Board of Education | Work Session - Feb 19, 2026

001[ GAVEL ] All right, good evening, everyone. I call the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education meeting to order. The first item is I request approval of our agenda. So moved. Got a motion from Rani and a second from Meredith. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, passes. may I get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of stating on the agenda? So moved. Second. A motion from Rani, a second from Vicki. All those in favor say aye? Aye. Any opposed? All right, we will try to come back as close to 7 o'clock as possible. All right, thank you. [CLOSED SESSION] All right. Thank you so much. And we are back to open session. Before we go back to the agenda, I see Mr. Jinks is at

002the microphone. I think he's got some housekeeping items for us. Madam Chair, yes, thank you. This is what I do when it's not snowing outside. This is a quite a sizable crowd. Welcome everyone. Thank you very much for being here. Just a few brief housekeeping announcements. If you need to use a restroom or need to leave the room for any reason, it's this door over here. This door. The one over there is going to be locked during the meeting for safety reasons. So it is this door. I would also like to introduce our Spanish and Mandarin interpreters to say just a few words and introduce themselves. Sandra and Rose will come to the microphone for just a moment. [SPEAKING SPANISH] [SPEAKING CHINESE] Also, if you drive a Toyota 4Runner, you, I'm going to call out

003a license plate: U738K. Carolina plate U738K. Sorry, man. Madam Chair, that'll do it for me. I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Jinks. All right, our next item on our agenda is Black History Month readings. Looking, there we go. Good evening. My name is Kristi Stanley. Can you, oh, can, yep, thank you. Good evening, my name is Kristi Stanley and I serve the district as the Director of Secondary Humanities. It is my honor to open tonight's meeting in celebration of Black History Month by highlighting the power of student voice and creative expression through poetry. Over the past 2 years, our students have had the opportunity to participate in poetry writing workshops with our current North Carolina Poet Laureate Jackie Shelton Green, and this year with Dr. Donovan Livingston,

004our current Chapel Hill Poet Laureate. These opportunities were made possible through the generous support of our Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Public School Foundation and the Orange County Arts Council. Because of these partnerships, students across the district have found their voices built meaningful connections with one another and use poetry as a way to uplift their stories and strengthen our shared community. The culmination of these events results in each high school choosing its own poet laureate, and those winners then move into a district competition. Tonight, you will hear from two remarkable young poets whose voices reflect both the strength of our community and the promise of our future. Our first reader is our current and first ever District Poet Laureate, a distinction that represents not only exceptional talent but also leadership, courage, and the commitment to uplifting

005others through poetry. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to share their work with you this evening, and we thank you for your continued support of the arts in our schools. Lastly, to the members of the board, cabinet, and our community, I would like to welcome you into a practice that we have utilized during our poetry workshops, and that is the practice of snaps. All right, so when you hear something you like, snap. A line that moves you, snap. Imagery that is powerful, Give our poets some snaps. It is now my pleasure to invite our Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools District Poet Laureate, Alea Mendoza, to the podium. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much for that introduction and thank you for having me today. Alea Mendoza. As a first-generation Mexican American, it is a necessity for me

006to acknowledge that myself, like millions of others, have grown with a sense of unknown and helplessness due to, to the people in power that cannot grasp the goals and dreams of our culture. This is my poem. Black is not something we can choose, but it is something we can cherish. Black is honesty and family. Black is resilience, compassion, and community. It's overcoming slavery, injustice, segregation, and being labeled. It's the color of the boy next door who was unfortunately too poor to live in the big house with the picket fence and the shaggy dog, with flowers on the lawn, not needles in the yard. And yet he found his way and proved he was worth so much more. Black is the past, present, and future. Black is not mine to claim, but it is mine to

007respect, to learn from, to carry forward with honesty. It's having faith that the USA will eventually achieve unity and change its ways because justice does not belong to one color. Black is now and Black is proud. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Aaliyah. Our next poet says she finds herself in poetry and that it helps her learn about herself and others. It is my honor to welcome Milly L pez-Sacina to the podium. Hi, my name is Milagros Lopez de Sena, or Mili. I'm proud to stand here. I think Black History Month and also Hispanic Heritage Month share so much in similar, so I wanted to capture those two months in one poem. My poem is called "When Your Voice Meets Your Fire." I step to this mic with brown-skinned hands, that hold my ancestors' dreams like

008burning lanterns, glowing even when the world's tired to blow them out. But this month, this month I honor a history that didn't just rise. It rose through concrete, roots cracking the pavement while the world tried to bury it alive. Black history is not a month. It is a fault line humming under our feet, and every step you took toward freedom sent shockwaves through a nation that pretended not to even feel them. Your courage. Your courage was a storm with a backbone, a hurricane that refused to blow, teaching my people how to turn feel, to turn feel into fangs fired and forward motion. Your brilliance. Your brilliance was a solar eruption, a mind so bright it forced the sky to widen its borders just to hold your shine. Your resistance. Your resistance, resistance was a blueprint

009etched in lightning, a map of survival. Every step, Silence's tongue traced until their whispers grew teeth and their teeth grew thunder. You didn't just open doors, you blew the hinges off, and the wind that rusted in carried my people forward like seeds scattered in new soil. Your victories were earthquakes with intention, and the fractures they carved became highways where our futures learned to run. Your legacy, your legacy is a golden-forged mirror reflecting the truth that liberation is a chain reaction. One spark waking another, one flame daring the next to burn brighter. So, I stand here, a Latina stitched from continents, encouraged, saying, "Your fire didn't just warm your own people, it taught mine how to blaze without apology. Your story didn't just echo through time, it thundered so loud my voice turned to, learned to

010strike back. Your light didn't just guide a path, it carved galaxies where my future could finally glow." And when my voice meets your fire, the world, that's where the world feels the heat. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much. Our next agenda item is public comment. I'd like to read a few housekeeping remarks related to public comment. The board appreciates and encourages public comment. Board members will listen to the comments and may ask or make clarifying questions or comments, but there will be no general discussion related to the public comments. Public comments on any matter that is not currently on the work session agenda will be heard at the beginning of the meeting, which is now. Public comments related specifically to work session items will be heard after each work session item has been discussed

011by the Board of Education. Additionally, tonight we've done this, but we welcome our families and guests who prefer to speak Spanish or Mandarin. We're pleased to offer Spanish and Mandarin interpretation services. Interpretation will be provided con consecutively, meaning we will hear a sentence in one language and then the interpreters will repeat it in English. As a result, we will double the time limit for those speakers. We kindly request that all speakers please speak clearly and at a moderate pace to allow the interpreters to accurately convey all information to the board and to our guests in the audience. Due to the anticipated number of speakers, speakers for both general and work session topics have up to 2 minutes for their comment, but of course 4 minutes for those requiring interpretation. When you are recognized, please come

012forward, state your name, and if you're speaking for an organization, please identify the name of the organization. So we have public comments for items not on the work session, work session agenda at this time. We will start with recognizing any teacher organizations, school improvement teams, or student groups, followed by anyone who has signed up in advance, and finally any other persons wishing to comment. Again, this is for items not on work session. And thank you, Mr. Link. I see Mr. Link has come forward. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Brian Link and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. I rise tonight to speak about policies 1750 in conjunction with 7220, but before I do so, I want to thank this board's efforts to recognize Black History Month and again to

013formally thank our two amazing students, right, for their poetry this evening. It's a reminder of the message that, for those of you who were here last time, that the heart of CHCCS is its people, and our young folks are the ones who are leading the way. Speaking of Black History Month, I want to, as a social studies teacher, remind folks the importance of public education, which I'm assuming all of you here tonight, right, are here to support and the connection, right, to democracy. And so I want you to understand that North Carolina has had 3 constitutions. The second one was written in 1868 after a tumultuous time in our nation's history and our state's history. It was written after the work of the Freedmen's Education Bureau, right, which were communities of free Blacks who were

014looking to rise and support public education and to educate their communities who they had been systemically denied previously. And in that constitution in 1868, they were able to secure both free public education for both Blacks and whites. And they were able to secure that education being paid for by the state. And in doing so, the Freedmen's Bureau superintendent, FFA. Fisk, was sure that education would one day extend access to the ballot for Black men, eventually allowing them to exert political and economic power to become first-class citizens. And that's what happened 2 years later with the passage of the 15th Amendment. And so, Joel Brown isn't here, so I will do it. If you're all here tonight for public education, public education is on the ballot this primary season, March 2nd. Get out and vote. Register

015to vote and make sure you're delivering that public education message not only to this board but to our county commission and our state legislature, who is primarily responsible for funding it. Thank you. Rani, go ahead. Oh yeah, thank you so much, Mr. Link. Just a point of clarification, the general election is March 3rd. Early voting is on now, so please take your ID and take a friend and go vote. Thank you so much, Mr. Link. Thank you. All right, any other SIT or student groups for items not on work session? Okay, do we have anyone who signed up to make a public comment for items not on work session? Go ahead. Good evening, my name is Tiffany Richmond Langino. I speak before you tonight as a parent of 3 CHCCS students, and as an educator.

016In 2018, we chose to move to this district because of its reputation as the best public school system in the state. When we arrived, I realized that my kindergartner was required to spend a significant amount of class time using educational technology and taking tests administered on an iPad. Throughout my children's experience at Scroggs and Culbreath, They have ping-ponged back and forth between McLaws, iReady, IXL, Reflex Math, Gimkit, iReady again, and so many more programs that I frankly lost count. We have loved many things about their experience at Scruggs, including the principal, Miss Epps, who has shared my frustration with the heavy reliance on technology in education and CH, CCS. Ed tech is hurting more than it's helping. My 8-year-old daughter is upset that she doesn't have 3 green lights in Reflex Math despite having real-life

017fluency in multiplication. It is common knowledge that students are able to spend hours of their day in middle school at Culbreath playing games on their computers and emailing back and forth during class time. There is a better way. After 10 years away from teaching, I took a position last year as a 10th grade civics teacher at Woods Charter School. I realized quickly that many of my students were distracted by taking notes on their computers, and some were submitting typed work generated by AI. In response, I made a change this year with the support of admin. I eliminated note-taking on computers and require all assignments to be written by hand during class time. Students may research topics in advance and arrive to class with hand handwritten quotations and citations to support their arguments in their writing.

018I provide copies of civics related short stories, newspaper articles and primary sources which we discuss together without distractions. We have frequent debates, speeches and projects, hardly any of which require the use of computers during class time. I have found the administration at woods to be supportive of my method of teaching and eager to shift away from the perils of heavy technology use. As a result, I am strongly considering moving my three children to Woods. I would like the school board to consider that Ed Tech is driving people out of the district at a time when they cannot afford decreased enrollment. A change must happen. Thank you for your time. Miss Holloway, do we have any other. Did they not. Do we. Did we not have them designate what they were making public comments for or

019No? Okay. Did anyone else sign up for a public comment not on the work session agenda. That's the work session item, just in case you didn't realize. For all of you here. Okay. All right, so seeing no other public comments, thank you. Also, you may send written comments to the board. The email is on the agenda and additional information regarding written comments is available on our website. Our next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Board members, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I have a motion from Barb. I have a second. Second. A second from Meredith. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you so much. The next item on the agenda is discussion and action. Our first item is recommendation for approval. A second reading for

020policy code 3220, technology in the educational program. I know this was pulled from consent, so I know it looks like. Mr. Shorrochium. Is Atwater coming forward? Board members, were there any questions specifically regarding this policy or comments? I asked for it to be pulled And I was. My specific request, given everything else that's on the agenda, was to send it back to the policy committee specifically to consider the sentence, the board encourages the use of generative AI by school system employees and students, etc. I don't think that reflects our current thinking. I don't think it's consistent with the digital learning plan that we're doing. And so. So this was on consent, I'm assuming. I think it was the second reading, so I missed this last time. So apologies about that, but that is my request.

021Go ahead, Rani. I was going to just ask you to repeat the, the sentence, Barb. Sure, it's formerly G, now H. Generative artificial intelligence. And there's a sentence that says the board encourages the use of generative AI by school system employees and students. Students to expand their skills and capabilities and to prepare students for a future AI enhanced world. And while I certainly agree that we need to prepare students for a future AI enhanced world, I don't agree that we encourage the use of generative AI by school system employees. Madam Chair? Go ahead, Al. Good evening. embers of the board and guests just wanted to comment on board member Federer's request and clarification. So this is a language that we were able to review. The guy. Obviously our policies come from recommendations from the North

022Carolina School Board Association. The sentence that board member Fetters is referring to, we are agnostic to it. It's you as a board are taking a position. The substantive language of the policy is not being requested to change. So what we would say is if the board does not have objection, and there was a motion to be made to amend it on second read, this is something that we could accomplish this evening upon staff review. It does not. We don't believe it needs to go back to policy because it's not substantive of nature with our policies. Go ahead, Barb. Okay, then I move that we amend this policy to delete the sentence that I just read. I'll second that. So it sounds like we have a motion to approve this policy as amended by Barb and

023a second from Melinda. All those in favor, oh, George, you have a question? Okay, go ahead, George. We have a coalition of that Miss Atwater has been leading for the last 90 days of parents and teachers and board members that are just looking at technology and technology in schools. And I think it would behoove us all to just take this out at this point and just let, let that come back in later after this group gets its report done. Okay, just offer that. Thank you, George. All right, so we've got the motion to approve as amended and a second. Board members all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, thank you, thank you. The next item on our discussion action agenda is a recommendation for approval of the interlocal agreement between Orange County

024and Orange County Schools Board of Education and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education. And Mr. Shiroki, I see you standing. Good evening again, Madam Chair, members of the board, and guests. Yes, it is my pleasure to introduce what has been a long time coming the interlocal agreement between Orange County Schools, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, as well as Orange County, with respect to guidance with the 2024 bond referendum projects. And this is an agreement that establishes the decorum, the way in which projects will be presented. We know in the very beginning there were a lot of substantive changes that were made by the commissioners We, as well as Orange County Schools, was able to provide feedback, and I'm very pleased that all of the feedback that we provided allows this policy to be reverted back

025to the practice that is currently in play. And I just want to kind of highlight just a few of the things that you have been able to review. First of all, it does allow the ILA to be maintained with all three boards, but it does remain enforced if one party was to terminate. That was something that there was a lot of questions about. If we were to pull out would Orange County have to recreate their ILA, and this allows it to be, continue to happen if one of us was to pull out. The other is that it does specifically stipulate that the guidance in the ILA is specific to 2024 bond, general obligation bond project spending. It's not for any other capital project monies that you might have in the future. Obviously, this ILA has

026a term to it, which is the amount of time that you can to sell debt and have to begin paying it back. So it was through 2033. So there is an end date on the ILA as well, and that was clarified. It also does revert back in Article 4 that the practice is to go back to what we've been doing for many years and was kind of codified in a policy that the commissioners approved back in January of last year, a year ago. So we're reverted right back to that, and that practice is that we follow the capital investment plan process You as a board will receive my recommendations. You will vet those, approve them. I then send that to the commissioners for their review. What the ILA does is that there is a core

027team now that would review before I bring things to you to make sure that we're all in alignment with what the guidance the commissioners are providing. But then after you approve it, the manager then does what he has done in the past, and that is he would recommend and say that everything has been vetted, it's in in accordance with the ILA. The commissioners would then dialogue about our projects, as they always do and ask questions. But then ultimately, the one major thing that was changed in this ILA is originally it talked about how the commissioners would approve, specifically approve projects in the capital investment plan. And what it's done is they are able to review them, but ultimately they only have the authority to appropriate funding for capital investment plan items. You as a board

028are the ones that can approve the projects. They can ask questions, but ultimately they just have the power to not approve by not appropriating the funding for that current fiscal year. so with that being said, staff, we are recommending ultimately that you guys approve this. Orange County Schools approved it earlier this week, and then obviously the commissioners approved it back on February 3rd. So I'm happy if there's any input or comments, because I know that you guys have been very involved in this. And it's the first time that this has kind of been codified in many, many years. So a lot of practice has been put into writing. So I open it up for any comments or suggestions upon, you know, ultimately for your approval. Board members, do you have any questions? Rani, go ahead.

029Yeah, I want to just first, thank you for your leadership in getting this pushed through and the change to revert back from the language of commissioners approving projects to reviewing them. I think that's an important distinction to keep in front of us. And I will say this agreement will require us to really have open and transparent communication about what our plans are. It is clear to me that the commissioners appropriate funds and school boards have responsibility around project design. And so I just want to note that for the record and just encourage us to make sure we are, as we have been, keeping that line of communication open between the commissioners in this core group who is going to be bringing information back and forth between the boards. Thank you, board members. Any other comments,

030questions? Yep. With that, board members, may I have a motion to approve the interlocal agreement between Orange county and the Orange County Schools Board of Education and the Chapel Carrboro City Schools Board of Education? So moved. A motion from Barb. Can I get a second? Second. I have a second from Vicki. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. The next item on discussion and action is the acceptance of the initial site plan layout as recommended by the design committee for the car elementary school replacement project. Mr. Shiroki Madam Chair, members of the board and guests, thank you. This is a very. An important milestone for the replacement of Carrboro Elementary. What I want to do is, as I've said, we want to keep you informed of all of

031our bond referendum projects ultimately would be quarterly. But this is a step in the project that for any of our schools we want to be able to get your acceptance of what is the, the site layout that's going to be necessary, knowing that in design all of our school replacements are on occupied campuses, which is more area of detail that we want to provide, knowing that safety is first and foremost. But I want to walk through this is a shorter version of what our community has seen. We have had multiple meetings with senior PTA leadership, the Carrboro elementary pta. We had a community meeting with the parents of Carrboro elementary, as well as we put multiple flyers out in the community. We had many residents this past week attend. So we had a very fruitful

032meeting where they were able to see the plans and share with us observations of the property over the years, challenges that they have faced. And we're able to do our best to try to incorporate that as best as possible and when allowable into the project. So what I'd like to do very quickly is I'm going to do a brief overview just of the project team, the design process, because I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We have not designed the school. We are not at that stage. We are in what's called the massing stage, which is the preliminary stage, which I'm going to go through, that you have to have when you meet with the town of Carrboro, when you start meeting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, other jurisdictional entities,

033you have to be able to show how you plan to impact the site so they can begin to provide initial comments. And that's what we're doing this evening, and then answer any questions. So again, the milestone that we've hit thus far, ending in January, is we have had tremendous listening sessions out in the greater Carrboro community. And then ultimately, we're looking at completing the design of the school in January of 2027, construction as early as spring of 27. And then the goal right now is that the new building will be complete for the start of the fall 2028 school year. And as I've always said as we hit hurdles have to overcome things that obviously could change. One nice thing about having occupied school replacements is that you are able to transition at any time

034during the year if the schedule allows it versus having to wait until the start of a physical school year. So that is an advantage. So it doesn't not like we have to wait six months if we don't open in the fall. Again, project team, just want to remind you that we have Turner Townsend and Heery handling our project management. very pleased this evening to have Catherine Peel, who's also in attendance if there's any technical questions beyond what I present, from LS3P, who is a large designer with many, many years here in the state of North Carolina as well as the Carolinas. And we're very pleased to be working with them, and their team has been working extensively with the Carrboro team in listening and understanding what their needs are in their school as we bring

035it up to current standards. Our construction management group tonight on the agenda, I have this kind of tentative but it is Clancy and Thays, who is the committee has selected. And they have been part I will say, kind of at their own risk, as far as contributing and providing some input with the initial design phase pending their award. So again, with the initial engagement, one of the things that came out from a lot of the listening sessions with the community is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anytime you replace a school in any school district, and, and experientially involving the children in that process be it from the architects, the consultants, the contractors, of allowing them to participate and understand how a building lives and breathes in trying to incorporate sustainability, not just already in

036a STEM curriculum that school may have, but actually experiential, experientially within the building and having them play a part from planting trees to seeing tradespeople work and obviously promoting a lot of careers that are in those, those building trades for students to be able to gain a better understanding with. So that is one thing that's come out across the board in all of our listening sessions, and I wanted to share that because the folks on the, design team are really excited about that. These are the stages of the design process. We are currently in the concept and the massing stage, but then ultimately later this spring into the fall we will have the schematic design, which will be the actual concept of the design of the school, the programming, where the grade levels will be,

037the cafeteria, so that you can visualize that. And then we jump into design development where they're fine-tuning the schematic design. And then ultimately preparing for construction documentation before we actually start the project. But it is a multi-phase and we will be coming back to you each time. So again, just a timeline. We're in the concept schematic phase right now. but ultimately January of 2027 would be the earliest for permitting and bidding. And then obviously starting the school fall of '28. So here's the big, the piece of what I wanted to share with you this evening on the site layout. So this is just an aerial of the existing property today. And you see that on the eastern side, the right side we do have a trail that bifurcates the property. That's a trail that has

038been there for many, many years that our community takes advantage of, like many of the trails that we have with, within our both communities. This is where the existing school is. And the goal of this project is first, this is an occupied replacement. We, the goal of the site layout is to make sure that the existing school remains in operation during the construction. We also have to ensure that we maintain the safety and the security and that traffic flows during the construction, knowing that we have peaks morning and afternoon as we do at every school. This is deeply entrenched in a residential community. It's a 25 mph street one way, does pose its challenges, but it is one that we know we can overcome. But it is, it's a paramount piece because we can't have

039contractors conflicting with parents that are bringing their kids to school or picking them up. We also want to minimize the site disturbance and maintain tree buffers as much as possible. We know that we're going to have to clear some trees, but we also know that we can do that in a very smart way that maintains the goals of the projects but also leaves the natural element that our community desires in all of its projects here in town. At the same time, we want to utilize as much clear area as possible, not just taking trees, but there is a lot of open space that exists, and we want to make sure that we maximize that. But then some other items are clearly we want to minimize the disruption of the educational program, the activities of the

040elementary school. Clearly we are com, soliciting community and school feedback. We're going to be incorporating sustainable design practices as we do with all of our projects. And then we obviously want to keep our project on budget and on schedule. The the bond is a fixed amount of money. We have a fixed amount for this project. there's no additional money to be added to any of our projects, so we have to do everything we can to stay within budget on these. So with the site analysis, this is just an overall of the site, and it kind of shows you where the existing school is, the open clear areas, as well as the forested area. And you'll see the blue on there are wet areas. Some areas are wetlands, some are streams, but these are areas that

041we can't touch. These are areas that you do not want to impact if at all possible. So we know that those are areas, and some of those are to the north of our property. But there is impact on our property as a result of that, so we have to address that accordingly. So in early design this, this design committee came up with 4 concepts, and the concept 3 and 4 were the 2 that immediately had to betaken out of the mix. And the primary reason was, is that didn't allow us to have an occupied school that we could then take occupancy of a new school, meaning they had to, they put the parking and the road coming into the school where the existing school is, and we don't have a location for the children in,

042at the Carrboro Elementary. So we know we've got to be able to do both at once. So those were eliminated, and then we jumped into Concept 1 and 2. And I'm just going to highlight Concept 1puts the building very close to the school, but the item that I want to bring to your attention is there is the, on any property, when you build a residence, you always try to build on the highest point of the property. One, it allows you to minimize dirt movement. That's cost when you have to move dirt. But it also allows you to maintain the natural feel of the property. So the first item, though it brought the building closer to the school while it's occupied and it reduced the clearing of the buffer to the north, it impacted the buffer

043to the right closest to the trail. That was a, a problem for us. And immediately we were like, okay, let's go back to the drawing board with this. Because in this plan Phase 2, you still have to address the bus loop, and that bus loop would have to be added once the existing school is demoed. So we immediately looked at another placement, and that is, I'm going to skip over these, Concept Number 2, where if you notice here, the building is further north and it's on the highest piece of land. The advantage of this site is that it allows minimal clearing of the trees to the east. It allows you to build at the highest point on the property, which maintains budget and cost to the best of our ability. And it also keeps the

044most heavy extent of the construction away from the existing school. So this is the one that clearly surfaced as the massing. The one thing that came out of the community meetings, you'll notice that that parking lot, many of our parking lots are not that size. Back in 1958, 1960, there really weren't any parking requirements, but the DPI, as well as North Carolina Department of Transportation, has two non-negotiables when you build new schools. You have to have an appropriate number of parking spaces on site. So we're looking here at about 90 parking places, which is the minimum that we have to have. At the same time, you have to be able to take all cars off of the public street when parents are dropping off and picking up. So what we've got here is a main

045road, a collector road, that will allow queuing and We will have to do this for all of our projects. But what it does is it allows the traffic to be taken off the road so that people can drive on it, emergency vehicles could get past. With this being residential, this is a huge improvement for the school and for the community. But at the same time, it just mitigates the amount of buffer clearing that is necessary. So this is the recommendation that we have. The design committee vetted this. They looked at the pros and cons. And they bring this concept to you today for your consideration. We don't have any flexibility with the road or the parking, unfortunately. But at the same time, we know that 90 spaces is only good but for so many opportunities,

046right? When you have large beginning of school, back to school meetings, 90 spaces doesn't work. But we can't go much larger than that, and nor would it be cost effective. but this is a much improvement, and we anticipate with all of our older schools when we replace them in time, we would be, have to do the same to make that improvement. So in the end, on the concept, and this is the part I did not talk about in the first, where the existing school is, this is a community school where the public utilizes it very extensively because it's just entrenched in the community. It's very walkable. It's not along a major highway, so people can walk very freely and bike very freely. So what we're doing is recommending is that there is a community garden

047space that's in the front of the building, as well as a multi-use field space that the community and the school can use. Currently, there is a baseball field on the existing site. That field is really not used, and it's not conducive for other sports activities. So we're recommending that we just make a multi-use field and allow students to have community gardens, allow there to be tree plantings, additional trees added to compensate for the trees that we've cleared. But that would be a nice open space so that the school will be up on a hill when you, when you drive into it, and the students will be able to look out and see green space beyond the parking lot given that elevation. So again, I've talked a little bit about the pros and the cons. The

048con for both is that we're going to have to make some temporary provisions for the bus loop, where the bus loop will probably have to hop over into the parking lot for maybe a month or two so that when we demo the school, we'll be able to build the permanent bus loop. Loop in play. But it will allow us to have occupancy, and we feel pretty confident that local fire and permitting would allow us to do this, knowing that there is a final design that has been approved by the town. So with that being said, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. But again, this project is a, the site layout is only about 95% there. It could be modified as we go through the vetting, but this is one where we

049just felt is important to be able to share with you on the front end, because it, what you see is pretty much what we're going to get. But if anything, we're going to do our best to try to mitigate as much as possible if the design process allows it even further. So any questions? Thank you, Mr. Shiroki. Barb? Thank you, Mr. Shiroki. Just since today in tonight's meeting we're talking about school consolidation and school closure and school construction, and ands of folks here have been following this process all the way through, but some are, have not, and understandably so. And so I was just wondering if you could just remind us, why are we building this school and with what money? And yeah, why are we building the school with what money? Yeah this school

050amongst with two others were identified as schools that were the, I won't say the oldest, but they ranked in the top of being the oldest, but also had the greatest need when it comes from mechanical, electrical, plumbing. I'll say all the stuff that you don't see when you walk into the building and Carrboro was a school that had tremendously high failure rates with air conditioning, with plumbing so it was one of the schools that were identified this school is being funded through the, the 2024 general obligation bonds that were approved by the citizens of Orange County back in November of '24. Okay, thank you. Meredith? Thanks for that explanation. I also just wanted to reiterate the distinction between the bond funds, which are capital funds, and funds that are operating in nature, just because I

051know that we've gotten a couple of questions about that. Those two types of funds cannot be intermixed, and you cannot utilize per, funds that were designated for capital purposes for operating expenses. So, I just wanted to reiterate that. Yeah, I think the gist for most people, because that could be very confusing if you're new to this, is bond money is finance money, just like if we were buying a home and we were financing it whereas for annual recurring expenses, for household expenses, you would not sell debt in order to do that. So yes, and I just wanted to thank you and your team for really going out to the Carrboro community, talking to a number of different groups, getting feedback, and then coming up with a plan that I think satisfies a lot of the

052concerns that were expressed, particularly regarding the tree line. You know, we would like to not lose any trees, but the reality is when you're building a new school on a small enclosed site where there already is another school, it's a little challenging. So I think you've minimized that, and I, I really appreciate the responsiveness to those concerns. Go ahead, George? Thanks. If this is an appropriate time, and if it's not helpful, just say so. The, the bond money was specified by the county commissioners, who are actually legally responsible for paying for school buildings, and they have to pay renovations and/or building school buildings. That's been a long-standing thing. They made it clear that they wanted us to build larger school buildings that would last 50 to 75 years into the future, as opposed to using

053the money strictly for renovations. Could you just speak to that? Because we did get some of those questions as well. Yeah, the Board of County Commissioners and the guidance that they have provided back in January they have added language that you know, their goal is to replace newer facilities to bring them up to DPI standards, and that if they're going to make the capital investment, knowing that that statutorily is their require their obligation to do that they would want us to replace schools versus putting money into renovations where in the end the classroom sizes are the same. And I would give an example of bringing this building up from 1959, I think DPI standards. That's a 60,000 square foot building without the auditorium. We're adding 30,000 square feet, and that's just the minimum DPI standard.

054So that just shows you, when you talk about educational adequacy or lack thereof for our older schools, adding 30,000 square feet, we're not adding more classrooms. The rooms are larger, the halls are bigger, the cafeteria is larger there's pullout spaces, there's support service spaces, things that DPI has had as standards, for 30, 40 years. It's grown, right? But the school was built way before that. So that's, that's really the gist of why we're doing what we're doing and how we're doing it. Vicki? Would you please remind us how many students the school will house? I don't have it directly in front of me, but it's about 500 students that programmatically it can hold. It's a little higher for facility-wise. The fact that there is a dual language, a split program does adjust that. But the

055school that we're looking to build based upon budget realistically is going to be about 550 to, at 600 at most, and that's budget dependent. So it does look like we're going to be able to, I'll say, expand the size of the school. So ultimately, I've been talking with you for many years about ultimately we're going to have to have boundary redistricting. I don't believe that we're going to add that many more seats, to that, and that's, we'll just have to keep managing it. But right now we are targeting 550 to 600, which is very similar to what the school has today. And of course, we're including some pre-K opportunities in that number, which does increase it by a few number, few kids. So yeah, thank you. Board members, any other questions? Go ahead, Barb. Mr.

056Shiroki, could you just tell us what is DPI? And then we also got a question about in, in an email about why things need to be bigger to be educationally adequate. And could you just explain a little bit about that? Yeah, and I apologize using that acronym. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is the entity here in the state of North Carolina that basically mandates all policies or laws that are enacted by legislation, and they manage that, and that's who we all, we all answer to. And I'm sorry, could you ask the second question? What's the significance of things being bigger? Because kids aren't bigger. Yeah so I'll have to put kind of my instruction hat on, but I am talking to you in an old-school format. Standing behind a lectern, I'm talking at you,

057right? Today's instruction is not about talking at, it's about experiential learning, it's about cooperative learning, it's about children being able to gather in a group at the elementary level over here, over there, over here, do activities, come back together collectively as a group. So classroom size is very important. The types of furniture that are used are different. The desks that I had back in, I won't say when we don't use those types that we use tables we have for flexibility. So the spaces are more open and not fixed. Like if you remember in high school, you had chemistry labs where that furniture was fixed. And you, it was a chemistry room. You couldn't do anything else in it, maybe a study hall, but that was it. Today's instructional designs allow for flexibility from kindergarten, pre-K,

058all the way up to 12th grade. And so DPI, as they've developed standards, they know that teachers need more space. We have more services, direct services, where adults are coming in and providing assistance to children that have specific needs while the teacher is still working. So you just need more space. And for our older schools, that is a tremendous challenge. Or they don't have space where they can meet with a child and work with speech or work with OT/PT. They have to go into the cafeteria because that's all that's available. DPI has addressed that over the years and asked that, that, that be calculated into the total square footage. And those are just brief examples, but our classrooms today, if you go into a newer school, They are night and day from the schools like,

059like I went to. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, board members, may I have a motion to approve and accept the initial site plan layout as recommended by the design committee for Carrboro Elementary School replacement project? So moved. Second. I have a motion from Meredith and a second from Rani. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, carries. Thank you. All right, our next item on discussion and action is the award of construction manager at risk contract for the replacement of Carrboro Elementary School, and that's Mr. Shiroki again. Thank you. And again, this is one where the, the stars just align. They're in the same evening, but I'm very pleased you know, we've brought an award for project management to you, we've brought an award for design services Now's the time where we

060have brought the contractor on board, and we have always said that our lessons learned from past work is that we want to have all three parties together at the table on the front end with occupied replacements. The tights are very sight, the transitions are very important. Minimizing students' disruption is paramount. We wanted to have the contractor on board, and we're very pleased to be recommending this evening and I will be remiss to say we also have Bobby Anweiler, who is with Clancy and Thays, who again is here to answer any questions, as Ms. Peel was previously. But I just want to very quickly walk you through the process as we've done with the other two. We issued an RFQ, request for qualifications, back on the 30th of October of last year. We had a, architectural

061interviews right after the winter break. We sent a notice right after those interviews. We've been going through negotiations knowing that this is a construction manager at risk contract. Where ultimately we will be coming back to you with a guaranteed maximum price for the replacement of the school. And that will be a piece where that ultimately will be the first change order that you will have as termed and stipulated in the contract you're awarding tonight. And then obviously we've gone right to where we're here tonight to award it. Our committee we had multiple memberships, and this just represents our district membership from our principal, Mr. Jordy Roman, His assistant principal Kimberly Winslow, many facility staff member sand finance and technology staff members that played a part in that process. we also asked our consultants who we've

062had hired to be technical observers to be able to provide feedback as the contractors interviewed. So, we had Turner Townsend Heery as well as LS3P. They were not voting, but they provided input because they're out there in the industry and they're working and they know what the challenges that we're facing, and they were able to provide us just with good information. The criteria for the RFQ ranged from just a letter of interest to explaining their organization and structure, their past experience specifically in North Carolina K-12 work, their pre-construction experience with design and working with architects, as well as specifically their construction experience, their workload capacity, their safety record, And then obviously, the other is their financial data. Are they able to handle a project that has a construction budget of $42 million estimated? And are

063they able to fulfill that? And Clancy Theis obviously is able to do that. These are the companies that submitted. I won't go through those, but they're here just so that you see we had a very robust turnout. Ultimately, we finalized down to 5, and we interviewed those 5, and that's where Clancy Theis was the, the most qualified. Just to tell you a little bit about Clancy and Theis, they've been around since 1949. They've got over 75 years experience in the state of North Carolina. They've done over $1 billion in educational work across North Carolina where they have met budget, schedule, and safety goals. They've got extensive experience, which was something we were very interested in with occupied site replacements, and we know that they have the ability to provide exceptional construction experience based upon safety,

064stewardship, and collaboration. So the committee determined that they were the best and that they would be able to meet the needs of our district, as well as connecting with the Carrboro Elementary community and being able to adapt and understand the specific needs as all of our schools will have when we embark on those projects. So just a breakdown of the contract. Again, the total project budget for this replacement is $53 million. The additional negotiated fees for construction manager at risk, tonight you are only awarding financially a $250,000 award for pre-designed services with Clancy and Thays, but we also pre-negotiated with our board counsel at Tharrington Smith the construction management fee, the contingency fee, the bonds insurance fee, the sub guard, liquidated damages, so that all of that is predetermined and all of those fees will

065be based upon at the end what the guaranteed maximum price is. The only thing that the $42 million tentative construction budget fee here is based is the pre-con fee until we get into it and we determine what that true cost is. So with that, just again, I always show you a timeline. We're in the design narrative phase, and again, I jumped all the way down to where we're looking at June of 2028 for completion of the building, and then ultimately the site in December, meaning the school would be occupied in as early as the fall, and then we would be demoing the building and creating the multi-use fields subsequent to that. And again, for once I've got checks across the board as far as our milestones and that's been a long time coming, but obviously

066we are on the last milestone, which is the collaborative design process, which is currently underway. And you won't see the slide any longer after tonight. So with that, I can answer any questions you have, but again, we appreciate your patience and the ability to allow us to have a very successful RFQ process through, with all of our design consultants, knowing that this is something we have not embarked on at the elementary level in over 12 years. Thank you. Board members, do you have any questions? Motion to approve. We have a motion from Rani. Can I get a second? Second. A second from Vicki. All those in favor say aye? Any opposed? All right, the motion carries. Thank you. All right, our next item on the agenda is our work session topic. All right, and board

067members, I, I do have just a few opening comments that I want to read to kind of help start some of the discussions and questions that I had after our last meeting. But I did want to ground the community on what a work session is. Work sessions are meetings in which the board spends time, more time discussing a topic. In these meetings, the board generally doesn't take action, which requires voting approval. Public comment will be heard after each work session topic. And so there have been a lot of conversations regarding the board's discussions around school closure. The board has been using work sessions to discuss, to discuss the closure process, thoughts on the numbers of schools to close, and which schools we might close, and the criteria to which we will use to close schools.

068Schools. Although there are board members who have currently expressed an interest in the closure study to include 5 schools, and some who have expressed an interest to include 3 schools as part of the study, there has not been a vote on the number of schools or which schools ultimately will be part of the closure study. As I stated at the beginning of the previous work session discussion, this is a work session. This is a time when the board spends more time just discussing a topic. However, there are some votes that the board has made regarding school facilities. As Mr. Shiroki mentioned, the board did vote for the 2024 bond plan, the underpinning to the bond itself, which identified 3 schools for replacement for the $300 million bond funds and the $100 million pay go. Also,

069the board has made, has voted for our 10-year capital investment plan. Both of these votes included the construction of 3 new elementary schools: Carrboro, Estes Hills, and Frank Porter Graham. There were some comments made during the past board meeting that there would not be sufficient funds to, to complete the construction of the third school under the bond plan. Under our current bond plan, that school is Frank Porter Graham. The school collaboration meeting is a meeting in which the board leadership from the school districts of Orange County, Chapel Hill, and the county commissioners, along with our respective staffs, meets quarterly. During this meeting, I asked the county staff and commissioners present whether any changes have been made by the county regarding the bond amount, or if the county had made a final decision on the availability

070of pay PAYGO funding. The county confirmed that there had been no county commissioner decision that would reduce the funding under the bond or the PAYGO at this time. It is accurate that the county did not fund the PAYGO for the first year as anticipated, but it is under the county purview to make changes on how much and the timing that the PAYGO funds are available. Additionally, with respect to the bond fund, the county, the I'm sorry, state law allows flexibility for the county to request an extension for bond funds. So my fellow board members, I would urge the board that it's premature for us to make any decisions regarding whether funding for the third school under our bond, our current bond plan will be available until such time the county advises us otherwise. For the

071board, I also want us to consider the implications on the bond plan and the CIP by including schools that we have voted for and its implications. This was not addressed during our previous meeting, so I wanted to make sure board members consider that, those implications of introducing schools that we did previously vote on, and also the impact on potentially voting on a school closure plan which may go contrary to our past board decision. I did want to pause here, and I just wanted to ask, we've got our board attorney up here, and so one thing that I had a wondering about, I had a couple of board members reach out to me about, was if we were to include schools in our school closure plan that we already voted to include in our bond plan

072and our CIP, what do we need to think about from a legal standpoint? Absolutely. So the board has previously approved, because the board had approved the bond plan in the CIP, you do revisit your CIP every year and reapprove it every year. but what the, under county policy and under the, the interlocal agreement that you have approve any changes to that plan in order to receive funding for something different than what you have previously agreed on, you would need approval of the county commissioners. And so they would have to agree to the change in your plan. So board members, I just want to pause here and just see if there are any comments based on just some of the stuff our attorneys share, but then also the update from the school collaboration meeting regarding the

073position of the county with respect to the bond and PAYGO funding. I think it might be helpful in the community, everyone may not be aware what the PAYGO funding is. It might be good to explain that. Oh boy, I may need to tag in Mr. Shiroki to help me on this one. There we go. So I used to wonder what PAYGO funding was. So PAYGO funding, in essence, it's cash. It's cash that the county is able to obtain through real estate assessment, through, through taxes. So the idea of the county when they said that they were going to be funding PAYGO to both of our school districts and providing$10 million a year for the next 10 years, it was by an increase in the tax rate. And that's what the Board of County Commissioners toiled

074and deliberated over last June when they approved the current fiscal year budget of what they could be able to approve or not. But it is cash but is directly tied to the real estate taxes that our residents and businesses pay who rent or lease properties. So if I may interject, the understanding is as Mr. Cirucci said, that the commissioners have committed $300 million, slightly less than that, of which about $260 million is borrowed from the bank, essentially. And then the rest of it, they are anticipating being able to fund as they go, pay as you go, through tax revenues. Thank you. That's correct. Thank you. Board members, any other comments or questions or thoughts? Go ahead, Marani? Yeah, I have a clarifying question. I think in our last meeting we did vote on the number

075of schools, so, I'm wondering sort of where this new discussion is coming from. I think just as a reminder, and I started off the work session we didn't take a vote. I think I did a temperature check in terms of where board members were thinking on 5 schools versus 3. So I think that's something to keep in mind. Can you help me with how that's different than, like, so I feel like we kind of keep going backwards and we've got to sort of, we're trying to move fast, and I think we've got to be transparent both with the board members and with the community. And if we say one thing in a meeting and come back in a meeting again, it's confusing to me as a board member, and I'm sure it's confusing to our

076community. And so I feel like we have to put some lines in the sands. I left that meeting, I think folks left the meeting with the understanding that we had agreed to go to the 5 schools. I don't know who has authority to make that change without the board voting again. So just to clarify, I think it also, when there was seeming like a cons some majority of the board thinking they wanted to go back to 5, it did open the question of what do we do with our bond plan and what do we do with our CIP plan? And so that, that was a wondering, and that's why I asked, because that was a vote. There was a resolution, there were motions, it was noticed that there, a vote was going to happen on

077that agenda. There was no notice to the community that we were going to be voting on whether schools, actually, we reiterated that we were not going to be voting. This was a work session and we were going to be, going to be working through the school closure discussion. So how would you suggest we move forward given where we are? Like, I don't know how to think about this as a board member. We made it, I thought we left with the decision. So we will ultimately vote on the school closure plan itself, which will need to include which schools, how many, and things like that. So once we come up with the criteria, that's when all that will happen. I'm hoping it's our next meeting. Go ahead. If I could, through the statutory process that we've

078talked about for school closure the board, before closing any school, has to cause a study to be made of that school. And so the, the decision point for the board would be, what are we going to study? And then I think there would need to be a motion and a vote. We would like the staff to bring back a study of this school, that school, consolidate, whatever it is. And that would be the clear statement of what studies you, and then from the studies, then it is perfectly fine and normal and understood that you may cause 4 studies to be done and then choose one of them or choose none of them. Like, that's, the study is to bring back the information to help you make a final decision. Okay. Thank you. Board members, any

079other comments or questions? Go ahead, George. So it, I just want to say that I, I think I understand this. I've left the last two board meetings a little bit confused about where we are on things, and you know, I did some, do what? Thank you. Sorry about that. You know, I, I, um knocking things over. Yeah, I started looking things up too, and we did our CIP, we did our CIP in April of 2025. We approved the capital investment plan we approved the bond plan August of 2024, and in both of those we named the schools to be replaced and, why and made plans. And then on January 15th, a month ago you took a temperature check, which I respect. And that, at that time, the plan was to proceed on ahead. And on

080February the 4th or 5th, the last board meeting, we had another temperature check, and the plan was changed by one vote to do something different. And that's where I say I left confused. It's like, what are we doing? That every time we show up at a board meeting, we, we change a plan because somebody brought up something, and we reverse what we all decided unanimously just 12 months earlier. And so I was very confused, and I appreciate your pointing out just the realities of, I, I think we need to stick to our decisions. I know it's tough. This is the only opportunity we as a board have to actually discuss this stuff. We have to do it by law in an open meeting. So if we could, the clapping and the snapping, if we could

081just hold off, let us, let us go through this, okay? Right? Like, we have to do this open and in front of you in public to be transparent, okay? That's just my one ask, okay? Thank you. All right, thank you, George. I don't know if Somebody else? Go ahead, Rani. Yeah, I want to come back to this question of what decision was made when we voted on the bond, because as the board member who served on the working capital group and the bond committee, I, I'm closest to that. And, and what I would just like to remind us is when we made the decision on how we would prioritize bond funding, we made the decision in a scenario that we would have funding streams that would continue to rebuild the other schools. We did not

082contemplate closing schools at that point. So when we talk about making a different decision, we are right. Like, I don't know that the voters of the 3 schools that were not prioritized would have voted in the same way if they had known that their vote was to say you might be closed because you didn't make that top 3 list. So just as you would not want to be considered unfairly I think we should include all of the schools in the same fair way. And, and like, this is just a different scenario. Like, we did not contemplate closing schools. We said you will have free, the future funding that will rebuild your schools, and that's what the voters voted on. Again, please, please, thank you. Board members, any other comments? Go ahead, Barb. I had some

083questions. Mr. Shiroki, could you come back? Thank you. I have a bunch of stuff for him. Is that all right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Mr. Shiroki could you just tell us how much involvement did you have? Miss Dossie just mentioned the capital needs work group, and so you've been involved with that as well, right? Yeah, so the capital work group started before I was employed here for about a year and a half, but I've been involved for the past, since July of 2022. It started about a year before that, I believe. And we had board members that were representative of that. And as a result of the work group, there was a study that was commissioned by the commissioners, right, which is now called the Wolpert Report, right? Among other things, that was one. That's

084correct. It was a report that had a two-prong approach. They were asked to look at, to give us just an overall assessment of our facilities to determine what type of long-term funding the county would need to come up with. It was not to go in and itemize every single thing in the school, but it was to look at the schools, look at its condition and its age, and decide, given whatever money the cap, the targets that were provided by the county, what would they recommend with that. At the same time part of it was the fact that enrollment trends have been declining. And they asked the Woolpert as the consultant to look at the optimization of, of the school district when it comes to space utilization. So it was a two-pronged approach where for many,

085many months, and I've always said it always said we had 1,000 more elementary seats, and I always would say they say two, I used to say one school at that time until our enrollment trends changed. But it was a two-pronged approach of what they asked. So it was about, in the end, the commissioners, it was about building Newer, fewer schools was the premise of that report. As the principles of the report is what the county uses now. The premise of this is what they were asking, but they're not asking us to go in, I use the word nickel and dime every single thing they put in it. It's the premise of trying to put our kids into the newest schools and also maximizing our space if it's underutilized at whatever grade level for both school

086districts, not just us. And then just a couple of follow-up questions about the report. How much did the county pay for that report? So my recollection is total it was about $958,000. 50% of that was paid by our portion of school funding, and then Orange County paid the remainder out of what would have normally been appropriated by the county for schools. And the title of it again is Facilities Assessment, Facilities Optimization. It was Facilities Optimization. Optimization is the word that they used. And does that report include this include discussions of consolidation or closure? It talks about utilization, where it's, if it was over or underutilized. And ultimately, the original scenarios that they created for the commissioners did include school closure as scenarios which is what ultimately I initially presented in May, where I, I gave

087a premise of at the time, which can't do, but we talked about consolidation of dual language and utilizing the McDougall campus, where ultimately at that time FPG and, because they would go into a new building, FPG and then Estes Hills would have been I used the word at the time, taken offline at the end of the phasing of the bond program originally. Okay. And in your, didn't land there though. In the end, the board did not approve that. And we approved the replacement of 3 schools. So I want to be correct in saying, right, in your opinion, is that report combined with the analysis that staff is going to do sufficient to inform our deliberations, or do you think we need to go get more data from someplace else? As far as, if we're looking

088at the age and the condition of the buildings, I do not think that that report did its job, and it identified 6 elementary schools and 2 middle schools were the ones that have the greatest need, and You know, our staff would attest to that left and right from work orders and investments that you've made in the CIP. Those schools are all high flyers when it comes to, we're putting a lot of money into them and they're reaching an age where all, all 6 elementary and the 2 middle schools could experience catastrophic failure with mechanical, electrical, plumbing type infrastructure. Inside they look fine when you walk in. They may look the same as they did in 1958, but they're functional from the outside perspective. It's what's behind the walls that it's just, it's served, they've all

089served their lives. And it's my understanding that the reason, we've gotten a lot of requests or questions about why we aren't just looking at all 11 elementary schools, pick some criteria and look at all 11. And that isn't what we've been talking about. And can you just tell us why? Yeah, so I have to start from scratch. Since we started the bond program that's a question that gets asked for people who, they're just not following meetings, and that's normal. Right. So Wilbur did that work for us. They looked at our entire portfolio and they said, out of all of your buildings, you do have needs at these schools. Like we showed, we've talked about East Chapel Hill, Carrboro High School, the McDougall campuses. They've got roofing, air conditioning, but they're not 50+ years of age

090yet. So it basically boiled it down to where they said, here are the schools again, the 6 elementary and the 2 middles that you need to look at when it comes to either replacement or renovation. And that's all based upon the money you have. They would, they would say, and, and I vividly remember asking this because the county gave them financial targets for the scenarios, so they were fixed, if money was no object, because it was a billion dollars worth of work for both districts, they were, they would have said replace all 6 elementaries and ultimately the 2 middle. And we debated with the middle schools, not with Phillips, what we did, debated with Culbreath that we didn't believe that, culvert was necessary to replace immediately, but it's coming and we debated that. So they

091narrowed it down, they did that work. We don't need to do that work because it's really about, in my world, in operations, the fiscal side is we've got limited capital funding for maintenance and we have high costs and we have buildings that potentially we're going to have to pour a lot of money into, and then that money's not going to be able to go into other buildings within our school district portfolio. That are 30 years or less in age. So they narrowed it down for us. I so I don't, I would not recommend spending any more money and looking at what are the schools that you should be talking about. At least we're there, and I could show you lots of data about maintenance and talk to teachers and everybody who can tell you our

092maintenance teams are in our 6 elementary schools every day. They are. And we know that. We've all talked about that for many, many years since I've been here. It's nothing new. I'm sorry, Al, I hope you don't feel like you've been grilled. I feel like I'm pushing you on order here a bit. I wonder though, as we think about the charge before us today to maximize or maybe minimize our financial impact, would there be any different decisions? So maybe we would say like the schools that cost the most to fix, we would not do, right? Because that would result in more savings for the district. So I'm just trying to make that nuance of like, when we, so when we told the public that we, you are selecting these 3 schools as priorities because these

093other schools are following, not because these other schools will be considered to be closed, right? Like, how do we think about today the, the maximizing the, minimizing the financial impact to the district? And I'm sorry, I don't want to put you on the spot. I think that's a general question for all of us. Like, it, I have, again, I want to be careful. I do not want to give any opinion. I want to give you facts. But I have been very clear that the 3 schools that we presented ultimately to be replaced, those are the 3 worst. And if you were to ask our facility folks today, they would tell you they are at those 3 schools the most. But the other 3 that we're talking about, we're there often as well. They're right behind

094them but we are we are taking the oldest buildings offline that are costing us the greatest amount of money and that's objectively just sharing. If that answers your question. I mean, it's, it does, thank you. Were there any other factors why we picked those three schools? I'm asking, I know, I know the answer, and that's why I just want to make sure we're thinking about long-term, about if we, we, we make any changes to our bond plan we also think about as a board, are we going to find ourselves right back at these same schools? There were multiple factors that were used when I presented back in May of '24, July the two that prevailed out of all of the criteria that you as a board, you had asked, community members were asking just like

095they are now, similar things but the two were Could you replace a school on site to minimize student disruption? Because land is, is a premium in our district. It's not as if we can just go find a site. The only site we had was adjacent to Morris Grove Elementary, and we had the green track which is not ready to be developed yet. But the, and that was determined that that was, it's on the western, northwestern extreme of our district. It was just determined not to be conducive. But ultimately, that could be a site for a secondary school down the road because the county has earmarked that. So building, replacing buildings that could be occupied at the same time was paramount. The other was adjacencies to existing schools. And you know, Estes Hills was adjacent to

096Phillips. We talked about the McDougals and why McDougall Elementary at the time would not be a school to put as part of a consolidation for dual language because its adjacency deficiencies at the middle school level. And ultimately where we landed with FPG, knowing that that was a school you couldn't build on site, that there was sufficient land at Hollerith Middle, which kept that school in the community where it came out that 50% of, roughly 50% of the students that attend FPG lived within a very short distance of that school, just coincidentally today. So it was decided that if we, that our language schools And again, I want people to misunderstand what I'm going to say. They're language schools today, but maybe they, they may not be language schools in 25 years. So geographically, we knew

097that that section, knowing that there is a high number of children that are coming out of the southwestern portion of our district, that we felt that geographically having the synergy of having FPG next to Culbreath allowed for those efficiencies for parents, for transportation. But at the same time, the dual language program, it allowed that to matriculate because Culbreath is the logical, and there's a huge number of students from FBG that matriculate into the middle school program at Culbreath and ultimately Carrboro High School. So those were the two factors that prevailed. We looked at other factors. We looked at trails, public transit we looked at numbers of students in non-transportation zone. We looked at the actual number of students that walk, because the number of students, if you'll remember, the number of students that are eligible

098to walk versus actually walk, it's night and day because we had safe routes to schools counts. So you were able to at least talk about that and then we talked about trails and accessibility. we did not get into master planning with the towns because we used that already with our demographers, and they project the, the yield. So that was a factor that was not really discussed in depth, but that we did we did talk about, you as a board talked about it. We just provided as much information as we could. But the first two things that I talked about, those were the prevailing ones that I believe that you as a board ultimately weighted, if you want to say, as being important aside from just the fiscal part that was necessary. Thank you, George. Go

099ahead, George, and then Merida. Al don't want to put words in your mouth. You said minimize student disruption, geographic location, a number of things. I don't think I heard you say tonight, but I have before, additional costs and expenses of moving students temporarily out of buildings and all that. Is that a factor, or am I putting words, well, not when I put words in my mouth, but Swings, we talked about swing schools, and there are cases where swing schools could be advantageous for any school district where children might go. And I'm just going to use a hypothetical: if a school was to be closed but we knew it had maybe about 3, 4 more years of life, we might use that as a swing school to allow movement. Or if there was an air conditioning

100failure at a school, you'd have a building that you could put the kids in temporarily while you're waiting for the new air system to be designed, manufactured, and transit, I would say from Canada, because that's where most of them come from, to be able to install. And we, that's a risk we have in our district because we have so many buildings that are greater than 15 years of age. The county has readily admitted that they have not been able to fund the capital improvements that are necessary until recently, that we obviously can benefit from a swing school because that's the concern that our facilities department have about our buildings. If there was a failure and we had to relocate students if it was a small building on a campus, we could accommodate, such as we

101did at Sewell recently. But if it's the whole campus, if it's like, like Scroggs, which is one building, and the heating and cooling went in that building and it was down, we would have to do something with those kids and we would not have anywhere to put them. There's just no space in our schools aside from having to, at this point with underutilization, have to sparse them out, across many schools, right? And you know, that's part of the reason why we want to look at the redistricting as well, to balance our schools out, if that helps. Thank you. Meredith? Thanks. I just wanted to take a second to explain my thinking a little bit because I've shifted a little bit over time. And I think that the reason why you see 7 people up here

102with 7 different perspectives, and that actually is a good thing, I think, for our district because we tend to debate these issues and then hopefully arrive at the best decision. And I don't love the idea of considering 3 schools. I don't love the idea of considering 5 schools. It's not that one of those 2 ideas is a good one, it's that it's a necessary one. And so I, I felt like in, in an effort to increase our flexibility as we plan for the future, I wanted to have all 5 schools compared for a couple of reasons. One, for flexibility. Two, because we're hearing from schools that were saying things like I wouldn't have voted for the bond if I'd known that our school was potentially going to be closed, which, that's a hard thing to

103hear anyway, because the problem is you vote the bond down, you still have to close two schools, and you don't have new schools on top of that. And so that's really a lose-lose for everyone, not only in our school district but also Orange County Schools, which are also recipients of the same bond money. And so I really, that hearing that just makes me feel like it makes me fret a lot. You know, I understand that these issues are fraught and I don't love the idea of like these competing school communities. It's very upsetting. And I know it's upsetting for all of you, but I just, I guess I just wanted to say from my perspective is that we're trying to really think this through and decide what is the best decision for our district going

104forward. And that's the reason why, like, I pushed for the way that I did last time. And there's definitely some disagreement amongst us, but I hope that the public understands that we are taking this job very seriously and that we are, are really trying to look out for the long-term viability and health of our district. So thank you, Merida. Anyone else? Okay, well, I just want to say I wanted to bring this up just mainly for the board members to consider. Like, ultimately, whatever we do with school closure, it may have a rippling effect on our bond plan. So let's keep that in mind as well, that hopefully board members will have time to chew on that and think about that over the next couple of weeks and what those scenarios might look like. So

105that, that's where I'll leave it unless board members have any other questions or comments. Okay, all right. So board members, after our last meeting, after we all shared a variety of ideas for criteria, I did ask the staff to help compile the list for us. And since that list was extensive, I did also ask the staff for some input on the criteria because it was a lot. I think we ended up with like 50 or so, I'm sorry, how many? 64criteria. And so I did ask the staff if they could just give their input, because they're going to be the ones tasked, at least on the, the first level, of doing this work. And I asked them to provide some input on the criteria and any considerations about the information being requested, because we asked

106for things about like the cost of this and cost of that. I wanted to make sure that if, whether the information was readily accessible and if they had any comments on gathering it. Also did ask that since time is a key driving factor for, for our decision, I wanted to make sure that board members had information on some of the impacts of the criteria that we were asking for and also the cost consideration too, because even though Mr. Shiroki and our team, they have a lot of information and we've gathered a lot of information as part of the bond process and, and our general facility maintenance, there were some data points that when I looked at it, I did ask them, do we have to go out outside and get consultants for this? And so

107I did ask them to weigh in on that too, because I think that's an important part of it, because we're trying to save money. But if we go out and we're spending money as well just to get that information. I think board members need to know that too as well. Let's see, I did want to try to give us a little bit of framing how we think about it since our decision to close schools is a financial one. I know for community members it may feel like other there's other things that we, we should look at, but it did, it, we're closing schools because it's a financial decision, plain and simple. It's not because we don't like a school or we don't think highly of a program. It's not about programs. It's not about anything

108within the school. It is simply a financial decision that we have to make. So board members, I'd like for us to consider criteria that are objective and measurable, measurable, and that are based on information accessible now by Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools staff. I don't want us to, I would like for us to not consider external information that we can't analyze for school closure. I know there have been some anecdotal look at this thing out in the universe and that, but again, I just want us to make sure that it's something that's internal that our team can gather for us. Also, I also want to make sure we're grounding our decision as a facilities decision. As I said before, I want to remind us that we're not making decisions around programs. I repeat, we are not

109making decisions about programs. Okay, so please don't worry about your programs as a part of school closure. Programs that are in place will continue to operate and students will be able to continue on those pathways of those programs. We are not discussing programs at this time. We are only talking about physically closing buildings. Again, today we are still not voting on any of the final criteria. We're narrowing down the list, or even which schools we're going to have as the school closure, as part of the school closure study. We'll do all that at the next board meeting. We'll kind of move towards crafting what all that looks like. It'll be on, my hope is we can, if we can get to a criteria list, it'll be as discussion and action. Again, it'll be another time

110for for the board to discuss, and if we need to finesse it one more time. And I urge the board that we vote as quickly as possible so we can start this, start this working for the staff. And with that, I'm going to stop if any other board members have any comments before we start working. George, go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to offer, I guess offer a suggestion and then if y'all just say no, just forget it. I, we only have one deadline date right now, and that is we need to have our budget ready in spring for next year, our request to the county commissioners. So that in terms of our time forces and everything, I don't think we need to be constrained by any date that we put in place to do anything,

111and I would suggest that we take a big deep pause for a minute here and slow things down a little bit with this in mind and this came from talking to some parents today, and I've heard this over and over, there's a lot of confusion about how much money do we save by closing a school and how many staff are going to get laid off. And could we lay out for the public a list of how many teachers or staff not by name and by school necessarily, but where are we going to find our savings versus closing a school? And so voters could have time to look at the stuff we're having to deal with. Let's say we need to find $8 million and we need to find it in the next X months for

112next year's budget. We could say we'll lay off 40 staff, we'll close one school, and this is how we'll get the 40 million, or we close 2 schools and we lay off 20 staff. But these are our realities, and that we develop them in general categories, put them out in the community, have a public hearing or 2 next month, and let people, you give us some ideas. Okay, here's our problem. We want to hear from you so that when we get down the road, we can say, look, we We're doing everything we can to protect staff, so we have to close these schools, or we make a decision to go a different way. I think you're getting my drift here. Rather than start doing criteria tonight for how we judge closing a school, I just

113think that might be a more productive, because we're not under any constraint to meet a deadline for that. So I'll just offer that. Thank you, George. Barb? George, I don't know if you're suggesting moving away from the timeline that we put out last time. I think we would have to back up a little bit on that. So I was just going to ask Dr. Trice if you could just explain to us what are the financial and human costs of having this timeline drag out. So certainly the timeline we shared with the board at, I think it was your February 5th board meeting was in response to the numbers that we see regarding declining student enrollment. We were a bit taken aback when we had about 350less students enrolled in our district this year. It translates

114into $2.6 million, as I've shared with our community, through various community sessions. But in addition to that, we've also received word that the Board of County Commissioners are considering other funding models for local schools as well. So I think Mr. Scott has modeled for the board that we're looking at anywhere from $3.6 to $8 million potentially, giving given the scenario that we would be presented with. Soin my mind as superintendent, the timeline is important because I have to present the board with a balanced budget. Our approach initially was to focus on a school closure, as was shared with the board at your December retreat, because that provided us a longer runway to work with our staff. And there are many of my community sessions in the fall, staff was there and they wanted that longer

115runway. Many parents wanted the longer runway. We obviously have to deal with our facilities issue, which is one reason we presented to the board to first focus on facilities. I would say Dr. Griffin is not too far off. if we have to focus on personnel first and let's say at the lowest tier we're probably looking at 50 to 80 positions that we would have to, to reduce if we focus on that first. And we still haven't dealt with the facilities issue on the back end where we will also have to reassign, rearrange our staffing as well. And so that's why the timeline is important for us. The idea that we also have to go through a redistricting is very important to the timeline. We were seeking a decision by, before the close of the school

116year because that would give families and staff and employees a year to kind of go through the process of being reassigned letting staff know where they may be working. For staff who are often called singletons in our district, that would give us more time to do placements as people retire or leave our district for whatever reason. And so I hope I'm not talking too much, but that, that's the That's the logic that we were using as an administration to suggest the timeline. If we were to kind of back off of that I don't know that we've done great analysis, but we want as much time as we can give to the redistricting process. Now, if we have to push that off another year, that has a whole other ramifications for staffing that we have not

117done the analysis for. And aren't we also trying to do this differently than we did the last reduction in force? I mean, I, I just, having been at community meetings with you, I have heard from staff like that, that was very painful and hard, and part of it was that there was so little notice to staff letting them know about the reduction in force. And my sense from the way you presented this to us is that you want to avoid that and give folks as much time possible to, to figure stuff out. And, and I guess I would just add, from, I think uncertainty and instability in this process, us changing our minds and going back on votes that we took a year ago, is really not good for families either. Like, I think people

118need to see that we can be decisive and data-driven, but decisive. And so I think I just want people to acknowledge that there is a cost to saying we need to add more criteria or add more schools or take more time and get in an expert, that is not a cost-free proposition. There, there are human and financial costs with respect to staff and families. And I want to acknowledge that I don't feel great backing the board up in terms of a timeline that we feel is appropriate because it does kind of force the issue a little bit. But when I saw that the enrollment decline was as precipitous as it was, the calculus changed for us in terms of how we manage the future of our budget and the future of our district. Since that

119time we've heard from Dr. Dollar at our most recent board retreat. It looks like our trends will continue to follow that path. And so in my mind I think what we need to do is make decisions that will allow us windows of time, perhaps 2 or 3 years, where we make a big decision, we stabilize for 2 or 3 years, and then come back and analyze where we are as a district before we have to make another big decision. Outside of that, we're kind of making year-to-year-to-year decisions about cutting staff, and I think that's something that, um destabilizing to, to our, to our staff. Our district is confusing. It has a significant impact on morale. And I'm, and I have to say that if, if we're not going to focus on facilities first, it will

120accelerate the staffing aspect of balancing the budget. And there's just no other way to look at it. Thank you, are other Questions or comments? Melinda, go ahead. Yeah, I'm going to, Dr. Charles, I'm going to ask a question that I know the answer, but I want everyone to hear it. So if we do not close a school or two, we will likely have to cut programs? I don't think we'll have to cut programs. I think we've been, we've tried to be clear that our programs we're able to find a place for programs. I mean, if you look at our capacity, we certainly have the room for them. So we're we don't need to, to cut programs. As was shared in our, in the February 5th board meeting, I think it was 83 or 85% of

121our budget is staff. If we can't close a school or two, which would generate $3.4 million which would give us a longer runway to kind of manage our budget issue, then we'll have to turn to the biggest lever that we have, and that is our, our staff. And I'm not just talking about school staff, talking about central office staff as well. And I know some people say, yeah, we can cut all the central office staff that, that's a popular opinion. But what you also have to realize is that some of the work that is done at central office will roll down to schools, which won't feel great to those who are in our schools. Thank you, Dr. Trice. Any other comments or questions? Okay, so I think we've got the criteria list that was available

122for members. Again, as you can see, it has the comments of the staff that I asked, I just wanted to get their input, right, to help us a little bit. I guess we could go criteria by criteria if there's any thoughts. Go ahead, Vicki. So I just want to say a few things to try to help bring us into the, the climate of what's going on here. Yes, we know it's a fiscal situation, and yes, we know it feels like a very physical situation, right? So I just want to help everybody understand, as we're saying, that this is monetary and it is fiscal. It is. But we also have to realize how some of the some of the ways that we got here. It was not new, it was not overnight. And I know a

123lot of us are saying, we hear this, we hear this over and over again, but let's, let's look at it and put it in very real, clear, plain language, because that is what I like to do. And before I even do that, I want to give you a kind of a simple analogy, because there are a lot of educators, a lot of parents in here, and we have to do a lot of work with our kids when it comes to like math, right? So if a teacher gave your child a problem and said, "A+B+C=20," that could be a lot of different things, right? And you don't know all the possibilities. But if that teacher then said to your student, "A+B+C=20, but I'm going to tell you now, C=4," that changes that. So I just want

124to leave you with that to think about that analogy. Life changes from day to day, and we have to think as such. But I want you to go back and think of, look at some other things. Glenwood was built in 1952. It is 74 years old. 74 years. I want you to think about what a dwelling that needs to do what it needs to do in 2026 that was built 74 years ago, what the implications would be to keep that doing what it's supposed to be doing for the number of people it needs to do it for. That's not the same as when someone says, oh, but my house might be passed down generation to generation and that does it. That's for a single-family home or duplex that might be having 15 people over all

125of that time going in it, not hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. So that's very different as well. So we're looking at Carrboro, it's now 69 years old. FPG is 63 years old. Sewell is 57 years old. Ephesus is 54. Estes Hills is 68. Sewell is 57. Those buildings are older than the majority of the people in this space. And I'm saying that to say that if we're truly trying to do what's right by our children, and we're not talking about what they're, how they're being educated in spaces, we're talking about being responsible for the spaces in which we send them to be educated. 74 years old. And now let me go ahead and say this, because this is also something that means something to me that's not just physical. I'm going to say

126this publicly, and I'm going to mean it when I say it. Glenwood is the only building left in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools that was built to only educate white people. That needs to be said, and it needs to be heard. I know when the first Black child went to that building, and we had other schools that weren't integrated at the time they came online, but they were after Brown, and the intention was for them to be integrated. That is not the case with Glenwood. So as we're talking about diversity, as we're sitting to talk about what we're wanting to do, let's think about our history and let's think about the space that we're sending all of our different children that was never intended for them to be in that space. So, I know I

127needed our community here and know that. Thank you, Vicki. Okay, all right, board members, so we've got our list of 64 criteria Why don't we start with the first, I mean, well, why don't we look at the first 4, because that's where the staff has recommended so previous 5-year capital maintenance costs. Projected 10-year capital maintenance costs, feasibility of building on site while students remain enrolled, and building adjacency to middle or high schools. I don't know if any board members have any comments or thoughts about any of those four being included as part of the, our criteria. George and then Rani. Madam Chair, our Just a point, I guess, clarification. Are you about to take us through this? Take us through all three, all 60-plus of these one by one? I mean, that's what we're going

128to need to do. We've got to whittle down the list, George, unless you think, unless there's a different way we'd like to approach it. I'm not going to keep interrupting and saying it, but that, that was my point, was we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Because this presupposes that we're closing schools. And I would suggest that we take a little pause here on this and put that, put out the dollar figures that Dr. Trice was mentioning to say, look, here's the deal, and let people see it and digest it and talk about it a little bit before we just, we'll be here till 3 in the morning and we still won't have answered the big question, and that is the schools to be closed. We're just going to, go ahead, Barb. It just seems like

129an exercise in futility. All right, Mr. Scott can you, could you come up, please? And then I'll come to you. Can you, so how, school closure is a really big deal, which I think is what George is getting at, and no one wants to do it. Nobody ran for the school board to close schools. But so how can we be sure that we've tried everything else and that this is a thing that we need to do? Yeah, so let me be clear first. Like, I, I didn't apply for the job and get the job to close schools either, right? This bothers me just as much as everybody else. So again, just to reiterate what Dr. Trice said, we know that we have a tremendous amount of uncertainty that we're facing, right, from, we know that

130we're going to have a need from $3.1 to $7 million going into next year. Don't know what that's going to be precisely yet, and we won't for a couple months but we also know that 82% of our staff is personnel going back to the dollar, capital dollar that we spent so much time on. We knew 82% is personnel, the rest is non-personnel. Of that, at least 10% or 10 cents of the remainder is fixed costs that cannot be changed. The electric bills insurance bills, transfers to charter schools it's simply not possible to find the order of magnitude of cuts that the board is going to need to find over the course of the next 2 or 3 years in non-personnel costs, right? So I'm pretty confident that we can turn over every rock, we may

131be able to find a small portion of that. Again, if we do that, curriculum is going to suffer maintenance needs at the schools are going to suffer. Ultimately, to balance the budget as we continue down this road with uncertainty with the declining enrollment and then the possibility of a change in funding formulas, it's going to require the administration, to relook at how we allocate positions across the district. And the only way to make up that savings year over year is going to be sustained cuts to staff. there's really no other calculus that will work to keep us with a balanced budget. Now, how soon that happens, I'm unsure. You know, it all depends on many variables. You know, we don't even really know what our enrollment will be next year, so it could go faster

132or slower. Than we anticipate. But again, part of the calculus with the closure of the schools out 2 years would be to provide a first, first look, first stopgap to try and prevent some of these, I don't want to say mass layoffs because I don't think there'll be mass reductions in force, but there will be reductions in force if we continue to run 10 elementary schools lower than 80% capacity the DNA of what our schools, what our elementary schools are, are going to change significantly just because we're going to have to reduce the amount of resources that has made Chapel Hill what it is in each of those schools. The schools will be unrecognizable over a period of time. Just flesh that out, like what makes, what kinds of positions are going to get cut?

133Because it's not going to be the ones funded by the state, right? Because those follow the enrollment. Yeah, so that's, I mean, an elementary school, like, obviously you have your K-3 teachers are funded directly by student enrollment, but beyond that we have teacher assistants in every K-3 classroom. We're funded about 100% over with the state funds and teacher assistants, so I'm not saying that that's where we would go to the cut, but that would be a potential cut. World language programs You know, those positions are not funded by the state. We have 10 world language teachers across elementary schools. Well, that would be a potential place to go. Supporting services, school psychologists, school counselors. We have one of those in each elementary school. Again, not funded by the state per school. It's funded by ADM.

134So we'd have to relook at how we model our supporting services. It's really the whole gamut of instruction. You know, you've as a board have seen where we've put up our state positions versus our local positions, and it would really just be going down that list of local positions and how we can slowly begin to remove some of that from each school to maintain them. Thank you, George. I think Barb followed up, is a follow-up question. I don't think people understand because you haven't put dollar figures to positions yet, but to save $1 million, you're talking about 11 or 12 teacher positions? That's right, it'd be 11 or 12 teacher positions. We need $5 million. Do the math. I'm talking 60 teachers. We're not talking 6, and it's got to be done by April. Am

135I incorrect? Depending on where everything falls, I can't, I know, I'm not pushing you down, but I mean, this is, this is the real cost here. And when we do 50 teacher positions or 40, we raise class sizes by X percent, we pull out support staff. This is all out of our local budget that comes from the county commissioners, and they have to have these numbers by the spring for next year. And we still haven't guaranteed anything for the year after or the year after. This situation is dire. It is not a something we can just Oh, it'll be 5 people or something. It's not that. It's huge. Am I being dramatic? Overly? No, not overly. Okay, board members, I don't know if you have any thoughts or comments about that. So George, I don't,

136I guess for me, and I'm just going to let you know, for me I don't want to pull the lever of personnel first. I don't either. I'd rather close two schools. I've said it for two years. Okay, so I think for me that's where I am, and that's why, not to not hear you, but I understand you wanted to see if we needed to entertain that. Understand the need for doing this is real. It's not just a little bit of money here or there, and it's, it's a real forced choice. No, I know, and I think one thing that we want to make sure, there's going to be personnel loss, right? And there's going to be ongoing personnel loss because I think Mr. Scott, on a number of occasions, we've talked about the allotments. And

137so as enrollment drops, the allotment of staff is going to change. And so we're going to have to continue to do this. This isn't new. This is just new to Chapel Carrboro City Schools. This happens across the country in every other district. We just haven't done it. We've maintained and held harmless our schools and our district operating at 50 and 60% capacity, having nice small, small, small class sizes. And that's come at a fiscal cost to us. That means we can't raise staff pay. We can only raise it a little bit, right? We can't be responsive to our student data. So I appreciate what you're saying, George, is like, it's either closed schools, which also will have some staff reductions, or we immediately go back down that road of now we're going to go and

138cut 50 to 60 staff across the district. That means we won't have the nice haves of like a nurse in every school, or the full complement of the mental health supports that we value in our community at every school. That means all the things like a TA to help support our teachers, because they do a lot. So I think that's just, I appreciate you wanting to help ground and balance it. It's not a fight of don't close my school, it's like We have to close two schools, full stop. And we need, we need the community to understand we have to do this. This is really hard and it's really sad. And just to add that in terms of what we don't have and what we do have in terms of all of our schools, we

139do often hear that we have a nurse in all of our buildings and all of our schools. We, our Phoenix Academy right next door, they do not have a nurse all the time. They do not have transportation all the time. They have an evening program that many of you probably do not know that they have. It is a SPIA program where our most marginalized and vulnerable high school students who want to go to school, who are trying to figure out a way to get to and from school, cuz we need to figure that out. That's real dollars and cents. Because if our elementary kids and our middle school kids and our other high school kids have an opportunity to get to and from school in a safe manner and they have those nurses in those

140buildings, we need to be figuring out how to do that also. So I need to lift that up because so often we will say all of our buildings, but as the liaison to that school, I need to make sure that I uplift and let us know that they don't have that. And they deserve it just as much as all of our other children and all of these other buildings. So we have to be physically responsible to them too. This is our responsibility to be collectively responsible for all of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, not just this school versus that school. This is no this school versus that school. We need to think about the fact that until we're doing better, where every single one of the schools that's online is considered the best of what we

141have here, we're not doing our best. And when you have enough space in schools with about 8 elementary schools, and then you still end up with 11 elementary schools, then that's not the best we can be doing right now. Because it's not like we have 2 that are just empty that we could just shut the doors. They're spread out in spaces that a lot of people have never had the luxury of having it so spread out. So when we have what, what you asked for, as time went on in the population in our district, we want a neighborhood school, we want a neighborhood school. That meant different things. So now the neighborhood may need to spread, may need to get a little bit further, but Chapel Hill is not 25 square miles. No one's going

142to be going to school 45 minutes away. That is just not the reality of what we have. And I would go to say that any educator that's in, in any of those buildings that is ready and prepared to educate all of our students can educate all of them in any one of our buildings. And that is the task at hand, and that is what we need to do. So closing a building may very well be difficult, but at the end of the day, that means we will be consolidating people. We will be combining communities, bringing us hopefully more together to build a better community. We need to stop thinking about what's right next door to us and think about how much better we'll be, what's down the street and around the corner. Thank you, Vicki.

143Rani, I know you were next, so that's okay. No, no, we've got to have the discussion. So I was going to go back to the criteria and as Risa, you asked us to look at the top 4I have a wondering, I think the first one is previous cost. I think that's a sunk cost that's captured in number 2, so I would not I would recommend that one probably not be included. Or come, or do you want to combine? No, I think it doesn't matter, right? Like, that money is gone. It shouldn't influence our future decisions. Okay. And so if they're, if as it relates to future potential needs, it's already captured in number 2. Okay. And then I think we should consider, if this is a financial exercise, the cost of building the various schools

144if we are trying to save, we want to be avoiding the maximum amount of cost, right? Um, I think just, I have a couple more. I'm sorry, which number was that? It's kind of an 8, like, is it cost avoid? It's actually 9. Okay. Yep. And then 35 is And let me back up. The reason why I said the first 4 is because when I looked down what the staff said, they had a number of them were like, this is available, like, if we look at item number 4, number 2. Yeah. So you guys just, that's why I said let's just try to look at the first 4 because there were a number of them. I don't see how 30, I mean, I don't see how these are included in the no, I just, I

145just wanted to say that just in case somebody else Yeah, was looking. 35 is about campus openness and safety. Like, I would not, I would want to understand what that would look like across the site selection. Site adequacy, why would we shut down a school if another site is not adequate space to rebuild a school? And then37 is alignment with talent. Sorry, it's just 9, 35, 36, 37. Okay. Okay, Meredith, go ahead. Sorry, I was typing. Oh, that's okay. I just wanted to point out a couple of things. One is that In this long list, I think some of these criteria are definitely valid, but I think they're better suited for consideration in talking about redistricting versus school closure, because I think that it's kind of hard to talk about one without the other because

146it's, it's really all interconnected. but I do think, like, I'm trying to find one for example, but, but I do think a lot of these will have to be part of the larger study that we do in concert with a demographer when we decide how we're going to redistrict, thinking about you know, hardship and making sure that folks don't have undue burdens and looking at equity and things like that are certainly going to be super important when we talk about the redistricting. that's not to say that they're not important at all when talking about closures, but I think they're, I would align them more with the redistricting. Okay. And then I think that that like if we're trying to focus mostly on cost, like we, we need to look and see, at least take an

147overview look at costs of transportation. So I was a little surprised that that wasn't included in the initial criteria. Can you expand how so? Because I know when I was going through the list and talking with the staff and that was the feedback it's going to be hard for them to kind of estimate transportation costs until we actually decide, because that's a redistricting question, right? Like, we can close the school, but then until we move the children, or start talking about moving the children around to different schools, that transportation number of, like, school closure may not be complete. So I wonder if you could look at it more as, like, a binary thing than looking at like actual cost. But like, like a campus yeah, like a campus that has like a much higher number

148of walkers than another campus, like that could be quantified in kind of like a 0 or 1 binary choice rather than you're looking at the actual like, okay, we're going to pay this much more in bus transportation and we're going to have to you know, make this alteration to deal with car line issues that might result from more cars, or whatever it is. That's probably too nebulous, but maybe we can distill it a little bit more so that it's a factor but it's not. I'm looking at staff on some of that because I'm like, I don't, I don't know how clean that'll be. But okay, with respect to 1 through 4, did you want to pull any? Do those seem fine? And then also, were there some other ones? I'm just trying to follow a

149little bit. Yeah, I like the first 4 for sure, and I think 3 and 4 are pretty easy, right? Because those are also binary. Like, those are either are or they aren't. The first 2, I kind of agree with Rani. I think you could consider those kind of redundant, but I guess I would only caution you to completely remove the, what she called a sunk cost. Because if somebody, like, if a building just got a new roof and a new wing or something, then it seems like that should be considered. But I, but I hear you. So you would not see that cost in the projected 10-year, so you would, it would be captured there. That was the only, okay but any, but any others on the other 60? Criteria, any ones that you'd like

150to keep? Yeah, I mean I got you on transportation. Yeah, when you get a minute, if you could just kind of identify which one. Yeah, I mean, the only other ones that I would like specifically point to, and like this one again is like a nebulous one and it would create, it's subjective but I do think like looking at impacts on specific groups like, that cause undue burdens, I think there needs to be a way to, to look at that but it has to be a way that is quantifiable and objective, and it's, that's going to be challenging. Could we think about just doing the, and I know we're calling it something different, just the general REIA, racial equity impact assessment, just doing it generally speaking? And I'm looking at Dr. Trice. At that one,

151that maybe we just apply it generally versus making it a criteria? I mean, that sounds reasonable to me, but feasibility-wise, I don't know. Yes, I think the first question is who experiences benefit or burden. I mean, it's not specific to race, right? So that might be something that we could look at, especially in, in terms of programming. So we'd have to dig into that a little bit more. Okay. And that one was, I'll find the number on that one unless you have it, Meredith. The number? The equity. Yeah. I guess it's that 45 through 48 cluster. Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know, George. I'm sure this isn't going to be too helpful to the process, but when we redistrict students, it's 25% to 35% of kids at any typical school are

152going to get moved to another school. Our vacancy rate is 75% fill rate, 25% vacancy and going up the vacancy rate is today. So when you get moved in redistricting, you basically had your school closed. It's the same thing for you as a family. You're no longer in your home school, and that's going to impact a huge number of students. Yeah, and I think we need to have criteria that match, and we're not there yet. But it, with that aside, I want I want to point out how arbitrary this gets. With the yellow ones that are here, we have a recommendation, and I, and I respect the school district for the recommendation to have adjacent to a middle school. Well, that's fine, except we've just eliminated with that recommendation two, two schools from the discussion.

153And so I might want to put out another one, which is, and I actually do feel this makes sense is we should have our 9 elementary schools geographically spread around the district. And if we close 2 particular schools in the northeast quadrant, we leave basically a school desert east of Franklin Street and north of Columbia. I'm talking Ephesus and, and Glenwood. So all of a sudden we have left the future of the district with 3 of 4 quadrants of our district have lots of schools and one doesn't. Now, does that criteria become more important than adjacent to middle school? That's where you, this gets arbitrary. You can't weigh this is more important or that's more important if you don't have hard numbers to look at. So I would say take any criteria off the list

154that just don't have raw data, and even then make sure the list is guidance and not binding on anybody. This is just guidance for the board. Otherwise, I think we're in real dangerous territory. Okay, thank you, George. Melinda, go ahead. I'm looking at number 33 about flood zones. I think we all still remember Chantal, and they've mentioned it in terms of new building, but I think we need to think about, I don't know if any of the 3 or 5 schools are currently in a flood zone, that we need to think about that because we may have another Chantal. Vicki and Barb, I'm sorry, Vicki or Barb, I don't know if you're ready. Okay. I like the four, the four that have been identified, and it's mostly because I'm not smarter than, I mean, I

155think we have some people who really know about this topic, and this is what they think, and it makes sense to me. And I don't, I don't know what expertise I have that overrides theirs. And, and I think these meet the criteria we had laid out, like the criteria about the criteria. They're objective, they're measurable, They're grounded in facilities and they're, they're information we have and they're based on the present and not projections. So I'm fine with those. Okay. Are you ready, Vicki? Okay. I'm not hell-bent on number 4 based on the, the information and explanation. The, I'm, I like when it's nice to have elementary schools next to a middle school or a high school, I think that's nice. I don't feel that that should be a criteria because some of our elementary schools

156are really close to a middle school and a high school that may not be right next to it. We can give an example of Sewell and Morris Grove. They're all very close. Morris Grove is not that far from Smith and Chapel Hill High. But I say that to say that in terms of the reasoning, in terms of academic acceleration, I'm, I'm, I don't know that I feel too comfortable with that being a specific reason for a facility to be next to another facility, because we have to think about all of our students, and all of our students are not going to be needing to be right next to another facility because of advanced academic acceleration. So I'm I just, I just don't know how I feel about that. So I'm, for those reasons, I'm not

157pressed about that criteria being a part of the conversation for me. Okay. Any, any other ones? I know you're still looking. I know it's a long list. I'd like a little more explanation as to the shuttered building. Which number is that? 26, use of shuttered buildings as swing space. I don't know who put that on the list. I don't know, Dr. Trice, you remember from our discussion. Who put it on the list? Is that, well, I guess what, I don't, yeah, let me be, or why does somebody remember why? Yeah, I don't think I put on the list, but I think the conversation was like itit may be more relevant as we close a school that we could use that facility as swing space for a second school. Okay, for constructing the second structure. Go

158ahead, Barb. I guess I know that Mr. Shiroki has done some research on best practices and school closures, and so I'm just wondering if you can share, like, is there an ideal number of criteria that people recommend? Like, it doesn't seem like we should have a ton. Like, I feel like that's going to be really unwieldy, but is, is 4 like what most people, yeah, I will say this as objectively as possible. So a lot of the research, and I'm hoping I don't go down a lot of rabbit holes here, but the research, it basically says you need to have measurable items and that school closure, it can be separate from boundary process. Mostly all school districts, there is school closure because of financial reasons. That's what draws it, unless the state is mandating that

159they have to close schools, for the most part. So what, what I've learned is in, in looking at this is you want to, you can have paralysis by analysis, and I've used that phrase for quite a while, but that's what the research is saying. You got to, you want to make sure that you have objective information and that you, if you have subjective information that's qualitative, that it's informational, it helps just inform you as a board, but it's not weighted, it's not part of it, but it does help you inform, just like ancillary information, which I imagine some of the stuff you guys have talked about tonight It's important to talk about. It's important to be aware of so that you're informed. But the other, the other thing the research says, which is not answering

160what you're saying, is all of the research, when you look at the feedback from school districts who have undergone this and they're like, hmm, let's do a postmortem on this and say how, how well this worked or it didn't work. What they will say is giving staff and parents runway. We've talked a little bit about that, but that's what people who've been through this painful process will say. The more runway you give parents so that when people enroll, they know that this school, just like when you redistrict in 2 years, you will be going to this school at this address. And people understand that and they can prepare for it as well as teachers can prepare, staff can prepare because what they do is, there's a lot of studies out there where people have had

161to rip that band-aid really fast because fiscally they couldn't pay the bills. And that's where they would say if they had just been proactive and been ahead of the game, it would have been much smoother because people have to process it and people, and mistakes are made. It's what research says when you rush into something and don't give people time to be able to process and figure out how it's going to impact them, and then how do they actually make it happen. And that, that's really about making it happen, is about staffs and the adjustments, because they're being moved to different schools as well. It's not just the students, it's everybody that's involved. So if that helps. Madam Chair, may I just, sure, go ahead. As well, just from the school closure statute, in my

162understanding of the consideration of criteria is in part that what the board is doing is identifying what data you want in included in the study that you would review. That's correct. And so just as a reminder, there are certain topics that will automatically be covered because they're required in the study. Now they are general, but geographic conditions, anticipated increase or decrease in enrollment, the inconvenience or hardship that might result to pupils affected, the cost of providing additional facilities, are, which in this case you wouldn't need additional facilities, but those are required by the statute to be included, so all of those will automatically be in there. Okay. Thank you. Any other part, did you have a, okay. Meredith, go ahead. I have a question about that, because, like, 56 and 57 are anticipated increase in

163enrollment and anticipated decrease in enrollment. Both of those were not recommended by staff, but if that has to be included, so what the statute just says anticipated increase or decrease in school enrollment, it doesn't necessarily mean just in that school, right? I think the fact of anticipated increase or decrease in your district is relevant and the, if the answer is that the anticipated increase or decrease in a certain school based on location is not is, is sort of irrelevant because we're going to redistrict, that's okay, but it just has to be addressed. Okay, any other board members' thoughts? Go ahead, Melinda. I've been struggling with number 3 for a while because to me that criteria is as much about deciding which schools we're going to rebuild as deciding which schools to close. So I'm just,

164I'm kind of struggling with that one. Hold on one second, let me get there. Feasibility of building on site. Alright, so, and then, and George, you want us to consider any, we only consider criteria that give us data. You didn't recommend any. I'm just recommending things. Okay. You know, I'm a, well, I haven't spoken, so let me take a stab. You know, I'm open to, I was open to seeing what staff wanted and, and I was just listening to board members as they talked about like why one not the other. I think for me maybe it's the wording of one, but if we've already made significant for number one, significant investments in maintenance, and I guess you could get that with one and two, so I would probably combine it. Like if we've already made

165significant investments in a school I want us to make sure we kind of understand that holistically before we say, well, let's take a school that we just spent $3 million on offline for a new roof, right? I'd want to make sure we kind of balance that in our thinking because that means that school doesn't need a roof, but then another school might need a roof. And I want to make sure I, I'm looking at it that I'm not picking the school that needs a roof, right? So you should, we'd see that reflected in number 2 in a lower future cost of maintenance. There you go. Yeah, so that's why I think 2 already captures it. Yeah, but I, for the staff, I wouldn't want them to not, not make sure they, they flush that out.

166So I'd probably want to make sure we're clear on that. That for me would then probably make that like a higher criteria for me in terms of things that I would consider. Like, the overall capital cost. So looking at both, like, the fact that we've already spent a lot of money means we don't have to spend a lot of money to maintain a site. And so that would be how I would balance it. The feasibility of building on site. I know Melinda said that's something for building, but I think I want to make sure that we don't lose sight. Like, if we choose to close the school? Like, what are we going to do? So I don't, I don't know how that, how we fold that into a criteria, because let's say we close the

167school but you can't build it on site. Like, what are you going to do? Wouldn't that closed school give you swing space? That closed school would give you swing space, but then if you choose a school that you can build on site, the converse, and you choose to close that school and you choose to leave the other one open and it flips into the bond, like, where are you going to build the new school? Where you're going to build it where you just closed the old school, right? Was the idea that if you don't close the school, then you would have to rebuild it because these are your oldest schools? And so the question was, which ones could in the future be rebuilt and where we would, Mr. Smith, and where we would rebuild them

168to, right? Like, if we chose to close the school, right, and leave one open, and then it would roll into the bond, it would be part of the bond, we probably need the balance. Like, where are we going to rebuild that school? So let's say there's a school and you can build on site I think you need to balance that, right? Somehow. I don't know how to capture, that's why I think I suggested this one. It's like, that needs to be, for me, that needs to be balanced too, because let's say we choose to close a school where you can build on site and we choose to leave one open where you can't rebuild on site. That's going to be potentially part of the bond. And so in 3 years, where are we going to

169rebuild that school? Do you understand? Yeah, I think for me that was part of the calculus in picking the schools that we picked initially. And so to me, when you're, if you're looking at the expanded list of schools, that would be a point in favor of continuing on with the same plan that we had before. Yeah, so like, I agree with that, but I just wanted to explain that I know there were some board members who didn't. Weren't in favor of 3, but that, that's why I think we can't, I feel like we can't take that off the table, right? I mean, that's why I thought it was important, because it was a, it was an important criteria when we were deciding, like, making the initial decision. And so because we took that into account,

170that is a reason why we would rebuild those schools instead of a school that we cannot do that. That's right. So no, I agree with you. So, and then number 4, I think, I don't know. I mean, for that one, I'm okay with that. The staff, there weren't a lot beyond this for me that I was, I mean, a lot of them, I appreciate the staff saying, well, you kind of get to those numbers, like projected main capital maintenance cost is going to get to a lot of this forecasting failures and inevitability of capital needs and things like that. So I'm fine. Not a lot of those cost measures are, are fine with me. For me, I would, I'm open to combining 1 and 2 in some way to make sure we get the holistic

171picture of long-term maintenance costs for a school building and its impact. And I'd weigh that pretty, pretty heavy. That would probably be for me the most, more than 50% of the consideration that I would think about. I know I didn't talk ask you guys about weighting, but I just want to say that, that that would be the overwhelming if I were doing the math on what the staff suggested, I would even say higher. I would dare say that for me it would be even more significant. I don't know if board members have any other thoughts on criteria. And so I wonder if recall this down to a final list and then come back and put weight suggested weights to them. Sure, as best we can. Obviously we have some where some board members have said

172some yes, some no to that, so we'll sort that out. So it looks like generally keeping all 1 through 4 and then criteria 9, 33, 35, 36, 37, I missed 18, sorry, 18, 45, and 48. But I think 45 and 48, Meredith, I think that, that was the cluster that we were open to figuring out a way to factor that in. Yeah, I would really look to the staff to make some suggestions on how we could look at that in an objective way. And I think to Vicki's point, like, about number 4, I agree, I think it is, it's a very nice thing, and actually for more reasons than just acceleration. But if we decided that we wanted to consider it, but we thought it was a nice thing as opposed to a necessary thing,

173unnecessary thing, then we could reduce the weight, or we could play around with, with the weight to make it not as, as key of a criteria. And then transportation, the comment I had from you was figuring out a way to make it more binary versus dollars, just because that's a little bit harder to, to calculate, right? Yeah, I'd be open to some suggestions on that. Okay. I think my notes are accurate this time. Board members, any other thoughts, questions, and then comments on, I think, next steps? I mean, again my goal is to keep us moving, but obviously we also need to get us moving where we can get the board to make a decision and, and charge the staff with doing the study. So go ahead, Meredith. One more thing. I just, I just

174wanted to say publicly, like, I have no appetite for leading with staff. Okay. So thank you. Any other thoughts or comments? I want to make sure we at least give staff a next step. So what are we thinking for the next board meeting? Is working on weighting of this, I think it would be good to get it down to like 15. I, I don't know if we're there or not. I feel like what I've heard people say they want to add to the 4, it feels like, like maybe we could just hammer this out for now. Like, are there things that people agree just we can take off? Um, it seems like, I, I would glee, I'm guess, I'm inferring from what, how people are talking about this that the ones that they're mentioning they

175want to be considered. So maybe just as for a process suggestion, we add the statutory stuff that Eva said we have to have. I mean, not, Eva didn't say that. The legislature. The law said it. And then the other, just for now, just to keep us going, have a more expansive list and just include everything everybody has said. Okay. But not what we haven't said. That's my suggestion. Okay. No, that, I like, thank you. Go ahead, Vicki. Can we get it so that the, what's already in statute for us, we can put here? So if it's in statute, we can go ahead and take the recommendation off because it's already in statute. We have no choice but to follow the law. As you said, I'm just saying, so on our document, can we have that

176there? Sure, yes. I mean, I don't know that any of these are worded exactly like the statute, but a lot of them would fall under that umbrella. That way that could help us reduce some items already. Would that help us. Madam Chair, you think, reducing? Let me make sure I'm clear. So we've got the 5 statutory requirements. One of them is kind of randomly broad, such other factors as the board shall consider and germane. So I'm going to take that one off. That's right, I want to make sure. So we're talking about 4 items and then also the other ones that we've come up with. Vicki, let me, no, I was just saying that if we're, you, if we're looking at the statute, if that will help us to maybe tweak some of the other

177ones we had, because some of them may fall within the statutory guidelines. Okay, so where we don't need to necessarily restate it, that's what I'm saying. Okay, but if it's harder to do it than that, I'm, I don't want to undo us. I'm counting. Give me a second. You guys have a lot. And then this transportation one. How many do we have, Barb? I'm gone need your help. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. We are, so we've got 15 of our own plus the 4 under statute. You got that? Are you counting all 4 of the equity ones as 4 separate? Because I mean, I think that could clearly be, okay, well then we'll, we'll shorten that and I'll just say 45 through 48, and I'm going

178to need help with that one. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1112. You got 13 running. I was just saying if you were 15 and taking off 2, you've got the numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Let me make sure I'm not missing one that somebody said. Yeah, the tree, what is it? Melinda said keep 33. That was the flood one, right? That was the flood one, right, Melinda? 33. So that would go under geographic conditions. Yeah. So Melinda, could we assume that under geographic conditions it's flood? Okay, so we can take off 30, 33 as its own standalone, but it will be rolled up in there. In which one? 33 would go under geographic conditions. What, it would be part of the discussion for geographic

179conditions. Okay. What number is that? 33. Geographic conditions under the statutory, Oh, okay. Is that helpful? Okay, any others that could fall under the statutory. With 44 through 48, all of the equity ones, could they not be highlighted under the effect on students if we're requiring ourselves to use that guideline? Then that means we commit to requiring ourselves to use that guideline. I'm sorry, which one, Barb? 44 through 48, we have under the statutory requirements to look at the effect on students. Yeah, so 45 through 48 could go under the inconvenience or hardships that might result to the pupils to be effective. But I'm saying any of those 44 through 48 that Meredith was speaking of, wouldn't they have to be looked at? Yeah, yeah. So we move that to that one. I mean, I

180think that would help. Yeah. Meredith, you're fine with that? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. And how about the remaining ones? We've got 9, 18, 35, 36, 37, and then TRA, the kind of how we're looking at transportation. I mean, we could, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out how to, 3 would go under, would, would we say like 3 would go under the cost of providing additional school facilities, or is that something different? I wonder if we just put together the combined list for the next meeting, and then as we weight them, some of these might naturally kind of get the, the scope of what, how we want to consider them. Okay. And obviously, let's think about weighting. I mean, we don't have to. I wonder if a narrative concept around these topics might be

181helpful because I, I wonder about how we would weight them to make sense so it won't feel arbitrary. Just something for us to think about, right? Like, we aren't deciding that tonight, so think about it. Like, how would you weight it, or would you just want the study to include all the information, and then we kind of look at everything holistically for each school. Okay. All right, so our next meeting, we're going to look at now this shortened list and then hopefully finalize the list and what we're going to do with it after it in terms of charging the staff with the school closure study. Okay, is that yes/no what we're thinking about next steps? Okay, so we okay ending this work session? Go ahead, Meredith, I'm giving you guys speak now. I have one

182tiny point, Okay. So on number 3, the feasibility of building on site while students remain enrolled, I just want to point out and note that we need to reflect the fact that FPG cannot be rebuilt on site, but our plan as currently articulated is to rebuild it on a site nearby. So I don't want to ding them for not being able to rebuild on their site because we already have a plan to rebuild on a different site. So do you want it, does that make sense? No, no, it does make sense, right? Because that was never, but we don't have it, we don't, we don't know how many schools we have in it. George, well, how can we do criteria if we don't know how many schools have been involved? I thought we were back

183to 3 schools. We had voted on the bond. We've settled that. Unfortunately, that's not where the board. We're doing criteria on something we didn't agree to look at. That doesn't make any sense. I think number 3 is in there only because of the suggestion that we include the bond schools. If the bond, if the, if the list for the original 3, number 3 wouldn't be. I thought we made clear, and I think because it, no, we didn't. We, we're not voting. We're not voting. We didn't vote last time either. We did a pulse check. I know that. So, but we have 3 schools being replaced. Isn't that where we left it? Right now we have 3 schools that are in our bond plan. We have no, we, we don't know how, we, we are an

184we have not settled until we task the staff on whether it's going to be 3 schools or 5 schools or which schools or whatever. That's part of our task under the statute. And so obviously board members will continue to think on this, and then once we develop the criteria, then we will discuss what that's going to look like and then what we're going to task the staff with in terms of the school closure plan. So are we okay ending our work session today? I don't know, do you got, I would suggest we end. Let's hear from our public. Yeah, do board members just want to do a quick stretch break? I know some of you might need to use the bathroom really quick. You want to, I know you guys are waiting. They want to

185be able to sit through every comment. Can we just, I just want them to go use the bathroom and come back. [RECESS] Okay, thank you everyone. All right, so at this point in our agenda, we're going to have public comments for the work session item. Speakers will have up to 2 minutes for their comments as displayed on the clock in front of Ms. Fetters. When you're recognized, please come forward, state your name, and if you are speaking for organization, please identify the name of the organization. We'll start with recognizing any teacher organizations, school improvement teams, or student groups, followed by anyone who has signed up in advance, and finally any other persons wishing to make a comment. And I'm going to read the statement again. Additionally, tonight we're welcoming our families and guests who prefer

186to speak Spanish or Mandarin. We're pleased to offer Spanish and Mandarin interpretation services. Interpretation will be provided consecutively, meaning we will hear a, hear a sentence in one language and the interpreters will repeat it in English. As a result, we will double the time limit for those speakers to 4 minutes. We kindly request that all Speaker speak clearly and in a moderate pace to allow the interpreters to accurately convey all information to the board and to our guests in the audience. So starting with any teacher organization, school improvement team, or student groups, and I see Mr. Link is standing at the podium. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again given the late hour and the number of people here, I would like to once again request that we allow the public to speak first. I will be

187here to the to the bitter end and I'm happy to provide our organization's thoughts at that time. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Link. And I don't see any other organization stepping forward, so we will start, and Ms. Holloway will help me with this. I'd appreciate it. So we've got, and your names are going to appear up there and she's going to call maybe one or two names as well. Okay, and so Calvin, I'm not going to, I'm so sorry, I'm not going to get your last name. I'm so sorry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. My name's Calvin. My kid is a kindergartner in the Mandarin dual language program at Glenwood. Love the educators, the staff, and the school leadership there. The Mandarin dual language program is a profoundly important, one not just

188because it allows my kid to communicate with his family, but also because it allows him to be proud of who he is in a time when we have politicians and other national figures saying that Asians don't belong in the United States. And of course, we all remember what happened during COVID and the surge in anti-Asian violence during that period. But the dual language program isn't just, heritage speakers. It's a program for everyone, and it cultivates the value of learning about other people's cultures. That's why I think it's also so important that it goes together with the World Language Program. Having the two programs together extends that ethos to the whole community, and it's really greater than the sum of its parts. I know, Madam Chair, you said that all the programs are going to continue,

189but those of us that are in the Glenwood community really want the programs to continue together, to not be split up because we feel like we belong together. Thank you. Thank you. Benjamin Wiley. Benjamin still here? Okay. Kim Han. Sarah, Cedarburg. Members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. After 25 years away, I moved my family back to Chapel Hill last summer. Largely, we felt confident doing that because of the strength and reputation of Chapel Hill Carrboro Public Schools. We were thrilled when our daughter was accepted to Glenwood's Mandarin dual language program. In other cities where we've lived, we couldn't access dual language programs because demand exceeded supply. A public school Mandarin dual language program is rare. A Mandarin program paired with a STEAM magnet is exceptionally rare and strategically important

190to the district. Programs like this are typically found in much larger districts. Having one here reflects Chapel Hill's academic ambition and makes our commitment to global learning tangible. When I attended Glenwood back in 1991it was still a traditional neighborhood school. The dual language STEAM magnet was added deliberately to attract families and strengthen enrollment, and it's working. Glenwood is operating at over 95% capacity. Families are choosing it. I understand the budget pressure, and I understand that enrollment matters. During the work session, I heard that the point repeatedly that buildings are long-term decisions while programming can change. I understand that perspective, Programs like the dual Mandarin, the Mandarin dual language program take years to build, years to staff well, and years to earn community trust. Once disrupted, they are not easily reassembled. Strong programs become just as

191structural to a district's long-term health as the buildings that house them. What I have not seen is a clear plan showing how the Mandarin dual language and STEAM programs would remain intact if Glenwood closes. Programming and capital planning must be considered together so that we can understand the trade-offs. I don't want to mispronounce the next name. Mark? Hi, Mark Shenfather of a kindergartner and a fourth grader and a 25-year educator. Thanks for the time to speak. so we understand the problems, right? We have declining enrollment therefore declining revenue, and you know, the solution is to cut costs, but I think that, at a time of declining enrollment, the last thing we want to cut are the schools and the programs that are actually driving enrollment and driving revenue. We've all seen the data that FPG

192and Glenwood are at 96% capacity utilization. That's not a coincidence that the dual language programs, and in Glenwood's case the STEAM program, are the highest enrollment. People move here for those reasons, and I think that if we basically eliminate some of the schools that is driving the enrollment, it's just going to exacerbate the problem that we have now because people will just leave the district because it's not possible to relocate all 500 students who get Spanish every single day, or every, all 400 kids who at Glenwood, you get Mandarin every day spread across the district unless you want to hire Spanish-speaking teachers and Mandarin-speaking teachers at every school in the district. The other thing that I just want to point out, and I just want to ask the school board and leave you with this

193question: if we close schools today and look how many people came out to show for their community, I worry what's going to happen is that more people are going to leave the district. And then a few years from now, after we've closed these schools, you're going to be stuck with the same problem of having to cut costs and close more schools and just kicking the can down the road. I think what we should be talking about is how do we drive revenue and value to our school district and go, maybe go to Woods Charter and go to the Friends School and figure out what are they doing that we could be doing here so that our families don't leave and exacerbate the problem that we have today. So thank you very much. After Audrey, Maria

194Palmer. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm the mother of two in Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District at Glenwood. I'm from North Carolina and attended public school schools in Winston-Salem and Watauga. Even in these strong districts, Chapel Hill-Carrboro is recognized as the best. It's been a leader since I can remember, decades at least. And at this time, our district is facing very difficult decisions, decisions that call for leadership grounded in clarity, compassion, and innovation. Closing two schools may be an unavoidable, this isn't about two schools, it isn't even about five, it's about the nine that our children will fill. Even with declining, birth rates, we can attract families from surrounding areas and compete with private and charter through strong schools and innovative programs, a key to stabilizing enrollment. Instead of centering the conversation on

195closing two schools, we need a broader, forward-looking strategy that secures the district's long-term financial health, attracts and retains families, and results in nine excellent schools that our children will go to. Our community would respond positively to a comprehensive plan that preserves and strengthens what works. We've all heard, we tried to get into the dual language, 15th on the waitlist. These families often leave for charter or private. Which of our schools have EC programs where students thrive in neuro affirming environments and foster their value and belonging? Let's keep that and grow it. As concerns rise about meeting the needs of boys in classrooms, imagine expanding the STEAM program to offer project-based learning, prioritizing hand-on experiences, movement, and curiosity with minimum screen time. Families would flock. This moment calls on the whole community. It isn't about two

196schools, it's about the entire district and the path to nine excellent elementary schools, and this will affect us all. Hard decisions. Okay, Before you go, Maria, who's after Maria so they can go ahead and come up, please? And last name I cannot pronounce. Okay, and next. Thank you. Ready? I'm Maria Palmer. I'm running for county commissioner for District 1, and I'm here to pledge my support to the school system. If elected, I will help you keep all our schools open. I helped write the grants that brought dual language to Chapel Hill-Carrboro, and I think we need to expand those programs. I also know that we can offer universal preschool, and those parents are paying a, an average of $15,000 a year. If that money came into our schools, and we can refurbish, if we have

197enrollment25% capacity, what parent here would not want to have the same preschool in the same elementary that their kids attend, and that would bring revenue. The money is there. The Chamber of Commerce has a goal of hundreds of new daycare spaces. We can provide them in our schools and bring revenue. Carolina is adding 5,000 students in the next 10 years. The faculty and staff serving those students will bring families. If we get them when they are little, they will stay in our schools rather than go to Montessori and go to a charter school or private school. Our schools are jewels. If we sell them, yes, it's $10 million. Where are we going to find for $10 million land to bring new schools when our density increases, which our towns have pledged to do, both Carrboro

198and Chapel Hill? Where are we going to find the land to bring, to build new schools? We won't. So please, please, I know you have gone down the road a ways and that you guys have done a lot of work, but we need leadership that doesn't look at, just look at the numbers and what is, but looks ahead at what can be. Thank you. After Ann, it's going to be Becky Zornick. Himy name is Anne Petrosello. I'm the parent of a CHCCS student and I'm also a volunteer with our local public school STRONG and I'm speaking on, on behalf of them tonight. I agree that given our current district enrollment and financial situation, we do need to reduce the number of elementary schools and act on that plan quickly. I strongly encourage the board to

199use a short list of quantifiable evaluation criteria and a data-driven process in order to make the decision that will be the best for the whole school district, the district as a whole. And I think that's something that all of us in the, in the room here should be able to get behind, is something that's the best for the whole district. The evaluation criteria should be chosen to determine the most financially strategic a solution for the entire school district. Fortunately, we do have quantitative data that the school district staff have collected, and also from the Wolpert Report, that can be used in the decision-making process to make that decision quickly. We should not make this decision based on the desires of particular neighborhoods or the loudest voices in the room. There are many parents who cannot

200be here today for many reasons. That's why a rigorous data-driven process is so important. The data speaks for the families who weren't represented here today. It helps us to decide what will be best for the district as a whole and for all the families within it, especially for those who often have the least voice in the decision-making process. I also want to thank Superintendent Trice for educating the CHCCS school community on the issues at play and why the school closing is necessary. I found it very helpful and informative during this process. Ultimately, I do believe we're going to come out of these changes with a stronger school district that provides the absolute best education we can for all students with the resources that we have. And I think that includes some of our special programs

201that we have that make our school districts good. Thank you. Kylie Johnson is next. Good evening, board members. I am Becky Zornick, and I am a parent of two Estes Hills Elementary students. And over the next several minutes, you'll be hearing from many Estes Hills parents, and we're united by two things. One, we are proud of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, and we are concerned about its future. We respect how difficult this, these decisions are. We know school closures are painful, and we know you are balancing real financial pressures, and we are grateful for the time and care you put into this work. Two years ago, the district completed a rigorous consultant-supported data-driven facilities plan with clear criteria, board approval, and voter support, and the community moved forward in good faith. Our request tonight is simple:

202adhere to the plan you made and establish similarly data-driven, fiscally sound criteria in your decisions on the school closure. We also want to acknowledge something Dr. Trice raised, that in, if the district does not focus solely on facilities, there may be ways to buy time by examining singletons. These are positions such as school nurses, social workers, and certain specialized teachers. In many districts across North Carolina, those roles are shared across 3 or 4 schools. These are our nurses, our counselors, our resource officers. They are our friends, they are our neighbors, and they are our children's trusted adults. If staffing configurations are part of the financial conversation, then that analysis again should be transparent, data-driven, and applied consistently across all schools, just as facilities criteria should be. We are not asking for special considerations or treatment.

203We are asking for consistency, stability and responsible governance. We urge the board to honor your process and protect our community's trust in you. Daniel Head will be after Kylie. Good evening, I'm Kylie Johnson. I'm the parent of a first grader at Estes Hills Elementary. I'm also alumni of Frankfurter-Graham, Culbreath, and Chapel Hill High School, and I'm so proud to stand in this room with all of you who stay up till 10 o'clock work at night and fight for the kids that we all care about and who are near and dear to our hearts. So I mean that as a broad community. I'm so proud to be here with each of you. So simply put, we do not think it's good for the district or for the board to start over on the discussion from a

204few summers ago around the future of Estes Hills Elementary. But if we must, we understand this to be a fiscal and operational challenge and one that requires us to disconnect the heartbreaking idea of closing a beloved elementary school from the business decision that has to be made. But in this case, we believe that the facts are aligned with our hearts. The district has already completed the data gathering, the modeling, the comparative analysis. The work led to a clear conclusion that investing in a new facility at Estes Hills Elementary site is financially and operationally sound and has a positive impact on the district as a whole. All of us together. Reopening that analysis now introduces new costs, wastes large investments in previous analyses, and delays progress. That impacts all of our kids. These are material impacts

205in addition to the deep emotional strain that we can all hear in my voice on a community that just underwent this process. I urge the board to discontinue considering Estes Hills as a part of the closures. Hi, good evening. My name is Daniel Head. I'm a parent at Estes Hills Elementary, and I'm also a substitute teacher for both CHCCS and Orange County Schools. I'm here to talk about the real cost of the delays that we are discussing by reopening and examining more and more criteria. Closing two elementary schools can save about $4 million each year and avoid up to $15 million in major repairs. Continued delays increase the risk, and as we talked more tonight about another reduction in force, with nurses and student support staff among the first to go. And Dr. Trice, you

206mentioned tonight, if we don't focus on facilities The only way to buy time is focusing on a reduction in force. They're not abstract numbers. Those are the people our children depend on. Time is money, and time is also uncertainty. The board has said it wants to move quickly with decisions this spring, closing schools by 2027. And with that timeline, it is critical to follow the professional guidance already provided by your district staff. Staff has done the work. Expanding the analysis now risks higher costs, longer timelines, and more instability. Delay costs money, confusion costs our trust, and rushed mistakes will cost both. We feel the responsible path is to follow the plan that you already approved and move forward. We urge the board to honor that plan to avoid unnecessary harm to our community. Thank you.

207Good evening thank you to the board for your service. My name is Elizabeth Pisa Crida. I have a kindergartner at Estes Hills. As a former teacher and district administrator, I know how important stable, aligned leadership is, especially now. This board made the wise unanimous decision to hire Dr. Trice, providing continuity and avoiding an expensive search. Dr. Trice's thoughtful approach to community engagement gave me confidence in his process for closing schools, a process that was grounded in the board's approved bond plan. Dr. Trice's closure timeline is essential to retain as many of our district's amazing staff and teachers as possible. In fact, we heard tonight that 50 to 80 positions are at risk. These are the people that make our district great. Should the board reopen the debate about rebuilding and require the county to reapprove

208the bond plan, it will inevitably extend the timeline and puts our district's future sustainability at serious risk. We all want to see Dr. Trice and his administration succeed, and he and his team need your continued support. Alignment between the board and the administration protects staff morale, strengthens enrollment, and signals stability to the community. I urge the board to not reopen the bond approval plan so that they can adhere to Dr. Trice's thoughtful timeline in order to retain as many of our teachers and staff as possible. Thank you. Hi, I'm Justin Klein. I have a daughter who will be entering the district next year. First I just wanted to thank the board for your public service. I'm sure there's other more exciting things we could be doing at this time, but I really appreciate it. Board

209members, please stand behind the data-driven long-term facilities planning commissioned from Woolpert that has been trusted up until this point. This report drove the planned key projects announced ahead of the 2024 bond that named Carrboro, Estes, and FPG for rebuild. It was de, developed in the context of de, declining enrollment, which is not new information and has been well documented since 2019. Operating budget pressure is real, but it's not a reason to blow up capital commitments voters approved to build safe, modern schools. I'm asking the board tonight to continue with the plan that you made, that we the public have supported, and that the district administration has already begun to act on. Please trust the rigorous process that brought us to this point and move forward with plans to rebuild Carrboro, FPG, and Estes. Thank you.

210Good evening, board. My name is Felice Reddy and I'm a district parent. Estes Hills sits directly adjacent to Phillips Middle School. This is not just geography, it is strategic infrastructure. Co-location allows for shared systems, coordinated traffic flow, aligned safety planning, and long-term efficiencies in maintenance and utilities. These advantages were studied during the bond process as part of long-range facilities planning. If this is a fiscal and operational decision, then strategic assets like this should matter. Returning to the drawing board risks disregarding efficiencies already analyzed and incorporated into the adopted plan. The work has been done, the criteria were set. I urge you to honor the plan and move forward with rebuilding Estes Hills in its optimal central location adjacent to Phillips Middle School. Thank you. John Wallace. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening.

211My name is John Wallace, and my two daughters are Estes, are students at Estes Hills. We're all here tonight because we care. We care about our schools, this district, and our community. This just, district is a major reason people chose to live here. We understand the budget shortfalls, the declining enrollment, and recognize the consequences of stagnant growth in our district over the years. But our community has elected town officials that adopted the Complete Community strategy focused on more connected communities, affordable housing, and strategic growth. We see the infrastructure improvements and growth along Estes Drive and in the MLK and 15501 corridors. And much more is laid out in the transportation and future land use plans. At the university level, the Carolina North development will include workforce housing and university staff for, sorry, sorry, will include

212workforce housing for university staff and their families. Like our town officials, we elected you because you represent the values of our community. This district must align with improvements with these major investments by the town and, university. It's a fiscally responsible decision now and for our future. We ask the board to engage in more intergovernmental collaboration, and we urge the board not to close Estes Hills Elementary, which sits centrally located within those plans. Such closure would signal siloed governance, lack of coordination, and misalignment with public priorities. Thank you. Good evening thank you for the opportunity to be here. I'm Brian Driska, a proud parent to two current and hopefully one future Estes Hills students. Our district has amazing schools thanks to the exceptional teachers and staff who foster communities in which our kids learn and grow.

213Closing even one of these schools, much less two, is agonizing. As you make these excruciating decisions please minimize disruption to students, teachers, and staff. The prior bond analysis highlighted the ability to rebuild on the Estes Hill site without relocating students into a swing space. The fact that Estes is under-enrolled would also mean the ability to welcome additional students and teachers from the district now as a new stu, state-of-the-art school is designed and built. Avoiding relocation reduces transition costs and shortens timelines for modernizing facilities, as well as minimizing the significant loss of staff across the district that has been discussed tonight as a consequence of delaying these difficult decisions. It saves the district money by allowing other buildings to be taken offline faster. I urge the board to make decisions that help build new, bigger, stronger

214school communities while mitigating disruption as much as possible. Rebuilding Estes Hills will help the district achieve the goal of minimizing disruptions while addressing our financial shortfalls. Thank you. Hello my name is Harsha Ganga, and we're recent transplants here from Boulder, Colorado. We do miss Boulder, but seeing the passion in this room, I'm heartened that we made the right choice moving to North Carolina and Chapel Hill. When we moved here, we did a lot of research on schools and looking at a number of schools, and for all the reasons mentioned here, we settled on Esther Sill and Phillips as the schools for our two daughters who go to the Esther Sill and Phillips schools now. And I'm going to go off a little SK, off script here. I want to thank you all for doing this.

215I don't know how you sit there and do this in public. This is amazing work. I mean, I'd rather be watching Bridgerton second season now than sitting here. But so thank you for that. This may be an unpopular opinion. But I have to say, tough decisions have to be made. You can't run out the clock here. You have to rip the Band-Aid off and get the decision done and move us, help us move forward. And that's why I put on this Unity t-shirt, because I want us to thrive as a community. And the longer you delay, you're ripping the community apart, and it's not helping us. And I drive around the town, I see all these signs about we're all in this together leave your leaves on the floor. I mean, is that just branding?

216Do you guys mean that? We need to do this. We need to do this to keep the community going. So I would say, and school closures are hard. It's not, I mean, I'm making fun of this. It's, it's a tough decision to make, and it's not an easy decision. But let's keep grounded on, on financial principles, make some tough choices, and keep the ball moving. I think, thank you for your work. God bless America. And I know this is a tough time to say this, but A lot going on in the world, but I still think this is the greatest country in the world. That's a tough act to follow. Hi, my name is Akshay. I'm a parent at Estes Hills. So over the past 10-15 minutes, you've heard from several of us. We're all

217parents with different stories different perspective, different priorities, but I think our message has been pretty consistent. We're proud of this district, we believe in its teachers, we believe in its staff, and we want this district to remain strong for the next generation of students. I think we can all agree many families in this community, not just at Estes Hills went through a difficult emotional process to understand and accept the facilities plan that was adopted. I want to underscore that it really was emotional, and this has been emotional tonight too. But we did that because we trusted this board and this district. We placed our trust in you. Reopening those decisions now risks reopening that uncertainty, weakening stability and undermining that trust that's already been built. You know, this is not about, I think, one school

218versus another. I hate it when it sort of takes on that kind of character. every school is in, in this district is filled with dedicated educators and remarkable children. And this is about, I think, honoring the process that we went through, using public resources wisely, and leading with consistency we respectfully ask you to stand behind your prior commitments follow the plan you approved, and move forward with rebuilding Estes Hills. And we urge the board to honor that process. And I mean, if I may, I'm hoping this anecdote or sort of analogy will land because it often seems like 50% of the people in this district work in healthcare. But you know, if you have a patient They're sick. They come in. The diagnosis is unclear. What do you do? You get data. You order tests.

219You order labs. I think over time that data coalesces. You draw conclusions. But there does reach a point where more data actually doesn't help. One more scan, one more lab assay, maybe we'll send it out to the Mayo Clinic. There actually reaches a point where it starts to hurt you, because that patient all that while has been getting sicker. And what I would hate to see with this district, which is a crown jewel in North Carolina, is for it to go from serious condition, where I think we are now, to critical condition. Good evening, my name is Steve Eford. I'm the PE teacher at Ephesus Elementary. I sent you all a letter about 3 or 4 weeks ago. Hope you had a chance to read it, just how much I love Ephesus. How much I

220love that community. So I hope you had a chance to read that. A comment's been made several times in, in the board meetings the past several times about we're closing buildings, but we're not closing schools. And from a 10,000-foot perspective, I, I do agree with that somewhat because great educators are going to be great educators wherever they go. So I do agree with that. Where I would push back against that and, and give them more of a boots on the ground or shoes in the hallway approach is that there's absolutely an impact when you break apart a family, when you break apart a community and, and splinter them out and send them other places. You absolutely do have an impact. And any one of us in our building would be happy to teach any single

221student from any single area. But if you send us out other places, there's absolutely a breaking apart of a family and breaking apart of systems that have been put into place to support all students. to take it a step further, singletons have been mentioned here. I'm a singleton in my building. There's one PE teacher in every single elementary school in our district. So, If our school closes, honestly, I have no idea what would happen to my position. Honestly, I don't know what would happen if my school stays open. Nothing is assured for me at this point. That's why I stand here with, with a lot of insecurity and not knowing what's going to happen to me and a lot of uncertainty for other folks in our building and all the other buildings of all these

222other schools. So I ask that you please consider that when you say something so general as we're not closing schools, we're merely closing buildings. As a board, you hold us as staff to incredibly high standards, as you absolutely should. And we appreciate that. but as a community, we need to hold you all to high standards as well. And thank you for the discussion tonight. I ask, I plead with you to please, please put any, any preconceived notions you had aside and consider the information that's in front of you tonight and all the information that's been sent to you from our school, from our PTA. And thoroughly consider that with integrity, with honesty, with transparency. Because this is, this is our livelihood. It's also our life. Thank you. Good evening board. I will read my message

223in Spanish and then I will read it in English. [SPEAKING SPANISH] Thank you for allowing us time to share. We hope you were able to experience a little of the of la familia as our student welcomed to this evening board meeting. This joy is what our full dual language school embodies as we develop all students in our school to be bilingual, biliterate, and critical conscious. As speakers come up to address the board this evening, please know that we have been intentional, intentionally with what they are presenting. As we understand that's a difficult decision, will require the board time and energy, and do not want to slow down your process. We are here because it's not clear what we are not talking about programs means. So our main request is that the board confirm their commitment

224to keeping the full school Spanish and English dual language program intact, as this provides unique and valuable opportunities and draws families to Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Indeed, if you see fit, we will be honored to serve as a model magnet school program from the district. Thank you. Hi, I'm Mary Beth Freer. I'm a mom of I have two children in the district, and I will be interpreting some for my child. [SPEAKING SPANISH] Good evening, members of the school board, community, and Dr. Trice. Sorry, my name is Will Prier, and this is my mom. I'm in second grade at Frankfurter Gramm Biling e, FPGB. I love FPGB for many reasons. I learn two languages, play with friends who speak different languages, and can help people who don't speak English. At FPGB, the teachers, kids, and parents

225are truly una familia. Will and I are here to strongly support maintaining the FPGB Lingue program. Fully bilingual schools don't just teach language, they shape how children think and connect. Students build cognitive skills as well as empathy, confidence, and the ability to navigate a diverse world. What you just heard from Will is not theory, it's lived experience. At my school, you don't just learn science and math, you learn other languages and about different cultures, and that brings people together. FBG is a place where culture is celebrated across the entire school. It's a joyful place where children sing along to Super Bowl lyrics. The only thing more powerful than hate is love. Dance in Zumba class. Cha-cha-cha. And enthusiastically compete in football, or soccer, games at Copa Mundial. Fully bilingual schools like FBGB prepare students to

226be thoughtful, compassionate, and culturally aware citizens. FBGB is a model of equity inclusion for our Chapel Hill community. Preserving FBGB's fully bilingual program doesn't just protect a program, it protects the values this district and our community stand for, cherish, and have committed to. Thank you, everyone. You want to say it again? Campus Briano, together we shine. Thank you. All right, my name is Heather Lindenman. I am an FPG parent and thank you to the board this evening. Thank you also to all my neighbors and community members who are out. When our district kids and families walk into FPG we walk into an alternative world. The social hierarchies of America are no longer the social structure. In its place, you have friendships that might begin in Spanish, turn to soccer, and lead to sharing books and

227family stories. No one can question that FPG as a program is thriving. But to be what it is, FPG cannot be a program attached to another school, split up, or part of a different school community. To maintain its unique dual language reality, it needs its own building and school community. Said differently, I understand the board and district support the dual language program and the other very important Mandarin dual language program. But without a designated building and campus of its own, FPG's dual language education as we know it would not exist. FPG is a place where the default is comfort in the discomfort of trying something new. For really learning a new language, whether it's English, Spanish, to work, you need to know it's safe everywhere and that everyone in the building understands you. This is

228possible at FPG. FPG is a vibrant and thriving community because people are drawn to the hope that we can all learn from each other in the deepest way made possible by sharing two common languages. Thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Ana Rosario. I'm an FBGB parent and a former educator in the district. I've been listening closely to this process, and tonight I want to share a small moment that helped me understand why this conversation matters beyond buildings and numbers. A few days ago, I was working with a group of children. I noticed several of them several of the children speaking Spanish to their families, so I approached them in Spanish. One child who attends a Spanish immersion program responded immediately and excitedly in Spanish. There was pride in his voice, no hesitation. Then I

229spoke in Spanish to the, another child. I knew she was a native Spanish speaker as well. She looked at me and said, "I speak English." That moment stayed with me. While, while one child felt, felt comfortable and affirmed responding in his heritage language, the other one seemed more distant and disconnected from hers. I've seen this at home too. For a long time, my own son didn't feel connected to his Dominican heritage. After 3 years at FPG, something changed. His pride showed up quietly and naturally. I believe that happened because he was in an environment where his background and culture, are part of everyday life and genuinely celebrated. So as you think about the future of this district, I ask that pride and belonging be treated as essential outcomes, not side effects. We need to protect

230the integrity of what creates that sense of connection. Schools where children feel seen and connected don't just feel good, they keep families engaged. And they build a district where pe, where people want to be part of. So instead of us starting with which school should we close, I believe we should be asking what district are we envisioning for our kids' future. Thank you very much. Good evening, board. My name is Roberto Blanco, and I'm a parent of two children at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School. I've also worked with first and second generation Latino immigrants, both adults and children, for many years in the field of mental health, including at UNC El Futuro and with developmental disabilities as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. I want to thank you for listening to all the schools in our

231district and for your role in envisioning a dynamic academically rigorous and equitable school system in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. These are not easy conversations or decisions, and we appreciate you working through this process to make a better school system in Dr. Trice's vision. I believe that we can. As a son of a Mexican immigrant who came to this country for educational opportunity, I am asking in this moment of vulnerability for many Spanish-speaking families that you keep the FPG school-wide program intact. In addition, I ask that you prioritize maintaining the community connection of some of the most marginalized families throughout the district by maintaining the dual language program at FPG. I am proud to have children at FPG. As a multicultural family, my children have been given a huge gift: the ability to communicate with their

232grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins in their native language. They also have been able to explore cultural and aspects of their own identity, and that of others in a safe and nurturing safe place. This is something that has made them confident students and leaders in their spheres. And I know that has also made a huge difference in the lives of the other Latino students who are going through or have gone through the program. Dual language education is not just beneficial, however, for those native Spanish speakers. The focus on social-emotional learning helps children build empathy for others and for themselves. Lessons on different countries and subcultures allow them to understand that people can be different and that everyone in this world has value. FPG molds its students into kind and conscientious American and global citizens at a

233time when kindness is sorely needed. Thank you. Hi there, my name is Mark Hoop landI have two kids enrolled in CHCCS specifically because of FPG. I had a concern, a question about the implementation of the 2024 bond referendum. on August 15th, 2024, prior to the election and after a lot of research, the Woolpert Report and community feedback, school board approved the administration's recommendation for the bond project which included building a new site for the FPG dual language program. I personally met with3 of you on the board, attended community meetings, and participated in many conversations with voters all over the town about the bond measure heading into election day. And, and as an aside, I have a newsletter that I provide over a couple hundred residents of Chapel Hill. Because the bond is a significant amount

234of money, voters relied heavily on the board's commitment Voters relied heavily on the board's commitment when casting their ballots for that bond, and there was an awareness at the time of declining enrollment as well, right? Maybe not as extreme as it is now, but there was an awareness of declining enrollment. Despite that, we voted for the bond as voters. In your last meeting, there was doubt cast on the future of that bond whether there was enough money what facility you might close, etc., etc. I would ask the board to reiterate its commitment to the voters that you will work to deliver on the promises made as part of this bond that we voted for and approved. I understand this is an exact science, there are a lot of moving parts, but we as voters are

235relying on you to work toward making the board's commitments to the voters a reality. That being said, I realize some community members here have concerns about whether closing FPG's facility now makes sense if you're going to meet that commitment and rebuild that facility 5 years down the road, but I think others are going to speak on that topic. Thank you. Hi, thank you again for letting us speak. My name is Kiana, and like Roberto, my colleague, I'm a child and adolescent psychiatrist, but that's not my important job. My real job is that I'm a mom, a mom of 4 kids, one that's currently at FPG and 3 that are alumni. And I want to tell you how important it is for me to look around and see the diversity in the hallways and in the

236school community. For an African American female and a parent in Chapel Hill Schools where sometimes we are underrepresented, it, it means a lot to me. And I purposely picked this school in this part of the district so that my little brown children, when they go to school, they see diversity, not only when it's around them in the color of their skin, but it's the languages, it's the culture, it's the richness. It's knowing that diversity isn't a checklist, it's something that happens with our programs for Hispanic Heritage Month, for Black History Month, you name it. Every month has a month, and our school celebrates that equally because it's important. So I also thought I would tell you, having 3 alumni children who have continued to be bilingual and biliterate because of FPG, I want you to

237hear from an alumni tonight about what that course has meant. And he's waited all night long, so I'm going to let Keaton talk now. Good evening. My name is Keaton, and I'm a former student of Frank Porter Graham Elementary. I'm here today because FPG is the only school in our district that is truly bilingual. It's not just a school that has a language program. Being bilingual is a whole identity. It's a mission for every student every day. There's a huge distance between ta, just taking a language class and actually living in that language. On other programs, you might just practice vocabulary, but FPG, we use Spanish to solve math problems, run science experiments, and learn about history. This immersion model is what it makes FPG so special and unique. It helped me become better, better

238thinker and gave me a level of fluency that you just can't get anywhere else. FPG is the only place where every single classroom is built on connecting different cultures. As, as a former student, I can tell you that FPG changed my life more than any other school I've been to. It taught me how to connect with people from all different backgrounds. It gave me a way to see the world that I wouldn't have found anywhere else. Thank you. [SPANISH SPEAKING] Okay. good evening everybody. Thank you for allowing me the space to talk. I have students also at FPG and I also work at FPG and I appreciate an opportunity to do both things there. I was very also surprised when my students, when they visit Mexico from side of my family, and then they also

239went to Guatemala to visit the dad's side of the family. What the family found out when they were in those countries is that their Spanish was perfect, and they did not have any, any problems communicating with their fam, with their families in those countries. My oldest son moved back to Mexico and he's able to be, to work being bilingual in Mexico and this is all because of the opportunity that he learned a second language at FPG. And as part of being employed in the cafeteria, we serve around 395 students every day, and it feels really good when they walk through the line and they said, "Hello, how are you?" or "Thank you" when they're grabbing their food. They know that I don't speak English, but they are able to communicate to me in Spanish. I

240really would like to take you into consideration and not closing F, and not closing FPG. I feel very comfortable at that school, and I can see that my daughter, who still attends FBE, will be, will have a better future just like her siblings. Thank you so much for listening. Good evening, everybody. I really feel like you've heard so much that I don't want to repeat, but I really want to reiterate before I, before I start thank you. I recognize after sitting through this meeting that This is not easy. This is difficult. These are difficult decisions. And you know, I, we appreciate the work that you're all doing to, to make these important decisions. I came I'm a parent of a third grader who you might have seen out there singing and dancing as you were

241coming in. She's been at FPG since pre-K. We were actually; she started pre-K at another school. She was waitlisted. And the second day, was her first day at FPG. And we've been there again, it's, it's just been an amazing experience. And you know, when we, we heard people talking about diminishing enrollment, I should just say I feel like my family is that story. I work mainly remotely and travel. My daughter's mom works in Durham. We've many times thought about living somewhere cheaper, frankly, and saving some money. But we've committed to staying here for FPG, for the school district. And I know they're, I know we're not the only ones, and so I hope people take that into account. This full FPG bilingual program is so important. I mean, just, you've heard about it, but I

242just don't think you can have this program where it's just a Spanish class or it's just a subset of one school. It really needs to be a program that's in, in the building. And so I hear you talking about buildings and not programs, and I guess it's a, maybe it's a question. I don't, I don't see how we can keep this program without it having a building and hope that we also add to the criteria that we're talking about the current enrollment. I think we have full or near full. I'm sure there's people that want to, want to get in. And so closing FPG and then splitting people up to go to multiple dual language programs would, would be very difficult. So thank you. Good evening, I'm Guillermo Cepeda, parent of a 4th grader at

243FPG. So let me give you, I'm hoping that I'm going to give you some facts with my story. I'm going to open my heart and, and let you know a little bit of my story. Before COVID my son was diagnosed with a severe and rare speech disorder. We were living in Mexico City then, and when COVID hit my wife and I decided that none of the schools, private or public, in Mexico was going to be able to take care of my kid and take care of my kid academically-wise. So we decided to find the best bilingual school, private or public, in the world to bring our kid to have him educated. So I'm a headhunter, an executive search consultant, and I dedicated one year doing a research on which one, which was the school in

244the whole world. I looked at Australia, England, Spain Argentina like it was like15 countries. And we arrived at the conclusion that FPG was the right school for my kid. We did background checks. I even spoke with Jill Lacerna that used to take one of those seats some years ago, with an, an ex-SLP that used to work at the school and even a family from Chile that had a kid in, in school. So what I'm trying to say is FPG has a reputation global Globally, and I'm trying, trained to find rare gems hidden. So it is just a matter of promoting more the school and not killing what brings you the enrollment, right? Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Alan Ferry. I'm the parent of a former FPG student. My son

245Jaden went there from kindergarten to 5th grade. He's in 7th grade now. Had the opportunity to serve on the school improvement team there for 6 years. My wife's an educator here in the district. I'm the child of 2 public school educators, so public education is deeply personal and valuable to our family. So thank you to all, all of you and the educators in this room for all that you do. Certainly don't want to minimize the pressures that you are facing with declining enrollment, aging budgets, or aging buildings, budget constraints. They're real problems, and I certainly don't want to minimize that, but I'd ask you to consider that not all of our elementary schools are interchangeable. Specifically, FPG is a case where that distinction truly matters. Now, my family had options when we were looking at

246schools for Jaden to start, both inside, outside the district, but we chose FPG deliberately. We didn't do a worldwide headhunter search, but we did our research in the area. Because of that full school dual language model and the school's reputation. We know many other families made a similar choice. You've heard from some today. So those students and their associated funding dollars made their way to CHCCS and FPG BB, FPG specifically. We're also considering it for our younger son who's about to turn 3 for the same reasons and after 6 years of firsthand experience with this amazing school and community. Finally, just want to share a personal story. Our son's in 7th grade now, doing great academically, but even more, he's a great person. He's become great friends with a classmate that's got some physical challenges,

247and he doesn't see that as strange because he learned that at FPG from 6 years in a culture where looking out for other people is normal and expected. So in closing, I just ask you to see what F, see FPG for what it is. It's not a building, not a budget line. It's a unique asset to this district that attracts families and helps shape the kind of citizens that our community needs. It's too valuable to lose. Thank you. Hi, first I want to thank you for your time and your thoughtfulness. I'm Amanda Brady. I started at FPD Bilingue in 2013, my first year as a teacher and the first year that it was a school-wide dual language program. I've grown with this school and watched the program strengthen into what it is today. We are

248the biggest, fullest school bursting with pride in students, and we acknowledge that we need a new building and we desire to keep our full school program intact. We are actually creating bilingual, biliterate, and culturally competent students. Because these pillars are infused into our everyday interactions, lessons, and curriculum, our students are able to foster double the relationships, read double the texts, participate in double the conversations, see double the perspectives, and demonstrate double the empathy. Our native Spanish speakers receive reading and writing in their native language, elevating their language and culture, propelling them into literacy quicker because there isn't a language barrier, and equipping them with academic vocabulary and literacy in their native language. Then when they begin learning English, they are able to transfer the foundational reading skills from their first language into their second. This

249process is so incredible, it almost feels magical to watch, but it's real and it works. I know this to be true because I'm an interventionist teaching small groups of Spanish reading skills, phonics, decoding, and fluency, and math as well, to our native Spanish speakers. I just watched 3 of my own 2nd grade native Spanish-speaking students, 2 of which are newcomers, reach grade-level benchmark scores in Spanish reading. I can't imagine our newcomer students in another school or program. They flourish here where their culture is preserved and honored and their language is spoken and taught. I see native English speakers also gain confidence in learning a second language starting in kindergarten and growing from there. Our program is unique. It is essential to the dynamic education that this district offers. I have my own children in the

250school as well with and one who will hopefully join when he's of age. Thank you so much. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Henry Ariza, and I'm a parent at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District. I'm here tonight because one of the schools listed for possible closures from Program Bilingue is not a building to our family, it's a bridge. When my family chose to move to this district, we were looking for more than test scores or proximity. Like many multicultural families here, we were looking for a place where our children could grow bilingual, bicultural confident, and connected. FPG offers something truly unique: a school-wide dual language program that spans the entire elementary school experience, not just a partial dual immersion program. There is no other school in this district,

251in this district that offers that continuity, depth, and commitment, and that really matters. Because programs like this don't just teach language, they teach listening, empathy, and belonging. They bring families together across cultures in ways that can't be measured by enrollment numbers alone, although the numbers tell an important story too. Schools with dual language programs like FPG and other bilingual schools are among the most popular in the district. With full enrollment, enrollment year over year. Families are choosing these schools or private, over private or charter options, and they are staying. We want to increase enrollment in the district, right? So when FPE appears on a list of schools that may close, it feels like we are risking the loss of something rare and deeply impactful. Not just for one community, but for the future of the

252district. That's why my, that's why, thank you. Good evening, members of the board and Dr. Trice. My name is Jeff Glick. I'm the father of two students at FPG. I heard the board chair say tonight very clearly that the discussion was not about closing programs or ending programs, it was about buildings. But I haven't clearly heard the entire board commit to doing that, and I really think that this is important and it matters. I want to bring up a reason that it really matters that hasn't been talked about by some of the other FPG parents, and that's because school, the school immersion program at FPG drives enrollment. And enrollment drives revenue, and we really need to focus on revenue in addition to cost reduction. I, I recognize that a lot of the factors driving elementary

253school enrollment in the district are outside of the board's control, but not all of them. And one of them is to look and see where is the demand. We should be looking to invest there and grow there, not disrupt it or fragment it. so please as you're approaching this difficult decision-making process, really ask that you consider committing as soon as possible to preserving whole school Spanish immersion that exists in its current form at FPG. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service. Good evening, my name is Camila Morales and I am a first grade teacher at FPGB. As you know, FPGB is a school whose majority population is Hispanic. When I first came to this country, I was lucky enough to have landed in this district. I was 12 at the time,

254and I am forever grateful for each member of the staff that saw my potential in me and provided me with the education I needed to come this far. My experience as a student in this district was good, but my experience as a staff member gave me something back that I never thought I would get to experience again, the feeling of belonging. I want to restate, CHCCS did everything right. I received all the support I needed to navigate the difficulties when you immigrate to a place where your language and customs are present in every direction you turn. Every time I walk into FPG, it brings back those memories and feelings that I once had 18 years ago. Feelings I honestly thought I would never get back because that was my reality and that reality of many

255others. I see myself in my FPG family and I know they understand all of me. I also know this is my, this is what my colleagues feel because they share the same story as me. This is my family now, and together we have built a school culture where each student feels seen, understood, and where students that come from another country like me get the feeling of being home again. Seeing all my students of all demographics being empowered by the Spanish language, building relationships with students from all backgrounds, fostering those relationships, and caring about each other with compassion are my greatest joys. This could have only been possible because of our staff and all the parents that have supported us year after year. We're not just a dual language curriculum, we are their culture as well.

256All of us students, parents, and staff are an example of a strong culturally responsible, responsive community. All I ask today is to please keep our familia FPGP together because we bring much more than a program to our community. We bring a unique cultural experience and a feeling of being home to everyone that is part of this familia. Is Katie still here? Yeah. Good evening. Thank you, everyone. I know it's late, but I actually really love hearing why everyone loves their public school. This is so, it gives me so much hope. so my name is Katie Wouk, and I'm a parent of two kids in the Glenwood Mandarin Immersion program. I'm here first to advocate for the unique school environment at Glenwood. I've heard assurances that programs will not be affected by school closures, but it's

257simply not possible to close the Glenwood building without affecting the district's only dual language Mandarin program. Glenwood's model is distinctive. Not only is it the oldest school in the district where our incredible teachers do educate our kids about the painful history of our school segregation so that they can learn from this history, but also today half of the students participate in Mandarin immersion while the other half receive Chinese language instruction throughout the week. And this program extends beyond classroom time. Cultural practices are woven throughout the school community. We just celebrated Lunar New Year together, and teachers collaborate across immersion and world language classrooms. This is not a small program that can simply be tucked into the corner of another building where students are learning a different language. Glenwood is essentially at full enrollment, and I

258have not seen a clear, thoughtful plan for how this program would be retained at the same level of integrity, enrollment, and excellence. Excellence that currently attracts families to the district. Glenwood students currently can continue Mandarin at Phillips Middle School, which is the only middle school in the district offering Mandarin. Families choose this program because it provides sustained long-term language learning, and that's because my kids are nowhere near as fluent as Will was in Spanish. They need a little more time. If Glenwood closes, what is the concrete plan to ensure those students continue to have access to a coherent K-8 Mandarin pathway and beyond. Now for the second half of my comments, hopefully I'm not too far past a minute, I want to zoom out to ensure I have time to advocate for all 9 schools

259that will be affected by any closures and redistricting. Since the last meeting, I've spoken with parents, teachers, the Daily Tar Heel, and students across multiple schools. There have been so many creative ideas. You've heard many tonight. I hope you really take them to heart. Thank you so much. Hello I'm Brianna, and just like the last meeting, you all have me all shook up. So I definitely agree with other people. If there is any stone unturned, that means we keep all of these schools open, let's do that. These schools are amazing. I want to go to them. Let's do more of that. But if a school must be closed, we want to ensure there's a clear cost-benefit, because otherwise, what is the point of this? Um, so I wonder, and this just came to me during

260this meeting Dr. Griffin, there was something you said about the criteria should be about what schools we close, what schools are going to save us the most money, because that is why we are doing this. If we didn't have to, we wouldn't. So I think we need to think about, okay, what schools save us money? Regardless of how we're going to rebuild, if we're going to renovate, that can come later after we've saved money. Because I think it's always going to be easy to spend more money. We can make that plan any, like, that, that's the easy part. The hard part's going to be closing. I think we need to save the money because otherwise it's just too heartbreaking to lose any of these programs. Thank you. Jennifer still here? Yeah. After Jennifer is going

261to be Kristen Brookshire. Hi, members of the board, I'm Jennifer Hochberg. I am a parent of a first grader at Ephesus and hopefully a kindergartner at Ephesus. I just wanted to thank you for the discussion on the criteria. I think that's what we've been looking for as a community. All of these schools are great. I hate that we're pitting these schools against each other when really it's for the good of the district. But the one thing that I want to talk about with Ephesus is something that we call him Kochi said is that this is about breaking up families. From 10,000 feet, it's a financial decision, and I know that it has to happen But I appreciate the time that you guys are taking to look at these schools and really think about it, because

262it is taking away what people, their livelihoods. Because you can't say that there aren't going to be reductions in staff with closing some schools. You can't say that it's not going to affect transportation, it's not going to affect other things. So I really appreciate the time that you guys are taking and the care that you take with this. And it is very hard as to look at 5 schools. I voted for the bond. Had I known that the bond could take away another school, whether it's Ephesus or any other school, I don't know what I would have done. I would have always wanted to support schools, but I just don't think that there was a lot of transparency with that. And I think that, that could be something that should be really looked at. And

263I think that the last thing with Ephesus, the headline, if you close Ephesus, is that you are going to be closing the school with the highest academic student growth performance. That is a Title I school. So you need to think about that, and that we are performing well. And it exactly what Coach E said, it's about the family, it's about the parts of the whole. And taking the parts away to other schools is going to take away that student performance because that is the secret sauce. So thank you for all your time, and I appreciate that this is a very hard decision. All right, good evening, board members, Superintendent Trice. I'm also an Ephesus parent and I have two brief topics to lift up tonight after reading the matrix of considerations as posted online as

264and as discussed tonight. the matrix includes six different rows that talk about housing and town planning and each of the responses to each of those criteria cites the Carolina Demography presentation from December of 2025. Within the linked slide presentation, there is a slide called Key Assumptions that says, this is an initial model, we will update the forecast with development impacts. I understand that the district enrollment is declining, and, but I also believe that it's not even across the district. So I really hope that you'll double-check and make sure that you have a complete forecast that accounts for development patterns and student generation rates for future housing across the district. I appreciated the board member comment earlier about thinking about the geographic distribution of our elementary schools across the whole school district and zooming out and

265having that lens. And then lastly, I hope that you will consider criteria that encompasses town plans and multimodal transportation impacts. These factors received attention, and discussion during the various bond project scenario meetings and conversations, some of which included recommendations for consolidation that would have addressed the utilization challenges we're still faced with today and why we're talking about this with such urgency now. It's hard to process how those considerations can be set aside when we're now talking about school closure, when before we were talking about the prioritization of capital projects. So thank you for your time and your consideration tonight. Kayla is after Adam. Hello. First, thank you for your service to our community. I hope that my comment on criteria 1 can help you as you rework this draft list. Criteria 1 as it's written

266is sunk costs. It sounds like now, though, Criteria 1 will be combined with Criteria 2, but I just wanted to remind you to be careful when giving any weight to sunk costs. Two Nobel Prize winners in economics have said sunk costs are irrelevant to rational decision-making, and the other said that sunk costs, the sunk cost fallacy keeps people doing things they shouldn't. So what they're saying is it's irresponsible to continue investing time, money, or effort in something simply because you've already invested in it. I'm not as smart as Milton Friedman and Richard Thalerunless I have a Nobel Prize waiting for me at home, but I trust that they are right when they say not to make decisions based on sunk costs. Criteria 1 is sunk costs, so please just keep that in mind when you're

267combining it with Criteria 2. Thank you. Hi, good evening, and thank you for allowing us this time. I'm Kayla Waldron, and I am the mother of two children at FPGB. I remember the day we found out that our first child would be attending FPG because unfortunately many of my daughter's preschool classmates did not, were not successful. But we had that opportunity and then we felt both fortunate and grateful to be able to join the FPG family. And our experience at FPG has been nothing short of remarkable. We have watched our two children, a fourth grader and a second grader, become tremendous people. They have blossomed in their language skills. We have marveled at their growth in reading and math year over year. And we have been captivated by the stories that they tell us about

268cultures and customs, ones we could never share with them. FPG is committed to developing children who are prepared to be global citizens. The experience, the thoughtful experiences that are offered to the students ensure that they see the world as bigger than Chapel Hill, bigger than North Carolina, and bigger than the United States. And our investment in this program could never be at a more important time. As a result of our children's experiences and, and the events planned for the families, my husband and I have also expanded our community. I grew up in Iowa, a long way from here, and it wasn't until I got out of my hometown that I realized that the world was bigger than that, that town, bigger than Iowa. And it took me a long time to, to, to sort of

269get outside of that. My children don't have to start at that place because of FPG. I urge you to think about this program and the experiences it offers as a whole. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'm convinced that we need 9 dual language programs in our district. My name is Nora Rosenberg. I'm a parent of a kindergartner and a second grader at Estes Hills Elementary School. but I think I want to wear the hat today of a person in the district overall rather than a particular alliance to my school. I moved to Chapel Hill because of the school system. I was told that no matter what community that I lived in, that I, I would have a good educational experience, and my children would. And my first years in this district have absolutely lived

270up to that. I've had incredible teachers, steady administrators, really devoted and caring staff, and I feel a deep concern about the 10 or more years that I have in this district, and even whether this is a place that I'm going to want to stay. I was very grateful for Dr. Trice's presentation this fall, very carefully and gracefully outlining the challenges that our district is facing. As a population scientist, I can attest that the demographic shifts that we are facing are real, and that without swift action, this is quickly going to translate into declining educational programs., across the district. This will in turn trigger a further downward spiral where people don't move here because of the high-quality schools and where people who are in the district look elsewhere because we no longer have an excellent educational

271system. These challenges are not going to go away on their own. We can't deliberate our way out of them, and delays are incredibly costly, as was mentioned earlier. And so, however painful and unpopular, we need the board to move forward swiftly and decisively. We need time for the district to plan, we need time for families to plan, we need to minimize the staff layoffs, and we need the board to act now. We need to think that in 10 years from now, we're still going to be living in a district with an excellent school system. After Allison, Emily Elkins is next. Good evening, good night, everybody. Couple things I just wanted to bring up real quick. The original proposed criteria we were first looking at today seems very useful for identifying which facilities need attention, but

272not for what action needs to come next. So thank you for considering expansion of the criteria. It was interesting to hear your conversation today. Side note, I wanted to clarify something that's kind of getting lost in the process as I'm trying to track this process. The two wallop reports made recommendations about buildings, and it didn't really recommend which school should be rebuilt, which should be shuttered for good. And that distinction matters a lot because we're now, we're now asking a different question than we were 2 years ago, 3 years ago, and those are very community-defining decisions. So I've also noticed in this process there's been some inconsistency around how we use that language. Sometimes the word closure has meant permanently closing a school and redistricting students Sometimes it's meant building a brand new building, and

273that's great. And then other times we've talked about disbanding a whole school community without calling that a closure. And those are all fundamentally different outcomes with profoundly different impacts on students, teachers, and families. So moving forward, I'm asking for more precision and clarity and consistency on which of those things we're talking about so we can all understand what's actually being proposed. A focus on facilities is fine to identify facilities, but deciding what to rebuild, what to close requires additional criteria and more specificity. And thank you, Rani, for acknowledging the reality that circumstances have changed. I've been a little confused by comments suggesting like nothing's changed, or implying that some schools were made promises that others weren't because really the bond plans made a promise to the whole district. That some schools would be rebuilt, others

274would be renovated, and that no schools would close. So that was a promise to all of us, and I appreciate you considering that as well. Thank you. Hi, hello. We heard tonight that communities fare better with more advanced knowledge of closures and the planning, so I do consider more Um, just more planning or more thought goes into some of these points. I guess I am curious to know a plan or what would happen with the Phillips Athletic Field. And I also would like the concern about traffic around intersections with many schools being redone. And that I guess just as a Chapel resident of 30 years, I actually care more about this town than the current school I'm affiliated with. So I really do value the discussion about the whole community because this is a lasting,

275this will have a bigger impact on all of us and will affect everybody. Thank you. Hi, I'm Miriam Wieberg. I brought my laptop because last time I screwed up my thought and lost my train of thought, so I'm going to help myself not do that today. I'd like to add context to my comment about dollars versus dimes in the last meeting. We've heard that closing a school is necessary to avoid a reduction in force. But when we look closely at the deputy superintendent's analysis, about $1.4 million of the projected $1.7 million comes from eliminating staff positions. The actual non-staffing savings tied specifically to closing a building appear to be closer to $200,000. So I think it's fair to pause and ask, are we framing this primarily as a facilities issue or as a staffing decision,

276because those are two different scenarios. Research from University of Chicago and Research for Action suggests closing, closure savings are often fragile. School closures can lead to enrollment declines up to 10% as families move to charter and private, or to Durham if there's no schools on the east side of the city. In a 400-person school at $7,500 per student in state funding, that represents $300,000 in lost revenue. That exceeds the projected building savings that you guys are talking about. When you factor in transportation, which I argue can and should be assessed now and not later, that net savings becomes much less clear. Additionally, there appear to be a significant discrepancy in enrollment projections, roughly 500-student difference between the Carolina Demography's '25-'26 forecast and the district's Power BI dashboard. Please look into that. That is not a

277minor difference. It's large enough to materially affect the financial modeling. My request is this: before making an irreversible decision, can we ensure the community sees a transparent scenario-by-scenario analysis that accounts for staffing, enrollment shifts, transportation, and long-term fiscal impact? We have not seen that so far. If you're going to make a decision about dollars, let's make sure we're not overlooking the dimes that quietly add up or the human costs that don't show up neatly on a spreadsheet. Thank you all for being here. Is Monica still here? Monica? What about Caitlin? And then Travis and Ed. Katelyn couldn't be here tonight, she had to go home, so I'm speaking in her place. My name is Jackie and I live in Chapel Hill, and I want to make two discrete points tonight. First, bond plans change all

278the time, and the bond was a promise to all of us and not just the few schools selected for the earliest improvements. When we voted for the bond plan, closures were not a part of it. Now closures are up for consideration and the budgetary issues are dire. We need to reevaluate whether it makes sense to build 3 new schools. People talk about trust, and ignoring the fact that the school closures were not mentioned in the bond plan is an ultimate destruction of community trust. Second, I have concerns about criteria. I'm not sure if it is appropriate to decide on criteria when it is unclear that schools are in the criteria, will, which schools the criteria will be applied to. But if we must decide I urge you to take more holistic approach to costs. Why

279are we considering whether an elementary school is close to a middle school and not whether or not closures would create school desert east of Chapel Hill? Why would we consider, consider maintenance costs from the last 5 years but not transport and busing costs related from school closures? Facility costs alone do not capture equity concerns like proximity to affordable housing. The Legion Road affordable housing development was given millions in federal grant money in part because it would be in a walk zone for a public school. I request that the board please consider families who do not have flexible choice in, in school choice, and please make decisions based on what is best for the school district as a whole and based on what we know now, even if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable to readdress. Thank

280you. Is Travis here? Thank you members of the board for your time. I'm the father of 4 CHCCS students and all of them are alumni of Estes Hills. School closures are painful because every one of our schools is a community, as clearly shown tonight, not just a building. But 2 years ago, the school board and the community already did the hard work. We studied the data, listened to expensive experts, and then voters approved a bond that specifically included rebuilding Estes Hills. That plan recognized the value of Estes' strategic central location, promising to rebuild it while minimizing the impact of the students due to its current co-located site with Phillips Middle School. Changing the plan now sends a damaging message. It tells families that even when they are fully engaged in voters say yes, their work

281can be undone. Even if circumstances fluctuate, honoring voter-approved commitments is paramount to maintaining public trust. While budget shortfalls are real and deserve serious attention, discarding or informally revisiting prior adopted plans risk eroding public confidence, and spending more money to evaluate a plan is reckless. Taxpayers deserve transparency and integrity in long-term planning decisions Honor the plan in the bond and show the community that when they trust this board, the trust goes both ways. Thank you for your time tonight. Lynn still here? And then Tiffany after Lynn. Is Tiffany still here? Okay, great. But Lynn is first. Sorry about that. Good evening, my name is Lynn. I'm a parent of two at FPG. I want to add my voice to many others here tonight by stressing something that is as important as it is obvious. That is,

282that there is a big difference between a building and a school. Obviously, a school is not a building or a collection of buildings. We are making a decision about closing schools, so why are we selecting criteria that apply only to buildings? I believe that any pursuit of purely objective criteria that will make this decision for us would be irresponsible. I believe that any attempt to base your decision on a purely financial analysis would be irresponsible. I hope that none of you will make your most important decisions behind a curtain of objectivity and financial analysis. Instead, I hope that each of you will take a principled stand based on your unique perspective and your empathetic rapport with the people you serve. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for working to identify criteria within a reasonable timeline.

283I agree that clarity cannot be indefinitely delayed. And that prolonged uncertainty affects both staff and families. At the same time, decisions of this magnitude should reflect evidence-based best practice. Practices rooted in evidence-based research is what you expect of your staff when they teach our children, when they teach our children, when they demonstrate their learning, and I expect that of you. National and state guidance on school closures consistently emphasizes multi-factor evaluations framework, transparent methodology, and publicly demonstrated modeling. It absolutely does not solely consider facilities alone. Much of the past discussions reference projected savings needed, but we are rapidly moving to final decisions while still being essentially napkin math. It would strengthen public trust and stabilize current and future enrollment and staff to see the full financial and staffing model, including attrition assumptions. Transition costs, transportation adjustments,

284and the net staffing impact over multiple years, and show how every single school sits on the criteria for a fair process. Please stop naming schools prematurely. It is absolutely destroying our community. I am not minimizing the lift you have here, and I believe you'll be proud if you take on the thorough process, however much work it takes. I believe it will more importantly stop the bleeding on enrollment and staff retention, as well as eliminate interschool competition. Personnel comprise the majority of district operating expenditures, and research consistently shows that staffing reductions are the top-performing outcome of fiscal savings in closure scenarios. If closure timeline is being framed as a way to protect staff, the board should clearly demonstrate how staffing levels differ under closure and non-closure pathways. It seems that the fact that a reduction in

285staff will be unavoidable is getting minimized. Thank you for your time. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Melissa Maris. I have 3 kids who are currently enrolled in elementary school in CHCCS, kindergarten, 3rd, and 5th grades. I spent most of my life in education and I've had the privilege of volunteering at our school somewhat frequently, and I understand how hard our teachers and staff work every day to serve our community. And I wanted to come here tonight not as a representative of a school, but in a role that I think probably everyone in this room can relate to, which is as a parent who really believes in public education. I believe in showing up for it. I believe in funding it. I believe in sending my kids to it.

286I believe in donating my time and talent to it. I even work at a private school, and I would choose CHCCS for my children again and again. I implore you to include stakeholder voices in your decision-making process and not just as a cursory afterthought. I am begging you to be intentional about a process and a timeline that do not pit elementary schools, friends, and families against each other in a competition for survival. That's not fair to us, and it's not productive. Please follow the example Dr. Trice set for us last fall and see us, your community, as willing partners in a process to do better for all our students. Do not treat us like antagonists or paint us to be villains. By sharing information or support disproportionately. We are trusting you to engage in this

287process in a fair and impartial way. Please do it for our students. They deserve nothing less. Thank you. Hi friends, thank you again for the late night. I know tomorrow we're all going to be really sleepy, but I am going to be in excellent company with everyone that is here tonight. so my name is Ash Sherman. I serve as the elementary level lead with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. And so this statement was written collaboratively by several of our members in different buildings as well as by all of our elementary school building leads. So we are representing Ephesus, Estes Hills, FPG, Glenwood, McDougall, Morris Grove, Northside, and Scroggs. And together we are advocating for clear and timely information on staffing impacts associated with school closures. I know that's been brought up a few times

288tonight. We recognize the financial realities that we are in. We recognize the need for school closure and the need to have a timely decision made on that. We also encourage transparent communication about all of the cost-saving measures that our district has already implemented. We know that there have been a lot of them, and I think that that will help our community understand the closure process better. We also know that closure is going to impact every stakeholder in our district. We want to just also recognize and honor the fear, the uncertainty, the sadness, the feelings that a lot of us are having. I think that staff members in particular have unique questions about the impacts on our livelihood and on our positions. This process is not only going to impact staff members at the schools that

289close We know that every elementary school is going to be impacted through redistricting, through enrollment shifts, and through position changes. Allocations will change, and we don't want uncertainty to impact morale. So every single success in our district can be directly credited to our talented, passionate, and dedicated classified and certified staff members. So we are asking our district leadership to provide some clear guidance as early as possible to give us that long runway that you mentioned, Dr. Trice. And to consider some of the questions that our staff members have raised, such as what job guarantees there will be for permanent staff, how placement decisions may occur. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague who's next. Hi, I'm Jenna Nielsen. I'm also a CHCCS member and here to represent all of those people who wrote

290this statement. So, like Asha said, our big concern is making a timely decision for closure so we can move on to another really hard conversation, which is how are we going to protect our people. So we want a timeline for when staff can expect placement decisions. We want to know how leadership is going to incorporate building-level staff voice into the decision-making. And we want to know a little bit about ratios for these singleton positions that are going to be the most impacted. No matter which school closes we're going to keep educating the same number of kids just with fewer buildings. And the students needs won't decrease because we're in fewer buildings. Soin fact, school closure is going to cause stress and turmoil for these kids, so our jobs are going to be harder in this

291process. Our elementary currently staff singleton positions, one per school, regardless of enrollment size. There's the specials teachers, world languages coaches, social workers, librarians, counselors, nurses, custodians, bookkeepers, data managers, food service people, principals, assistant principals, we're talking about a big portion of our beloved staff members and these roles are already stretched thin. So we're wondering, rather than increasing the number of students each of these singleton positions serve, could we use school closure as an opportunity to improve ratios in a thoughtful, meaningful way? Um, as you guys continue planning for future staffing changes, we request that building-level staff have involvement in the process by including input from the stakeholders central to this process, a clear plan can be communicated in a way that minimizes harm to those staff members. in conclusion, we have two asks: a quick

292closure decision, and then energy towards clearly communicating what, how this is going to affect staff positions, and what process could be used to humanely, kindly, thoughtfully reassign these impacted staff. With transparency, meaningful stakeholder input, leadership can communicate care and respect to the professionals who make our elementary schools extraordinary places. Thank you. Thank you. Hi I'm Amanda Fox. I teach at Estes Hills Elementary, but I'm not here to advocate for one particular school. I'm here to stand up with my colleagues that teach at the various schools throughout the district, and if I advocate for my school, I'd be actively advocating against theirs. I know this is a tough decision. I don't envy you all having to make it. I hope that you will commit to making the decision quickly. I feel like tonight we started to

293get farther away from the decision and farther away from the timeline, and I know how bad the rifts affected a lot of people and I know how badly it will affect people again. People are going to lose their positions anyway. We want to minimize that harm. and I really want to make sure that we stick to the timeline as much as possible. Also, I feel like the community needs to hear that we need to show up. We need to read our emails. We need to come to the Q&A sessions that get scheduled. Dr. Trice, I feel like, has gone above and beyond trying to make sure that there are a lot of opportunities for community engagement and some of those have been poorly attended. And I get it, it's a new thing, but I do

294think that we need to meet the board halfway. We need to make sure that we are hearing what they are telling us because they are trying to listen to us, but some of us are repeating the same things that have already been re, been addressed, and I feel like that's just wasting even more time. Also we need to We need to pressure the legislature to actually fund our public schools, and we need to show up and rally the way that we show up here. Thank you. Joe Garcia? Is Joe still here? Sarah Snyder? After Sarah is going to be Chris. Hi, I'm a mom of four one at Phillips, two at Ephesus, and one hopefully going to Ephesus. I would just like to say that it keeps being asked what has changed between the bond

295time and the now time. And as Dr. Price, Dr. Trice so eloquently put, the calculus. Which has changed everything. The calculus has changed. That's why he had 15 meetings to brief us about the dire numbers. So everything has changed. So again, the school bond that we all voted for has changed. So I do, I do think that visiting all 5 schools would be the most transparent thing to do to gain our trust. And with that, I will say, if you decide to close Ephesus, if you can show us why If you can give us the reasons that are not all financial, it'll be so much easier to swallow. Second of all, I have a child going to Phillips. He can't get there 50% of the time by the bus. Can't get there. Tried to give

296him a Valentine for his bus driver. Mom, we have a different bus driver every day. How are you going to bus? Why are you going to take away a walk zone school to bus kids? You got to look at the financials of the transportation. Third of all, how do we recruit people to our district? How do we change these desperate numbers? Reduce the tech. Reduce the tech. Look at, like, look at Wake. They're doing away with the one-to-one. We are paying these companies, these billionaires that are very corrupt as we all know, millions of dollars. Stop it. Stop it. Then we won't have to close schools. And then I will just end with um, end with words I did not write that I think are great. Transparency about financial net savings, staffing, and community impact

297will strengthen trust in whatever decision is made today and decisions needed tomorrow. Judging by the volume of people in this room, the general distress in the community, you do not have the trust yet, and you should want it. I will also say on the middle school, elementary school thing, have y'all dribbled on those roads? It's awful and unsafe. Is Kathy still here? Kathy? Elliot? Jennifer? Jen? After Jen, what about Jennifer Tang? Hi, thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm Jen Costanza. I'm a parent of two students at FSSI. Elementary. And while you're considering criteria and before any school is closed, I have 3 requests. Number 1, share a comprehensive plan for all schools under consideration, including closure, consolidation, rebuilding, or renovation. No matter how you do the math, how many schools you close, how many

298schools are considered, how many schools you can rebuild, though there will be at least one school that's older and needs something, and you need to Tell us how the remainder of the bond funds or other funds may, will be spent to improve the schools that remain open. Our community deserves to see the full picture before irreversible decisions about closing schools are made. And number 2, focus on outcomes and demonstrate how closures will improve, not harm, educational outcomes. Many of the proposed criteria focus on facilities and maintenance costs. Also, in the emails, the stated goal of this whole process has been to put as many students as possible in state-of-the-art facilities. While modern buildings matter, research consistently shows that teacher quality and stable school environments are primary drivers of school success, of student success, excuse me,

299not facilities or technology. If we rely on criteria that prioritize building maintenance costs and ease of rebuilding and do not consider impacts on proven educational environments We are focusing on the means to an end, and we risk losing what's actually working if we prioritize criteria that don't guarantee better outcomes. In short, you can make a financial and buildings decision based on criteria that are broader than finances and buildings, and I urge you to do that. Number 3, show how you'll prioritize the schools, teachers, and communities that are succeeding. In any plan, show you, show how you'll keep the school environments that serve underserved and marginalized communities, keep the excellent teachers you, we have, preserve school environments that have the best academic and growth outcomes for all students, and the schools where teachers love to work.

300Thank you. Is Ann still here? Ann? Hi, I'm Jen Tang. I'm a mom of a kindergartner at Glenwood, and I didn't know that I would be able to make it here. So I haven't eaten. If I sound delirious, that's because I am, dinner, that is. And if it's, and I didn't prepare marks because, again, I didn't know I'd be here, but here I am for 5 hours. So, but I'm not here necessarily to advocate for any school. I do want to say, though, that I moved here in 2019 because I had heard about the wonderful Glenwood dual immersion program that a lot of my friends and colleagues had talked about. You know, I put my son in the International Montessori School so he could start his Mandarin immersion, continue because I very much want to

301support public schools. And I've been recruiting actually other parents from IMS, don't tell IMS, to come and join us because they also live in Chapel Hill and were considering. But now I don't even know what to say to them because I have no vision for what's going to happen to Glenwood in the next 5 years. I don't even know, like, if I should encourage people to come. I don't know what's going to happen to my own son. But I mean, clearly dual languages are so important. And I will say one thing that's been really disturbing to me is we talk about like we want to stick to the referendum. I voted for that referendum. Of course I want to support all our public schools. But at that time, I did not vote to close the

302school that I had planned for my son to go to before he was even conceived. And so I find it very unfair to use the referendum as something to hold us to when I voted for it because I wanted to support all schools. Not because I was voting to, at the expense of my future son's school. Again, if Glenwood ends up having to move to another school, fine, but please keep all the dual language programs, the world programs, the STEAM together. There is a real community at Glenwood that, even though I've only been there for 6 months, I can tell you I don't think can be easily replaced. I want to know how many, these, like, hundreds of kids are suddenly going to be moved into another school. If I have to go, and I'm

303already going across Sino Town, I live in the Morris Grove district. I know about all the controversies most, my Morris Grove neighbors brought to you all in the past when you all wanted to do some changes there. I'm willing to drive anywhere, but just keep our kids together and our programs together, please. Is Meredith here? Is Xander Hawley here? Hi, my name is Meredith Tozer. I am the parent of a 5th grader at FPG, but honestly, this isn't going to affect us in the grand scheme of things, so I'm here to talk for all of our children. We started this evening with well over 100 people in this room, and though we've lost some maybe to Bridgerton, but probably because it's near midnight there are a lot of families still here. This is clearly something

304everyone is very passionate about, and you don't see that unless this really matters. We've heard from many community members tonight about the importance of each of these schools to their families, and it's clear that it really matters that we stay together. That has to be part of your criteria decision-making, not just the financial implications. There's obviously a shortfall we have to account for, but if you're not considering the community impact and the kind of reality of how our students are going to deal with this, it changes the foundation of our community as a whole, and it makes it less likely for people to want to come here. It's been hard to actually sit and listen to everybody passionately talk and know that a lot of our very vulnerable community members from our dual lingual, dual

305language programs are the very people who are dealing with just a lot right now. So I think that needs to be another part of your criteria. I think we're all tired, maybe hungry, and emotional. We appreciate you all taking the time to be here and think about these things. You need to consider more than just the buildings when you're making your decision. Emily Kirk is after Alexander. Thank you for your service and for being here so late to the whole board. My name is Sasha Hawley. I'm a parent of 4 students at FPG kindergarten through 5th grade, and I'm also a 4th grade teacher there. When I was living temporarily in Chapel Hill in 2020, one of the reasons my wife and I decided to permanently relocate here was when our eldest got a spot

306at FPG. It's a very unique whole school bilingual program. in terms of criteria, I don't know why enrollment is not being talked about more and more heavily considered. Dr. Griffin said schools are enrolled at 75%. FPG and Glenwood are at 96%. We are not driving the fiscal crisis. And everyone at our school chose our school over their zone schools. We increase enrollment. People move to the district to be students at our school, to come to our school. Lastly, I just want to say I was really dismayed when FPG was just, it seemed to be casually added to the list of possible closures in the last meeting. I'm saddened and ashamed the board is considering closing our bilingual Spanish school amidst discriminatory and racist ICE attacks in our state and all over our country. Our message

307to our students in November was that it's safe to come to school. I wasn't scared to bring my kids to school, but many of my students' families were. Many staff members who don't look like me carried their passport to school and called a loved one when they arrived. To casually add FPG back to the list without thinking about the impact on our community and the current political reality was disrespectful. I urge you to stand up for our families that continue to be targeted by our deplorable federal administration and defend and increase bilingual education for the benefit of us all. Thank you. Is Jared here? He left. Iris? Julie? Hello, Julie Wery. I am speaking tonight as a parent. As two CHCCS students. I just want to start by acknowledging the difficult position we're in, and

308I want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. We're all very frustrated with each other, but really we should be frustrated with our state legislature. That is why we're here right now. We're in the position we're in debating school closures because of the extreme underfunding of our public school by the state of North Carolina. And if we, if even half of the people in this room tonight could think about going to Raleigh and talking about this, we might actually be having a different conversation in a year or 3 or 5 years from now. So I don't want to lose sight of that. My, my other 2 points are not advice or criteria or anything like that. It's just something I'd love for the board to consider. As they enter, or in the midst of this

309murky middle that we're in. The first is we have the right leader at the right time in Dr. Trice. I believe he has the trust and confidence of many stakeholders in our district, of you as school board members, of parents, of educators, of his staff. I hear time and again in carpool lines, outside at PTA meetings, of how much trust he has built in this community. And I know, and I trust that he's working to keep our district healthy, and he's also working to keep our community strong. And so I just urge you as board members to listen to him and listen to his staff because we trust him, and I believe he's the leader we need right now. My last point is that I want to encourage you to be transparent, decisive, and effective

310in our plan. As one of my co-workers often says, and I love it, clear is kind. And I really believe that in this conversation. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Nicholas Penwarden, and I'm a father of a first grader at Um, FPG Bilingue. I recognize the district is facing real enrollment and financial pressures. I appreciate the work you're doing to think long term, and as you consider consolidation, I ask that you ground this decision in principles that protect what families actively choose and what advances educational excellence. FPG's school-wide dual language model is one of those programs. Its enrollment is stable. Demand is strong. More than 500 students choose to attend and remain. In a period of district-wide decline, programs that attract and retain families are not liabilities, they're assets. Before any vote, I respectfully

311ask that you consider, or that you apply these four principles. First, preserve proven high-demand programs. Consolidation should protect models with demonstrated demand and strong strong retention, including FBG's school-wide dual language program. Second, publish a clear net fiscal analysis. Facility savings must be weighed against potential enrollment loss and reduced funding if families shift to charter, private, or homeschool programs. A smaller building footprint does not help if it accelerates enrollment decline. Third, formally Protect program integrity independent of facilities. If buildings change, commit publicly that FPG's school-wide dual language model will remain intact. Fourth, ensure this decision supports a long-term enrollment strategy, not just short-term cost reduction. This is not only about buildings, it is about whether the district will protect and strengthen programs that families actively choose. FPG is a district asset. I urge you to preserve

312it as part of a sustainable, excellent future for our public schools. Thank you. Thank you so much, the school board. I'm Adrienne Lona. It's a wildly late hour, so let me try and wrap this up. Our story is not too dissimilar from those that have talked already, but I'm also a child and adolescent psychiatrist with a strong commitment to social and emotional learning. So we left the San Francisco Bay Area in 2017 really looking for a progressive home focused on racial equity for our bilingual, bi, multiracial family. We chose Chapel Hill as that community specifically to send our two kids to Chapel, to Brockport Organ Bilingue. So FPG is a foundation of our progressive community here in Chapel Hill, so its loss would leave a permanent hole in our community and roll back decades of

313progress. The school board and the district leadership has a very difficult decision ahead of them, and I respect and understand that objective data is powerful. I am also aware that monetary and objective data could have never been the driving force behind some of the most important decisions in this nation like desegregation. I respectfully urge you to consider the dramatic blow to our progressive culture and community that closing FPG would cause and to do all you can to prevent it. Thank you so much for your work and thank you so much for you do. Hi, thank you so much. I know it's really late, so I'm going to be fast because a few things I was going to say, other people have said it, have said it much better than me. But I was going to

314ask one thing I haven't heard tonight is the cost of, for example, if we move or close FPG or Glenwood. You've said you're committed, the programs remain intact, hopefully, right? The decision is about buildings, not about programs. But what I haven't heard in the cost is discussion is if those programs remain intact and you close, for example, FPG or Glenwood, where do those kids go? What's the cost to that? If FPG is still on the list of schools to rebuild, to be rebuilt, if you move those kids for 3 to 5 years while you rebuild that school, what's that cost? You have 500 kids at FPG, I think 400 to 500 at Glenwood. There's a, there's a huge cost. So I would just ask the board to consider that if we're going to close one

315of the dual language schools, but you're committed to the program, please consider the cost in doing so. Thank you. Hi all I'm a familiar face. I was here two weeks ago. I'll keep coming until we have a set of criteria that we can get behind. And I don't mean we as a school, I'm so sorry, I forgot to introduce myself again. I did this last time. Emily Kreutzer, PTA president for Glenwood. My son is in 4th grade, dual language. I can talk about how amazing our program is, how amazing our school is. It's all great, but truly, I want to urge you all to make a decision that's timely. Our staff, as you've heard from the staff groups are very concerned about their jobs, and each time we draw things out, you've seen what it's

316done in the community. It's tearing people apart, and we can't come together until we have specific data that helps make those decisions. And if it's financial, then we have that data. I just want that, I want the criteria to be established and developed and waited, and I appreciate y'all talking about it tonight, but I think there is a sense of urgency on the timeline because the community can't begin to heal and truly come together as a district until we feel like we're not being pitted against each other. And the 5 PTAs of all the schools have been getting together over the past week. We have been having conversations and hard conversations, and I just ask that you, that you all make a decision as soon as possible and do your due diligence but allow us

317also that opportunity to then work together to heal. Thank you. So Emily was our last person who signed up. So at this point in time, I know Mr. Link, it, you can wait. There seems to be more people who want to speak. So, if you want to add anything and comment, add. Please line up. I'm sorry. Okay, so it sounds like these are our last 3. Okay, remember, for public comment you can always email us, which many of you have. You can keep emailing us, it's okay. But let's, let's get started. Is it just one or two? I'm looking to see, it's three. Okay, thank you. My name is Dennis Kiktev and I'm a parent of a second grader at FSS Elementary. And I came here today to hear a reasonable discussion about very specific

318criteria which will be applied to choosing the fate of the elementary schools in our school district. And I'm standing here deeply disappointed because today's discussion, as well as from two weeks ago, keeps bouncing back to some implicit agreements from 2 years ago instead of hearing a very specific criteria on what your decisions will be based. And in my opinion, there is a very simple thing that you forget to consider. This is financial savings, because your final goal, as I understand, as I, as you can state time and again, is to reach financial solvency of the district. And to do so, to decide which schools will be closed, which will be renovated, all you need to do, consider are two factors: the cost of upkeep of a school for one year before it's closed, period; the

319cost of this, upkeeping the same school for 5 years until it's been rebuilt. The difference between these two values will give you the financial savings in the course of your decision. Why it hasn't been discussed is mind-boggling to me. Tech, seriously, this board, in my opinion, will not be able to navigate our school district to financial solvency until you are ready to actually stem your decisions from solid, reasonable financial factors. Hi, my name is Mallory Turner and my ask for the board tonight is to collaborate or at least coordinate with the town council and county commissioners. We pay an exorbitant amount of tax money, and the fact that our elected officials are working in different directions is deeply disappointing. For example, the millions of dollars planned for the Legion Road affordable housing project, which, that

320decision was predicated on being walkable to Ephesus. To be frank, at this point I'm pretty sure that you all have decided to close Ephesus. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the impression I'm getting, and it feels like our tax dollars are being wasted. I am more than happy to pay high taxes if I believe that they are being spent responsibly, and right now I do not believe that that is the case. I've spent the last week calling town council members and the mayor asking them to coordinate with the board on this issue. When I speak to them, they tell me they want to But then I get a response later that there's no appetite to work together because you're separate, separate elected bodies. I respect each of your all's decision-making, but

321there, there is alignment here that should be discussed comprehensively, not one-on-one, comprehensively, the entire board with all of the commissioners, all of the town council. So that's my ask of you tonight. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Lauren Pavlis. I have met a lot of you before. I'm a parent in the district. My kids are both soon-to-be high schoolers, so I do not have a horse in this race. I am really here because I'm a clinical psychologist working with children and families, and the lens I bring to everything is kids and their basic developmental needs. Like many people in this room, I've been really dismayed by the lack of process and the lack of big picture strategic thinking here. I think everyone in this room understands the financial pressure. We understand the

322need to close schools, and we want the best decision to be made for the district as a whole. I'm going to articulate, I know there's a lot of back and forth about the bond, and I want to articulate clearly what I see as kind of the original sin here. If you follow the bond discussions, you know that the district originally proposed a programmatically driven plan for rebuilding schools. That was then modified because of loud community outcry and adult politics. Then they might, made Plan 2, and the exact same thing happened again. And then the board landed in a place really based on the adults in the community, not the kids and their needs. So this is, this is what I really hope. Parents and teachers want honesty. We want a comprehensive, forward-looking, long-term strategic plan

323that, as Dr. Trice challenged all of us at his enrollment meetings, really imagines what this district could be. So please put students and their basic developmental and educational needs at the center of every decision. Give us a forward-looking long-term plan, not short-term panic-driven decisions. Ask your teachers what to do. Ask your parents what their priorities are. There are so many brilliant, smart, creative people in this district. We've got to think out of the box. And there are people who are here who want to help and can do that. Please ask us. Let us be involved in the process. We would like to help. Thank you. Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the board, Dr. Trice, members of the community still up and watching at the witching hour. I've been doing this a long time,

324and it's always nice to be able to mark something new on my, my list, which is speaking after midnight. So, I rise this evening to speak both on behalf of our organization and then, should I run over, right, to use my individual time there. But my message tonight is actually really simple. Hopefully we can close on one of hope. I walked out of here tonight, right, seeing community members peacefully and civilly and politely advocating for public schools. That's amazing. I walked out of here tonight seeing individuals talk about revenue and not just cuts. Believe you me, I've been waiting my entire teaching career for this state legislature, right, to adequately fund public schools. I would love it if you can find me 4 county commissioners who are ready to raise the 6+ cents that it

325would take to not only deal with our budget but their budget as well. Right. And so, I see lots of positives that are here. And most importantly, and yes, these are difficult and these are, right, tension-filled, right, situations. But I saw underlying unity and I saw underlying unity in a community that is willing to stand up and back its superintendent and Dr. Trice. I did not hear one statement to the contrary about the transparent, open, right, and supportive environment he's created for having this discussion. I also stood up and as a member, right, and as the president of an organization on behalf of educators, I did not hear one person sit here and say, yeah, let's cut those educators. You all acknowledge what we've been saying all along, right? It's our people what are going

326to make this district special and most importantly are going to make our future citizens and leaders, right, our kids. The ones who are going to be successful. What I want to leave you with is time. Even if you could find all of that, right, the county commission won't vote on its budget till June. And even if they raise money, as you heard from our superintendent, if we don't act now, riffs are coming. And what you also heard is this is not right. And I think our board member Meredith put it best, we don't want to end up in a lose-lose situation. Because if we don't act, it will be rifts for personnel, and then it will be school closures, which will cause additional personnel cuts. So, the choice is clear. Do we cut now? And

327yes, there will be job losses, but avoid, right, the 50 to 80 additional cuts that will come on top of the schools. Or do we cut, right, because we won't act, do we cut 50 to 80 people right away with no runway and then still cut the same people that we're going to have to cut when schools close. To me, this is a very simple proposition and a very simple outcome to a very difficult and deeply complicated question. And I hope that people have listened to one another and will work to repair, right, the, the community ties. But at the end of the day, I believe in public education. I believe in our kids. I believe in this board. I believe in the superintendent, and I believe we are going to get this job done

328and get it done now. Thank you. With that, that ends our work session public comments. For members I'm going to go ahead and adjourn the meeting. Thank you.