Board of Education - Feb 05, 2026

001[ GAVEL ] Good evening, everyone. Welcome out this evening. I'd like to call the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education meeting to order. Our first item is to approve the agenda. May I get a motion to approve the agenda? I'll make a motion. We have a motion from Vickie. Sounds like a second from Melinda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All right, thank you everyone. And next item on our agenda is to go into closed session for the purposes stated on the agenda. May I get a motion? I have a motion from Barb. Second. A second from Meredith. All those in favor? Aye. All right, thank you everyone. We'll come back as close as we can to 7 PM. Thank you. [CLOSSED SESSION] [ GAVEL ] Good evening. We are back to open

002session. The next item on our agenda we have two proclamations, and so the first proclamation is National School Counseling Week Proclamation. All right, so board members, we could get started. Melinda. School counselors are employed in public and private schools to help students reach their full potential, and whereas school counselors are actively committed to helping students explore their abilities, strengths, interests, and talents as these traits relate to career awareness and development. And... Whereas school counselors help parents focus on ways to further the educational, personal, and social growth of their children, and... Whereas school counselors work with teachers and other educators to help students explore their potential and set realistic goals for themselves. And Whereas school counselors seek to identify utilize community resources that can enrich, enhance, and complement comprehensive school counseling programs and help students become

003productive members of society. And... Whereas comprehensive developmental school counseling programs are considered an integral part of the educational process that enables all students to. achieve success in school. Now therefore be it resolved that We, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education, do hereby proclaim February 2nd through February 6th, 2026, to be National School Counseling Week in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Be it further resolved that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education strongly encourages schools to host special events and activities to call attention to the countless benefits of a comprehensive school counseling program. Thank you. All right, and then our next proclamation is recognizing Black History Month. And we'll start with Melinda. Whereas Black History Month provides an opportunity to recognize, honor, and celebrate the achievements, contributions, contributions and enduring resilience of Black

004Americans who collectively have shaped the history, progress, and future of the United States. And whereas the history of Black Americans is inseparable from the history of public education, including the struggle for equal access, the pursuit of justice and equity, and the ongoing work to ensure that schools are places where every student is valued and empowered to succeed. And whereas Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools is committed to fostering inclusive learning environments and to ensuring that school culture honors the full humanity and contributions of Black individuals and communities. And whereas Black educators, students, families, staff, and community members continue to play a vital role in shaping CHCCS by strengthening our school schools and advancing our mission to inspire every student to navigate the world and make a positive impact throughout their life's journey. And whereas Black History Month

005invites reflection not only on past achievements but also on the present and future, challenging us to confront inequities, dismantle systemic barriers, and commit ourselves to excellence and opportunity for all. And whereas recognizing Black History Month aligns with CHCCS's core values of engagement, collective efficacy, social justice action, wellness and joy, and it encourages meaningful dialogues and learning across classrooms, schools, and the broader community. Now therefore, the Chapel Hill-Carborro City Schools Board of Education recognizes and proclaims February 2026 is Black History Month, encouraging students, families, staff, and community members to engage in learning, reflection, and celebration that honors Black history not only in this moment but throughout the year. Thank you. All right, the next item up on our agenda is public comment. And I actually have a lot to read, so bear with me. So our

006the board appreciates and encourages public comment. Board members will listen to the comments but may ask or make clarifying questions or comments, but there will be no general discussion on related on discussion on the related public comments. Public comments on any matter or of concern that is not currently on the work session agenda will be heard during this first session of public comment. Public comments related to specifically the work session items will be heard after each work session item has been discussed by the Board of Education. Due to the anticipated number of speakers, speakers for both general and work session topics have up to 2 minutes for their comment. And we have a clock in front of our that are where you can see your time. For both sessions of public comment, when you are

007recognized, please come forward, state your name, and if you're speaking for an organization, please identify the name of the organization. All right. So for this first part of public comment, these are for items not on the work session agenda, okay? So, we'll start with recognizing any teacher organizations, SIT, or student groups, followed by anyone who has signed up in advance, and finally any other persons wishing to make a comment. And due to the setup of our podiums, if you're going to make public comments, you're going to go to this podium to my left, your right. I get that right? Good. All right, so this is for items not on work session. Welcome, Mr. Link. Good evening. My name is Brian Link and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. I rise in

008the first portion of this meeting tonight to echo the proclamations that were issued today and both honoring my fellow colleagues who are school counselors and our district's continued efforts to focus on the whole child and mental health and how critical our school counselors are to that effort and our need to ensure that when we are looking at staffing that we are looking at the whole child and making sure that those support services are properly and fully staffed. I also rise, right, not just as the president of the organization but as an educator in this district and the head of our social justice East Chapel Hill and say thank you to this board for your proclamation honoring Black History Month. We are sitting here in a building this evening, right, that is steeped in history in

009this, our community, steeped in Black history in our community. And I'm glad you can do that. But I also am worried, and I don't believe it's anyone on this board who's doing it, but in the larger, sadly, circumstances that we find ourselves in both nationally at the state level. And so I'm rising for something that otherwise probably wouldn't have even gotten noticed this evening, and it's Policy 7100. And if you look at Policy 7100 this evening, the changes that are proposed there are essentially when we're talking about who are we going to hire for our children. We are asking tonight to strike out any actions that seek to try to retain and recruit educators of color, knowing that our public schools in fact are a majority of students, of people of color, and knowing that

010our educators in the buildings do not represent our populations. It is troubling that we would not do everything we possibly can to try to ensure that our educators are reflective of our populations. I understand why, I'm sure you do as well, while these remarks are being made, but nonetheless, I thought it important to highlight what is happening in our country and in our state especially this month. Thank you. Sorry, any other teacher organizations, SAT or student groups who wish to make a public comment for items not on work session? All right. Anyone else who has signed up to make a public comment? On items not on work session. And finally, anyone who would like to make a public comment. There we go. Hello. Fine. Thanks, Brian Link, for his comments. Brian, I'm missing you. All

011right. So good evening, everyone. I am Diane Jackson, a 30-plus CHCS CCS employee retired. I come before you tonight bringing greetings from my ancestors and community honoring Black History Month. I'm following up on the last time I appeared before you in support of the MSAN students and the Blue-Ribbon Mentor Advocacy Program. As I thought about the presentation of the students last meeting, several quotes came to mind, and I would like to share them with you. They tried to bury us, but they didn't know that we were seeds. When life give you lemons, make lemonade. And a favorite quote of mine, speaking of the Black community, derived from Isaiah 43:16-19: We know how to make a way out of no way. Hold up, let me find my notes. Um, as I shared with this assembly during

012the last board meeting, not only are the M-SPAN and Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocates students expecting this board to act upon their presentation. Black staff and community members are anxiously awaiting some movement, attention, and expectations from this board as it relates to the information shared by the students at the last meeting. Financial support for programming activities and a director of equity is needed. The students shouldn't have to make a way out of no way. If this district is going in another direction with Blue Ribbon, please notify the community. Where are the equity reports from previous years found on the school board school district information? I would appreciate if someone is identified to supply me with that information. It is needed for an upcoming community meeting in March. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before

013you tonight. And a reminder, Black history is America's history. We make contributions in spite of, not because of. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to make a public comment for items not on work session? All right, seeing no other public comments, thank you. Also, you may send written comments to the board. The email is available on the agenda, and additional information regarding written comments is available on our website. All right, board members, the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. May I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. I have a motion from Vickie. Can I get a second? Second. I have a second from George. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. All right. The next item on our agenda is discussion and action. We have

014one item. It's recommendation for approval on first reading for policy code 1750, 7220, grievance procedure for employees. Looking to see, Dr. Harris, okay. It's a little shift in this room, so I got to look to see where everyone is. Thank you, Dr. Harris. Good evening. Yes, this policy was suggested to be brought in for discussion and action to see if the board members had any questions or concerns just due to the number of revisions that were proposed in this particular policy. So I'm here to answer any questions or concerns that you may have. Rani, go ahead. I would just add we had good discussion about this policy in the Policy Committee, and to echo Dr. Harris, it really was a matter of the number of changes. We didn't have any particular issues to raise. Okay,

015thank you so much. Any other board members' comments or questions? Okay, let me get to my agenda. Sorry. All right, and this is on discussion and action. And so we are seeking approval of the board on first reading for Policy Code 1750. 7220, grievance procedures for employees. I will entertain a motion to approve on first reading. So moved. A motion from Meredith, a second from Rani. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carries. Thank you. Thank you. All right, the next item on our agenda is work session. And I just wanted to just go over what work session is. So work sessions are meetings in which the board spends some time discussing a topic. In these meetings, the board generally does not take action, which requires voting approval. And like I said from

016the beginning, public comment will be heard after each, each work session topic. Our first work session topic is our preliminary fiscal year 2026-2027 budget development overview. And it looks like it's Mr. Scott. That's right. Thank you, board members. For these work session items, we've been encouraged by the staff to ask questions. Throughout the presentation versus waiting at the end. Okay, so feel free to raise your hand. I'll try to keep up, but thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair, board members, Dr. Trice, members of the public. So tonight we're right back again in the middle of budget season. Kind of ironically, it's only been 2 months since we last passed our budget. But this has been kind of a different year for us with a lot of uncertainty. One, with the General Assembly still not passing

017a comprehensive biennial budget. And to add to that, I'm going to go over some other things that are going to, could potentially affect our funding moving into next year. So we want to take an opportunity and kind of update the board early in the budget season of, you know, some of the risks of uncertainties that we're seeing, and then just go into a little bit of what continuation budget could look like moving into next budget year. Just for review for everybody in the room our budget development timeline really occurs all year, but it begins in earnest in November and December as we really start to gather data and look at projections for next year. So here we are now in January. In February, we begin planning and drafting with the goal of delivering a superintendent's

018recommended budget in the first meeting, first board meeting in March. Typically from that, the board will put its own signature on the budget, making changes as they see fit, and we carry that to the Board of County Commissioners as a school board and administration team in April of every year to be considered as the county develops its budget for the next year. Sometime later in June, Board of Orange County Commissioners will adopt their final budget. That will be the final that will inform the board and administration of the final number that we can expect in county funding to develop our final budget. From that, we're able to craft the final budget to bring for board adoption, typically in July or August of a fiscal year, unless there's other extenuating circumstances. So I want to talk

019a little bit about budget drivers again. We're a little bit at a disadvantage because there is no state budget. Typically, as we enter the second year of the biennium, all of these budget drivers would have been spelled out in statute. It really removes a lot of uncertainty from the budget and the budget development. Again, unfortunately, we don't have those moving into this budget year. We have made a best good faith estimate using linear regression where we can to determine what those drivers are going to be. I just want to talk about those a little bit. First, I think we need to talk about student data. I want to apologize, there is a typo on the first bullet point here, but Dr. Trice has been going out among the community and we've been talking about the

020reduction in state ADM, which is the average daily membership, and how that funding works, right? And the way our funding works is our funding is in arrears based on the best one of two of the previous school year. So we know now that our ADM, 40th day ADM, was the best one of two for 2025 at 10,773 students. And it actually should be fiscal year '26, but in November of 2025. So we know that that number is lower than it was the year before. We also know that we receive about $7,500 per student. For each of those ADM numbers, so it gives us the ability to plan accordingly. So that first number is our state-funded number. There is also an iteration that we go through with the county to determine the difference between the funding

021split of Orange County Schools and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. And in order to do that, we have to reconcile out, out-of-district enrollment and charter school enrollment. So when we go through that iteration, we're landing in a budgeted 10,741 students for county purposes. Not a big difference to the state number, but due to the Fiscal Budget and Control Act, are required to be funded that way. All in all, it represents on the county level a reduction of 277 students compared with the fiscal year, with this fiscal year. That number is going to be important as we move through this presentation. Then I think also in the broader picture I thought it was always a good idea to remind everyone where every dollar goes. So we've created a Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools dollar that represents the entirety

022of the local budget. As you can see, we're still expending 82% of our entire budget on salary and benefits. Several years ago, that number was significantly higher, somewhere around 85%. We've been successful in drawing down some staff with strategic reductions that were necessary in order to fund other non-personnel costs such as rising utility bills, rising insurance costs, so on and so forth. But I just wanted to put this out um, you there, know, that still every dollar that we're talking about, the district spends 82 cents on personnel of local money. Services, 12 cents for every dollar. Please bear in mind that includes utilities You know, we have almost a $3 million electric bill over the course of the year. We have over $1 million worth of insurance that we pay. There are many other big-ticket

023items that makes up that $11.6 million. Only $4.2 million is directed at supplies and materials, and 1.5 or 2% is transferred directly to charter schools. We're required to do that by state law. State statute. This year we budgeted just under 1 point, or it's $1.45 million budgeted to go to charter schools. I do believe that we're going to, during the Finance, Facilities, and Operations Committee meeting next Tuesday, we're going to further dice up that dollar and get into a little more of what each of those silos represents. So if anybody's interested, please tune in at 5:30 next Tuesday night. We'll go through it. OK, so. Sure, yeah. Jonathan, we've got a question. Yes, Jonathan. Just a quick question on the 82% salary and benefits. Can you comment on how that compares with other school districts?

024Are we like in the middle of the range on that? Is that high? Is it low percentagewise? So I don't think I can comment on the percentage. I can come, well, I mean, I think it's probably extremely high just given the enormity of the local funding that we receive from our county. That being said, every school district is going to have similar fixed costs that we have, right? And I would think that proportionally those fixed costs would probably represent more of their budget. Thanks. Yes. Thank you. Go ahead, Vickie. You said the amount that you think will be going out to charter schools is $1.45 mil coming up, so it's decreased. Is that due to students going out to charter schools decreasing? So it hasn't decreased, but I think it's held relatively stable. Let me

025go back to this. So we have 227 chart, I'm sorry, 220 8 charter school students. I don't know the exact number last year, but it's very, very similar to that. Yep, we do have to increase the number every year though based on the percentage increase that we get in the county appropriation. So if the county gives us an additional 5%, then we have to increase the per pupil that we give every charter school student by the 5%. Okay, moving into some key budget drivers. Again, I want to just make everyone aware that these are our best estimates at this point. And we don't really have any legislative authority or legislative statutes to lean on to glean any of these numbers. But we are developing this budget with an anticipated 4% increase across the board. That

026being said, we still are awaiting, again, the general assembly budget. So there is a potential that we could have salary increases this year too. So we just need to wait, see where that comes out. But we are anticipating a 4% increase next year to salaries. Social Security is always 7.65% match. State retirement matching, again, this is kind of a tough one to predict because it's been kind of up and down over the last few years. Using our linear regression method, we're expecting it to increase up to 25.15%. That's about a 6% increase. Then of course, state employer health insurance premiums, we're anticipating going up to about $8,800 from $8,500 this year. And again, we left 4% non-personnel cost inflationary amounts in there just because we know the cost of everything is going up every year.

027I think right now CPI is running a little bit cooler than that. Stay tuned, we don't know what's going to happen over the next 6 months, right? All right, so what I wanted to do, because there's so much uncertainty, I wanted to prepare several different scenarios, a lot like the corporate world looks at, like a low-risk scenario, a medium-risk scenario, and a high-risk scenario. So I want to take a little time to talk about those assumptions and the risk overview. And before I do that, well, this could be one of the risks, but I want to update the board and the public about some potential changes to county funding that may be coming down. Earlier in January, the Board of County Commissioners had a board retreat, and they've identified, or the county staff has identified,

028a potential $21.5 million funding gap in their next budget cycle, right? There's several reasons for that. Some of it is for reduction in property tax assessments. There's increased requirements in SNAP benefits, which was a big part, increased healthcare costs for the county. But there was also about $10 million increase for debt service on educational funding for both school districts, along with a phased-in PAGO amount, which I'll get into in a minute. Knowing that there's this gap, the county commissioners have asked that the county commissioners and both school boards, the governing bodies, begin some discussions about the public education funding approach in the county, right? Up until this conversation, the county has historically increased total education funding year over year. And if we look back over the last 5 years, they've increased it about 3% year

029over year over the last 5 years. That has caused, because at the same time we're having a reduction in pupils, it's caused a faster increase in per-pupil funding. The county would like to explore a different approach, and that instead of increasing total funding across the county to both school districts, they would increase the per-pupil funded amount by the percentage instead of the total amount, right? So as your ADM drops, you'll receive less dollars in total because you're receiving your dollars now per pupil and not in total. And I'm going to go into a little bit more about what that means for us if that was to happen to us. But I think that's one risk we need to assess now and be part of this conversation, and also to inform the board and the community,

030because I do believe this is going to become a topic of significant conversation between the three bodies as we move through the budget season. So that's one thing. The other thing is, if you'll recall, as part of the original bond and capital investment plan in 2024, the county was to borrow $300 million for construction of school buildings. And they were also going to fund over 10 years what they call a PEGO funding. They were going to provide $100 million to the school districts to be split similar to that ADM split. And that money was to be used for ongoing priority maintenance needs. As well as the planning to go into the construction of the new buildings that we're going to be secured to by the bond. So last year, the county was in a not

031as austere budget environment as they are this year. However, they still had to balance raising taxes versus funding the payroll completely, and at that point they had devised in the county budget a phased-in approach to the payroll. So last year they phased, the plan was to phase us in, both school districts, a half a million dollars this year. That half million next year was supposed to be increased to $5.5 million, right? So we're already about $14 million short of where we should be, and then they would reach full funding in the following year. At this point, I think knowing that the county has a $21.5 million gap, this is another thing that we should be aware of. Because I do think there is the potential that that $5.5 million phase-in could be reduced as the

032county moves through their budget. So those are the two things that really came out of the county retreat that I think we need to focus on as a board, as an administration, as a community, because they're going to have significant impacts on how we operate over the next 10 years. I, for my presentation, I'm going to stay focused on the per pupil And then perhaps Mr. Ciarrocchi will talk a little bit more about the effects that PEGA will have later in his presentation. So let's talk about the per pupil model. So as of right now, our per pupil allocation today based on the number of students we have is $5,877. Under the new model, the proposed increase would increase that allocation to $6,053. $3 per child. When we multiply that to our, times our estimated

033enrollment, we come up with just short of $65 million. Okay, our county appropriation right now is $64.7 million, or thereabouts. So instead of getting those 3% on our $64.7 million, we're only going to end up, after we go through this iteration, with about $260,000 more in county appropriation next year than we received this year, right? And that's very important when you look, as we look forward and look at our continuation needs. All things being equal, if the county manager included a 3% across-the-board increase to local current expense on the county budget for education and it was adopted by the county board, this would be $1.5 million lower than we would have expected under normal circumstances. So you can kind of you see, know, there's not a lot of delta there in that graph, but the

034blue is our current year, the yellow is pretty much in line with our current year, and the green is what we could have expected under a normal situation. The other thing I want to point out here, and I think it's really important, is just like the state, there's no floor to this. So next year, if we lose another 700 kids, or another 100 kids, you can multiply that 100 times the $6,053, and that's $600,000 out of any potential increase that we have coming. And again, there's no floor, right? That this will continually erode. You know, if we lose 3% of our student population one year, we're going to be right back to no funding. So this has ramifications beyond next year. This has, you know, potential to affect us in perpetuity moving forward. So everybody

035needs to be aware of that as we continue down this road in discussions with the county. Mr. Scott, could you just go back 4 slides? Stop. No, not that. Not the dollar. It was very nice dollar. Whoever made that, props to the graphics folks. No, I wanted to ask about the salaries and supplement 4% increase and just ask you to break that down because some of the folks that we have on staff are paid by state money that comes from the state, but then many of our staff are funded through local money that we have to match. And so I guess I was just asking if you could break that down a little bit and then also help us understand how much of each. Yeah, so thanks. So certainly. We got two things going on.

036One is, again, we talked about personnel costs and how we're very fortunate to have the amount of personnel that we have in the district, right? I think if you compare this to any district across the state, our FTE count per kid is probably, ratio is probably higher than anywhere across the state. So we have a lot of local employees, a lot. But beyond that, we have state employees that we pay a local supplement on, right? So our teacher supplements begin at 18%, go to 20, 22, and 27. Thank you, Mr. Link. So we pay that portion locally, and if the state raises the state mandated salary or the state certified salary goes up 4%, we have to match that on the local side also, right? So that's what, that's where that 4% is calculated. I'm

037going to get into Well, I don't have the exact numbers for this presentation, but again, next Tuesday we'll go through it line by line and talk about all of that. But yes, anytime the state does anything we're about, we're not exactly 50/50 local/state, but the two funds are very, very similar in their size now. So, you know, anything the state does affects us at the same magnitude. And this one, I tried to break it down into one slide so that it was very, everyone was on the same page here. A couple things, like we have included the increase to the special district tax, 2%, in this. We've included in some of them our best estimates of what salaries and benefits and all that's going to cost. And we kind of run it through and really

038kind of boiled it down to 3 different scenarios. So the first scenario is that there'd be no policy change at the Board of County Commissioners and that we would have a 4% increase in salaries next year mandated by the state based on all of the drivers that we just talked about. There would be, the continuation cost would be about $3.7 million. So that's pretty much our best case going in. The second scenario is Oh, go ahead. I would suggest that's a very unlikely scenario though if the county is in a $21.5 million budget. Like, I know we will expect to have to bear some of that burden. So that, I just wanted to contextualize that. That's okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're right though. You're absolutely right. But we'll have to, yep. right. All

039So then with scenario 2 is again a state-mandated increase. But we're going to move to the new county model, right? So if we were to do that, I'm having difficulty reading that number, but I think it's $5.4 million. Got it. Yep. Okay, so that's what that would cost in continuation if the county moves, and that, that's pretty much, you know, that, that's going with the $1.5 million that we're not going to get, right? So worst case scenario from the district's perspective, best worst-case scenario for the employees, and I don't know if this is going to happen or not, but we're still operating under the assumption that the state could come back and the General Assembly after elections could reconvene and pass a budget this year that includes salary increases that we haven't implemented yet, right?

040We do have 3% of salary reserved, and we can talk about that when we look at fund balance in a minute. But if that was to happen, our continuation costs go from $5.4 to $7.1 million under this new model, right, which is a continuation cost that I have yet to see in my tenure here. So highly improbable that the impact would be that high, but we wanted to paint that picture just so that everybody's aware that this is kind of the 3 scenarios we're looking at. Again, this assumes that staffing remains at 2026 levels. We do know that staffing will be reduced a little bit by the reduction in enrollment. As we continue to develop the continuation budget, we'll have a good idea once we go through the allotment process of how many positions we'll

041be able to recapture through that. But, you know, as of right now, this is, you know, best we got. A couple months from now, I'll have a tighter picture. But right now, these are the 3 scenarios we're looking at. So what does that really mean? And then I know that some of you might be familiar with a graph like this or, you know, similar graph that we've looked at several times over the course of the last few years. So we're assuming, and you've heard me say several times, they're running about $4 million ahead, and our expectation is to add about $4 million to fund balance at the end of the year. So we do have a $4 million cushion moving in that was the board made a conscious decision to try and rebuild fund balance,

042and that money was going to be targeted to fund balance. And we're anticipating having, you know, $4 to $5 million fund balance at the end of the year. It's been several years since we've had any fund balance. I'm looking forward to, you know, being able to sleep at night and having a little money in the bank. Unfortunately, as you look through these scenarios, and I think we just really need to focus on the middle case right now, like, let's just focus there. Can I ask a question before you go from there? Sure. Why is having fund balance important? And I'm going to target this question from a cash flow perspective. So the most important reason to have fund balance is to deal with emergencies for a normal organization. For us, $30 million of our $90

043million budget comes from a special district tax. That special district tax, the majority of it is collected in November, December, and January, right? Our expenses are much more linear in the sense that we make, we pay teachers and staff in August, September, October, November, and December, right? That's a good thing. If, right, but if 30% of your expenditures or your funding source is coming from the special district tax and you don't get it until December, then I can't, you don't have enough money at the beginning of the year if you don't have any money in the bank, right? It's just like if you were to, you know, make your budget at home and you're budgeting in your bonus, but you don't get your bonus for the next 6 months, right? You have to borrow against

044that or something to stay liquid throughout the course of the year. So for us, our primary need for that is to be able to meet current obligations over the first 6 months of the year. There's also other benefits to it. You know, if we carried a 10% fund balance like other districts do, we would be earning interest on that money, right? We'd have $10 million in the bank earning 4%. That would fund 8 teacher salaries over the course of the year. So we don't have that. Working towards getting it back, crucially important. You know, we had a very healthy one at the beginning of the pandemic, kind thank goodness, because we were able to really adapt to be flexible and, you know, do some things that other districts were not able to do because we

045had such a nice fund to lean balance on. So for us, I think liquidity is most important, but also to have a safety net to lean back against is also important. So those are the two things I would say. And what has the county done to help us with this cash flow issue? I'm sorry, could you repeat the question? So the county has done some things to help us with this cash flow issue. Cash flow issue because we haven't had fund balance over these past couple of years, correct? Correct. That's correct. So try to, so over those, so we pretty much went fund balance zero 2 years ago. We built a reduction in force plan that really kind of had a 1-year equalization period and then a recapture of fund balance. And the county's been

046very generous. I mean, they understand the situation we're in. We have a very good relationship with county staff. We've talked about it at collaboration, and they are willing to, you know, forward us the cash to meet expenses. And that I do appreciate it, and it's great. But they also have a $21.5 million budget gap now, right? So, you know, they're experiencing some of the same pains that we experienced over the years ago. I think that knowing that, it would be a good idea for us to try and recapture some of that, just in case, you know, who knows what's going to happen. But they have been very, very helpful in assisting us with cash, with cash flow. With that being said, again, if we had the money in the bank, we would be collecting interest

047on it. They're actually, you know, they have the money, they're collecting interest on it, right? It's nice to have the cash fund, to have the bailout, so to speak, but it's not the same as having the equity or the fund balance here. It also limits you as a board when you prepare budgets. You don't have any fund balance to appropriate. You know, if you get in a situation where you want to do something and where you have a a need to really do something and appropriate fund balance, it takes away that flexibility that you have as a board, and you're really dependent on on the county to fund you year to year. Thank you. So it just removes autonomy for the board. Sure. Barb. go ahead, And Mr. Scott, we just had our annual audit,

048and could you just remind us what the auditor said about what an ideal amount of fund balances or percentage and what's considered best practice? Yeah, I'll talk about best practice. And best practice by the Governmental Finance Officers Association of the United States would say 8% would be a good fund balance, 16% would be a healthy fund balance. I think 16% roughly reflects 2 months' operating expenditures, right? And the other one was about a month's operating expenditures. I don't remember exactly what Dale or what the audit firm said. I would imagine, you know, they're professionally skeptic like they're going to want us to have as much fund balance as possible to guarantee our ability to continue as a going concern. So I don't recall exactly what he said, but I'm certain he was probably leaning closer

049to the 16% than he was, uh, the 8%. And then just to remind everybody, the county does set a minimum policy target for us of 5.5%, which is roughly 2.5-3 weeks of operating cash. All right, so again, I just want to, we didn't finish the slides. I'm going to target this in a little bit more. So if we finish this year 2026 and we have $4 to $5 million in the bank, and the county, you know, we end up with that middle case where we have a 4% raise from the state, which I think is pretty likely and the county changes their funding formula, at the end of next year, we will erode every dollar that we put into fund balance this year. We'll end up right back where we were 2 years ago, illiquid,

050you know, structural deficit, you know, having to take extremely drastic action, uh, looking forward into the next year. So I think we just really need to, you know, focus on that and understand what that could mean for us. Again, we have best case, but as you can see, even in the best case scenario, it just prolongs the inevitable. You know, continuation costs are going to continue to increase beyond what we're expecting in revenue. And then God forbid that we end up in the worst case position. But I think right now we need to focus on that projected. And again, I want to reiterate that all of the work that we have done as a board, as an administration, as a community to try and begin to right-size our organization, all of it will be eroded

051by the end of next year. And we will have to act swiftly at that point. We won't be in a situation where we'll have a year runway to try and phase in reduction in force, it will require much swifter action at that point. So I wanted to talk a little bit now that I've been doom and gloom for the last 20 minutes. I want to look forward a little bit to some strategic planning. I think that there's a pretty high probability that we're not going to get an expansion budget this year. So instead of that, I want to kind of look out over the next few years, kind of tease a little bit of what a pivot would look like. This is more of a hypothetical scenario than anything else, but I just kind of

052want to walk the board through an exercise of what those 4 levers look like. And Dr. Trice spent a lot of time at the board retreat talking about strategic budget levers. You know, it really, it's for us to set direction as the board and administration where we want to be in the next 5 years. You know, like, you know, what is the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools going to look like in the year 2030, in the year 2032? In order to do that, we really need to start now and start beginning to develop a strategic financial plan over the course of the next 5 years. Many organizations have a 5-year plan. We know that we can't predict the future, but it's good to have a plan as you set off down the road. So Dr. Trice

053talked a lot about budget levers. You know, we've looked at structure. We've pulled some of those levers with the reduction in force at Lincoln Center. You know, I think there's some more work to be done around the organizational structure. That's a lever we can pull. Resource allocation is another lever. We've kind of looked at some allotment formulas over the last year or two and tried to net some savings there. What we really haven't looked at is operational efficiency, and that's how we optimize our systems to facilities and operations across the district as a whole. Mr. Ciarrocchi is going to present a little bit later about some optimization with regard to operational efficiency. But I wanted, the fourth lever I think is very important because we've heard Dr. Trice talk many times like we need to

054know where we're going. And in part of that pulling these budget levers, one of them is innovation and reinvestment, right? Recognizing that we're going to have to pull all of these levers in order to get to innovation and reinvestment. So kind of what a timeline would look like for this, you know, this year we'd reassess staffing, resource allocation, and operational efficiency, you know, begin implementing a plan within the next 12 to 24 months. Once we start recouping some savings from some of these levers, we can begin a phase-in of innovation and reinvestment. And then at the end, I think we'd want to evaluate the impact of that and adjust any future funding strategy. So again, this is hypothetical, and I kind of went back to our expansion budget last year that we brought to the

055county commissioners to try and get some of this hypothetical information. Again, instead of an expansion budget, I think that we may want to present the county commissioners with a 5-year plan, and this is where we want to go, kind of tell our story different from years past. But part of, part of Dr. Trice's vision is to really try to raise educator salaries. We all know the teachers and educators are not paid enough, and every person here is working tirelessly for the children. And Dr. Trice, as I've heard him talk about that for the last 3 or 4 months almost constantly. So we've developed, and again, hypothetical plan, not saying this is what it's going to look like when it's done, but it basically would increase the supplement percentages across the entire district for classified and

056certified employees 1% per year over a 3-year period. The cost to increase certified staff is about $550,000 per 1%, and the cost for classified staff is about $350,000 for 1%. So for $900,000, you can increase just supplements across the district 1%. The other thing we've talked a lot about is our lack of adequate resources as it relates to instructional curriculum and resources. If you recall, our expansion budget included an item for new sustainable curriculum fund last year. That did go unfunded, but we made some strides to try and we just redid the science curriculum last year. So we're really looking for a source of continual funding that we can use to target curriculum cycling. So again, this is kind of a phase-in. We talked a lot about the need for about $1 million worth of

057curriculum. I think last year it was $1.3 million. We have secured a little bit in the local budget this year for it, but we've arrived at about $1 million is what we're going to need moving forward for sustainable curriculum. So again, phasing in similar to the supplements, $250,000 a year the first 2 years, $500,000 in the year 2030, ending with $1 million built into in the budget recurring for curriculum. So then, like, what does that look like? So this is really like when we're getting into the 5-year strategic plan, right? So I've focused on the expense side of it. There will also be a revenue side, which will be those levers. The other 3 levers have the ability to provide some of the relief required to build this. But this is kind of what we

058have in mind, right? That you would have a baseline year, and then we looked at the timeline, and you just slowly start implementing it by pulling levers that over the course of the year. And when you do that, you know, the cost is not as significant as when we're looking at raising supplements 3% in a year. It's kind of a phased-in, long-term approach, has the ability for us to reassess year to year. And and over the course of 3 years, we can achieve some of that pivot for a cost of $3.7 million. And again, this is all, like, hypothetical and theoretical. I just wanted to kind of represent the board and the public with the thinking that the administration has, the direction we received from the superintendent. I know there's been several board members interested

059in looking over the horizon, starting to develop a 5-year plan. There's a lot of energy among the cabinet about trying to develop a detailed document, is kind of a roadmap of where we're going financially. So this is more of like a preview and a tease just to get it out there and show everybody, but I do think that we'll lean into this maybe with our expansion budget this year instead of a typical expansion budget. And that is the end of my presentation. I'm sure there may be some questions. I'd be happy to answer if anyone has any. Yes, board members, if you have questions. Can you go back? I do. Nobody else does right now. Can you go back to that unbalanced chart? So I'm curious, so I'm just thinking this through. If we do

060nothing else. We would continue operations as it is, and we will continue to see our fund balance decline. This this will, will not allow us to be responsive financially to any of our performance data and growth that we want to see with our students, right? Because I know there was a presentation to student success about math. And so that math curriculum investment is critical. And if we don't do anything with our, to open up ourselves fiscally in a significant way, not $25,000, we're talking in the millions of dollars. We will not be able to move the needle for our students to grow in a meaningful way and finally address the achievement and opportunity gap in our district. Is that correct? It is. And the other thing I would, I would point out that we use

061a reduction in state funding in all of these scenarios. So even if there was no change to the Orange County methodology or there policy. This is an inevitable reduction. As your students drop, your efficiencies drop. Whatever course we chart here, it's a downward trend. There's no, without strategic structural change, there is no way to turn that line back around. And the state with their reduction per pupil is one thing. We've seen the county, that could magnify it. Again, there's no floor to this, right? There's no way to turn this around without sustainable, lasting structural change to the organization. Right. Okay, thank you. Board members have any other questions? Okay. Vickie, go ahead. Would you please clarify for the community, the special district tax, make, to make sure that everyone knows what's taxed, that what people

062are paying taxes on in the special district tax, because I know the answer, but I want you to please share that with everyone so that they don't think it's just one isolated thing that's being taxed. Okay, sure, I'll do my best on that. Um, so it's my understanding that the special district tax is an ad valorem tax on property across the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District. I don't know the rate off the top of my head because they just readjusted it, but the district receives about $30 million from that special district tax, which goes into general fund revenues. That tax on average grows 2% a year. So again, going back to being 30% of our budget, it doesn't grow at the same rate that our continuation costs grow. But that budget does fund all of

063those positions that we talked about where we have more positions in the state. It also funds some of the highest supplements across the state. It pretty much funds every, every aspect of our operating, of us operating at the high level that we operate right now. Without that, it would, our schools would look significantly different as far as the resources that we have them in schools. But in terms of property, we, our community needs to understand that's fixed and real. So whether it's fixed property as in homes, it's also real property as in cars, boats, sometimes in history, historically pets even. So just to know that it is a communal thing, whether it's homeowners or not. If you're in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and you own property, whatever that means to Orange County, there is

064a special district tax on it. That, that's the point that I wanted to make sure our community understands, that everybody here is paying a special district tax if they live here. Sorry, I go off. That's okay. Even if you're renting, I guess the owner is paying the tax, so you're paying it, just not directly. But yes. Go ahead, Rani. I just wanted to really appreciate, Jonathan the, the kind of detailed scope of this. This was really helpful to put all the pieces together and see how comprehensively we need to look at different approaches. Like, it's clear that just one approach isn't necessarily going to get us to the long-term solution, and it's also clear about the need for speed. And so I really appreciate how clearly you've laid it out and given us the time

065to ask questions about it. Thanks. Go ahead, Barb. I'm just really glad to see increased staff salaries in the, in the plan. And I mean, I think most people know that North Carolina pays teachers at the very bottom. But I also know that I've heard Dr. Harris, our HR director, and Dr. Trice, you talk about retention being the new recruitment. And so I guess, could you talk about how you see, or maybe it's more of a question for one of them, increasing salaries as a way to make sure that we have a fully staffed building in addition to just being the right thing to do. So I can talk a little bit to that. I don't know if I'm really, but I will say that there was a time where the board was paying 2

066to 3% less supplements than they are now, and that was not too long ago. And at that point, we were experiencing, for varying reasons, right, we were experiencing pervasive vacancies across the board. Once the board took action 2021, 2022, we got those supplements up. You know, now we're like 98, 99% staffed. Of course, we have some areas like EC where the vacancy rate's a little bit higher than that. You know, but I think it like, and I could make the argument like, you're at 98% staffed, why do you need to raise salaries? And I would make the argument like, we want to raise salaries because it's the right thing to do. It's not to try and, I mean, It's not to try and close that last 2%. We want to do it because we want

067to attract the best across the state, right? We want to lead the state. This district has always led the state, still leads the state in almost every metric, right? And we should lead the state in as far as employee compensation. So we could look at vacancy rates and I, we could make an argument not to do it because our rates are so low, but I think it's the right thing to do, and we should continue to lead in that space. And I think we've made the advancements in salary both in the classified and certified, not just one, in both. That was where we've made significant investments, and that's helped with a lot of our, I guess, staff fill rate/vacancy, however you want to look at it. Melinda, go ahead. And I think something else I

068want to make the community really aware, another reason we need to pay such a high supplement is because it's very expensive to live here, and even with the supplement, a lot of our teachers are unable to live within the district. Any other questions or comments, board members? Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. This is, this is what we're going to do. Public comment for this work session item. Hold on, let me read my statement again just in case somebody walked in late. All right, so we are at work session public comment. Speakers will be limited to 2 minutes for their comment. When you are recognized, please come forward, state your name, and if you are speaking for an organization, please recognize, name that organization. Let's see. And please, you're going to stand

069at this podium to do your public comments. And do we, and so it's only on this topic on our budget and financial update. And so I don't know, do we have a list or is it clear how people signed up? It's mostly school about closure. Okay, all right. Well, if anyone did sign up amongst all those names to talk about to provide a public comment on our budget or fiscal presentation, please come forward and come to the microphone. No one? Okay. All right, seeing no public comments, thank you, Mr. Scott and team, for all your work. As a reminder, you may send written comments to the board. The email address is available on the agenda, and additional information regarding written comments is available on our website. The next item on our work session agenda is

070an update on future planning considerations for elementary schools, and I see our Superintendent Dr. Rodney Trice is coming to the microphone. So thank you Madam Chair members of the board, cabinet, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. Um, I've prepared remarks that I'd like to read to help set the context for tonight's discussion and to connect it to the broader conversation, uh, we have been engaging in as a community. So this past fall, I led approximately 15 community and staff briefings and listening sessions to share in a transparent and straightforward way the fiscal and enrollment headwinds our district is facing. These are challenges that, quite frankly, we've been building for, I'm sorry, that have been building for the better part of a decade. In those conversations, I've emphasized that while we are not in a crisis, we

071are at a crossroads, and there is a difference. The crisis, for a crisis forces reaction. A crossroads allows for choice. If we act now and if we act together, we can manage declining enrollment and reductions in funding in a way that positions CHCCS to become a smaller, more innovative, and high-quality district, one that continues to reflect our community and the deep values and, that deeply values and invests in public education. As was mentioned earlier, over the past 2 years, the board and the administration have already made difficult decisions, particularly as it relates to I'm staffing. sorry, including a reduction in force. Those decisions were not easy, but they were necessary. As reflected in our most recent audit, the district has reversed structural deficit spending and is now in a position to begin rebuilding its fund

072balance. One of my top priorities as superintendent is to continue that work in partnership with the board and to restore our fund balance to a healthy and sustainable level. At the same time, we face ongoing and emerging risks: uncertainty at the federal level, the absence of a state budget, the potential revision of the county school funding model, and enrollment projections that suggest continued decline over the next decade. Together, these realities require us to think differently about our long-term infrastructure, staffing, and operational model. I also want to acknowledge the human dimension to tonight's discussion. I've spent much of my career in this district, and I know deeply that this presentation focuses on the fiscal and operational realities before us, not the long history of strong schools dedicated educators, and communities that have supported them. This is

073not because those stories don't matter, they matter deeply, but because it is essential that the board and the community fully understand the financial headwinds we face and the urgency of addressing them. This is not a moment to step backward in ensuring the long-term solvency of our district. In our community conversations, we've been clear: CHCCS will need to become a smaller district, both in terms of facilities and staffing. Our goal as an administrative team is to manage this in a way that preserves the high academic standards, programs, and services our community has long valued. Achieving that will require difficult trade-offs, choices that may not feel good today but are necessary to secure a stable and promising future. Simply put, we need newer schools, which the bond, our recent bond, helps us achieve, and we need fewer

074schools, which centers the advancement of the conversation we began this fall. So our aim tonight is to assist the board in achieving its goal of making a financially and operationally sustainable and equitable decision regarding school closure by June 30th. And the way we do this is by grounding our decision in our values and centering the future planning of elementary schools, including potential closures, in transparency, objective decision-making, and fidelity to prior county and facility planning commitments, while ensuring that our board fulfills its legal and fiscal responsibilities and acts in the long-term interests of our students and our district. I want to take a moment to kind of walk us through what our presentation will be this evening, or this portion of our presentation. In just a moment, I'll turn the mic over to Mr. Shiroki, who

075will outline where we've been as a community, as a school community. So we'll look at the Wolford Report, our 2024 bond, and the board's 10-year CIP plan. He will then move into where we are now, where we will review some of the information that we share with our community this fall, including information that Dr. Nathan Dollar shared with us concerning our demographic shifts that we're experiencing in our community, including 10-year projections that were shared at the board retreat in December. And he'll also kind of highlight the school capacity figures that may not have been seen by the board or our community as of yet. He'll then move to our budgetary impacts and savings and then turn the presentation over to me where I'll talk about next steps, where we'll present the administration with a proposed

076timeline that will create a path hopefully for decision-making process. I'll then turn it back over to our chair, who then can have a discussion with the board about criteria for selection of schools for closure. But right now, I'll invite Dr. Ciarochi to the podium to get our presentation started. Thank you, Dr. Trice. Uh, Madam Chair, members of the board, staff, and guests here tonight. As Dr. Trice said, I'm going to walk through basically a recap of where we've been where we are and then talk about the budgetary impact and savings possibilities that you as a board can consider. And as Mr. Scott had shared, I'll refer to it as a budget lever. You know, what I'm presenting tonight potentially on looking at some inefficiencies that we have primarily at the elementary level within our district,

077it's not a turnkey solution to the, the gap that Mr. Scott talks about with the Board of County Commissioners and what they're facing within their budget for the entire county. Not just for us in Orange County Schools. But it is one where I need to present the facts. They are in many cases, as you know, with Carolina Demography here at UNC doing some of the projections, they are doing a report for the county that's going to be coming out in March. And we got a preview of that, so it was really at 10,000 feet using regression analysis. But we just want to talk about the trends, just as Mr. Scott talked about the downward trend financially. Unfortunately, I, I'm going to be presenting the information you've seen with the downward trend at the elementary level

078within our district over a period of time. So my presentation tonight is not to really be about doom and gloom, though it could be read that way. It's really just basing the facts and showing it so that you can make the best informed uh, decision, and with the fiduciary responsibilities that you have. So I want to go back, uh, and actually it goes back before 2023, but As you're aware, the Board of County Commissioners, by state statute, they are required within the state of North Carolina, as all county commissioners are, to fund the capital improvements, be it new construction, renovation, major maintenance of all public schools, all public K-12 schools. They are charged with that financing. So for years, the county has had multiple priorities, and they recognized back in 2022-ish that they had unfunded

079or not funded successfully when it comes to school maintenance within both school districts that we have here in Orange County. So ultimately there was a capital studies workgroup that was created that consisted of board members from Orange County Schools, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, as well as Orange County Commissioner representation, and then staff members from each representative bodies that came together really to look at the needs of knowing that for both school districts close to 50% of the school portfolios between both districts were greater than 50 years of age. And there were multiple cases where there were major catastrophic failures in schools where either air conditioning, roofs had to be addressed, and it was more of a reactive approach. So the committee was tasked to try to develop a plan, at least strategic fiscal plan, of how

080to overcome the challenges that they were faced with over a 10 to 15 year period. But they, but, you know, I can get up there and I can advocate for our school district. Orange County Schools can. But the county felt for the citizens, because we're going to advocate for our own needs, they needed to have an objective independent body come in. So ultimately there was an RFQ that went out and Woolpert, which is a company that does this kind of work, came in. And they were tasked to look at the assets of our buildings given the age, but also to look at the space utilization, looking at enrollment trends, and then actually how the buildings were being used in the classrooms. So it wasn't just looking at individual buildings, it was a comprehensive facilities assessment

081where the planning effort was designed to help Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools and Orange County Schools develop a long-term plan, because Orange County shares very similar statistics when it comes to decline in enrollment, just as we do, and their portfolio parallels. So with that being said, the study really looked at educational adequacy, which was a new term for the commissioners. But it's basically, you look at a school that was built in 1958, which we have here in our district that's still being used daily, and the size, the parameters, the design of the room is not consistent with current DPI standards, best design practice standards for educational facilities, and very different than what we see in some of our newer schools, be it Northside Elementary or even, I'm going to call it a newer school, but when you

082look at Raski's, Morris Grove, Scroggs, those schools are pushing 20 years of age in some cases. Those are new when we compare to some of our older schools that were built in 1958, '59, 1960. So they really looked at that, and I'll talk a little bit further in the presentation about why that was important. Because obviously the question that continued to come up was, do you renovate or do you replace? And what I want to say is that with the building assessments, Woolpert did a just-in-time assessment because their goal was to develop a strategic financial plan so that the county could better prepare. And I'll walk through some of the levers that they utilized in order to to do that. So the first thing, and again this is a slide that you've seen, but they

083used what's called a facility condition index. And that's basically a percentage of what does it cost to invest in a building versus replacing a building. My biggest disclaimer here is facility condition index was not the indicator to determine if a school should be closed or replaced or rebuilt, whatever term you want to use. It was really to give a snapshot And what we found with facility condition indexes is that Woolpert came back and said our oldest schools, if money was no object, because they identified over $1 billion worth of maintenance needs for the county, over $500 million for our district, what they said is that the facility condition index is going to determine where the needs are for your schools that are 30 to 40 years of age. Not the older schools. They use the

084age of the school to determine the prioritization when it comes to schools that should either be replaced or potentially, they would say, school closure in their report. Age was the biggest determinant. But what it did help us in building the fiscal case for the amount of money the county needs to invest over 10 to 15 years is that when it, you looked at schools such as Carrboro High School, East Chapel Hill High School, you saw that they had very high Facility Condition Index ratings. And it was because those schools are not over 50 years of age. It's because they're at a life cycle point where the roof, the HVAC for very large buildings had to be replaced, which had substantial cost. But that cost doesn't mean that because you have to spend, I'll make up

085a number here, but $30 million at a high school that you would close that school because that school still has good bones in it. It has life to it. So we use that as a tool to build the case that either you have to, Wolpert would say either you have to take a building out of the inventory or you should replace it. But you need to put your ongoing maintenance money into the buildings that remain, that are not replaced. Because if you go out with a bond and you raise $300 million, $300 million does not replace when it's split between two districts, it doesn't get you that far. You still have to work with the schools that children and staff are going into each and every day that are not being impacted by a bond

086that may come out every 5 or 6 years. So in the building assessment, and this is just a slide that just kind of shows you how they, they work their way down holistically, we looked at all of the schools in the inventory and, you know, Again, these are in alphabetical order, but they, you know, you can look at them and ultimately there'll be a slide that kind of shows you the age. But it came back to where the buildings that had the greatest needs for a 10-year period consisted of Carrboro, Ephesus, Estes Hills, Frank Porter Graham, Bilingue, Glenwood, Sewell Elementary, and then Culbreath and Phillips Middle School. And you probably recollect that during the pre-bond presentations, the consultant Wolpert prioritized Culbreath's replacement over Phillips. And we came back and we demonstrated that there were assets

087within that facility that gave that school greater life. So you as a board acknowledged and said that if money was ever available, we would prioritize Phillips over Culbreath based upon need. So ultimately, in the end, the, and I will show this later, but the bond plan consisted of the schools that had the greatest needs which were Carrboro, Estes Hills, and FPG, out of which there were still 3 additional schools that were on the high needs list, and those are Ephesus, Glenwood, and Sewell. And then again, I don't want to leave out Culbreath and Phillips, but tonight's presentation is really about elementary schools because when we start looking at student capacity, you'll see where, where the inefficiencies are in our district, and it's at the primary level, not the secondary level. So at the same time,

088the Board of County Commissioners who commissioned this report, they weighed in and made a lot of decisions as far as the direction that they wanted both school districts to head in, both boards to head in, and primarily because they're the ones charged with the funding and they know that there are far greater needs than they have means. So when when they developed this and they saw the proposals, because Woolpert was asked to provide 4 options based on different funding commitments established by the county. It wasn't a blank check report. It was, here's a scenario where there is $100 million, $250 million, $500 million. What would you recommend if you only had that limited pot of money? It was not, here's a blank check, just tell us what you need, because that's really not realistic. But

089the report kind of shows you that basically when it comes to replacing schools age does play a predominant factor in what you would consider first, second, third, and fourth, unless we as a district had done some major improvements for a variety of reasons in the meantime that might put a younger school ahead of an older school because maybe you had to replace the roof and you still had a lot of life to that roof, or you just recently had to replace the air conditioning school-wide. So we had a little of that, but predominantly it is the age. So the commissioners ultimately felt confident that they could fund a $300 million, I'll call it a stimulus or a bond, right, to help begin funding where they were not funding. And I would be remiss to say

090that before the bond, the county was providing deferred maintenance money to the districts to a tune of about $9 million a year for us over the course of about 3 to 4 years. So it wasn't that they weren't funded, but that money was being spent at a very fast rate. Once we got out of the pandemic and we were able to get more steady pricing and consistent labor districts, we started spending that money really in 2022 and spent the course of it over the course of 3 fiscal years. So in doing so, when they adopted the bond and they felt that that was a good could sell to the citizens here in Orange County. They also wanted to develop a framework of how we would optimize the plan that Woolpert provided so we could balance

091where there are inefficiencies with major costs and expectations that existed. And their framework prioritized replacing old facilities with new facilities and improving the educational adequacy of the school buildings. Versus renovating. So the Woolpert Report talked about renovating. The commissioners came back and said, why would you renovate a building and put, say, 60% money into a renovation, but then in the end it still looks like the same school? The spaces inside look the same, but it may have new finishes, uh, new HVAC system, new electrical, new technology infrastructure, but the spaces are inadequate based upon the DPI standards. So in their mind, if we're only going to have limited funding with bonds that our county can support We want you to replace over renovation. So that was the direction that you as a board were provided

092from the people who appropriate the funding on a capital level. And again, they appropriate, approve appropriation. They don't approve projects. That is your role. But again, for them to appropriate, you have to follow the guidance of who is funding that at that level. So ultimately, the bond was approved November '24. Those about over a 67% approval rating, most of which came from the town of Chapel Hill and Carrboro when you look at it. But it was a very strong support, as has historically been within our school district in previous bonds. So when you look at the pre-bond plan, that where we landed, what you see here are basically, I kind of go from green, yellow, red because that's what Wolford did at the time. This is very of similar where, and again, it's where we

093landed You'll see that basically all the schools from the bottom, which is the newest Chapel Hill High School, up to about McDougall are all in green. And they go up to about 30 years of age. And I will tell you, even Chapel Hill, that is a brand new building, there were major components of that building that were not replaced. They are, they were not touched. So even though it's a brand new school from the outside, the auditorium, the gymnasium, and the cafeteria is the original core infrastructure for when Chapel Hill, you know, when we had consolidation of the two, merging of the two schools from Lincoln and Chapel Hill, and they built out there on the current campus. So there is still deficiencies with that school, and I always have to say that because those

094are things that are going to come back. You guys are going to come back and say, why are we putting money into Chapel Hill when we replaced it? Like, we didn't. But what you'll see is the yellow and the red is basically schools that are 50 years of age or older. And that's where you get the schools that are on that list that I had shared just previously. Uh, we do have the Lincoln Center, which is the building that we're in right now. So back in 2023, that building was 74 years old. There are components in this facility that are that age. But again, our money is not to go into an admin office. It is to go where the children and the teachers are best served. So we have prioritized that money is not

095to go into, uh, major infrastructure for support services is to go into our schools. So ultimately, again, it left 5 schools remaining that are on that priority list. And, you know, the thing I will say about the, the Woolpert plan, the Woolpert plan is good as the moment that it was put out, but it, it changes. The projects that they identified for maintenance, we know that we're in a reactive mode, not a preventative mode with maintenance. So even though they may say that a project needed to be done at a school, we know that even though they said that it needed to happen, we have something else that surfaces and we're having to redirect money to respond as we go. Kind of just-in-time management, which is what you have to do when your funding is

096limited as it is today. So the guidance that the commissioners gave us with our capital investment plan, which is an annual plan that comes to you to review and you approve and you submit it to the county for their consideration and then ultimately they approved that plan along with the other departments within the county that also have CIP plans. Their goals were to replace aging school facilities with modern structures, to address all high-priority facility needs such as infrastructure repairs and safety improvements, but also to enhance educational adequacy to support the evolving instructional needs. So their goal is when you approve a plan and senior staff goes over to present, or we have our joint meeting and you are presenting it, If we deviate from replacing aging school facilities with modern facilities, we're going to have

097to demonstrate why, of why we're not addressing educational adequacy when we're asking them to invest and to have our citizens have an increase in tax rate and to sell debt. That's the piece that they're saying to us, you know, do your best to follow our guidance because we have to be able to balance this with the other needs that the county has to be able to manage. So the reason I'm showing this, and I know for the folks in the audience this is hard to see, this is the CIP that we submitted that ultimately was the county commissioners approved in June of each year. I show this and it is available, the PDFs of all of this from the date that this was approved back in April. I wanted to show you that for the

098bond, it shows we talked, Mr. Scott talked about the pay-go money and how that potentially reducing the pay-go on the county side could be a lever that they have to employ to overcome their budget gap. Originally, of those who were very active with the bond, it was a $300 million bond with $100 million in pay-go over 10 years. And at the time, we were about a 60-40 split when it comes to what percentage goes to our district versus what goes to Chapel Hill. So we were out there basically saying that we're going to use about $175 million of the $300 million in the bond and we were going to use that to prioritize to replace up to 3 schools. And here was the order that we prioritized them at. But we also knew that there

099was pay-go money, which is basically cash that the county generates from a percentage of tax that the citizens pay. So the tax rate is impacted in order to pay pay-go. And that's where Mr. Scott had talked about how they, they didn't have the confidence to be able to raise the tax rate at the level that they had, I'll say, promoted in the bond when the reality came and they saw what was heading ahead. Using those trade winds as an example, they knew they had to pull back on that. But the idea was that we would use the pay-go, the cash money, to pay for the design portions of our replacement schools, which is what we're currently doing with Carrboro Elementary today. By the fact that they did not approve that pay-go, we're using bond money

100for that. But the concern of what the commissioners may or may not have to do with pay-go in the future is what I want to talk about tonight, because the bottom slide is the, the capital money that the district has historically received annually from the county. And it, last year it's about $4.2 million. This year it'd probably be about the same once we get the information for the county. So if we don't have the pay-go money to go with maintenance to help cover that in the years out after the design portion is done, then we really only have $4.2 million to address the high-priority maintenance needs that are within the project that the Woolpert Plan had initiated and our staff bring to you. So I say that to say, for us from an efficiency standpoint,

101if we know that the amount of pay-go long-term could be impacted or lesser in amount, it's even more so that if we have anything within our system that we can, uh, not have to maintain, that is money that we could redirect to schools that have just as great of a need. And those would be the schools that are in the 30 to 50 year range, uh, in being able to address major roofing or HVAC. Yes? I just want to ask a question. I know it's hard for other people to see, that's why I want to call out this number. In year 1 for Carrboro Elementary, and I know it's not complete in terms of what we spent, but we have spent a significant amount of this, how much is, I see $5.3 million already. Yeah,

102so for the design portion, there's 3 components to the design portion that was budgeted. The first was for the project management firm Turner Townsend Heery that you approved. That was about just over a $1 million commitment. For, again, a $53 million budget, total budget. We awarded a contract to an architect to be able to start the design. That was about $3.2 million. And then we're entering into the construction manager at risk construction delivery method. And there is some preconstruction services that come from the contractor before they develop their guaranteed best price. So we have committed or will have committed the good portion of that design money within the next 30 days. But we've already done about two-thirds of it already. Right. So if we were to say not Carrboro and then try to start over

103with a different school, that's not, it would, we would have to then spend another $5 million if it's not Carrboro. Yeah, if you were, say that again. So if we were to say, oh, well, not Carrboro, if we were to backtrack as a board and say we've changed our mind, we're now going to pick different schools to do, we would lose $5 million. That would, because it's not like they can port the information. You wouldn't lose the whole, but you would lose the portion that's been expended contractually. And we would have to have just, you know, we have the ability to be able to do that, but there would be monies that we would have spent that we would not get back. So my recommendation at this point You know, we've moved, because we've talked

104about inflationary measures, time is money, we've worked through the interlocal agreement and that will be coming to you shortly. We, you know, that's a project where inflation will catch up to where that, you know, the longer we spend on a project that we started, the greater that will be in the end when the bid date comes. And that's if any project that exists, it's not just with Carborro my recommendation, if you were to ask me today, I would not waste any expended money that we've done, but we have not expended any money on any other schools that were approved in your capital investment plan, if that answers your question. Thank you. Go ahead, George, go ahead. Can I ask you a question about the pay go funds? Because it gets confusing. Pay as you go.

105PAYGO is the voters approved a $300 million bond. Yes, be split between two school districts. And then the county commissioners said we'll give another $100 million of PAYGO funds over the next 10 years, basically $10 million a year, which you've been explaining. But so the reason that when they retract the money because they don't have it, even though they intended to have it. Not, not blaming anybody, is they had to start borrowing money from the bond. Is that correct? Only for what has been expended. Yes. So it's not as if they've got a loan for $300 million, right? They took $5 million. Yeah, it's only for what we've expected. That's correct. For the sake of purpose over here. So, we're really looking at a significant issue right now where the initial bond, we were really

106thinking $400 million for two school systems over 10 years. We're really maybe down to $300 million. Potentially, I mean, or whatever. The county pulled back on the pay-go funding for this current fiscal year right. Out of the gate. I can't determine, yeah, I can't determine what they would do in the future. That would be, but I think you have to be aware of it, or at least cognizant of the fact that it could happen again. And when they talk about a delta We at least need to take that into consideration as we are planning our major maintenance projects. So when can we get from you, and I don't mean immediately or anything, like, we have $175 million in bond money for our share for Chapel Hill-Carrboro out of the $300 million. When will we know

107how realistic that is to build 3 schools out of that money. Yeah, I believe that realistically. You have to wait for the elected body that appropriates the money to make those ultimate decisions or to take action publicly to be able to say this is the position that we have to take. I don't want to put the cart before the horse with another elected body, but I mean, that's, that's there. But I think we just have to be cognizant of that. As we move forward. But again, they've talked about potentially reinstating that money over time to where it's not going to zero out. They're going to have to decide what is that balance of what they can manage or not, because there was a commitment that was made to the community and they know that there

108is a pressing need. And the longer they, I'll say, kick the can down the road when it comes to funding major maintenance in our buildings, They know that that's just going to be problematic. So they, I mean, they've got a tough task at hand because they've got, obviously there's competing interests, but they know that there's a need and they'll have to decide that. But we just have to be cognizant of it, as Mr. Scott has said. That's a, that is a lever. There's only two levers that they can approach with us because the citizens voted on the bond. So that is, that is a go, the bond funding itself. And that's why it's a general obligation bond. It was done through an election. But you still have the pay-go and you still have the local

109funding that they do. Those are the two things they have control over. So do you recommend that we, that this be part of the discussion now with them, or do we just wait and see over the next year or two? I mean, do you have a recommendation for us? My recommendation is that for Mr. Scott and I, that we continue to dialogue with county budget and finance staff. But ask them to communicate with us when there are considerations that their elected body and the manager are both considering to put forward. But for us just to keep informed and to monitor that, because the retreat was just giving them an overview, but they are going to have, as any elected body, they're going to have to take some steps to be able to start addressing that

110as they go through their own budget development. And that's what we have to continue to monitor. Thank you. Right. So, jumping right into just where we are, and this is information that you have had presented for years. We've had two, there's two institutions that provide demography here in the state of North Carolina through public research institutions. That is North Carolina State University and through University of North Carolina, i.e, Carolina Demography is the part, the division, I guess. So we've received information from both entities over the course of years. And this was, the county contracted with Carolina Demography this year. So in doing so, and I'll just briefly go over, you know, Dr. Trice started with over 15 community-wide meetings where he presented the forecast, the trends when it comes to student enrollment that the county

111had been tasked and that we had been seeing for years. He wanted to get input. He also talked about Where do we want to see our district? You know, knowing that potentially there is a student decline that is going to continue, how can we be a high-performing district, just a smaller district, but providing the same quality, if not more quality, at the same time? But also having to address some of the inefficiencies that we have. And again, the topic I'm here tonight to talk about is just one budget lever that's there. So at the board retreat for you back in December, Carolina Demography pretty much showed you nothing new that you had not seen for many years as a body, not each of you individually, but just as a body, right? To where the trend

112has been downward from 2015. And what Carolina Demography was to say is, okay, I was here the year before at your board retreat, came back this year and basically said that based upon, you know, going back about 5 years and using regression analysis, we don't see the trend changing. And that was really the information. But he provided a lot of information, which I'll go over, about the reduction of students in our, with our ADM over the course of 6 years. He talked about the number of live births. You know, as you all know, he said it's not, this is not unique to our district. It's not unique to our state, our nation. It's our world. There are just fewer children be having, there's fewer live births, period. It's not about just people not coming into

113our community. It's just period. And districts across our country today, many of them are talking about this now that we're not talking about it before because they're seeing the same trend as he described. But this just kind of gave a totality of looking at from the 19-20 through this current school year. We've seen a reduction most recently, which is the most impactful, about 1,545 students is what he wanted to show. But he also just gave the, talked a little bit about the projections and that that trend was not stabilizing or going up, that it would continue in doing so. So when you look at the elementary enrollment, and again, that's where he showed that that's where your greatest decline was, and I'll get into a little further detail. He talked about the cohort analysis, and

114this is a very busy chart. But what it basically does is it shows you cohorts that start, say, in 2018, and he projects out to 2035. And you could go further back than 2018, and you're going to see the same progression. But what this chart shows is, is that over in the past and in the future, the number of children that are entering our district at the kindergarten level continues to go down. Each year the number goes down. So if you look at the chart on from the top left, and you'll see 2018, 855, I believe, students. As you project down, you will see all the way down, it goes down to just under 600 students in 2035. Again, that is a mathematical calculation. We've always said, and he will even say as a demographer,

115you can take stock in what I show you for about 2 to 3 years, but beyond that, you just have to continually monitor this. But it does allow you from a strategic standpoint, you at least have to plan accordingly and not think that something's just going to change in 5 years and enrollment's going to change. There are no indicators that would modify what he has projected. But the unique thing that he shared is though the incoming enrollment is going down at the kindergarten level, and what he will say is it's not that kids aren't coming to our district, they're just not being born. He would say that's the predominant reason, and that's nationally is what he shared with you. But what you see is the cohorts, if you watch, if you look at the chart,

116if you see where you start in say 2018 and you work your way all the way to say projected in 12th grade, the cohorts, once you're here and you start with us, you stay with us. So what he was trying to show us is it's people move to our district in the middle of the year and they stay as a whole, though we do have people who leave, but in the end there's a gain in the end once you start. And it was what he wanted to show us is it's that they're just not coming in the kindergarten year. The next piece, and this is something we have talked about, but we just graphically wanted to show you is, okay, so we see that the trend is at the elementary level. And let me go

117back. I did want to say the high school levels are strong. So we have lots of underutilized spaces at the elementary level, but then our high schools, they're pretty snug right now. And the phenomena that Dr. Dollar would say is that realistically you have people who are possibly are not coming to our district because of market share. Maybe, maybe they're just not being born, but if they are born, they may be choosing other options that the state of North Carolina provides, be it private charter schools or homeschool, things of other nature. But what he said is, is that potentially the reason why your high school numbers, and we uh, take, we, we agree with him, is at the high school level, a lot of our parents bring their kids back into public education because at

118the high school level there are opportunities and courses and offerings that they're not able to get at a private charter or even homeschooling. So our numbers continue to move in that direction. But I think that was important to show that we do gain over time. But, you know, when you look at capacity, we're really not looking at the middle schools and the high schools today. We're only looking at the elementary, though he did show that eventually the children at elementary will matriculate through and that there would be some movement at the middle school level to where there could be some reductions down the road. But at the high school level, if that trend remains the same where people are coming back into public education, and he says it's not just with us, across the board,

119that we would continue to see good utilization of high school classroom space. So going back to elementary, this is just a chart that graphically just shows you the capacity, the building capacity of our buildings versus the enrollment, student enrollment. And what you will see is that the program schools that we have, with the exception of McDougall Elementary, which does not have a program in it, they are the ones that have the strongest enrollment because they are working through a lottery system. So when you look at Glenwood, when you look at Carrboro Elementary, when you look at FPG, when you look at Sewell, those numbers are a lot stronger because there are children that are being accepted and they're filling slots, whereas except with McDougall, everybody else, there is an imbalance, if you want to call

120it, or underutilization in the building. So this is just a graphical way to show that, but to also just to be able to show you that the utilization rate, what you're going to see is the utilization rate today is about 75%, but then ultimately, we're projecting that the elementary utilization rate will be downward of 70% in the future. Now when Woolpert gave their presentation, and you'll probably remember me saying it, they said at that time, basically 2022-23, we were 80% utilization at the elementary level. And I always said 80%, that was about 1,000 students on average. Our schools hold about 500 each. And I would always say that's about 2 elementary schools right there. Well, that number has increased since even the Wolfert Report was done, to where I used to say, let's look at

1211 school, not 2, because there could be some fluctuations that the demographers don't hit. Let's be, let's to be conservative. Now the numbers, it's very compelling that it is 2 schools, potentially it's moving towards 3 down the road, but it's 2 today because again, I wouldn't trust any demographer beyond 3 to 4 years when it comes to making those decisions. You just wouldn't make a decision today for that immediately, and he agrees to that, so I'm not speaking out of turn. For the elementary capacity enrollment, this was a 10,000-foot analysis where he used, because you'll see that it shows program schools slightly increasing. Well, if we have a cap and the school can only hold but so many, that school is not going to increase because they're controlling the size by the enrollment in the

122lottery. But just using a simple regression analysis, that what was to be taken from this is just the trend. The trend is still more empty seats as you go into 2035. So we showed today about 1,371 seats ultimately could be up to 1,700 seats. And that's why I threw out there that potentially it could be 3 schools down the road that are underutilized in totality for our school district's portfolio. So, yes, ma'am. I just want to make sure that this is said at some point, but looking at these numbers, you know, there's quite a range between elementary schools. But I mean, a lot of it has to do with the way that the district lines are drawn, right? So, you know, as neighborhoods ebb and flow, what we drew 14 years ago when we did

123the last redistricting, it may not look the same as it does today. Correct. So, you know, knowing that the last major redistricting was when, I guess, FPG became a program school and the opening of Northside Elementary, you know, communities age out. You know, there's cycles where families and children, and that does fluctuate over time. And, you know, town planners can talk to you for hours about that, the life, I call it cradle to grave of a community, and then how it recycles. And they can predict how many times it will recycle and do all of that. So there have been fluctuations. So we have some communities where there may be homes where there are people who are, I'll say, 50 years of age plus, where their children maybe are out of school, but they're holding

124on to their house and they just, it just hasn't recycled yet if you want to call it that. So yeah, that's, that's a big piece there is that there are differences based upon student family movements that have occurred since the last redistricting. So I just wanted to just to kind of say, so where we are when we throw out today, we're at about 10,700 students. That really takes us back 20 years ago for our district. That was the last time our district was at that student count back in 2005-2006. And at that time, there were 3 less schools in our district. It was Carrboro High School, Morris Grove, and Northside. And again, today's enrollment is just a little over the 10,700, depending upon if you look at the principal's monthly report, which number you look

125at. But again, it's a trend, but it does show you. And what I will say is the Carborro, the fact that we were at 10,700 and we had 3 high schools back 20 years ago. Part of the reason why is that the high school membership has not changed. It's the elementary membership that has changed. The high school still remains strong, and I talked about that phenomenon where parents are bringing their children back into public education. So you can kind of answer to why, because we're not saying that you don't need a high school right now. They're full. But it's just to be able to show that, that, yeah, we're, I mean, we've gone back to the same size student-wise as we were 20 years ago. So with the budgetary impact, the budget lever that you

126asked me back in August to bring to you just to talk about hypothetically of what are the cost savings and the types of cost savings that a district could reap by the closing of a building, period. And we used an elementary school because that's where the conversation has been trending over the course of the past 3 years. So, you know, in the beginning, you know, there's 3 primary reasons that generally school districts have to consider looking at the budget lever of school closure. And that could be the aging, failing facilities where literally the buildings are crumbling. I'm pleased to say that we are not in that kind of disparity when it comes to our buildings. They're old, they've served their life, but they are, they are still functional today. There are other school districts when

127it rains, you We all see it. I mean, there's water pouring down the walls, there's plaster bubbling, all kinds of crazy stuff, right? The financial pressures, the shortfall with the revenue that's coming in for a district versus what it's expending, that's the biggest. And then you have just declining school enrollment. So we talked about that back in August. And what I presented is just, again, looking at an elementary level of what you could reap when it comes to recurring annual savings avoided capital investment with major maintenance, not talking about the replacement of schools, just the ongoing major maintenance that you have to continue to invest, and then the potential one-time savings that might occur. So the recurring annual savings was about $1.7 million a year out of your local budget. About $1.4 million of that

128came from fixed positions in our schools. The remainder was utility and general maintenance costs, not big maintenance, but just fixing small things at the school. Elementary schools are not the energy consumers in our district, it's the secondary schools. So even from an energy standpoint, it's not a lot of money at our elementary schools. It, they pale in comparison to our middle and high schools because of the amount of square footage and the usage of the buildings, because our middle and high schools are used for greater periods of time. So we talked a little bit about that. About $10 to $15 million on average for over a 5 to 10 year period that you might have to invest, be it roof, mechanical, storm, water improvements on site, sewer replacement, domestic water, all the infrastructure stuff, just

129like you have if you have an older home that you have to invest in. It's just on a very large scale. And then ultimately I gave you some direction of if you were to close a school and determine that the building needed to be no longer serve the use of the district in any way, shape, or form, that you have the ability following state statute and getting permission from the county commissioners because in order to sell, they would get first right of refusal, but you ultimately could sell that property if the county was not interested in it and there potentially could be a one-time savings. Though that money and the rules are very specific to that. And, you know, I've publicly said that real property within our school district is at a premium. It's very

130limited. And any land that our district has, unless there is something that is comparable that you as a board might consider as far as swapping land in some way, shape, or form with the county, I would not recommend ever selling any of our land in our district. And I'm not at a point to land in some way, shape, or form with the county. I would not recommend ever selling any of our land in our district, and I'm not at a point to say that I would sell any of our buildings because we've talked about the fact that in our portfolio, with the, the reactive maintenance that we're doing, that one day we could have a catastrophic failure at a school that requires engineering and manufacturing, say, to replace an air conditioning system, and it's in

131the middle of the school year and we have to move our kids to another school. So it would be our goal ultimately to consider if the school was to be closed, could we maintain it minimally in order to use it as a swing space until the time comes where it no longer can serve that purpose. But we've talked about that, and other districts utilize that as well. Wake County does that. They're at a whole different ballgame than we are, but they're having to replace older buildings and they're having to move kids in order to do that. It does give you that flexibility if you ever had a large school facility issue, because I think that we would not want to do, you know, switching over to virtual instruction as a long-term possibility, right? We would

132want to be able to have a building that we could educate our children in. Go ahead, George. Al, on this chart here, the $1.7 million per year savings is connected to what Jonathan was presenting with our county commissioner requests for annual operating expenses. I think it would be helpful for people to be real clear that when we go every year to the county commissioners and ask for a 3% increase just to stay where we were last year, that $60 million that we were talking about, this is the $1.7 million that would help with that request. The capital funding is another whole issue It's not in that discussion. Correct. In a sense, we still needed, we needed to find $6 million. We're getting about 25% here of our total request just for next year. That's right.

133And that's why I call it, it's only one budget lever, but it's not the solution. It's just something for you to consider because the bottom line is that's money that is being left on the table every year. And that you could maximize your buildings. And again, I say that's easier said than done, and we all recognize that. But it's the idea that when you look at the numbers here, it's very compelling that you at least have to weigh it and to decide what you believe is the best course of action. So this is a slide that I showed as well back in August, but it just kind of puts it into perspective. And again, this is $1.7 million of local funding per year If you make the decision today, and I'm not suggesting that, but

134we show in 2026 you would save about $6.8 million. But if you, the longer you wait, the less of that savings you're able to benefit from. And you see on the chart here, it goes right back down to $1.7 million. It's just a tool to know. Again, there are a lot of factors that come into play when you consider this, but it is one you where, know, As the county is looking at their structural deficits financially, we're looking at ours. These are things that at least we have to consider, but it just shows you that this is money that could be redirected that can minimize other reductions within our district where we have greater priorities possibly, right? So talking about budget levers, I felt that I didn't want to speak just in isolation that this

135is the only thing that the operations department is just sharing with you. You know, we have worked as a district to look at other current and potential budget adjustments, as reviewing our central office staffing structures, looking at those positions. There's currently, Mr. Scott has talked about, there's been a freeze of 25% on non-personnel budget items where departments have all had basically a 25% reduction. And then ultimately, Mr. Scott will have to determine if that money needs to go cover the shortfall, how that money needs to be used. There's been discussion about adjusting our staff allocation formulas, reducing expenditures on instructional technology. We've examined district-wide staffing patterns to look for any opportunities in reducing redundancy, consolidating roles where it makes sense. But we also explore opportunities across the board just to look at any existing contracts

136we have and are there ways in which we could reduce services? Can we combine services or even looking at outsourcing certain options. We know when it comes to our cost, you know, the benefits that come along add to the salary. So when you hear someone's salary, there's benefits that come along with that that have additional cost. But if there are services out there that can get the job done for less and more efficiently, we've been tasked by the superintendent just to evaluate that. So with that being said, I can answer any questions, but We're at the point where Dr. Trice wants to talk about next steps. Board members, do you have any questions? Okay. All right. So let's talk about next steps. As I mentioned at the top of the presentation, this section of the

137agenda really focuses on a proposed timeline that the administration put together for the board's consideration. That creates a pathway for decision-making around school closure. I want to say up front a big part of that is continued community engagement in the same lines as we followed this fall when informing our community about the changing demographics, the declining enrollment, and the budget implications. So for the next 5 or 6 slides, I just want to present that timeline be happy to answer any questions, but we'll definitely be seeking board feedback on this timeline. So here we are tonight. As I shared at the top of the conversation, we would ask the board to begin initial conversations that identify the criteria that will inform our future decision about school closures. So we're not asking for a vote But at

138some point, the administration will need direction to complete its statutory requirement on completing a study regarding school closure. We have a board meeting on February 19th where perhaps we could formally establish that criteria that would give the administration some runway to begin to conduct its study. Moving into March, if we were able to get the criteria, we certainly would want to begin to engage our, our community, sharing much of what we shared today. It was a bit of a reflection, but it was also a look forward in terms of understanding our school capacity numbers or challenges. Perhaps it is also kind of informing our community what the criteria is for school closure, but it's also to communicate that it's not about impacted schools or schools that may close. If the board decides to close a

139school or two schools, it will impact our entire district because we will have to go through a redistricting process. And so we want to, as we did earlier this fall, help carry our community through what that potentially could look like, but also get feedback on what the needs are concerning redistricting, because it will impact all of us. Um, as you can see on the screen, we're proposing 3 in-person sessions, perhaps at our high schools that can hold a lot of our community, one virtual. That's a an option that we didn't do this fall that I think would have been smart that we could deploy, you know, during this cycle of community engagement. We certainly will begin our data collection to inform our recommendation to the board. We want to start that as soon as possible

140because our report or our recommendation will be based on the data and the criteria that the board outlines. Moving into April, we'll be kind of quiet because we do need to actually construct the actual recommendation. So using the board's criteria, the data collection, the community input sessions, the history of the reports that we just referenced, we'll need to create draft a recommendation, and we're looking at about a month to do so, using the month of April to do that. In May, the administration would publish its recommendation, May 7th. We feel it's important to publish our recommendation well before the board is asked to be in a position to vote on a recommendation or select a recommendation. Or perhaps adjust a recommendation. And so it's our intention to publish, you know, our recommendation on May 7th.

141Our policy as a district requires a public hearing on major decisions that impact our community broadly. We are proposing to have that public hearing on May 21st, and that gives the community a couple of weeks to read through the administration's proposal but also engage with the board with questions or perhaps alternatives to the recommendation. But at the public hearing, like we've done in the past, there is feedback from the community that happens in a setting much like, you know, we have now where the community is offering their feedback. And then in June, as you can see, if we move from May 21st to June 4th. That's another couple of weeks where we would ask the board to make or take action on the administration's recommendation, or, you know, an adjustment to a recommendation that the

142board deems appropriate. But it gives the, the board a couple of weeks between the public hearing and when we're proposing that the board take action on a recommendation to, you know, have discussions. And so the idea is that we wouldn't kind of stack information and decision-making back-to-back, but we wanted to spread it out a little bit. So this is the proposal that we're kind of putting forth. It is a, It's February right now, not a lot of time between now and June, but a lot of work to do. And we want, we thought it was important that not only that the board see a timeline and what the proposed actions are, but that we're pretty transparent with our public as well about when decisions are made, when information will be presented as well. Again, this

143is just another way to kind of look at the timeline. I'm not going to walk through it, but as I mentioned, between now and June is where the bulk of our work will be done. Any action that the board takes will also inform the administration's work for, you know, the following year. It's important to, to recognize that we're not asking that the board consider closure of schools for next, the next academic year, it would be the following academic year. So I want to make that clear to our public. But I'd be happy to answer any questions or take any feedback concerning the timeline. But we did draft a discussion prompt for the board concerning criteria Given the financial and enrollment realities we just reviewed, and with an eye toward the long-term financial health of the

144district, what criteria should guide decisions about potential elementary school closures? And our staff is prepared to take notes, I know, on that discussion. But we'll be happy to answer any questions about our presentations, the timeline, and I'll turn it back over to Chair Jenkins for facilitation. Thank you. Why don't we start with just initial thoughts from the board on the timeline first before we get to the discussion prompt? Rani, go ahead. Thank you for the presentation and laying out sort of what has to be true to kind of get us to where we need to be. I would observe this is an extremely aggressive timeline to make all of these decisions to give us enough time to be able to reopen whatever our district looks like in, you know, 18 months, right? And so I'm

145just going to caution us to like build flexibility where we need to, and if we need to pivot, think about what that might look like. Can you all hear me? OK, thank you. The other thing I would ask maybe the board to consider, and maybe from administration as well, is like what are we considering from like how many schools? I think it would be impossible to close schools in a year. And so are we talking about one school and then coming back and re-engaging the conversation as we assess sort of where we are with enrollment and the financial impact that's left us with? Or sort of what are we considering in the decision that we're being asked to think about today? Thank you, Ron. Why don't we have other people reflect on the timeline and

146we'll come, can we come back to your question? I think it impacts the timeline, so I wonder if we could talk about that. All right, board members, what are we considering when we think about closure? Is it one school overtime, right, Rani, or two schools? And maybe board members can respond to a staggered approach, and maybe if board members want to reflect on why, I can start and you can go, or I can start calling on you. Can't sit quiet on this one for a moment. Sorry. Start calling in people. Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. Okay, Vickie wants to ask a clarifying. I'd like to clarify, have a question clarifying with what you're saying to us. What is it administration is bringing to us? What are you asking us to consider? One, two at once,

147or staggered? What, what are your thoughts before we need to try to, try to figure out what we need to look at doing? Well, I don't know that we've, you know, brought anything to the board. You know, when I think about the staggering option, I think we need to think about redistricting. And so if you close one school, you have to redistrict the entire district. So if we waited another year and close another school, are we going through another district-wide redistricting? So that, you know, those are considerations and trade-offs that we would have to make as a community. And I haven't yet talked about the rebuilding of schools that we are also underway doing, where we will also have to do another redistricting. So the idea is that we would want to create as much

148stability as we can in our community when we make these decisions. But, but again, I just want to, want you to know we haven't brought any plan or consideration to the board concerning. Have a follow-up question? Okay, so forgive me for going down this rabbit hole. But in terms of looking at the rebuild and the fact that we need new buildings and are having to potentially close two schools, time frame for possible having a new build would be how many years out again? So we're looking at 3, 3 years. So potentially we could have a new building and around the same time that we need to have two schools closed? No, it's going to be before. It's going to be before. I don't, the new school won't open until '28-'29. Okay, and you were saying

149possible the two closing '27-'28 with the, so around, I'm saying we're talking about two school years I mean, one school year difference in time, right? So around, so we're possibly looking at a new build building with two schools being closed within a year or two. Okay, I just wanted to get that straight in my head because that can help formulate a different thought process. Go ahead, Meredith. Yeah, I mean, I actually was going to say something similar to what Vickie said initially in that, like, I'm really looking for direction from the administration as to, like, how far do we need to pull the financial levers to make this work for our district for its long-term stability and sustainability? So I would prefer to close zero schools. However, I also recognize financial realities. So I can't

150really say right now one versus two without understanding how crucial those two data points are to solving our overall issue? Because I know that that's really just, as you've pointed out, it's one piece. It's not the entirety of what we need to do to remain solvent. Certainly it is one piece, but it is a big, a big piece, perhaps the biggest piece when we look at our budget levers. And in the absence of using that budget lever, what I mean by that is closing schools. We still have the responsibility of closing our budget gap, and if we're not going to close schools, then we will pivot toward, you know, where we spend our funding. And as Mr. Scott showed, uh, what is it, 83% of our funding is spent on people. So as an administration,

151we were looking to use closure of schools to create a bit of a runway, knowing that we have to kind of step down our staff, but we want to give them as much time as possible to make life-changing decisions when we do that. So if we decide about, for instance, school closures soon, we are still in the process of developing a staffing plan that's stepped down over the years. But as people leave the district or retire, we we can begin to fill those openings right away. And that gives our staff certainty, as opposed to, you know, spending time to think deeply or more long-term about school closures and having to accelerate our step-down and staffing plan, which would feel much like the RIF in some ways that we did a couple of years ago. I'm

152sorry. Can I ask a question? But looking at how significant our financial gap is, do you think we can achieve it just by reducing personnel? Because when you start reducing personnel, you start impacting our students and our values of what's like what we, a complement of staff that we value as a district, right? There are things that are unique to our district that as I talk with districts all over the country, they don't have. We have a nurse in every single one of our schools. I've talked to people all over the country. They're like, no, no, no, we get a nurse every other day. So hopefully your kid gets sick on the day the nurse is there, or it's going to be a teacher taking care of them, right? And so even if we try

153to reduce it with staff, I guess my question is, are we still going to find ourselves fiscally short? Not only, yes, I'm sorry. I mean, yeah, no, no, not only fiscally short, but we still haven't dealt with the inefficiency in our facilities. So not only will we kind of focus on staff and many of the programs and services will be in jeopardy, you know, we're still looking at capacity 60, 70%, which will get worse as our student population declines. So we'll make a decision about reducing staff, and then we're still going to have to come back to you as an administration to say we need to deal with these facilities. They're getting more expensive to maintain. We have declining enrollment. When are we going to deal with that? And so Our approach as an administration

154is to deal with facilities first. You saw some of the benefits in terms of allowing us to pool money, shift funding to support the infrastructure needs that are clearly there, but also giving our staff the runway to make decisions about employment and, you know, quite frankly, keeping them with us as staff retire or decide to work in other districts or move. That's helpful for us. Because we're not staffed at 100%. And so that's where, I mean, I've talked with you a lot about a lot of the inefficiencies when we look at a school that's under capacity. I'm sorry, board members, I jumped you on this one, but I have this question. Of like class size, because that's the other thing at play that it's from the state. It's the state law about class size requirements

155and like the, you know, the tipping point, like when you hit a certain number of kids in a class, it requires a classroom. And so we have some very, very small classes, not because we chose it, but the state yet again has dictated something and not tied dollars to it. And so, so I think that's where like there's an efficiency where we can round out classes and it doesn't mean that it's a loss of a teacher. It may be for the sake of our HR department, it may be tipping us to 100% versus sitting at 96 or 98%. Absolutely, I couldn't add anything to that. And I think Dr. Harris would say, I don't want to speak for her, but the faster she knows that we need to kind of place staff in open position,

156the better, because it just creates stability across the board. It, you know, eases transitions for staff because it, you know, it can be pretty nerve-wracking if you start to name employment categories that may be impacted but you're not making decisions for 2 or 3 years because, you know. Sorry about that, board members. Other board members' reflections? I don't know, Meredith, if you want to take to add anything. Thank you. Board members' reflections in terms of the timing. Go ahead, Barb, with your question. Just another question. Isn't there something called spot redistricting where you can just redistrict a part of the district? So I guess because I think nobody wants to redistrict 3 times in 4 years or whatever at all, and ideally we would just do it once. And I remember Mr. Ciarochi not wanting

157to close the school because he wanted to only redistrict one. He wanted to wait, but we can't. So I guess what, I don't know. I know we have a policy 4150 that tries very, it's like you really should try not to redistrict very much and especially move kids more than once within elementary schools. But I guess what would you really have to, I guess the question is like, But this obviously to me is connected to redistricting because that's its own cost and its own disruption. And so you really think we'd have to redistrict even if we just closed one school, or you do the whole district? Well, yeah, yes, particularly given some of the programming that's in our schools, you know, we would have to decide because we're not proposing to the board that we

158would eliminate any, any of our programs. In our schools. So we would, one, have to find a school to place those programs into, and which also may displace students. So there would be a bit of a redistricting. I don't know if Mr. Ciarochi could add anything to that. I know he's, you know, done this a number of times, so. Yeah, so there are two variables, I think, for your question about spot redistricting. So let me talk about programs first. So if we have four programs in our district, the children in those programs are randomly selected and they come from all over. So for a demographer who's looking at redistricting, you kind of have to look at kind of like a regression analysis of the past of where have the children predominantly come from within our

159district. And kind of hedge that. But even when you have programs, you have to lower your capacity to deal with over and under because you just don't know where parents are going to move or where their kids are going to land. So you already have some inefficiencies when you have a district that has programs versus not having any programs and every school is just residential. The spot redistricting, ultimately you could look at and I'll just, I have to make this up, but you could, if there were two schools and you're able to separate them geographically where you might have an eastern redistricting and a western redistricting or a quadrant 1 and 2 and then quadrant 3 and 4, however you want to look at it, and you make it a two-part. What the demographers, you

160know, we've NC State, this is what they do for districts in North Carolina. They would come back and say, you're going to have to lower your utilization because you're hedging on the future. So you can only use the information that you have. So what they would put out, a big disclaimer, is we're going to do our best to hit the mark working with transportation, working with all the departments that have programs, but you're going to have to be ready. And they'll have to develop options where you may have to pivot and tell a community right now you're slated to go to School A, but then when we get to reality, we see that there's not enough room in School A because of the way the program's balanced. And that section of that neighborhood may have

161to go to a different school. And you have to give full disclaimers to people that you're going to look at that information to make sure that they're balanced. But what happens is with spot districting is you do lower your utilization rates in that calculation. Not that we have room for that, right? But it's just maximizing our buildings at the same time. So ideally, that's what a demographer would do. They would try to balance it to minimize that disruption to parents and students. Unlike what you experience in larger districts like Wake County, where annually notices are sent to residents saying next year you will be at school B, not A. You know, that's not what we've been accustomed to in our district, and they would try to balance that. All right, Melinda, I'm going to put

162you on the spot. I'm fine with that. I think obviously we've all been putting a lot of thought into this, and I just want to acknowledge how painful this is going to be not just closing schools, but also the redistricting part. I'm a big believer, sometimes I think you just need to rip the Band-Aid off, and I would say I really feel like we should really look at closing 2 schools. I mean, looking at the cost savings, I would like for us to redistrict as little as possible, only have to go through it once, hopefully. To me, it just makes more sense for rather than kind of kicking that can down the road, is going ahead and doing it all at once. Thank you, Melinda. I'm just going to go back and forth. Rani? I

163just want to like paint a picture. We're talking about 2 schools, 800 students. The district has other priorities we have to manage. We're going to have to create a redistricting plan for all 800, manage all the programming shifts rethink transportation, build school schedules, communicate to families where their kids are going to go, and open schools. And I just think the feasibility of this is something that we have to, I totally hear you, Melinda, and as a finance person, I'm like, let's move as fast as we can to get our financial savings. But can we feasibly do it? And should we do that to our community? Like, I just, like, I just don't know how we do that. Thank you, Rani. George? Lisa, thank you. To be clear, I have always said for the last 2

164years that we need to close 1 school and maybe 2, and I think we need to close 2 schools. But I have a lot of caveats and I wanted to share them, and I don't know if I'm chasing unicorns here or what sometimes. But before doing that, I do, I want to thank you. And Dr. Trice and Ms. Fetters, I know you guys have spent hours and you have moved us significantly from where we were January 15th to today. So thank you for the effort to get us here. Because I feel like we're moving forward. My caveat to this and sort of echoing what Rani had said here. If we close one school in 2027. And if we open Carborro Elementary new in 2029 and we open Estes Hills new in 2030 and we close

165another school sometime in there, we have got to redistrict the entire district, right? And so I, I just want to, I want us to know, and this is where everybody's going to groan here because working with it is Can we realistically build 3 new schools? And if we are not going to build a new 3rd school, and I've heard prominent people say, yeah, that may not happen. We got to factor that into this discussion too. And I'm not one to go back and revisit the bond, but I can't just say let's do this, do this, do this, and then in 2 years we're sitting here going, oh my God, we've got another whole school. We should have talked about it. So that's my case, my sort of unicorn, because I know it's all sort of

166vague, but I think we need some other concrete answers before we just go whole hog into it. And that's a little different from where I've been in the past 90 days about it, because I really do support, we do need to close 2 schools. Thanks for listening. Thank you, George. Go ahead, Rani. Yeah, just to put some numbers around what you're saying, George, is we have $175 million and it costs about $60 million to build an elementary school. Mr. Ciarochi, about $60 million? Yeah, so $50 to $60 million. And we know that our pay goes decline and we're tapping into bond money to do the design work. I'm going to say $60, $65 for an elementary school. You just can't do the math with inflation by the time we get to that third school. And

167so I think the reality is, like, as we're making these decisions, we have to keep that context. So I appreciate you raising that. I just wanted to put some math around it. Thank you. Thank you, Rani. All right, Vickie, I know you had some clarifying questions. So, well well, you answered one of my questions, which was to clarify, and then with timeline if we were to be able to slow it down with preparing to close and looking at where our population is as we're building. And we possibly could look at the, the one school that we know we have the money to build right now. We know what we have right now. So we're looking at a new larger one school and we have to close the one, maybe two, but the new larger one

168school will house more and possibly have more space for programming, that would be able to put us in a better mindset in terms of trying to as Melinda would say, rip the Band-Aid off, but try not to ripping it off. That would prevent the pain of coming it off somewhat because you would be doing two things at once, redistricting and program moving. And then we would have a little more time for some academic return on investment coming in for us to see some responses to where our programs are looking at so we can have a larger picture of what's going on in our community. And I think in an additional statement, I think I would like to say is I know that our community has little pockets, and I would like to say that, you

169know, a lot of people may not realize that we built, Ephesus came aboard in 1972. Another elementary didn't come on board until 1996. That prior to that, 1996, this community had 6 elementary schools, and they were not all just community schools. Because let me help you understand, for those who were not here and don't all know the actual history of this community, there were lots of kids that had to always ride the bus. There were lots of kids who had to move schools who were redistricted and it had nothing to do with building schools. As we know, we're looking at having to close schools for the first time since desegregation, but we've gone through redistricting many times prior to the newer schools coming aboard. And I think we're going to have to start looking a

170little more back towards full circle and realizing that as our community changes, the way we look at what a community school means needs to change because if we're all part of CHCCS, which we are, we need to realize that it's not just about the school that's right down the street. And if we get to know who's around the corner and down the street, we may be able to get some of these beloved educators that are moving the mark for some of these students in those pocket schools to help move the mark for some of those kids that are down the street and around the corner too. Because you know what, they need to have the opportunity for their mark to be moved. I know what it's like to go to one school and then get

171bused to the other school because they didn't have the numbers of people that looked like me. So I stand here and say, I know, because I walked those hallways. I know what it's like to go into a school where they weren't prepared to teach people that looked like me. So we have to look at this from all different situations and realize that all of our children are going to need to look at this. And we as the adults are going to need to stand back and realize that what we wanted, what was best for us, and what seemed like might be better in your thought might not be what's best for our children that are coming along. Because if we don't teach them not to want to be with all the different people with down

172the corner and around the down the street, they don't know that they may not want to build community with those people that are down the corner and around the street. They won't know that they should only deal with who's next door. It might be worth them having programming with people from across town. So we really need to look at it from a larger lens to really accomplish what needs to be accomplished. We are small. We need to be smaller. Like I said, we had 6 elementary schools. With roughly the same number of students we have now, and we have 11. It's not that different. We had a huge explosion in population for about 20 years, and then it stopped. It literally started going back the other way. We went, woo, woo, and it came down.

173The largest graduating class in Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill High was in the '80s. We started building other high schools, but it's not because The numbers stayed up because Chapel Hill High was still the only high school for a few more years after that. But the largest class was in 1988. I know, cause I was in it. So over 500, the only time we hit that high. So people need to understand from which we came so we don't make the same mistakes with where we're going. Thank you. Thank you, Vickiee. All right, Barb. I just, I want to ask Rani about, so I, it's funny because I looked at this timeline and thought it seems totally reasonable and you think it's not. And I guess, is it that you think from February 26th to fall

174of '27 is too compressed or that, and that that should all take longer or that we should do all of this in this amount of time but wait longer to close schools or neither? Am I just misunderstanding you? I don't necessarily. It's a good question. I appreciate the ask for the clarity. Like, I have an appreciation that we have to move fast. And so I think like, this is kind of, we are where we have to be. I'm just appreciating that having made big decisions and done big implementations, you're always going to run into something unexpected. And so for us to sit here today and say we're going to move 800 students and be ready to reopen schools by the fall of 2020, I just don't see how it happens, right? So I think we

175have to make, like, think about how we are making decisions today. Like, do we do 1 or 2 schools? What are our school consideration criteria? And march down the path, but being flexible that we may have to think about how to do this in a different way. Does that make sense? Did you want to weigh in on 1, 2 schools? You kind of have to. I don't want to right now. I'm going to ask Dr. Trice another question. Okay, all right. Something that's come up in the many emails we've gotten, and I wanted to tell people we've read, we're all reading the emails, is Title I. And so could you just explain how does a school get to become a Title I school? What are the benefits of being a Title I school? And can

176you create new Title I schools through redistricting? So yes, Title I, you know, federal funding source that's tied to a school's population. We're looking at, you know, essentially socioeconomic status of students in schools. And so if you cross a certain threshold, you are eligible to become a Title I school. In our district, historically, There's been a little flux. You know, some years you cross that threshold and in some years you don't. I think it's important for our community to recognize that, you know, as we think about closing schools or replacing schools and we get into redistricting, you know, that's going to shuffle students all over the district. So if you're a Title I school today, there is zero guarantee that you will be a Title I school after redistricting. It just depends on how the

177student population plays out across our schools. And if we cross certain thresholds in our schools after redistricting and they're eligible for Title I funding, they will receive it. You know, one of the things that I often think about as well in terms of redistricting, it creates an opportunity to balance socioeconomic issues across our district. It's very difficult to operate a school with a high SES, and we do a great job in our district, but it is a bit of a challenge. And when you don't exercise that muscle of redistricting, you know, sometimes that's what happens as communities change or neighborhoods change. And so, but again, to answer your question, once we go through redistricting, there's no guarantee that any of our current Title I schools will be Title I in the future. I mean, an

178issue that I've been thinking about a lot that I haven't heard come up is how many people who live in our district who pay these high taxes who don't have kids who go here, and I am finding it, it's hard to justify that, to say we're being fiscally responsible with your taxpayer dollars and we got a bunch of schools at 65, 70%. That really bothers me, among all the other issues about our own budget. That really bothers me as an elected official accountable not just to parents but to everybody who lives here. And so I think we should close 2. I'd like to try to do it in a way that minimizes the number of times we have to redistrict. So I, that's above my pay grade, that timing question. Thank you, Barb. So, boy,

179I'm going to say 2, and I would say immediately. I think the staff know I've been thinking about this for a while. Sorry, this is hard because I see some of you and I know some of you and I know this is hard to hear. These are our staff and our schools. And I think Vickie has highlighted, we've got a lot of history in these schools, but this is something we have to do for our kids. So it's two, I am sensitive to Rani's concern about the compressed timeline. I do feel the pressure that it's external to us. So I won't go on my state federal rant right now. Save that for another day. But I think the pressure is external to us. We're not a taxing authority. And I would ask the question to

180the staff, do they think they can do it? Because it's not going to be the 7 of us who do this work. It's going to be the administration cabinet and all the staff that are going to support them. I think it's possible. I don't think it's impossible. And I would hope we would lean on other to districts do it. I mean, we've got neighbors who do redistricting all the time, but I would lean on asking the staff, do you think you can do it? I agree, I would like to see us minimize redistricting as much as possible. I first moved here right when we were doing some of the north side redistricting, so I wasn't, my kids weren't a part of it per se, but I just remember how tense it was and it wasn't,

181it wasn't great. And so I'd love to see minimized. I'd like for us to be thoughtful, like other board members have shared, about the timing of the new schools, because we do, it's the balancing of Wolpert. We don't gain a lot of seats, but we gain a lot of seats pursuant to the confines of what the county and Wolpert has laid out to us. And so, you know, we may not need to have to redistrict after schools, new schools are built. We may be able to delay that for another 2 years. But I would lean on the staff to help us think about, can we do it in a year? My suspicion, and I'm going to look to you, Dr. Trice, to answer it, you wouldn't have proposed this if you didn't think it was

182possible to do that either. Right. But also that, understand well. I was just noting that you didn't bring a recommendation on 2-school. And I think it's important to understand there's a difference between me standing here saying, yes, I think we can do it. There's this idea of trust but verify as a superintendent and leading our administration. If you were to give us direction, I think it's important for us to demonstrate how we could do it. Um, and so that's a little more than the timeline that I shared today, but it kind of gets into the ins and outs, the nuts and bolts of going from point A to point B, whether that's closing a school or two schools, uh, to include moving of programs and finding space. I mean, it will definitely involve us partnering

183with NC State or another demographer to look at boundary lines. And so we know that they, those partners assist other districts to do it within a year. And that's kind of what we're proposing. But, you know, I stand here today and say yes, but my next move would be to be a little bit more concrete about each step along the way. And to Ms. Dossie's point I mean, it's the human conditions. Things change, you know, issues come up, and, but we would need to put that into our timeline. The idea is that we have to start to move on facilities now. As the superintendent, I would prefer not to start with personnel, is what I'm saying. If we start with personnel, on the back end we still have this issue with facilities, and that would,

184that would be, in my mind, more disruptive. And starting with personnel, we would likely have to focus on areas that we've come to know and love in our district. You know, when I talk about instructional assistants and counselors and administrators, like, we enjoy those things. And if we have to make decisions about those positions, you know, I'm fully here, I'm here fully saying, yeah, we may have to, but at least we'll have a longer runway to kind of help ease that transition. That's why we would want to start with facilities. But I know I'm talking a lot, but to kind of go back to your point, I think we need a plan to demonstrate how we would go from A to closure of two schools if that's the you direction do. That's helpful. And I,

185as you're talking, I'm thinking, as a board, if we have to give you something to work with, and why I said 2 is it gives you the most, it gives you more financial flexibility to work with than 1. 1 really limits you financially, knowing that we've got this bigger worst-case scenario. What was it, $6.5 million? And I don't, I agree with you, I don't want to look for that $6.5 million with people. That, that, that is the very, very last place I want to look again. That was hard. That was painful. I don't want to do that again. So, so that's why I'm, for board members, that's why I'm leaning more towards 2. It gives the staff more financial flexibility. I know for community members it feels like it's personal, but I think there's, I'm

186just listening to Dr. Trice and the staff. I do want to be open, like, if while we're focusing on facilities, I still have to bring to the board at some point soon a staffing plan that right-sizes our organization. So we're not out of the woods with that. This is not, you know, the magic bullet that's going to solve all of our financial issues. It is big, but it is not the only thing that we're doing. We're doing 2 things or 3 things or maybe 5 things at once. When we talk about these budget levers. But we will have to bring a staffing plan to the board to kind of look at concerning our recommendations on right-sizing the organization based on student enrollment. And we also have the AROI, the academic return on investment work. So

187I think that's really important that we're working hard to be thoughtful, thoughtful about our finances, thoughtful about student outcomes and looking, like you said, at all levers, not just one. So I agree with you, this isn't going to fix everything. But to Ms. Feder's point, I mean, facilities is a big one. Our community invests heavily into our schools, and there is quite a bit of inefficiency in our schools. And that in itself is an equity issue, because if you are spending funding on fixed costs where you could deal with those inefficiencies. Those dollars could flow into making sure that every EC classroom has a full-time teacher. We have classroom, EC classrooms now where there's not a full-time teacher, right? And we could address those things and things like that if we were to become more

188efficient as a district. And we know to day that as we close schools, most of the teachers will follow the students. And there are positions that are kind of one-offs that, you know, that wouldn't be the case, but it does give us a little bit more flexibility. Okay, all right. So yes, so I got a board member ask To board members, I know we wanted to start with criteria, but it feels like I want to respect, and it's late and you guys, a lot of you are elementary parents, you got an early start. Teachers too, teachers. And so board members, do we feel comfortable moving the criteria discussion to our next board meeting? I think that makes sense. I think this is also an example of compression timeline, right? So like every decision feeds to

189the next one and pushes further downstream. And just, I know when, when I was working and talking with the staff about this, there's, we have some buffer. That's why it says February 2026, because we thought this discussion might flow over into another board meeting. Okay. Go ahead, Merideth. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I would be fine pushing the criteria discussion, but I also think that we have a large captive audience here and that it might make sense to address, like, a couple of things. Like, you know, there were definitely some themes that emerged from a lot of the messages that we were getting. And so I don't know if it makes, like, I don't want us to go off on, like, a huge tangent, but, like I do want to acknowledge some of the things that

190we have been thinking about and that, you know, I saw a lot of comments about you can't just consider facilities age. And, you know, from my perspective, at least, you know, as an individual board member, that's never been my aim was to only look at age of facilities. Sure, that's a consideration, but we do have to look at other impacts. Especially as it relates to economics. And so things like walkability where it, you know, affects bus transportation. But we need real numbers on that, not just a, you know, not a perception or, you know, we need data that will show us kind of how to proceed. So I guess I just want to acknowledge those. I don't want to hijack the discussion, but I did want to, you know, I feel like people have invested

191their time to come tonight. And so, you know, and I don't know that how many people will be able to come to the next one, and I just want to make sure that we address some of these things. Yeah, go ahead, Rani. So I have something related to what Meredith said, but I wanted to close the conversation on the number of schools. Like, how are we going to make a decision about that? Is that when administration comes back with a plan, we'll look at it, or do we want to sort of take the temperature of the board today and make. Why don't we take a temperature of the board? Because I think that's going to inform the criteria and also when we task the administration to do work. So 2, 2, so we got 4

1922s, 3 1s. From up to mindset. 2, while opening 1. Okay, I got you. Yeah, I mean, I think too, with the caveat that we need to think creatively on how that looks, and, you know, what, what can be done to minimize the disruption. I, I wonder when we direct the administration about the plan, right, because that's what it is, would it be helpful to also layer in like a draft concept of like how they, you know, how they would achieve 2? Would that be, Yeah, I mean, to me that's how I would be able to make a decision. I would need to see a project plan that kind of lays out the steps of the things that need to be considered, timeline, the dependencies, like, you know, what has to feed something else. And

193then I could say like, I feel comfortable that we can do 2 or we should come back and have a discussion. So I think we need more information before we make a decision. And obviously the decision won't be made until June, so we could frame it and send the administration off to make the case, because when it comes time for the board to vote, there's nothing that says we, we have to vote for two, right? It's got, I think Dr. Trice framed it that way, however, or whatever version the board proposes, right? Is that okay? Yeah, I think the timeline looks different if it's 2 than 1, though. So like, it's what are we asking administration to go do? There will be 2 scenarios. Maybe that's the 1 school, and then there's 2 schools. There's

194some overlap in the activities, but that's right, you know, each school's individual, and we'd have to think about that. That's right. Thank you, Rani, for pointing that out. Okay, so I think the temperature of the board is schools. Okay, and so, and I think that gives us a broad umbrella, right? Because it'll include 1 and 2. Okay, so I think, was that helpful? Okay, and then go ahead, Rani. I was going to say, do you feel like you have what you need to kind of think about a plan? No, I think we need, no, no, criteria. I mean, I think I think from, from a planning standpoint, I mean, it'd be important for us to understand criteria. If that's a, yeah, I was just about the two schools. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. And also

195the guidance of like, it's not just closing two schools, but like the timeline and the needs and information and all the things, right? Okay, good. All right, and then one more thing before we get to criteria. I do want to ask but like, are we open to reconsidering the schools under consideration? And so I just, I just, it's late. Don't you want to go home? Okay, listen. So, you know, we've talked a lot about our financial headwinds. And so I just think that it would make sense to consider what could lead to the biggest savings without restricting ourselves to decisions we made when we didn't have full information. And so I would just ask the board to reconsider and allow us to assess, allow administration to assess the remaining 5 schools identified as the highest

196needs in the report, excluding Carrboro Elementary, given the progress we've already made toward rebuilding that facility. I would say in the previous discussion, some board members raised questions about whether reopening the bond decision might create community confusion. I think we've heard from the community that is not the case. I think they're willing to reengage. And I just go back to the financial considerations. If we constrain ourselves from being able to consider where we might get the biggest savings, I think we're mis-serving our fiscal responsibility. All right. So Rani has asked another question of the board. Do the board members have an appetite to look at more than the 3 schools we previously discussed on January 15th, or would they like to expand it? And it sounds like you're saying to include Estes Hills and FPG

197as well. I want to make clear that we need a have, name. That's right. Those would be the 5 schools. So Sewell, Glenwood, Estes Hills, Ephesus, and did I already say Glenwood? FPG. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So we're going to try again. Meredith. This is tough for me. I mean, you know, I think we did make a commitment to certain schools when we clearly laid out the plan, and there were reasons why we picked the schools that we did for the redevelopment. I think one thing that was not said earlier that I have in my notes that I wanted to make sure that we did say was that one consideration was the ability to rebuild on site while kids are in buildings going to school and then demolish the old building when the new

198one comes online. It was to minimize disruption so that we didn't have to utilize swing schools. And, you know, there were a lot of, a lot of talk about that at the time. However, you know, I do think in the interest of fiscal responsibility, possibility that we should kind of look at all the options, even if we ultimately arrive at the same place that we started. I think, and that means looking at a grid that has criteria listed for all of those schools. So I mean, I would be open to that. I feel like I've evolved a little bit in my thinking over the past couple of weeks. You know, I do think we have to be creative. We have a lot of new information that we didn't have when the bond was being voted

199on, most notably the things that Mr. Ciarochi mentioned in his presentation. So that's where I would fall. I think we'd like to clarify what is the, like we're saying the statement new information. Can I just ask for you, Meredith, what was the new information? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, when we voted for the bond, we didn't know about the $21 million gap that the county commission, we didn't know that they were going to consider changing the funding, the allocation model, which I think that we might. Not be able to build a third school, right? I mean, yeah, at the beginning we were planning on building the three schools, and now there does seem to be some doubt, which, and I am concerned about that, because I, you know, I think all of our kids deserve

200to be in excellent buildings, and we need to figure out the best way that we can do that with the limited funds that we have. Thank you, Merideth. I'm going to keep doing the way I was before. Melinda, 3 schools, 5 schools? As the new kid on the board, I wasn't here 2 years ago. So to me, I think again, you make the best decisions when you have the most information. So we absolutely should open up to 5 schools. Rani, 5.