October 2nd, 11 of our 20 guards were here to hear the reading of the School Crossing Guard Month proclamation. That was the document that acknowledges the important work of crossing guards and also establishes October as School Crossing Guard Month in CHCCS. So tonight, as a sort of a postscript, I would just like to thank you all so much for going forward with that and making that happen. Thank you, Al. By Recognizing the crossing

008guards. I'm sorry. Anyway, thank you for doing that by way of the proclamation, but also for highlighting the work that they do. They're a small and mighty group, and I'll tell you that that visibility and awareness is really important to them and so. And much appreciated. And it's very important, as you heard from the guards as they introduce themselves that night. They come to the job from different backgrounds, different professional and personal experience. They're of all ages. Some of them work in our school. Some of them have been on the job for a very short time, some for a very long time. But despite all the differences, they really share a common conscientiousness, and they share a dedication and a responsibility to our students and to families who travel through their crosswalks each and every

009day as they go to school, on bikes and on foot and other rolling objects. And I've seen them at work managing pretty intense vehicle traffic, as you probably have as well, or you probably know. But in the calmer times, I have watched their interactions and I can see how important they are in the school communities. They teach the kids pedestrian safety, they're reliable, they're kind, they make connections with the families and the children, and they really do play an integral role in a student's school day from a safety standpoint, of course, but beyond that, too. So, all of this is important to shine a light on. So, again, I really thank you for your part in that and I know it's appreciated on their end as well. Our crossing guards, thank you so much. Keep

010an eye out for a social media video. Shout out. Greg, thank you. At some point in the next couple weeks, they're going to be in action. Thank you so much again. [APPLAUSE] Ms. Ironside. Thank you for. Appreciate that. Is there anybody else who did not sign up tonight that wishes to speak now? Please come forward. Okay, that moves us on to the next item, which is our consent agenda. The chair would request a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Carries unanimously. Thank you. And that brings us down to work session items for the night. The first one I see, Dr. Bales is jumping up his high school schedule Implementation update. Dr. Bales, welcome. All right. Good evening, board, cabinet members

011of the community. So as part of our ongoing updates to the board, our community, I just wanted to kind of give us an update as we are in month four of our 4x4 rollout within the schools and two plus years overall in the process. So just kind of giving you all a heads up of what we have been working on. So, our professional development has been ongoing at the school level and integrated into district level trainings. As we've shared before, these trainings are not necessarily like this is how you do block, but really trying to help our teachers and our students really figure out what's the best way to utilize the additional time that you have in that longer class period. As we're finishing up this first quarter, moving into the second quarter again, we're

012continuing to review and revise pacing. The great opportunity that we have is that if there are shifts that need to be made, we're able to make those changes right into next semester. I know that, you know, for all of our contents, we've had little things we might have to shift here and there, but we've already been able to do that. Feedback continues on what's working, what may need to be shifted. And I continue to thank our teachers that share just suggestions on like this may fit better here and there. So that's been really helpful as we move forward. One thing that I even forgot as we were getting ready to jump into our infinite campus registration, while we made that shift this year, we actually still scheduled last year in PowerSchool. So, this will be

013the first time that we actually schedule in a new system. So there'll be a little bit of growing pains with that. One of the things that we're exploring that we were not able to do in PowerSchool was to actually have our students and families select consecutive courses. So, if there was a student that wanted to take math 2 and math 3 the following year, that they could actually select both of those and the computer would show which one is the required one to start off. But that way it'd be a little easier for our counselors to be able to schedule that. So, we're navigating that as we move forward. I just want to start off with just. We've had great collaboration amongst our high schools. You know, I put in here even with our interims,

014because we have a few interims and our high schools, but especially with our interims like it, we have not missed the beat. It's been a true passion of our interims to make sure this works. You know, I think some of the hiccups that we thought might happen, we were really able to navigate to start off and we've had some really great success. And then the last piece, just honestly our check ins with teachers and students to see how things are going. We're seeing a lot More positive than negative, with an emphasis on self, on well being amongst both our staff and our students. So just kind of give a focus for tonight. We did have our first student staff teacher survey that we sent out. We'll be able to get a little deeper analysis into

015that once we have two data points. When you have one, you know, we'll get to see a little bit. But I wanted to make sure that we share that with the community. Continuing to explore and expand our cross and dual enrollment opportunities and trying to eliminate some of those barriers that we've seen come into play. And then our continued flex committee that meets on a monthly basis. Learning from each other, we really gave latitude for our schools to do what they felt was best. And they are definitely stealing ideas from each other. What's working, what's not in those spaces. So there'll be a lot of numbers here, but I'm going to try to navigate this piece. So in late September, early October, we sent a very short survey to our students, teachers and staff members

016in the school. And it was literally, how's it going? On a scale of 1 to 5, what do you like best? What do you like least? Trying to make sure that it was very generic and just left it open for people to jump in there. So, we had about 2000 responses which of course would be mainly students. And really what you looked at is there was probably about a quarter the scores that landed in that neutral part and then we had about, you know, 35% that landed on either a 4 or 5 or a 1 or 2 with more so slightly on that positive when we look at the students perspective, we had 38% positive. Teachers we had a little higher at 46% and then staff we had at 85%. Staff would be your non

017teachers, so your admin, maybe some of your, your coaches within the buildings. What people like best. Fewer classes per day, less homework came up over and over and over again. And then more time for labs, projects and focused work. Biggest challenges, opposite of that is longer class periods that constrain attention. Really trying to figure out the pacing and the way to make sure that they're covering the entire curriculum, especially in apartment gaps between courses hurt retention and then just logistics. And some of these are things that we heard last year and we'll be able to get a better understanding on if they're a true impact at the end of the semester to say right now that we're behind. Teachers are always behind and they find a way to catch up so we'll be able to

018navigate that for students our cognitive load is down and our focus is up. Having really a, a nice clear daily pattern. When you have four classes and your flex and lunch, your day is fairly predictable. Again, the pain points, your stamina, being able to navigate that. Reading the comments, it was very clear that stamina was really impacted in the class where they didn't feel engaged with the work. That attention drop off would happen. If you're going to be lectured for 80 to 90 minutes. Students that were engaged, those are the people that said look, I'm really engaged for those 80 minutes. I feel like the class is just flying by course timing and retention. Again, those semester gaps, we've continued to hear those really for that we'll be able to see the impact that that

019may or may not have after the year is over and we have some of those gaps that may be in there. And then really just those logistical bumps of when should flex be, how long is lunch, odd placement between periods, workload spikes if a teacher has to fill in for a class. So just some of those pieces on the teacher side really saying that they were able to dive into the actual content. So depth over breadth, longer periods. I had people say like I can actually like breathe while I'm listening to people do their presentations. I know we're going to get through them instead of trying to rush my students through them. So those labs, workshops, conferencing small groups allows for more time for those projects. Classroom management and planning. Fewer daily preps means you

020have less students. The relationships seem to have a strong relationship because you're with them for a longer period of time. Reduce the amount of planning and grading. With fewer classes, the pain points again that pacing and coverage pressure, especially in our AP engagement design. Sustaining high quality pedagogy for 80 minutes is challenging. You know, that's where you know, our professional development really comes into place of what are different things that we can try and do. While it's nice to have 80 minutes of what we're doing every single day, you're going to have to vary it up. It might have to be four different 20 minute activities that you're working on. You probably don't want to do the four same four every single day. And then planning time erosion, midday meetings and duty schedules compressed planning

021and then flex seems to fragment the day. So again, just as we're looking across all of our areas, engagement architecture matters. So again that modality are we incorporating mini lessons, lab stations, movement conferencing? If we're not utilizing that, we're just teaching for 80 minutes, it probably is not working for students or teachers. And then again, students reported higher satisfaction when they were engaged, which we could all agree that that's going to happen. Making sure that we're being very clear on looking at that course sequencing, whether it's AP math world languages, and see what does that actually look like and feel like when we move forward, we're going to keep an eye on this to see what the actual data that comes from this. I did put a note in here because this is something I'm

022curious about. At the last teacher workday, it was a required teacher workday. We had our College Board liaison come in to talk about like, okay, here's course impression. Here's where we might need to adjust things. Of all of our AP teachers that we had, we had 14 that attended that session. So there's one way of looking at it that they didn't want to go to it. It's because it was a teacher worked in. There's lots of to happen or they didn't feel that they needed it. We continue to have those professional developments to look at what that pacing looks and feels like. But we're starting to see less and less people needing that AP training. So I'm hoping that that means that that stress level is going down a little bit. Communication training to close

023the gap. Again, a lot of the negative goes back to the implementation details and then just relationship connection across all roles. Many respondents to score described a sense of feeling closer in connection between students and teachers and among peers in the block schedule. Looking at our cross enrollment and our dual enrollment. For our cross enrollment, we talked a little bit a couple months ago, but something we've explored and I've talked with Dr. Trice about as well. We have some partnerships in place that should we decide to pull the lever, the town of Chapel Hill is willing to work with us to provide Chapel Hill, Carrboro City Schools transportation alone to say, okay, during flex, we will basically take kids from school to school. Right now we do midday transportation. If we offer that additional transportation

024during flex, that allows students to go for one period and it really opens up high school to be Chapel Hill, Carrboro City Schools high school and not east on Chapel Hill and Carrboro. So one of the commitments that we're gonna have to look at is we have to actually provide that transportation for students through really engage and say, yes, I want to go into this. We probably can't say like, all right, once we get enough students that want it, we'll start to provide a slot as we're moving forward, I'll bring some of that information forward to you all so that we're able to look at those numbers. I really do think having that in place before students actually register will allow that cross enrollment to really increase. Another piece is we've met with our CTE

025and to ensure that space is actually there next year, we're moving into a space where if I have an automotive class, let's say if there's 20 seats in that class, 50% of those seats are reserved for the home school. So there'd be 10 for Chapel Hill High and then five saved for east and five saved for a combination of Carrboro and Phoenix. We would keep that until a designated date. So let's say that's June 15th. At that point, if, you know, east and the other schools didn't use up those seats, they'd go back to the home school. And that helps really make sure that those seats are available. We ran into a couple issues with that this year and decided that we just really needed to put this into place to make sure those seats

026were available. Looking on the dual room inside. So our automotive class, we used to always pay our automotive teacher an extra duty stipend. He was actually able to navigate into a space where he is actually for his fourth class, still teaching about the same students just now. He's a Durham Tech employee during that period. So students that are in that class are automatically getting the Durham Tech credits. Durham Tech is actually paying for that course too. So that's a little bit of financial savings for us. And that's something that we're looking to expand as we move forward. We have classes in every single one of our high schools already that are dual enrolled from Durham Tech. One of the things that we're noticing is that we need to make sure that we're really advertising those

027because right now we might have like six kids in there. And I know we keep talking about, let's make sure the teachers are here. Well, if they're here, we gotta make sure we have those classes full. So we have in our interpretation program at Carver High that we went and did presentations at Carrboro or at Chapel Hill, at East, and probably got 74 different names that are now interested in that program that may not have been at (INAUDIBLE) at the time to make sure that those programs aren't leaving the school as a cabinet. We met with Durham Tech's cabinet to discuss partnerships and expansion. And if you look at it, instead of creating a middle college, what would it look like? If we actually said all of our schools are a middle college, thinking big

028to start off and then being able to navigate that as we go forward and then honestly just a true understanding, like we're starting to get our middle schools that are interested and how can we make sure that our kids that may not have that direct pathway right now or don't see where they fit in, they want to help out earlier in our middle schools and say, okay, they're piloting a new course next year that will allow students to really look at career interest, CCP and CTE. If you look at it be like a course of about 24 kids, there'd be stations and students would rotate around there so they get just a little bit of a sneak peek. We've also had Durham Tech that has decided that they would help us a little bit next

029year with or later in the semester with that. So, they're going to start sending different programs to (INAUDIBLE) to be able to really drive home the point of like there's an option for you. Honestly, when you're in middle school, you're not thinking about that. But if we're going to build the program in high school, we've really got to start thinking in middle school. Our flex committee so not going to do too much on this one. But really we've been talking about what's working, what these adjusted and then really just what rules need to be put in place to make sure that it runs smoothly. So, one thing that I've asked them is at the end of the semester they're going to come together. Each school has a flex team, like lead team. And we've kind

030of created a list of questions that we're asking them to kind of review in a presentation that will be shared with some of our leadership here. There's a lot of questions here. We're not expecting them to get over all of them. But one of the things that we're really trying to do is set that baseline now because I want them to be able to see that after one semester, these are things we already shifted, things that are working and that we can keep track of what the changes need to be for next semester, for next year. When they're also able to hear from their colleagues as to what's working and what's not, that allows them, again, like I said, to steal. And at some point it may be okay, something's really not working at this

031school. Maybe we need to take that school to this school to actually see what's going on during that time. We're seeing some really high gains in some of our EOC courses when we're looking at check ins and some of those pieces that is a true intentional work at east and some of the work that they're doing that we want to make sure that we can replicate other places. Again, we said first year is really schools, you're using that time to best fit on what you need. But they want to make honestly like it's a competition. They want to be the best Flex. They want to be able to make sure that their kids are getting everything that they need. So, these are some of the pieces that they're going to be answering. And it also

032gives them an opportunity to bring brag a little bit. So next steps again, monitoring Flex and its impact. Those presentations. I know we have surveys that go out to teachers. I really love actually going and talking to teachers on the building. So setting up some of those times to just say we're camped in your school media center for the next three hours. If you're available or you want to schedule a time, you know, come down. We've done that in the past like on the front of the 4x4. We got a lot of great feedback. So being able to do that, I will also for anybody that's watching, feel free to give me a call. We'll always be willing to listen and then you know, getting that second student data piece. Also want to make sure

033that we are reviewing enrollment after the second semester in terms of what is the impact been on arts? What's it been on our math programs? What are those numbers look like? All of our students have had the opportunity to choose that eighth class overall. What is that class? Is it more that they're taking an additional AP course? Are they taking an additional music course? And just being able to figure out where those are landing. The great thing for us too is we're going to have our EOC data that's going to come back after our test in January. That really should show that when you have that dedicated, focused time, we should see some increased scores there. So that's something we are anticipating come back. That is the one test that we can assure does not

034have that huge gap. It's that you're very focused for that semester. You take the exam, it will have the scores back. So, I will open it up to the board if there are any questions, any feedback or any suggestions or anything that you would like me to help bring back next time. Thank you Dr. Bales, board members. Questions, feedback, comments? Yeah. Thank you so much. For this update, I'm curious, and again, I know these surveys are anonymous, but, you know, we're hearing some feedback from students where, you know, they have some challenges staying focused. I'm wondering at a school level, we're looking at it by school. I'm wondering if as the administrators are doing their walk arounds, are they making sure, maybe some of the staff who might be used to lecturing for 45 minutes,

035are they like giving them the feedback, hey, this is what we're seeing. You know, are we talking about this data in the staff meetings and saying we're seeing this? So if you're trying to convert a 45 minute lecture into an 80 minute lecture, this is what the students are saying. Here's some resources to help you think about, you know, mixing it up so that it's a lot more successful for the students. Are we, Are we doing that? Yeah, definitely. I mean, when we look at the data, I will say one of the things that our principals have done even before looking at this is they will take a list of their students that they know, you know, they might be pushing a little bit more this year. You know, students that may be on a

036watch list or students that they know just need that extra engagement. Like when they're doing walkthroughs, like, those are the classes they're going into. Like, you know, if things are working well in that class, it's probably working well in all of the other classes. So that's one thing in particular I will say also for the data, once we get that second data piece, one thing that Dr. Vilwalk, because she, we did actually link it to individual students, but she's the only one that can kind of see that, where we can link those data points together to say, okay, for this group of students, this is what the rating looks like. For this group of students, we're seeing that engagement levels are really low. Or here's some of the general feedback that are coming from African

037American males at this school. Like, we can get down to that level of detail. We just want to make sure that we give people like that second piece of data to be able to dive into that. But yes, I will say our schools do an amazing job of getting in and giving that feedback of not just don't do this, but, you know, we have this thing, we have this professional development that you can either go to, or here's a special event we're gonna have next Wednesday because they do a great job of like, here's the different choices of what you have and sometimes those choices are guided. Like as a teacher, you need to go to this session. Following up on that training question. I'd love to see school by school. You know, for me,

038I'm a data person because if we see that one school, I'm not going to name a school, but one school, staff are participating in the training, the student feedback is good. And then we look at another school and staff training is pretty low. Like they're not taking advantage of either the in person or on demand. And the student feedback of like how block is going is pretty low. Right. And then the perception of the staff is low too. That for me is like a case of like, okay, everyone has to change what we're doing. Everyone can't say, I think I got it. It's like, no, no, no. Now you have to do this because we're seeing the success here, we're seeing it in pockets in your school community. We gotta fix this. Because it's not

039about making blocks successful, it's about making sure kids are successful. Absolutely. So I think, because again, we had a lot of kids who were not successful on the seven period day either. And so now this is like, this is going to show us that, hey, we got to really change things up. My other question was about the flex because, you know, I got three high schoolers, so flex is like a whole different thing for each one. I'm curious, we've got the grading floor that's gone, right? So no longer is there that 50. So, and here's my concern. You know, I think if I thought all my kids would be proactive and have the executive functioning skills to sign themselves up for flex, then I mean, I'd be able to put my feet up every night.

040As a parent, that is not how it works in my house. And so I'm curious if a teacher sees kids are missing assignment after a week, knowing they've got that we don't take late assignments after time. Like, where's the onus? And where are staff samples to teachers? No, if you have a student who has five missing assignments, you need to sign them up for flex that Monday and you need to have them make up because to me that's ridiculous. Right? Like a kid fails one of our classes only for not turning assignments because now we don't have that 50 buffer. But then you look at the rest of their grades and it's like when they actually sit down and take a test, they have 100. Like that's. That for me is just not doing a

041good service to our Kids. And so if we've got this flex and all it is a teacher just says, hey, just hit submit on an assignment, and your grade is not going to be a D anymore. Now it's going to be a B. I think that's, for me, a good use of the flex. So then I don't have to spend 10:30 at night after I come home from a board meeting, opening up infinite campus running through my house saying, where's this assignment? Where's this assignment? You're welcome to all the other parents. I know that's what we're doing. So. Yes. So. Yes. And remember that we gave flexibility to the schools at first to like, flex is yours we want you to use. But that's also that. That's part of the reason we're doing the presentations

042to show, like, this model is working. This model, while it may feel nice, it's not really having any results. I will say there are some schools that have a. If you have under a 75, you're automatically coming back to math on Tuesdays. There are some schools that if you're missing a work on another day, you're coming back to miss that work or to fix that or finish that makeup work on another day. So I think we're gonna get there. But since we did leave that open. Thank you, Barbara. I just want to plus one that last point and just say executive functioning. And also depression. I mean, the kids. The number of kids not doing their work because they're sad is a lot. Were you in my house this week? I'm in my house. And

043so. And if they're feeling more connected, that's great. And I think nothing says, I care about you more than like, hey, I want you to turn your work in. So I really. I couldn't agree more with that, I guess. Could you go back to the cross enrollment dual enrollment slide? I just. Yeah. So how. I'm particularly interested in if Phoenix Academy students are able to. How that is going with cross enrollment. Yeah. I mean, we have students that are from Phoenix that are cross enrolling now. Okay. And that's something that, I mean, that's why I said to, like, Carbo and Phoenix get to hold that 25%. Right. Because. Okay. I don't want to leave them out. In all honesty, that transportation is going to come right by there too. But, I mean, Dr. Dixon will

044say left and right. Like, I want my kids to have those opportunities. And yes, we have definitely had those conversations and we've even said, like, what do we need to do to make sure that like students and things know that that's even an option? Because historically that may not have been. And I think that's where a lot of this lands is. Yeah, that's kind of available. But is that really for me? Because it really has been. I'm going to go and hear about this school. Even during registration, like we had all of the high schools together. We talk about all the CTE programs and then somebody raised their, like, that's great. I'm at east, what can I do? And like, well, not that that or that. So that's really why we had to save those

045seats. So, we did have that space. And the home school. This is my last question. The homeschool students, do we get paid for the (INAUDIBLE). Do we get homeschooling? You're homeschooling. I thought the same thing too. I thought the very same thing. The base school. I know. That's why I did the example instead of reading the homeschool part. You're right. Thank you for the update, Dr. Bells. My question connects back to Reza and Barb's comments, but it's kind of the support, like, how are we supporting staff? I'm very interested in the feedback of them not perceiving that they have enough time for planning because I think that is the critical piece that enables the those things. Right. Like, they can notice when students are not doing well and how they can support them. So I

046wonder if we like set some goals. Principals might think about setting goals of like ensuring that there is protected time for staff planning. And so I don't think that's. That needs to come to the board. But I'm very interested in sort of what that discussion might look like. And like, and I would say some of our schools, if not all, maybe not for everyone to start off, but they have set aside like, so maybe on Thursday During Flex, our Math 1 PLC gets to meet and they don't have students, so they have that dedicated planning time. Now that's only 40 minutes, but that's 40 more minutes than what they would have had. Reading into some of the comments, I think I'm reading that there may be, you know, if you only have one 80 minute

047period and you have an IEP like that, IEP may take the entire period and it's important to take the time for that. I'm glad we have the time for it, but how are we making sure that we're spreading that across and not having, I will say as a form, making sure that not the same teacher is going to every single meeting. Yeah. Okay. I have one other question. I am interested in more detail about how we're doing with the math pathways, making sure that kids are able to access that in this schedule. And then also, how are we preparing students for the AP exams? Students who are enrolled in this current semester but will not take the exam until the spring? Yes, I'll say for the ap. I start there. Each school has a plan

048right now. Like, when's the really intense, like, okay, we're going to start like in March. You know, we're going to come in every week. Here's on Tuesday, we're going to go over AP Gov and, you know, come in and whether you're in the course now or you're. You were in the course last semester during flex, you can come during that time. You can come or you must come. I will say. I mean, I would say can, because there are some. I wonder, especially for this first year, if we might be a little more directive about that, because I just, I worry about the disconnect and, and time. Like, I know a child who may or may not live in my house who would probably not take the initiative to study during that period, but if

049that person had to go to that flex, they probably would be more successful on that exam, which I've been telling. Them, but they don't listen. I know. Not about me, but I would say with that, too. There are some students that, like, they aced it the first semester. They could have probably, you know, I wouldn't want to force them into if they took four APs the first semester that your flex is now that the second semester, so highly encouraged. And I think that's really where like, the teacher that had them probably knows, like, all right, you do probably need to come back a little bit. I'm going to personally invite you to, you know, this flex. Here's the invite, here's all the things. And they also probably know the kid that, like, is going to

050get the five and it's still probably studying on their own. But. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry, I would just also add, you know, making sure that whatever the plan is around AP is widely known and it's not a secret, but it's advertised, you know, not only via email, but social media, wherever kids are kind of gathering, that we have a plan. And this is what the plan, whether it's flex, after school, study groups, you. Know, whatever it may be, that would be extremely helpful. And you read my mind because I was just coming off mute to say that and particularly making parents aware early of the plan and the timeline so we can support staff and their encouragement of students to attend the flex period or whatever the offering is absolutely right. As you're looking towards

051the spring semester and you're speaking about cross enrollment and ap, let's put all that stuff together for a minute. And has there been thought about situations where you have students that are cross enrolling but they took an AP at their home school in the fall semester? What does that look like? So with that, I mean, it'd be strategic scheduling if they're at the other school. I mean, that flex, you know, is still an AP Gov flex, whether it's at Chapel Hill or east to Orchard or Carrboro, if that is the piece that's missing. If they're off campus, like I can almost guarantee you, knowing our teachers, it's going to be a Google classroom or a Canvas course that's set up that can be shared even if you're not able to come to that flex that

052day, that all the materials and resources are there and available for students. I know some of our students are like, I don't want to come into another class, but I'd be more than willing to see the resources and kind of look over and, you know, navigate that. And while we're talking about cross enrollment, what are they, what are the, what are the thoughts for students who may need transportation but may have access to it? I know we don't have enough parking spaces at our high schools already. If we have students that are driving for cross enrolling to the other high schools, what has been happening to help with parking situations? I have not heard that that's an issue. And I know that we've had students that have been able to navigate that. I know that

053schools have shared, like, here's where you can park, but we can look into that. Meredith? Thanks for the presentation. I'm just curious to know anything that you've heard about the effect of the block schedule on attendance, since that's been a big topic of conversation. Specifically like the general idea of attendance is one aspect and then the other aspect is with athletes and missing the same class repeatedly for games. Just wondering how that's going, if they're able to utilize flex periods to make up for missing when they're leaving for games. Yeah, I know for the athletes it's been the flex or our teachers are very good at making sure that they have the material when they leave. I will say with that too, they're probably missing one class in Some instead of missing two or three,

054which does eliminate the need of going back and say, okay, I missed math, English and my Spanish class. I've got to do that. The next three days, they're just going back to their math class. In terms of attendance, I know that's something that Dr. Vilwalk's working on. I will go back t whenever we've looked at attendance, that connection piece is almost like on the top of the list. If you feel connected to that classroom, you're going to show up to the class. And the fact that we're seeing that show up over and over again for our students and for our teachers, my assumption would be that that is helping with that piece. But I know as we're getting through the first quarter, we'll start pulling some of that data. I'd also be interested to know

055how we're tracking with attendance for flex periods specifically. Just getting some data on that would be, I think, useful. I hear kind of some anecdotal reports that people, you know, some kids blow off the flex and just trying to figure out how we're tracking that and trying to adjust for that when kids do that. And then also when Dr. Vilwock does some disaggregation of data, would it be possible to get a little more information about how students with IEPs are doing with the. With the block schedule? I know that some people have said. Said it's really great that they have fewer things to focus on. And then others say that the sustained attention is challenging. Obviously, if you have attention deficits, that's to be expected. Yeah. So when we go back and we can actually,

056like, match the students to whatever, that'd be great. We can pull that for you. Thank you. I was wondering if even anecdotally, if there's anything you can tell us about the impact of the new schedule on discipline stuff on. Because I think one hope maybe was less time in the hallway, maybe less opportunity to -(INAUDIBLE). Yeah, it's in here somewhere. But, yes, that was one of the things that teachers even said, is that that discipline piece is down because, you know, one. It's not that transition. It's not that you're trying to, like, reset your brain every 45, 50 minutes. And sometimes for an adult, that's hard. Like, you know, we ran professional development said, are you going to do this every 50 minutes? And by noon, they're like, you're, I can't do this anymore. So,

057yeah, definitely the discipline piece has went down because that relationship piece is there and kids aren't trying to navigate and code switch seven times in a day. They might only have to do that four times in a day. And then just what are the... Has Dr. Vilwak, I mean, she was here a couple meetings ago talking about what we're going to look at to see how this is going. And is that fully developed, like that metric, like whatever the assessment mechanism is, Is that still in the works or? Still in the works, because I want to make sure that one. We just need to get the first quarter data. And it just finished to see, like, okay, what are we actually looking at? What are the trends that we're seeing there that we're going to

058need to follow? Like I will say the biggest thing for me right now is making sure after second semester because I want to see who dropped an ad, where are kids, what classes are they signing up for? Did it have a negative impact on any particular subject? Because I know that was a huge concern. I will say we have some of our counselors that are reaching out, like, here's a creative way, because this kid really wants to take two semesters of a music course and it's really hard as a freshman. Could they possibly take PE or in their sophomore year? Because they really want. And so our counselors and administrators are doing a great job of trying to be as flexible as possible to give them those options. Anymore. Okay, you do? I do. I

059would love to see. And I think maybe this is our plan about just specific data on the cross enrollment in dual enrollment and just seeing. Are we seeing an upward trend? I know you kind of gave a summary, but obviously from at the maybe year end or over the summer when kind of look back at how things are done. I'd be just curious to see. I've heard that our enrollment with Dermtech is up. It's been trending upward and so. And obviously hearing that now that automotive class, the fourth period is a Durmtech class, I'd be interested to see, you know, if we continue to see an uptick as a whole. We're up three, three times as much as we were last year combined the two. Okay. Wow, that's. I mean, that's great news. Okay, thank

060you, Dr. Bales. Appreciate that. Update. This is a work session item, so there is a chance for public comment on this topic. If anybody see Nobody. Let's move on to the next item, which is the interlocal agreement and Mr. Mr. Shorogi? So. Good evening, Mr. Chair Chair, members of the board, Dr. Trison, staff and guests. Tonight I would like to provide you with an update on the interlocal agreement that's between Orange County schools, Orange county as. As well as us. And just to start, I want you to know that there are no decisions that I'm asking you to make tonight. This is really just trying to bring you up to speed with ultimately a summation of the first draft, but then an overview of the second draft that each of you have individually been able

061to look at. But I wanted to provide you and the public with just a overall synopsis of where we see parallels and where we may have questions or concerns compared between the two versions. And then ultimately, I would like to give a recommendation on our next steps during this process and to try to get some form of a consensus from each of you as board members on if you concur with the recommendation that I'm going to give at the end. So, if you will allow me to. It's thinking. There we go. Hopefully it's not going to click over 20 slides. Now, if I could just start off with. And I know that each of you have painstakingly heard me present all of these milestones that I'm going to share, but I think it does provide

062good context for the amount and the level of work and the amount of stock that we've all put into this entire process in order to successfully begin replacing our schools and directing monies to major capital maintenance projects. So, I want to go back to November of 21 through this year, 25, to where the joint capital needs work group existed. And that was a joint effort between three entities, two school boards and the Board of County Commissioners, where two representatives from each body participated with senior staff from three bodies to really begin learning and understanding the needs of our district. Knowing that the county had a fiduciary responsibility, a state responsibility to fund capital improvements in both school districts, Orange and us. And there was a lot of work that occurred during that time and three

063of those years I had direct involvement in that. So all of that it was determined that there was a great need and that our schools had been neglected over the years, that monies had to be dedicated to other things over time. But it was time for schools to get back engaged in the construction and major renovation work. So ultimately, with the recommendation of the joint capital needs work group, the county did hire a consultant, we call him Wolpert, was the consultant firm to do a school facility study. So in 23, that occurred, and then in November of 24, ultimately the commissioner supported the recommendation of the consultant. We had a bond referendum that occurred Pretty much one year ago this week. And our citizens overwhelmingly in Orange County, approved that bond for a total of

064$300 million. So immediately after that, in January, our Board of County Commissioners, they approved what's called a major project planning policy. And basically it's everything that the capital work group had been working on for the past several years. And it was an alignment of where the monies that both districts were using, be it lottery capital cash or pay GO money, that the money had to be used for projects that were in the, I'll say, the principles of the Wolpert report. You just couldn't use that money and do things that weren't identified or prioritized as major category types of work. So I always use the example. We have to do roofing, air conditioning, build new schools, renovate holistically schools, but we can't go out and build a swimming pool for a swimming program. That was not

065something that the consultant looked at. We couldn't do a weight room as an example, but we had to put it into maintenance. And that was an important piece. There were no surprises that came from it. It talked a little bit about school consolidation or optimization because they did pay the consultant to look at both school districts to look at the space utilization. But it basically said that you need to take all of that and make good common decisions of projects. So with that being done, we moved right into June, where we went through the CIP process, the capital investment plan process. You agreed and supported the projects that had been in the bond as well as the major maintenance. You as a board approved that capital improvement plan with the recommendation for it to be

066submitted to the county. Senior staff here worked with the county to make sure that we were in accordance with the January policy that the county commissioners had approved. And then ultimately that CIP was approved at the end of June, and the money was made available in July for roofing, air conditioning work, but primarily for the capital school replacements. It was that Carrboro elementary had been prioritized and that 5.3 million would be appropriated in this current fiscal year for the design portion of it, not the construction that has not been approved yet, though it's in our CIP to happen next or this coming July, but that was done. So with that being said, the capital work group, before its work ended at the end of this past spring, it was really decided to look at. There

067are things that the group had not done. We talked about the nuts and bolts of school maintenance and capitalized work, but really didn't talk about the process, the how of how we would get together and collaborate and work together so that there's parity between the districts, that project scopes are similar, and that we don't have one district doing something that is totally different than another. And we had that agreement, and we used the Wake county public schools general government model where they had had success, where the general government folks in Wake county would meet with the school district, and there was a process that went through their capital improvement plan process. But there was a team that met very frequently so that everybody was on the same page. So, in doing so, the vehicle that

068was used, though, you could have had a memorandum of agreement. It was an interlocal agreement, which is what I'm talking about tonight. So with that being said, that model was used to basically talk about the guardrails, the parameters of the frequency that we would meet, the type of information we would share, who would be responsible, when would we present to you as a board, but also to the county commissioners and the frequency of that. It was pretty much everything that was outside of the guidance that the county commissioners provided to us and they approved back in January. So it included everything outside of what they had approved. And I presented that to you, and I gave you a recommendation that it's totally in alignment with everything going back to when commissioner Hamilton made the recommendation

069to start the capital work group. And all of our involvement, that board member Dossey and board member Jenkins participated in that group. All of that stuff was there in that ILA. So we met in advance and we met with the joint board meeting where the two school boards met with the county commissioners and. And that first draft was presented to them. It's exactly what you had seen before. And the item of discussion at that meeting was really ensuring that the public at large got communication about the status of the bond projects. A lot of concern about broadband access and that if we put stuff on our websites that not everybody has access to the Internet and that we needed to look at printed media and other forms. But that was really the substance at the

070joint board meeting that we all witnessed as far as comments for that. So subsequent to that, about two weeks later, a second draft was created. And that's what I'm going to talk about this evening. And then ultimately, in this process as being the second draft, we have also awarded our project management status in hiring a firm to help us manage and facilitate. Facilitate the replacement of Carrboro Elementary. And then I'll talk a little bit about the next step for the hiring of an architect engineering firm shortly. Al is the attached Draft, the most current draft of the agreement. There are two drafts you'll see first draft, second draft. So I'm only showing you the drafts that you have seen previously. The second draft is the one where it's highlighted in yellow, if you're looking at

071that. My presentation tonight is to try to prevent you from having to really look at those because you got to do a side by side comparison. But I'm going to reference a lot of the items that are highlighted in yellow on the second draft version, if you are looking at that. Thank you. Absolutely. So again, a little timeline now just for the interlocal agreement. September 18th is when you receive that overview. September 25th we were at the joint board meeting and October 14th we got the second draft from the county and were advised that that was going to be presented at their October 21st business meeting. So that draft was discussed at the 21st, October 21st meeting. We did have time for staff to review and to work with our board chair to be able

072to write a response because they did ask us to try to get feedback in very short turnaround time. But we worked real hard with council in order to do that. That is also attached to the presentation where you can see what Chair Griffin submitted. And it was obviously giving recommendations and asking questions for clarity. And then ultimately tonight I'm here before you to review the second draft. So with that, the interlocal agreement, just very briefly, we know that this is where the county is asking us at Orange County Schools to enter an agreement to really formalize collaboration on planning, funding. The goal is really to ensure that all of our capital projects are completed efficiently, very transparently and within budget. And then obviously there are, there's some legal basis, you know, the county, we know

073that they are charged with the financing and the construction portion of the funding for school districts, but that school districts do retain control over design, instructional programming and facility operations in general. So very, very common knowledge. We've talked about that on many occasions. So the key features are of this interlocal agreement is that it was establishment of the core team, which is really senior staff from all three parties, that it does have roles and timelines and a termination that it goes through 2033, which is the length of time, the greatest length of time that the bond money can be used. It does really focus on transparency as far as regular public updates to the boards as well as the community. And then obviously it promotes fiscal responsibility and project efficiency. That's the ultimate goal, to

074demonstrate to our taxpayers that we are being fiscally responsible. When we create these very strong instructional environments for our students. So again, I'm not going to spend much time on this, but the first draft was right in alignment to meeting all of those goals that had been established. And the bottom line I have here, it really established a very strong framework for collaboration and public accountability which was not included in the Board of County Commissioners direction that they approved back in January. This is the, the piece that was missing from it and it was, it was needed. The second draft, which is the one that was shared with us on the 14th of October, is significantly different from the first. It shifts more project control to the county and it diverges from earlier joint work

075and approved capital plans. It is, I won't say it's a total opposite, but it's basically where there is a lot of very prescribed prescriptive oversight and approval steps that have been interjected into this policy within a week or two of where we had our joint meeting. And all three boards could have talked about that. So I want to just give a very 10,000 foot overview of what I will say are staff. I use the word concerns. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's just questions. What do things mean or what are the implications, the concerns. In my world, my concerns involve time and money. Those are my concerns because that is the net result of anything when there is a delay in a process. So the first question is the document. And

076again, what I will do is give a disclaimer. In the meeting with the commissioners, they took the feedback from the board chair and they acknowledged that they were trying to find ways to answer and meet some of the questions. And I think they validated some of our questions were valid and that they needed to include them. We just haven't seen a version subsequent to that meeting from the feedback. But there was really good dialogue where they talked about and I think they even had kind of the letter and they were looking through the chair was in the meeting and making sure that they brought up items that we had shared and I suspect Orange County Schools may have done something similar. But the first is it talks about all projects. So then the first question

077for us is, is this about projects that are funded through the 2024 bond or is it all capital projects from all funding sources? And again, the collaboration that we've had and the policies, the capital improvement plan sets the guardrails for all of that. But realistically on this ILA document, we don't know if they're talking about the whole thing or if they're only talking about bond. So we just asked them to provide clarity with that. It also talked about a threshold of anything that's $250,000 or more would review a minimum, have a review that would really over complicate routine repairs. $250,000. It's a lot of money in the capital world, when you're looking at schools that to build them in elementary school is $40 million. $250,000 won't even replace the air conditioning, not even come close

078to a wing of a school. Everything that we do and I bring to you, I have to bring to you because of the cost. Everything I do exceeds $90,000. But in reality, everything that we do on our school replacements will exceed 250,000. So for us, it's just, what are we talking about? Are we talking about if we replace a heat pump for $15,000 above an office area at an elementary school, or is it bigger projects? They also created more approval layers. And I say they. I'll just say the document that was presented at the meeting. So it's not about people. It adds multiple review steps where you have the core team, the county manager and then the board of county commissioners where it ultimately really, other than you as a board of education giving us

079the go ahead to say yes, you are not able to give final approval on these review processes. They would have to ultimately go in some cases to the county manager and then some. The county manager would then have to take to the board of commissioners to get final approval. Again, this could create multiple layers and ultimately can delay projects as a result. So the policy misalignment is really that it just conflicts with their guidance from January. It's like we had this guidance, it was established, we are all in agreement with it and we're like, you know, looking at this and saying why the change? What caused them to have to spell this out when it was already in the guidance and the purview that the county commissioners already possess based upon state statutes, it got

080prescriptive in saying that construction management at risk construction delivery method would be the method that has to be used. We concur with that. But if it's talking about all projects, 250,000. We are not going to use construction manager at risk to replace a heat pump. We're going to use a hard bid. We might use design build one day. But right now, the way this is written is only CMR. So we expressed that and I think they understood and we'll modify it. But again, the way it's written it's anything and everything. Delays. It requires county approval for all design and contract check changes, even minor. Meaning if there is a change order that has to occur for something that no one thought about but is needed, it is not building a swimming pool, it's adding additional

081electrical outlets in a science classroom that somehow got missed. Let's say we would have to take a change order for $2,500 and go all the way to the Board of County Commissioners. The way that this ILA is written, and for us, it's a matter of just, you know, we need to create ways in which either they allow us to have contingencies or they say that if it's anything that is a substantive change or a certain percentage of cost that you then ultimately go back, I totally get it. But in my mind, for project management, if they give us $53 million to design and build an elementary school, total project cost for everything, that's our budget. So in my mind, I don't see that we would need to go back to the county commissioners if we're

082doing exactly what they approved and we stay within the budget, the funding that they appropriated to us. So that's the kind of dialogue where we say that doesn't make sense, but the current process, that would be the process. But if we have to go above 53 billion because steel costs go up or delays, I totally understand why we would go back to the county commissioners because they have to reappropriate additional bond money in order to cover those expenses, or we would have to take money from somewhere else. So it does make sense in that respect, but it just doesn't seem feasible. And this is where I talk a little bit about the change orders, where they spell that out that all expenses above the original amount have to go before them. And then there's language

083about sales tax recapturing. We know that for commodities you could purchase items and the. The vendors pay tax and we can get that money back. And that money then is reappropriated into school capital projects. Well, they have language in there that, that no project could move forward until a sales recapture agreement is in place. Well, there is one from the past bond, the previous bond that expires. And I think I've told you this, December 31st of 2025. After that, we've got to create another ILA for sales tax recapture. It shouldn't be hard to do. It's a very mechanical item. But again, I didn't think this would be difficult either. So it's just another layer. But My recommendation would be when it comes to hiring an architect, which is the only thing we're doing now, I

084don't see where this would be applicable because that is not a taxable service that you could get reimbursed for. They don't charge you tax for design services. But when we get into the construction, you would definitely want this. So. So can we have that language read somehow that it's not for the design portion, but when you get to the construction portion, that agreement has to be in place. And we would concur with that totally because we benefit from that if we are to receive it. So the bottom line, just sharing, giving you just my direct opinion, but this is where I would recommend to you as a board that we would ask that if, you know, if we're given the involvement, we would want to continue to collaborate and align to finalize this ILA and

085make sure that it aligns with existing policies. It maintains your authority as a board of education based upon statute, and that we do anything we can to avoid any inefficiencies that can increase cost. But in the absence of an ILA, and I've spoken with county staff, slight or small conversation with our board council. If there isn't an ILA in place, then the last, most recent guidance should be the path that we take until that guidance is changed. So what I would recommend is that we continue to proceed as directed by the Board of County Commissioners, January 2025, major project planning policy and the fiscal year 2025 approved CIP, and that we just move forward. And then ultimately this ILA comes back to the commission commissioners and we're able to review it. We can work on

086that, but we shouldn't stop the press while we're waiting for an ILA, when really the things that are concerning, we're not at that point yet. And we shouldn't hold back because here's the bottom line. Any delay in improving the interlocal agreement, it could result in schedule impacts and higher costs from inflation. We've got to press forward. And I think that from a staff standpoint and from what I've been speaking with the county, they believe that just continuing to press forward with what is in play would be the mode. We are authorized to spend 5.3 million for design and no more than that as it relates to the bond project. So that's as far as I would say we go. Ultimately, if we get to a design within the next year and we're ready to do

087a construction, begin construction, that's where I think that this next step would come into play because we wouldn't be able to pay a contractor. Even though they've given us their best price, they would expect to start receiving some payments for that. So with that being said, again I just share with you. We've had three major milestones. We've completed the first which is the selection of a project management firm to assist us. I am very excited and I'm very keep my fingers crossed that we will be coming back to you at the next meeting with the architectural engineering recommendation. Our committee met and I've said this in our facility finance, Facilities and Operations committee. We had over 17 submittals for that project and we got down to five, we interviewed five and we have made a

088recommendation and we're working with board counsel in order to begin those negotiations. Our plan is, since we have the time is to actually come to you not just with a recommendation, but actually have the contract in in play and to ask you to award everything at once versus coming back with a finalized contract. We think we might be able to have that for you. If not, it would be the first meeting in December and then ultimately after that it would be the hiring of a contractor to be able to partner with us. Because knowing that we are working on site and the sites are tight, we want to have that contractor to be part to have discussions about phasing site work, working with the towns NC dot with road access and to have them on

089the front end so that they can weigh in. They're not going to be doing anything other than weighing in on the site work. But we believe it's essential. Whereas if we were just building on a brand new green site, we wouldn't need to have the contractor until schematics where we actually have the concept of the school design. But in this case we think that that's very important as far as critical path in getting the project moving forward. So with all of that I'm looking for some concurrence if you believe that the recommendation is to proceed as I've stated. But I can answer any specific questions that you have as it relates to some of the comments that we presented to the county. And again I can answer those at this time. Mr. Chair. Thank you.

090Mr. Sorogi, could you clarify for us the where do things stand exactly today and are we waiting on the board of county commissioners themselves to come back with what? Yeah, so at the meeting what they said is that they would pretty much work with county staff and their council to be able to develop some form Of a modified or I'll say a third draft, We've yet to see anything be posted. I imagine that they may be looking at that internally. And once they come to some form of a consensus or an agreement that would be put on a public agenda. But that's what we're waiting on. All that we know from that meeting is that many of our comments were very. They were very receptive to them, But I think that it really boiled down

091to them trying to work out that level of oversight and approval between the school, school board and them. And I think that's where there was some differing initial opinions. And I think they've got to work that out so they have a document that they can present to us at Orange county schools. And again, we. When we get that copy from them, even if it's the copy that they're ready to post, we will, as we've done before, we'll collaborate with board counsel to ensure. Because our intent, when they gave us the second draft, we collaborated with Orange county school so that we were tried to be a united front. They may have something that's unique, as we may as well. But we wanted to be very consistent because we've been collaborative for the past four years

092and we want to continue that momentum. And related to that, the time is money comment that you made. Can you comment on the summer work and some of the things that I learned in that meeting about why time is going critical at Carrboro elementary and what a delay could cost us in terms of completion dates? Yeah. So our sites are occupied. So obviously you have to do two things that are, I will say summer dependent. We have critical. Do we have dependencies? You gotta have a summer if you're gonna clear a site to build a new school, You've gotta. If it's move trees, move dirt, move rock. That is very difficult to do when a school is occupied. Right. So you need a summer. And then ultimately, when you build a school, if the design

093allows you to open the school and then tear down the school, you need another summer. The goal would be that we could move the students into the brand new building and just let the existing building, if it has to sit for six months, it sits for six months before we tear it down. But if there's a need, because they need to put a parking lot where the existing school is, you. You need another summer. So for us, it is summer driven. So we're already looking at the designing in the 26 year and this would go out in the 27 year. So it'd be 27, 28. And we said 28, fall of 28 is our ideal. Knowing that 29 may be a reality with the approval process and by being summer driven. If we had a

094green site, you know, we had talked about building next to Morris Grove, which was a great green site, you could go into that site and you could just run it and there's enough distance in space. Might be noisy at times, but you could control dust. You could. There's all kinds of mitigation strategies that you could employ and will allow it. But we know that at Carrboro, Estes Hills, and then ultimately when FPG, when that one's ever replaced those three schools, they're all going to be next to another school, be it Estes Hills, next to Estes Hills. FPG, right now we're looking at right next to Culbreth Middle. So again, that's the biggest challenge we have. Thank you, board members. Any questions? He's asking us to sort of give him a head nod to proceed with

095the agreement that it's basically, you're trying to get back to where we were with the core team agreement plan and not have an interlocal agreement. That changes a lot of the. The oversight, in my opinion. I think that the guardrails that the commissioners created in January require you as a board to follow the rules because ultimately the board of county commissioners may not be able to tell you what you can do, but they can choose not to appropriate funding. That is, we all know that. So in my mind, yeah, I want to get back to let's move forward. Let's. Let's be collaborative and let's get the project moving because ultimately we're going to follow that process because we need the money. We need to improve our schools. Clearly, I don't think that that would ever

096be a measure that we would want to be against. So that's what I'm. Look, I'm suggesting, but I'm not foolish enough to realize that I may get what I want. It may be that we have to come to some concessions or have to decide what are negotiables or non negotiables for you as a board, depending upon whatever this third draft might suggest. Because again, we don't want a document to delay our children getting into the newest facilities possible because that. And you know, we know that ultimately, as part of this process, we know that boundary redistricting has to occur when we build our new school. So there's a lot of steps in this process that is dependent upon just getting a school Complete to the best of our ability. Thank you. Thank you so much

097for providing this information. It's really helpful. I was worried when I sat in the county commissioner meeting that, you know, some of the stuff that we're doing on the front end would be delayed. So it's good to hear. It's not going to be. We're going to be able to proceed with some of the preliminary stuff that we're doing on our end. You know, I think, you know, waiting to discuss later with the ILA about the ILA, once the county commissioners figure out, whatever they're figuring out makes sense because obviously the document went completely different from what we saw in the first draft. So obviously we need to have some discussions, you know, with them as well as, you know, as a board, but even with the county commissioners to understand, you know, what goal they're

098trying to achieve. Because it looks like we've got two different goals here and they weren't. And one of them wasn't anything that we discussed when we were. All three boards were in a meeting, it didn't even come up. So. And I agree with you, my biggest concern is time is money. Everything is hard right now. Finding labor, you know, cost of construction, I mean, that stuff has been going up for years. So, you know, we can't have any delays. And if the county commissioners, I mean, we've already had processes in place, quite honestly to do facility work in place. And so this clarification in January helps, but, you know, I just don't want us to get caught up in another subgroup of other people who are this, you know, within other boards have to approve

099something that we've already approved and it just, it gets to be too many cooks in the kitchen. I was having a meeting earlier today and I said the same thing. We get too many cooks in the kitchen, that's when everything starts to go wrong. And ultimately we gotta focus on our goal. Newer school buildings for our students and staff and sometimes the adults, we just overcomplicate it. So can I ask a point of clarification as well? So did I hear that absent a finalized ILA, that the county staff is suggesting that we move forward? Yeah, in a conversation with them, they were, you know, their premise was you have a board approved guidance that these are the guardrails and until something changes, that would be the guidance that you would follow, which is kind of

100standard with, with documents. But again, it's the matter of that money has been appropriated and we have full access to use it. What we can do is we can't deviate from that and start using any of that design money for anything that's not design. That's right. Management related. But that's the advice that we've been given. And you know, my concern is that we sit and wait. That that could be the rationalization. Well, why did you sit and wait? You had guidance. Right. And in the absence of seeing a new document, you know, for me, I just know that we've got to keep these projects moving forward. Forward. And if, and I don't believe that we are violating any, any policy or standard that is there. Given that they did not do a rescission of the

101January policy, if they had done a rescission of the January policy, I would say you can't do that anymore. But they haven't done that yet. Now if something changes between now and when I bring you an architectural award recommendation and they do something like that, then I think I got to put the brakes down and say we got to talk again. But right now we just don't have any indication. And I did ask the county if they knew when there might be a, another draft that would be published for a business meeting for the commissioners, and they were not able to provide that at, at least at the time of the conversation, which was late last week. If I may, Mr. Chair, I just want to note that the, the addendum that the county passed

102in January to their policy, which speaks specifically to how bond funds will be used, has a list of like seven design principles the school districts must be able to demonstrate. So that is in effect as well. I mean, it's, he was speaking of guardrails. There are certainly guardrails in it. Yeah. Like they say, you got to look at safe routes to schools. You got to look at finding a viable site that has connections to water and utilities, which we have a site selection, but it talks about sustainability, you know, trying to employ as many sustainable practices as you can. So there are, there are guidelines that are very specific and that was recently updated as well and discussed with the Capital Work Group. So thank you for that. Yeah, that's a good point. We thought

103that was sort of the final word in January. And. I mean, not to beat a dead horse, but So it's not some novel creative legal interpretation that January 2025 policy applies. It's just, that's just in the absence of something that overrides, that's what that, that was our last guidance and we, there hasn't been any change to that guideline. Okay. I think you're getting Ahead, the head nods to thank you for the update and keeping us posted. Thank you. Appreciate it. Is there any public comment on this topic? I guess we have one public and I can't see behind the podium. Two technically. Two technically, yeah. Okay. That takes us then to the budget adoption update. Mr. Kaiser, I know you've been waiting patiently. So thank you to the board and staff members and community members

104that are here. My name is Justin Kaiser. I'm the district assistant finance officer standing in for Jonathan, who has been under the weather for the last couple days. And I can tell you from talking to him on the phone this morning, he's. He's definitely under the weather. He would not have given us too much tonight, so we're hoping he has a quick recovery. So I wanted to start with the purpose for today's presentation. I know you've heard Jonathan give countless budget updates and they've all been about the same. And the delay has always been, we're waiting on a state budget. Tonight's a little different. We now know that we're probably not getting a state budget, at least in this current calendar year. So that is kind of our motivation to just go ahead and pass.

105Something I'll highlight throughout the presentation where we sort of took the risk of not having that budget available to us and we took a conservative stance on something that was kind of an estimate or, you know, something. We just want to be cautious on knowing our financial, recent financial history and kind of where we're at and where we're going. So the purpose for today's presentation is to ensure the board knows what they're adopting at the next board meeting. I even called this the intent to adopt. I just want to make sure everybody is well aware of the items that are included and sort of the stances we took to arrive at the balanced budget that we're going to present. So some of the major items is a General assembly budget update. That one's easy. There

106is no update. Student. I'll talk about student enrollment a little bit, revenue changes, continuation items that you've all seen, the spending reductions and how that kind of flowed into this year's budget. And then the one I'm most excited for is the local fund balance update. So as I said, the General assembly is at a stalemate. It's well documented. Kind of wanted to cover kind of the two stances. The Senate wants to, or they did, accelerate the income tax cuts included in the revenues for the state budget. I want to highlight that that is passed and kind of that is legislated already. The House has come back and said they're kind of nervous about that. They would rather go back to the original plan and slow it down. And the two groups have just not come

107to a consensus on what they want to do. From the Senate's perspective, what they wanted is already legislated. So they have no motivation really to come back in the House, though they continue to kind of put stuff out. The Senate's already gone for the year. Then there's nothing on the agenda to bring everybody back to pass something. So our expectation right now is that it's pretty likely that we won't have a budget for this fiscal year. I think the next thing that's scheduled is in April of 2026. So that's sort of the update on that. Here's the student data update. I think we've you've heard a lot of people speak about the student enrollment trends, from the State Superintendent to Dr. Trice to Dr. Vilwalk, just to highlight, obviously we have a declining enrollment and

108that takes away funds as most of our funding is tied to admiration. But it also impacts the ratio between us and Orange County. And since we're a split county, that's kind of a double whammy on us. If the proportion also shifts, which we saw this year, it's kind of a minor shift, but it's just something to be aware of that not only do we lose the money for each kid, we also lose to the proportion, depending on how that shakes out. And that's highlighted in this chart here. It was about a quarter of a percent. The, the proportions shift. But on a $95 million budget, that's not nothing. So it's just something I wanted to highlight there. This slide kind of talks about the regular current expense funding. The county did pass a 3% countywide

109increase on that, and so we'll receive about 3%, which is about 1.63 million. Next slide is about the special district tax. The county did increase above the revenue neutral rate on the special district tax, giving us a little bit extra revenue there. In total, that came out to about 1.1 million. So the 2 of those making up the majority of our revenues was about 2.77 million increased over last year. So this is sort of a summary slide of those two major pots of money, but also a couple of what I would call miscellaneous revenues. And we again took a conservative stance on those. We wrote those down a little bit to kind of reflect the trends we're seeing. Sales tax revenue, we've seen down over the last couple years, Transportation revenue, fines and forfeitures. So,

110we wrote all those down just a little bit. And the chart to the right of that highlights the scale. Those revenues are quite small compared to those first two I highlighted. So in total, we're budgeting a 2.4% or a $2.4 million increase in the local revenues. So this slide's about the continuation items. You've seen these probably six or seven times at this point. What I wanted to highlight is that we put in the 3% that we've been talking about. We know the Senate and the House were very varied on their stance and how much teacher raises would be. Neither of them were at the 3% level. So again, that's a, that's quite a conservative stance to take. But we were able to balance the budget with that 3% reserve in there. And I want to

111highlight that that is a reserve. And if the state did come back and pass teacher raises, we would be balanced up to that 3%. And then this is just another summary and a pie chart to see. Sort of the. You can tell that 85% of that is salary related and the other 15% is non salary related. And that just matches the proportion of how we spend our funds. So, the continuation sort of follows that. The important thing I want to show on this slide is if you factor in those local revenue changes, we still didn't quite meet the continuation need. We would have been left with about 928,000 left in deficit. But as we know, we've recently implemented our reduction in force over the last year or two. And so the first table there is

112the chart from the last slide showing that 928 deficit that would have been there. The $4 million impact that you see, that's again an estimate that we have as it, as the RIF plan shakes out what we think sort of what we'll pick up from that. And again, that is a conservative number. I believe when we originally presented the plan itself, that was somewhere in the $5 million range because of, you know, the timing of when people left and how the lapsed salaries are going to shake out. There's a level of risk there. So we took $4 million and with that continuation need, that should leave us in a financial position in the positive $3 million for this year. So that's very exciting based on where we've been. So, like I said, the local fund

113balance update, this one's pretty exciting. This is for the fiscal year that just ended and the audit is technically still in progress. But you guys will see that, I believe, at the next meeting and they'll talk about the fund balance position that we ended up in. We did add about 360,000, which in relation to the budget is not very much. But what that does show is that the deficit, the structural deficit that we've been talking about really since I've even been here, is at least at zero. So moving forward, I would attribute that to the Tier one and Tier two of the RIF plan. If you remember the three tiers. And Tier three is where we're going to see that return of fund balance. And as we noted, that's a much needed improvement from where

114we've been. As I put the budget on this year, it's been quite a different story of how to allocate those funds. And we're not looking for places that we know are not are unbalanced. We were able to put on a balanced budget. So that, that's quite a different feeling than what we've had recently. So what's the next steps? As I said, the board is getting the full adopted budget at the next meeting on November 20th. And barring any major issues, we expect to adopt that at the next meeting. And then of course, we started back in 2023 with the meritorious budget. I'll call it a standard. It's just how we present the budget in the document. And I just wanted to let the board know we're continuing that, those efforts to maintain that level of

115information and presentation. So after you take any questions. Thank you. Justin. Questions. I did want to ask you to repeat something about Tier one, Tier two and Tier three because that was a difficult thing for people to do, but it reinforced that the projections that were made as a result of doing that are in fact what we're seeing today. And that this has, tough as it has been, it has achieved its desired outcome, which was to one, level things off and then two, to rebuild the fund balance. Exactly. So we presented Tier one and Tier two as like the stopgap measure. These are the things we're going to do. We did it immediately, I believe it was back in August of last year. Those were the things we wanted to impact last fiscal year. And

116the fund balance. This is the level of fund balance that was previously at zero. Even though that's a small amount, that means that the deficit, it was addressed and then Tier three was presented as the long term return of financial stability. So that is where we expect that $3 million financial position at the end of the year to come. To fruition. So. Yeah, thank you. Anybody else? Barb? I guess I just was going to see Dr. Trice. If you could share anything about the presentations you been making with different stakeholders about enrollment trends and how, if at all, that might affect our next meeting and how it's interacting with the budget. Yeah, I don't know that it would impact our recommendation to adopt a budget, but certainly with declining student enrollment, I think you saw

117some of the numbers in the beginning of the presentation. We can expect to receive less state funding next year because of the declining student enrollment. And so what I've been sharing with staff and soon and those in the community is basically the trends that we've been seeing since 2020. So that, you know, all of our community has the same information and that we're not operating on different information, especially if we have to make tough decisions on how to address, you know, the financial impact of declining student enrollment. And so one, the first part of that is to share the information what the declining enrollment trends look like the cause. When we think about birth rates, you know, there are questions about housing that often come comes up in some of these conversations. But very soon

118after sharing data, we're going to pivot toward also determining, you know, what value should drive decision making as an administration and a board when it's time to address the, you know, the budget situation because of declining student enrollment. I think more long term is the recognition that we are becoming a smaller district. And as opposed to going from year to year to year addressing the budget challenges, challenge, how do we make a pivot that allows our district to thrive given that we're going to be a smaller district? I don't want to get ahead of information that we think will be shared with the board in December at your December retreat where we'll probably have more hard and fast numbers from Carolina demography to kind of give us our next steps with that. So if I

119could add one thing, I would commend dpi. They catch a lot of flack, but one thing that I feel like they have done right, they switched to a funding and arrears model in a period of declining enrollment that really helps us see the or have time to react to the issues that can come and we have at least an opportunity to address proactively as opposed to always reacting. So that's a major change that kind of went under the radar a little bit. But I would commend DPI for that. Thank you, Meredith. I know there are a lot of variables at play, but if you had to make A projection on fund balance for 2026 going forward. Like I see that we're in the positive for 2025 on the slide. I mean, given the Tier 3

120RIF, what might we expect to see one year, three years down the line? Yep. So that $3 million is what, what we expect this year. Okay. And again that's, that's with a balanced budget at 3%, there's so much variance in that that we opted to take the conservative stance of the 3 million. But it could be. Okay, so that's where the 3 million. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood that. Okay, thanks. Anything else? Okay, Mr. Kaiser, thank you. And you're bringing this back November 20th for formal approval? Yeah. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? None. Okay. That takes us to committee reports and sharing. And we will start with Finance committee. Reza. Our next finance Facility and Operations committee meeting has been moved because of

121the Veterans Day holiday on Tuesday, November 11th. So. So our meeting will actually be on Monday, November 10th, 5:30 virtual. Go to the Chapel Carver City Schools website under Board Committees to get all the meeting information there. Thank you. Thank you. Policy committee. Mike. Our next scheduled meeting is November 18th, Tuesday the 18th at 5:30. And student support committee. Vicki, Our next meeting will be in January and we will give you an update as to the actual date we fall on because we did a packed meeting this past and most of the updates that you received tonight were part of student success. So, you have already received my updates. I'm thankful for that. So we worked really hard and we're hoping to be able to come back early part of January and we'll see and

122you'll get an updated date for that and it'll be on the website and it will be virtual. Thank you, Vicki. Are there any board liaison committee reports or any sharing people wanted to. Ronnie, go ahead. I just wanted to congratulate my colleagues who were reelected, George Griffin and Reza Jenkins and Miranda, who's in the audience, will be joining us here in the next month. So, congratulations on your victory and really thrilled to be part of community where so many people are willing to serve. So, congratulations to other candidates. Shout out to Barbara Fuchsi, Mayor of Carrboro and others who were reelected in the recent election. Thank you, Ronnie. I just wanted to share and I think Greg and the rest of the communications team, they've posted pictures and did some videos. I think we recently

123had the two county commissioners, Commissioner Porty Ascot and Commissioner Carter. They both went on some school visits with a Few of us. And so that was just really great taking them out. I love visiting the schools, but it was just great taking them to see some of our CTE programs, our pre K and things like that. So just a wonderful time with them. I don't know if anyone else who went has anything to add, but it was just great because obviously it helps with them building connection to what they have to fund every year. So the more we can get the county commissioners into the schools to see what we're doing, I think that's really important to help with our narrative every spring when we have to go to them and talk to them about

124our budget and what we're doing in our schools. Vicki, I just want to highlight a little bit more about when our state super superintendent was here in our district. I made a point of sending our principals a thank you so much and our appreciation and congratulations on the students that participated in the program. We had students from Smith Middle and Chapel High that performed, and then our drum line was awesome. And I just wanted to publicly say they did an absolutely wonderful job. Chapel Hill, Cairo City schools should be very proud of all the students that participated in that program. And for those who weren't able to be at the program or haven't really heard much about it, I want to make sure to shout out our state as a whole. We are number two

125in the nation for CTE classes. And the goal is that we will be number one. And I just want to highlight and let everyone know that the state strategic plan, it is really wonderful. And do yourself a favor and go look at the things, because our state superintendent is really intentional in saying that we need to highlight and we need to revere all educators from the time our kids are stepping on buses or going across a crosswalk to the time that they go home. And I just want to say thank you and that it was a really, really wonderful evening. And it was, well, well, enthusiastic, I'll say that way. It was so enthusiastic and, you know, yeah, I appreciated it. So thank you. Thank you, Vicki. Anybody else? Okay. The chair then would request

126a motion to return to closed session. I make the motion that we go into closed session pursuant to General Statute 143.318.11 to consult with the board's attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege. Second. There's been a motion and it's been seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye Opposed? It's unanimous. So we'll go into closed session. Thank you. [CLOSED SESSION] [GAVEL] The meeting is now back in open session. Have you got a motion to make? I do. I make the motion to retain Brooks Pierce for advice in discrete legal matters as needed. Second There's been a motion that's been seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye Opposed? Carries unanimously. Thank you. The meeting is adjourned. [GAVEL]