001Purposes stated on the agenda. So moved. Second. A motion from Meredith, a second from Barb. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We will return as close to 7 o'clock as possible. Thank you. [ CLOSED SESSION ] Thank you, everyone, for your patience. We are back in open session. And the first item on our agenda is National School Nurse Day Proclamation. Board members, if you don't mind just reading one whereas, and we'll go around and I'll finish up, okay? We'll start with you, Meredith. Thank you. Okay. National School Nurse Day Proclamation, May 6th, 2026. Whereas, families deserve to feel confident that their children will be cared for when they are at school; and Whereas, students today face more complex and life-threatening health problems requiring care in school; and Whereas, school nurses
002have served a critical role in improving public health and in ensuring students' academic success for more than 120 years; and Whereas, school nurses are professional nurses who advance the well-being, academic success, and the life-long achievements of all students by serving on the frontlines and providing a critical safety net for our nation's most fragile children; and Whereas, school nurses act as a liaison to the school community, families, and healthcare providers on behalf of children's health by promoting wellness and improving health outcomes for our nation's children; and Whereas, school nurses support the health and educational success of children and youth by providing access to care when children's cognitive development is at its peak; and Whereas, school nurses understand the link between health and learning and are positioned to make a positive difference for children every day, NOW
003THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, we, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education hereby acknowledges the accomplishments of our school nurses and their efforts to meet the needs of today's students by improving the delivery of healthcare in our schools, and we offer gratitude for our school nurses, who contribute to our local communities by helping students stay healthy, in school, and ready to learn, and keep parents and guardians at work, not just on this National School Nurse Day, but at every opportunity throughout the year. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chapel Hill-City Schools Board of Education hereby proclaims Wednesday, May 6, 2026, as "School Nurse Day" and calls upon all citizens to join in celebration and support of the School Health Nurses and the School Health Nurse Profession. Adopted this 6th day of May 2026. Thank you.
004Our next item on the agenda is public comment. I just have a few things to read. 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. Comments should relate to the education and safety of students or to the operation of the school system. The public comment time is for discussion of educational issues or the operation of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools. Public comment is not intended for extended comment or to be disruptive behavior. Speakers may offer criticism of school operations and programs, as well as criticism of board members and administrations in their official capacity. However, the board will not allow personal attacks. Obscene abuses or defamatory language will not be tolerated.
005Let's see. Just as a matter of process, we will recognize teacher organizations, SIT, or student groups first, followed by anyone who has signed up in advance, and then any person who wishes to make public comment who didn't sign up, you are able to speak. Oh yeah, well, we do have a work session topic, so I think comments related to the work session topic, those will be made after our work session. Thank you for that reminder. I see Mr. Link is coming forward. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the school board, Superintendent Dr. Trice, members of cabinet, and the public. Good evening. My name is Brian Link, and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators. I'd like to start off by first thank you for recognizing our school
006nurses and all that they do for our students day in and day out. And I would be remiss standing up here as the head of a teacher organization if we aren't also going to make sure that we recognize that this is National Teacher Appreciation Week, and Tuesday was National Teacher Appreciation Day. And I am certainly grateful for all of the educators here in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro city school systems for doing that. And of course, this board and this administration did your part by honoring and recognizing teachers to allow them to go express their voice and advocacy in Raleigh this past week. And we thank you for that. Tonight, I want to address this board, but largely to address this room, which sadly does not have as many people as we've had earlier this year, but
007hopefully they're all watching online. Thanks to Mr. Jenks communications and say, while the discussion that is coming up next will be addressed then, also happening are discussions around the budget. And the county released the county manager's budget earlier this week on Tuesday. And while there is an increase for schools, it's only 2.5%. That will not meet our continuation budget. And while there is proposed $3 million for PAYGO, that will not meet the needs of facilities, including the construction of 3 new schools here in Chapel Hill, as the voters were told and the public responded. We need every single individual who cares about the topic that is on the work session tonight to be in Hillsborough on May 12th at 7:00 PM for the public hearing there and back here at the Southern Human Services Center
008on May 28th, the Tuesday at 7 PM, to come out and tell our county commissioners we have made tens of millions of dollars in sacrifices, we have lost positions. Any cuts cannot come to schools. We need our educators. That is the message of this National Educator Appreciation Week. Thank you, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair. Appreciate the opportunity to speak. Any other SIT or student groups? So our first speakers, Rob Clark. Oh yeah, you come up to the microphone and you have 3 minutes. Good evening, my name is Rob Clark. I'm a parent of a high school student in the district. Thank you for allowing me this time to opportunity for comment. I apologize in advance. I hope this is an appropriate time for a topic that's not about school closure. I know there's a lot
009of folks here and online that are interested in that topic, but I want to talk about something that's important to me and to my family, and that is about the level of access of military recruiters in our high schools and the apparent lack of transparency there appears to be for families about that access. In my family's case, recruiters built a relationship with my child while he was a minor over a sustained period of time, and that relationship did not begin with a family-involved discussion about military service. It began with pull-up contests, giveaways, personal attention, recruitment conversations, promises of signing bonuses. And ongoing direct communication. By the time my child turned 18, recruiters had already established trust and influence, and largely outside of any involvement from our family. I want to be clear that I'm not
010against military service. Our family includes military service members, and it can absolutely be the right path and right choice for some people and some students. But recruiting is not neutral counseling. Recruiters are evaluated on enlistment quotas. They are salespeople for a career path that has profound physical, psychological, and moral consequences. And unlike college representatives, they are often building sustained personal relationships with minor children inside compulsory educational environments. I do not recall meaningful disclosure to parents, and I certainly may have missed it as a working parent. There may have been information that I didn't see, but I would have liked to have known how often recruiters are present, how students are contacted, what data may be shared. Whether students are being texted or follow up with directly, and how parents can meaningfully opt out. Our district,
011as I know, has faced enormous pressure around parental notification on other issues such as pronoun use, and yet apparently it is acceptable for military recruiters to build and maintain ongoing relationships with my minor child without equivalent transparency to families. I'm asking this board to review district policy and consider stronger parental notification regarding recruiter access, clearer opt-out procedures. Does that mean my time's over? It does. If you do have a statement, you can email it to our all-board email address. I'll just say one last thing. Families deserve to know when adults whose jobs depend on recruitment quotas are being given repeated access to their children inside public schools. Thank you. Mr. Clark, can you come back up to the microphone? Dr. Griffin does have a clarifying question, and I don't know if it's going to be
012directed to you. It is. Mr. Clark, we have a practice of not engaging with speakers, but for point of clarification, have you shared your concern with other staff members prior to speaking tonight? I did. Thank you. Our next speaker, Liz Vale. I think mine should be moved to after the work session. Okay. Thank you. So that was all our speakers who had signed up in advance. Does anyone else wish to make a public comment at this time for items not on work session? Okay. Thank you, everyone. Let me read my other spiel. There is information for anyone who wishes to provide a written comment to the Board on the agenda and also on our website. Thank you. Our next item on the agenda is our consent agenda. May I get a motion to approve our
013consent agenda? So moved. A motion from Ronnie. Do I have a second? Second. Second from Melinda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Our consent agenda is approved. Our next item on the agenda is our work session item, and Mr. Shoroki is coming forward. Thank you. You got to get around the obstacle course. So good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Trice, and guests. It is my pleasure to be able to present to you a study that has been a long time coming. That goes back to August of last year where we started the discussion of a hypothetical school closure, and we ultimately, at your board retreat, had some discussions about moving forward with next steps based upon information that we had received as a district, ultimately asking district staff to
014come back to you with the criteria that either was mandated by state statute or that you had predetermined. So tonight, what I would like to do is to provide you just with a framework in starting of the presentation of what the study is, what it's not, walk with you a little bit about how we went about the study and the goal of the study. But then I'm not going to sit here and walk through the entire report. It's over 100 pages. But I do want to explain, especially for folks who have not had an opportunity how it is structured, and so that people have the right lens when they're looking at it, because there is an abundance of information and it is very specific in some cases. But at the same time, I would like
015to provide you with an overview of one or two items that are within the study for each of the criteria, things that I think are relevant or possibly new that should be brought to your attention. But by no means I want everyone to know that there's plenty of information that I will not cover unless you bring it up with questions at the end. So that you have the information based upon the requirements that you had. So in starting with that, I just want to start off, what was the purpose of the study? And again, I will tell you, there's a lot of reading tonight. This is a very text-rich presentation and with charts versus, you know, graphics and things that you see in the past. But the study is to provide information to help you
016as a Board of Education to make an informed decision about our district's future, and that has been a theme that we've been using for several months as we've been working with the community and Dr. Trice and you as a board. The goal is to evaluate the key factors around the 3 schools that are being considered for closure this evening. What this study does is it does provide you with additional data that you have asked so that again you can make an informed decision and be able to understand some of the dynamics because a lot of information you have heard from me over the past 2 to 3 years in some cases but you've also heard a lot of information from public comment and from input that you've received. So a lot of this information here
017will be affirming to what you have heard in many cases, but it's a matter of just putting it all in one location so that you have the ability to be able to compare, contrast, and to use the lens that you need to in helping to make that decision but it does provide factual information along those public comments that I've talked about, and it does fulfill the legally required procedural STEP. The STEP does not say that you have to use this as part of your decision-making, the legal requirements, but you do have to discuss it. You do have to be aware of it and be informed by it. But again, when we talked about the criteria and all the factors that went into that, there was no requirement that you had to be preset with it,
018but we do have to cover it. So again, I do separate what is statutorily required versus what you as a board have asked in this report as well. What the study again does not do is it does not weight, prioritize, or score any of the criteria of closure for any of the schools, and it does not propose specific recommendations or judgments on any school. And I will say, if there's anything within this study that presents that way, it is not intentional. We have strived to be as objective and fact-based as possible, and if anything, it does make the study a pretty dry read as a result. Because it does not provide any opinions to the best of our ability. To kind of give you an idea, this study, as you look at it, and I
019know you've had an opportunity to see it, as the public will, it's really a snapshot in time, but it's multiple snapshots in time. When you're trying to pull data to be able to provide you with the information, it could be that we use the Principal's Monthly Report #2 as the data set, but it's whenever that data was available in order to provide you with the information. So I'm going to give an example. Enrollment counts. We have Carolina Demography, we have Woolpert. Ultimately, you're going to see some work from NC State. You're going to see snapshots in time when we looked at the number of children in a program at a school. It's going to be what was the number at that given moment because enrollment does fluctuate. So what I want you to know and
020for the public to know So use that as an approximation, but if you try to match this number with that number on enrollments, they're going to vary. But they don't vary enough to make it significant in my opinion. But again, I want people to understand that as they're looking at the report. The report is broken into 4 sections. There's an introductory section that kind of gives context because there are people who are just getting into this conversation today. And there's other folks that have been part of the conversation from its inception but then it's separated into 3 other sections which pertain to the individual schools. And we chose to do that so that if somebody was interested in only reading about one school, we did our best to ensure that that chapter could stand on
021its own, that you would not have to read the remaining pages. So there is some replication when it comes to some of the criteria that's being evaluated because it's consistent for the evaluation of all 3 schools. So you do see repetition in some cases, or you may see repetition and then you'll see something very specific about the school. But that was done so that people didn't have to read an entire 100-page report and they could choose to read the 20 pages that pertain to the school that they're most concerned with. The other piece is to understand that though we have separated the criteria in each of those chapters, if you want to call it, it doesn't mean that that's the only thing or only place where that information is provided. And I'm going to use
022hardship, which is an area that you're supposed to discuss. We focused on equity and student groups in this section, but throughout the report there are examples of what people might perceive as hardships, such as a bus ride time, a cost, a program. Those are things where that could be very subjective in nature, or it could be a hardship that most people would recognize, but hardship is blended within the entire report and that is within the eyes of each of the readers to be able to determine what they believe is a hardship is greater or not. But that's an example of where if you just read it in a linear fashion, there are blends that are in there and you have to be able to pull that out yourself as the reader. Again, trying to be
023objective and not trying to prioritize one thing over the other. And then I talked a little bit about the enrollment and data points about how they vary primary. So the majority of the information, it came from multiple places, a lot of involvement from district staff but specifically we pulled reports that were public-facing reports to the best of our ability, such as the Carolina Demographies report, the 2025 SAFO report from last year facilities capital needs information from either Woolpert or studies that were conducted by our district staff. When it came to transportation, we have a partnership with the town of Chapel Hill, specifically with the Safe Routes to Schools Committee, and we work with them in their report as well as using information from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and then our transportation staff who
024understand the detail and the true potentially challenges or hardships that could be faced within any of these scenarios. So they were most helpful. When it comes to inconvenience or hardship demographics, we worked with the Office of Research, Assessment, and Student Information to be able to show you information about achievement, performance, attendance, student groups and what we did in that is we worked to show the individual 3 schools, but we also showed all schools and you're going to hear this throughout my presentation. This is the first step, but ultimately If a decision is made to close a school and students have to relocate, when we go through a district-wide redistricting process, children throughout our district at the elementary level are all going to be impacted. So a lot of the stuff that you see, it's impactful
025in looking at closure, but it's broader in scope when it comes to how it's going to impact the general elementary community as a whole in the future. So a lot of it is, we'll talk about it, but we really can't make decisions until you get to the next step. Or you can start here, but you're going to have to continue that conversation when you get into redistricting because the same impact in closing a school in many ways occurs when you redistrict students out of their existing schools as well. The program capacity analysis, that's something that I've talked about in length with you when it comes to educational adequacy and how we actually use our buildings. We worked with NC State to be able to help us develop a comprehensive analysis of how we're using our
026schools today. So they contributed to this as well as we've used our board counsel, Farrington Smith Firm, in order to assist with the legal requirements to ensure that you are compliant. So the timeline for the school decision closure, again, we are presenting the study this evening and for your review and discussion, but ultimately there will be a public hearing at the next monthly meeting, on May 21st. It's still anticipated that we would ask you to make a decision by June 4th at that meeting. And then ultimately, through the middle of this year through early of next year, we would do the post-decision redistricting process, which would be a community-wide process, even more so than what we've done with school closure because it involves everybody within our district, as well as ultimately making some form of
027a decision The goal would be fall of, uh, for fall of '27 so that that could take effect, and it would give our folks enough runway to be able to prepare for that process. So the school study criteria, the first 4 are mandated by state statute to just give an overview, a very broad overview of geographic conditions, any increase or decrease in enrollment, uh, inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected and additional facility costs. And then you as a board asked for some additional information with respect to recent and projected capital improvements, building adjacency to middle or high schools, transportation costs, and then site adequacy. And that's where the NC State piece falls into play to see what are our sites actually adequate to be able to serve the needs that we have instructionally for our
028students and staff. So with that being said, I want to start off with the first criteria. And some of these I'm going to go over very quickly because it's very basic information and I don't foresee that there'll be a lot of questions. But the first one was with geographic conditions. And there was an emphasis to look at any wetlands or floodplains, if there was any type of impact to the site, if there was any climate issues that would cause concerns for future use of the buildings. And looking at all 3 schools, what I will say is we have some schools that have wetlands that are on them. They're very small in portion for the schools that are under the study, but there was no significant impact with any wetlands or floodplains on the 3 schools.
029We did look at EPA air quality, and what we found is in that study, 2 schools, be it Ephesus and Sewell were in the good range on the EPA air quality status. Glenwood was moderate. I suspect that's because you got 15,501 and 54 kind of right there. But it was right on the edge. So it wasn't as if there was anything dramatically different, but there was a rating difference there. With the increase and decrease in enrollment, this is a piece that I would like to spend a little time with you on. This criteria really focuses on the work of Carolina Demography, and Carolina Demography was hired by the county to be able to look at the projections and to be able to make a determination. We asked them to get involved with the why, or
030how did we lose our students, when did it start. And what Carolina Demography came back initially and told us is that up until this past year, we have lost from 2016 through this year over 1,200 elementary students, 259 middle school students, and 220 high school students. So that's kind of where we started, and this is what got our conversation moving because we needed to gain more information to see, knowing that the pandemic was at close to the tail end of that or in the middle of that, and to be able to make a determination when do we think that that decline was going to either continue, was it going to stabilize, But we really sought outsiders' help as well as the county needed that because they are responsible for not only the maintenance of our
031schools, the capital investment in our schools, they're responsible for building schools. So them having to understand the projections helps them plan on from a budgetary standpoint what type of funding, capital funding they need to provide for new schools or replacements or maintenance work. So with that being said, we stopped there. And this is information that you had up until December. And in this why, Dr. Dollar at that time when we got the primer in December at the board retreat, housing was the piece that was not part of that story yet. That was the part where he believed rather than just looking at what people were projecting on paper, there needed to be a very extensive process where they actually met with the towns. They ground truthed is what Dr. Dollar called it, where they actually
032went on sites to actually see the number of units that are being built, what type of activity there was. They conversed with developers, real estate agents that were marketing the developments to really get an idea that we may have had a projection of a certain number of students. What's the reality and the timing of that? Because in the past, that's something we did not have, is the timing. We just knew that potentially there could be something, but we needed something more accurate because you as a board obviously had to make a decision about closure. And we have to be able to make sure that we understand to the fullest extent possible and with the greatest amount of information what we are working with based upon current projects that are within our community. So Carolina Demography
033then came back and they used all of that information and including the housing. And this is the report that you were presented with just about a month ago from them where they came back and it was very impactful, the housing analysis. And they had told us that it could be impactful, but they really had to, again, ground truth it. And the lesson here, or at least the point that came to our attention, is that he was able to show a projection for elementary of 111 students less over a 10-year period. And that's based upon the housing projections that were done. And I want to focus on that first because for us to receive this information as staff and for you as a board, this was an aha moment for myself because it was a matter
034of where the demographer was now saying that that hemorrhaging or that decline potentially, it appeared as if it was going to stagnate. And losing 100 is still a lot of children, but it's not at the level that we've been losing in the past. So basically the message from Dr. Dollar was that we need to continue to monitor because you will notice that if you look at the housing and you look at what is 5 years out or 10 years out, the majority of the increase or decrease, we hear it's decrease, is resulting in the first 5 years. It's not in the 10 years. And you've always heard me say you got to focus on the 5 years because that's what's more relevant than projecting out too far into time. But we know that we will
035continue from the county to get this update. But that was something where it told us if we're going to focus on closure, we need to focus on the students that we have lost, but we should not plan on looking ahead for more students as part of our closure plan. That opened it up. So it does determine how many schools we need to close. It just tells us that whatever that number is, we don't need to increase the number. Now, aside from that, and again, tonight is about elementary schools. The decline of 280 students or 679 students between middle and high school, that is something that we need to pause and we need to monitor over time because that is the fact of where the children that we have not enrolled in our district, that decline
036is matriculating into middle and high schools. So we know that potentially we could be having to monitor enrollment in our middle and high schools down the road. Now again, I say that not to say that we may be considering doing something with the middle or high school in the future, that's not what I'm saying tonight, because Dr. Dollar has always said that we have parents through market share who are choosing to put their kids in other forms of education outside of public K-12, but many of them are returning at the secondary level. They've also talked with us about if affordability continues to be an issue within our community, that there are middle and parents who have middle and high school age children. Many of them are at a point where they can afford to move
037into this community. And the demographers are saying you just have to understand that dynamic of what affordability is at the time within your community and who is able to add to your community or not. So you just don't want to look at numbers and say that we need to either consider consolidation of other schools down the road. We're not there yet. You need to monitor those numbers, and I think we have plenty of time to do that. And when I say plenty of time, we're talking 4 to 5 years before I think we should even have that discussion if the trend continues. But that 111 students at the elementary level, that was the aha moment for us. So with that being said, Carolina Demography also created a chart for all of our schools, and it
038showed what they are projecting based upon Principal's Monthly Report number 2 for this year, and then what they're projecting over time. And what you will see is I have arrows beside the 3 schools that are under the study. But you also see that again, the rate of the decline is kind of I'll call it almost a stoplight approach, but the red is a greater rate, the green is a growth, and then you kind of got in between. But you can follow the numbers as you go from 2026 to 2036, and you can see where we have in some cases a decline in students. We also have increase in students. And I want to walk through that a little with you and just give you some feedback on this. So for Ephesus Elementary, it shows that
039over a 10-year period that there is a potentially an 80-student increase at that school based upon the current boundaries that we have, not new boundaries, but the current boundaries that we have. And that Glenwood Elementary increased of about 24 students, and then Sewell Elementary, the decrease of 52 students. The one thing I want to say about this, and you look at Glenwood, we know that Glenwood is a program school. It's the program, we control the size of that program. So when you see an increase at Glenwood, it's not an increase in their program. It's an increase based upon developments that are within the Glenwood area that the demographer looked at and believes that there could be some growth from people moving into that area or that community. That's what that's showing. It's not showing that
040the program is going to grow by 52 because it's pure lottery-based and that size is capped by what we determine, not by what the residential area determines. Unlike Ephesus and West Sewell, where those are residential schools and, you know, unless the zones are modified or changed, it does show that though we may be seeing an overall decline of 111 students over 10 years at the elementary level, we see that 2 of the 3 schools are predicted to have a gain in that. So again, what do you take from that? The fact that if those 2 schools were closed, there would be other students that would move into that area that would have to be going to other schools as well. It's not a huge number, but it is impactful. My word of caution with this,
041and I think Dr. Dollar would probably say the same, is though he's predicting, say, 80 more students at Ephesus, it could be less, it could be more. But if it's more, it's something we really have to take heed to. I've always said, we need to correct but not overcorrect, because you just can't pivot when you make a decision to close a school and to make a decision to reopen a school if the numbers were to change. So almost feel like we should take a feet-first approach versus a head-first approach. If you're jumping into the water, we got to be careful with that, because again, you can't turn that ship as quickly as you can with other things out there. At the same time, I want to use an example just as a comparison. McDougall Elementary.
042On this chart, you see that McDougall is at 469 today and that they could go to 495. That is our one residential school that does not have any programs that is maxed at this point and it continues to demonstrate that that school is going to grow. So ultimately, I put out there that we may have schools that have capacity. There are schools that are overcapacity, and if we redistrict, we're going to have to relocate or redistrict students out of those schools just to give the school relief to the ability. Because when I get into program capacity, that's where I'm going to talk about at McDougall, where they have very limited access to flexible spaces to do things that are school-centric that are essential to the fabric of what we do within our instructional programming. They
043just don't have the space, literally, compared to some of our other schools that have the capacity now and do have the ability to use that extra space for that. But again, we'll get back to this chart here because I think what it does is it just kind of lets you be aware or informed what schools you may have additional capacity in over time and which schools you may not. And again, we're not going to make those decisions tonight or by June 4th. All of that would be the next step when you hire demographer to look at the redistricting, because you would want them to take a quantitative analytical approach to determine where is the best positioning of students and communities that allow the schools to be balanced, not only for the year that it's done,
044but for future years to come. They will continue to look at these numbers that are projected out in their scenarios. Because though the school may be losing students today, in 3 years they could be gaining students. And we have to plan for what we believe is a gain or a loss. So criteria 3, and this is where inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected. We as an administration, we took an approach to really create a framework that, you know, in the absence of finalized attendance zones, It's very difficult for us to identify the number of students that are affected by any school closure because ultimately you're going to redistrict and other children are going to be impacted as well. So we took the approach of let's provide information for what we know. So in the report
045you will see the lay of the land is what I call it when it comes to student groups, economic factors. You will see attendance, grades, performance, things that you could look at. But what I will say is we purposely are not making any judgments or opinions when it comes to that. It's basically, if there was anything that I could take from it, is if you have a school that has a greater percentage of students than another for a certain student group, that school would be impacted more if that school was closed because there are more students that would be impacted. But I don't believe that we're at a point where we can actually break down and let you know how those children would be impacted because we're going to have to work with that with
046our community when we do the full redistricting process because the impacts will be the same. But if anything, they're going to be greater in magnitude. And this is no different than what you as a board have done in the past and previous boards have done when we've gone through a redistricting process. You've got to look at everything in a totality. So again, we've decided again not to make assumptions but to focus on understanding the potential risks and then setting clear equity guardrails to guide future decisions. And that's a recommendation that we're making to you to ensure that you do keep equity in the forefront because again, all we know at this point are the demographics, the outcomes from academics, the attendance but all of that we need to take into a broader context, before we
047do school assignments. So again, I'm not going to read through this, you've got it, but just showing some examples for the general public to see. And in the report, we again, we do show when it comes to the student groups, not the school performance. We do show though all of our schools as it pertains to the student group. So you kind of get an understanding of where our students are and where they're not, if you want to call it that. So again, our recommendation would be that the next steps in dealing with equity as it relates to inconvenience and hardship is that you got to go into the redistricting process. But we are recommending that you stay grounded with the student experience and that universal risk factors, they should apply across all schools. And I've
048listed here the primary ones that we believe should be in consideration when we go through redistricting. And that is the importance of stable relationships with peers and teachers, that connectivity that's part of the fabric of what makes our schools be successful and for our children to be able to flourish is having those relationships, the ability to have them between peers and teachers. The continuity of instruction, you've talked about programs and how you want programs to remain intact and that you do not want to have those impacted in a negative way. Again, you have to continue because we're looking at all schools and we have to ensure that all of the programs that we have continuity. And then access to programs, in some cases at the elementary level, extracurricular activities, that transportation is reliable, that it's
049looked at, and that our transportation folks working with the demographer can ensure that they are coming up with the most efficient ways so that those routes can be done with the greatest fidelity as possible, given all of the challenges that we all face with transportation. And then the timing of the transitions. We got to make sure that we understand not all student groups transition at the same time and do it successfully. We have children with special needs where transitions may take a lot more time for them to be able to have those relationships, those routines, the familiarity of the surroundings that they're in compared to other students and we just have to look at that. It's not one size fits all when you look at transitions for students, especially at the primary level. So again,
050our, our next step here would be to reflect upon those impacts with students. And again, there's a an entire section that talks about ensuring equity in services for our EC children and ensuring that that is kept in the forefront, that those services are provided. Much of it is legally required, but at the same time, you've got to take that into consideration. But again, it's the central principle that we're recommending to you is just to keep equity rooted in the actual student experience and not just assumptions. Go by what they're actually experiencing. And that would involve community feedback, student feedback, and really understanding, getting first-person feedback in that process, which is something that is not new for our district in participating in. And again, this would be a phased approach, and the study talks about a
0513-phase of how what we would recommend at least use as a guiding or a north star in helping follow, facilitate that process. Because when we get into redistricting, it's not going to be just me standing up here talking about the redistricting. It's an all-out effort for a lot of departments within our district because it impacts anyone and everyone. So, it's a, it's a total team effort when we get to that point, especially with the magnitude of what we got. So, criteria number 4, additional facility costs. This was kind of an easy one because it's not germane, though it is required. You have to talk about it. It's not germane to ours. The examples of where this is required I've said this before there are many districts in our state where they have 2 schools that
052have, say, lost 50-60% of the students in both. They are combining the two because the building conditions are not ideal, and they're building a new school. So, they're closing two schools, building a new school, and then putting the populations of the two schools into one. Generally, it's a two-prong approach. It's because the building is in poor, terrible condition, but their enrollment has also gone down. And you see a lot of this in many of our rural communities. That's why this statute is in there, because that's really what has started school closures in the past. That's been a predominant reason. You know, the whole idea of low birth rate or lower birth rate, what we're experiencing nationally, that really hasn't been happening as much in the past as it is today. The reasons are different. Rural
053schools may have had a primary business that was within their community. That business may have left. It changed the population and it forces them to have to make some really tough decisions that generally are always financial in nature as well of what drives them to be considering this. So, criteria number 5, and this is one where I will say I started off this process when we introduced the schools to put under consideration for discussion. I took a fiscal approach with you and I said, if we have to close a school, we have to look at the operating and the capital expenditures and we have to look at ways that we can reduce those expenditures because again, we wouldn't close a brand new school. We would want to close a school that has reached its age
054and has been identified by our the county, who also recognizes that we have to try to replace and fix our schools. So, in doing so, we did two things. We asked our staff, our facilities staff, to kind of give their assessment. And in the report, it kind of gives a breakdown of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, infrastructure type projects of what they thought are projects that would be needed within the next 10 years based upon lifecycle age and condition, even living experiences of what's happening in the buildings today where there are larger amounts of work orders for sewer pipes or for the air conditioning or roofing issues where we know that we have infrastructure that has to be replaced. And what we did is what I show you here is you asked for recent and projected. And
055so, you see the recent, we captured the past 5 years from 2020 to 2025. And it shows you that Ephesus, about $678,000 worth of investment, Glenwood at about $770,000, and then Sewell had $2.6 million. And we've been very open. It's not as if Sewell was the breadwinner for whatever reason. They had fortunately, they had a fire, and we had to put a substantial amount of reinvestment in a building that is a very large amount of square footage on their school site. So, we know that, if anything, that building, the Lawler building, is in really good shape at this point. It's been inspected structurally. Everything had to be checked after, after the fire, and we just know. So, we've put that money into it. So, you do kind of see that one is higher than the
056other, and we referred to this earlier this year. These are sunk costs. This is something we've already done. And for any of our schools, you know, we are not stopping doing work in our schools because we're considering school closure. We have to continue to maintain our buildings. no matter what we decide. So, it's not a matter of us just avoiding things. It's a matter of replacing as we have to, because, you know, through the CIP, we only get about $4.2 million right now in maintenance funding annually. So, our needs are far greater than our means. So, there's very little preventative maintenance on a capital level that we are doing in our buildings with the maintenance funds that the county provides to us at this point. So, it is just-in-time type repairs. So then when you
057look at the capital projected expenditures, you know, we did show this, say, 2025 numbers, but then we did compound that or escalate that at 4%, which right now 4% is about the escalation. You know, if you pay attention with Wake County, they just recently talked about having to add more money for school construction because their escalation factor, they need to increase it. And so, we believe in working with our project management group, 4% is a good number at this point to use. And again, we, we were steady with that across the board, but it does show that in 10 years, if we had the funding, the amount of equipment and infrastructure within those 3 schools, there's about $70 million worth of work that you could do. But I have to tell you upfront, we're not
058doing that value of work unless something changes with our funding. So, what I will say to you tonight is my epiphany where I will say my position has changed just a little. I can't exclusively tell you that if you look just at the fiscal need of the building, that that should be a sole determinant or, or as strong of a determinant that I started with you on in December, because it's a projection. And I know that we're only going to repair what we have to repair. So to put that out there and to say that one number is higher than the other and that that should weigh differently for you I'm telling you now, I don't believe that it should, because if something breaks at any of these schools, we're going to have to fix
059it. And that's how we're responding. So, I just kind of say that with a grain of salt. At the same time, I will tell you now, there are different numbers that you're going to see from the Wolpert report. Honestly, if something is $15 million or if it's $21 million, it's a difference. But in our world, it doesn't mean it's not different to us because it's still a lot of money. So I don't want you to again, I can't say that enough that do not use this and weight it in your mind, at least, because you're not using weight, but to say that one number is more impactful than the other. Because again, we could have a school that's not on those three that something fails and we have to replace, and that's where that money's
060going to go. It's going to go where it's needed with the portfolio of our schools. So the Wooper Report again, this is just to kind of show you a comparison when they did the scenarios that the county had asked them to do because they didn't the county didn't give them a scenario where it's like, we're going to give you a blank check, tell us everything that we have to fix across the board. They said, well, it's $1 billion, right? That's what they said. They didn't walk and give all of it. But what they did is they had a category which they called comfortable and safe, and they listed it for all of our schools of what amount of money would it take for the major capital investment if you didn't do anything else in the
061school but just fix stuff that needed to be fixed. They estimated Ephesus about $28 million, Glenwood at $16 million, and Sewell at $23 million. What I want to share with you is that's 2023 numbers. For the study, I did not escalate it because again, I think the numbers are big enough. You can escalate or not. It's not going to change the impactfulness. But I wanted to show that to you because that is in the report. As I've already told you though, the report is from really, it's almost 4 years ago at this point. But it's already It's an antiquated report when it comes to maintenance because we have had to do things that they have identified and fixed, but we've also had to fix things that they did not identify that failed. So, it's a
062good north star, as I've said in the past, but it's not the turnkey. And we've already had some discussions with the county to talk about possibly doing another facility assessment just on the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing between us and Orange County because we know that that report already needs to be revamped, which is not uncommon to do that every 3 to 5 years. So, building adjacency to middle or high schools you know, again, I want to put out that for our district, we have 3 campuses that are comprised of 2 or more schools. We have the McDougall Elementary Middle School campus. We have the Estes Hills Phillips Middle Schools, and then we have Sewell, Smith, and I'll say Chapel Hill. That's the only school site where we have 3 that are adjacent. So, neither Ephesus
063or Glenwood have a middle or high school that's contiguous. with the school. But at the same time, Sewell does have Smith and Chapel Hill. What I want to tell you is presently in working with our student information folks that there are no school Sewell students that are enrolled in courses at the elementary level at Smith Middle or Chapel Hill High School. There have been some isolated cases in the past, but that's not something that is common is what I found. But however, there are cases where there are students from Smith and/or Chapel Hill that may come to Sewell and take advantage of shadowing opportunities and collaborative opportunities working with the students in the classes with their respective classes. So, you do have that synergy. But again, I just we looked into that. We wanted to
064share. I think realistically the only the strongest case after a school has been built, because if you build a school and they're adjacent to each other, there are efficiencies with the cafeteria, with the parking with the gymnasium that you can get from a capital investment. But from an operational standpoint, the, the greatest advantage of having schools that are adjacent boils down to the parents who are able to drop their kids off possibly at elementary and middle school at the same time. There's activities after school, they're close to each other. But again, what I'll say is we got plenty of schools that are not adjacent and they're all within the same distance. And I don't believe it serves as an advantage or not, but it is a nicety if you have it. But I just don't
065believe it's compelling enough. And there was nothing that, in my opinion, with the district staff's evaluation that really made it stick out more than the fact that it's a very big convenience for parents at times and with certain situations. So, transportation costs. There's two things in the report that transportation focuses on. It looks at schools that are adjacent to the schools being recommended or at least studied for closure. And it gives you an approximation of how much time it might take to be able to move students from, let's say, Ephesus to Estes Hills if Ephesus was to close. Or if Glenwood was to close and it was to well, Glenwood is not a good example. But with Sewell to close, how close is Estes Hills or Morris Grove? So, it gives you kind of an
066approximation. The thing I want to share is just to remind everybody, our school district is about approximately 30 square miles. That's the size of our district. You know, our schools, they may seem far apart, but they're really not geographically far apart. In no way, shape, or form will we ever consider moving students from the west side of the, of the district all the way over to the east side in a redistricting. It's going to be a domino effect, in essence, is what happens. So it's not like you're going to be moving somebody all the way across town. Unless a program or something was to be moved, the adjacency schools are the ones. So, we focus on time, and it's there's nothing really revealing in that. The average of the time, it's what we anticipated. On
067average, it could be 8 to 12 to 13 minutes. It just depends upon the disclaimer again I want to give is we give an estimate of the time, but at the same time, when we redistrict, bus route zones are going to change. And what I will tell you is there are major inefficiencies that we currently have when it comes to routing in our school district. And I'm going to use just one example to kind of give you an idea. There are times where we know that in transportation, if we close a school that's a residential school, that every child that's within the walk zone not every child walks, and you'll see that in the report but we know that we have to take the responsibility of being able to transport any of the students that
068were in the walk zone of the school that possibly could close. So, we take that number and we use that and we multiply that out by what DPI states is the average cost per student. And we give you kind of an approximation of what that would cost, and you see that on the chart. But at the same time, though we may have to add a driver if you close a school, we have examples where there are students and I'll use an example who live up near East Chapel Hill High School that every day a bus goes up there, picks the children up, and drives past Ephesus and Estes Hills and takes them to Rashkis because that's where they're zoned. If you go by Carrboro High School at BPW, there are students that live in that
069community that go to Rascas every single day. So, there are the demographers call those satellite pockets, and it's where you have schools or neighborhoods that are outside of the contiguous school zone that you've zoned students to. Well, if we go through the redistricting and if we determine that there are ways in which we can minimize that or improve it, that driver that's going to some of those pockets that we have, that driver could be used for a school that potentially is closed where you had to hire a driver for the walk zone. So I say that to say, even though we're saying you may have to hire another driver, in the big picture there may not be additional costs if we're able just to improve some of the inefficiencies that exist out there today. Because
070again, it's been a long time since we've redistricted. It's been over 12 years. Our lay of the land has changed and we clearly see that communities have aged out and they have changed to where we have capacities in some schools where we don't have capacities in others. You know, hindsight what I will tell you is if we could have, if we could have redistricted, we probably should have done it 10 years ago and we should have done it 5 years ago. If, and if we as a district had done that the imbalance that is there wouldn't have been as pronounced as it is today. But again, we're going to make that right. In the future, but it is one where that would have helped a little as far as the lay of the land and
071the balancing that is out there. This DPI report is something that every school district submits with their mileage and the number of student counts that they have. It's out there. It's public. You can see the history of what we have paid per student per year. You'll see that during COVID, especially when students returned, transportation was a lot higher because there were more transportation pieces and contract driving that we were providing for. So, you'll, you'll see a variance if you go actually look at the chart on the state page. But again, the other takeaway for transportation knowing that we're saying that for Sewell and Ephesus, it's about $112,000 to $117,000 additional dollars for the students that we would have to transport that we're not transporting today. Glenwood transportation has basically said that they do not believe
072that Glenwood would be added cost. When they look at the history of the number of students that ride the buses to Glenwood versus the parents that drop them off, and they compare it to FPG, which is also a program school, and the number of parents, that number really doesn't sway. So in their mind, they, they believe that that would probably kind of negate out because there might be different parents that are driving their kids to Glenwood if that school was to close, but it would still be about the same number because they have seen that consistency with the programs over the time that the programs have been there. So, we've put that pretty much as a neutral cost. But in the report, we do show what the actual cost would be if you had to
073transport everybody, because our program schools, we provide transportation to all students that participate in them. So, you'll see the big number in there too. But realistically, our transportation department felt pretty confident from historical data that Glenwood would not change. So criteria 8, and this is the one the final one but I want to be able to spend a little more time because there is some new information here that we've got as far as how we are using our buildings. But I just want to remind everybody, there have been 3 types of reports or analysis that have been done that we've used. First is the Woolpert Report. It was not just a facility report, it was an optimization report. And then we had the SAFO capacities, which have been the historical way in which our county
074has been able to decide if we need to build more schools because of enrollment increases in years past. SAFO was ultimately created at a time when developers many years ago either had to pay fees, or if the district saw that the development that was being proposed created hardship where they didn't have the seats, they could deny developers at the time. The laws have changed, and you cannot stop development by the basis that you don't have seats in your schools, and you can't charge them proffers or fees that occurred nationally. Those laws have changed. But SAFO was a document that ultimately was created in a very conservative level to be able to tell a developer yes or no. And if they told a developer no, they had to be able to be a little more over
075the top with them to say, even if we had this many seats in our school, we don't have enough for what you are proposing. So those numbers, we call them legacy numbers, and you will see that discussion in the analysis that was done. That was really used SAFO was used when our district was growing, and we're not in that state where we are growing. We still have a net decline over the next 10 years, and we actually have to look at what how do we manage a decline in student population? Hence, program capacity is very important at that point because it's how you're using your buildings with the children that you have today. And that's the program capacity piece you see here. So again, I just want to walk through what each of these reports
076did. You know, the Wolpert Report They utilized the square footage per student to evaluate the size and adequacy of the school facilities for the bond support. Their job was to come in to show where our needs were and if our schools were adequate or not when it came to current instructional standards. And the case was that they were not, and that the Board of County Commissioners said that we should be replacing schools. We shouldn't just renovate schools. We need to make the spaces that are necessary so our schools can be up to current standards for the next 50 years, knowing that they've been open for 50 to 70 years at this point for the first ones that we were looking at. The SAFO capacity it really looks at legacy capacities, but I do want to
077say that it is irrespective of community and academic programs, like it doesn't talk about the EC/AC classroom settings. It doesn't talk about pre-K and a whole gifted programming multi-language programming, resource spaces. All of those things that allow our schools to be able to have the flexibility to do what they need to do working with our kids. That the SAFO was about getting as many kids into our buildings as possible, maximizing the building without looking at the instructional needs, because we know when you have instructional needs, that's going to lower that capacity. But that's what we have to do in the business of education. We've got to be able to provide those buildings because we are not creating offices that businesses would have. We're creating learning environments with children that all have different learning abilities, different
078stages of learning, and we have to be able to address those with our staff. And then the program capacity is basically where it's what I would call the ground truthing. Just like we did ground truthing with Carolina Demography going out on the job sites and looking at the developments, NC State who works with all of our K-12 districts in this capacity they actually went and we inventoried all of our elementary schools initially. We looked at all of the spaces that were being used. We sized them up. We matched those up with current North Carolina DPI standards as well as best practices. And then we went and met with all of the administrations at those schools, primarily the principals, to better understand how their buildings are working and not working. What, what needs do they have
079when it comes to world language space, AIG space, resource rooms, calming rooms, sensory rooms? Any, any type of room of that nature. And what we found is our newer schools, if they were at capacity, they were doing okay. Our older schools, if they were at capacity, they didn't have the flexible space. And then our older schools that didn't have the students in them, they were able to use that extra classroom space to offset those other classroom needs that we have that are non-instructional. So, in that we kind of ground truth and really looked at So what you're going to see is basically SAFO has a high number for capacity. And as you get into program capacity, that always lowers the number. And that's what I really want to talk with you about today, because that's
080where if we go through a redistricting process, we can't just say that we're going to turn the world upside down, move our entire district around, and then put them into spaces that are not flexible and do not give them the supports that the schools, the staff, and the children need. We've got to keep that in mind because again, I've, I've used this phrase before. I believe that that is one of the tenets of what makes the fabric of our district is how we address the individual needs of our students. And we have we take advantage of the spaces that we have to maximize that. And we can't allow that because districts that are growing in size, they are very limited because they just have to put children in seats. And we if we have the
081ability to hit the reset, we've got to do it right, because we know that if we do turn into a growing situation in years to come, you know, we all keep our fingers crossed for that we may have to pull that space back in time, but we shouldn't start that way from the beginning. We need to get back to where we were 20 years ago. So again, I do want to share, because I think this is an important part. One of the biggest things that Woolpert did, in my opinion, was they determined the level of educational adequacy in our schools. And I've already said that to you. Our older schools were lacking, our newer schools were not. And there were 3 questions that they asked. And they asked, do students have all the necessary schools,
082do they have all the necessary rooms? Were the rooms appropriately sized? And then do the rooms have the right equipment? And you remember when I presented the Wolpert Report, I basically said we were horrible when it came to do we have all the necessary rooms? And we didn't do well when we had are all the rooms appropriately sized? But we did fairly well, 83%, 86%, and 88% with do our rooms have the right equipment? And I've always said in our district, we are resource rich in many respects. It's resource rich, not on a capital side, but on a human resource and with materials and supplies that are appropriately placed in our schools. And they acknowledged that they saw that there was the appropriate equipment in all of our educational spaces. And at the elementary level,
083these, the 3 schools here under the study, it demonstrates that. So that was really good because that opened our eyes that we really need to look at the program capacity because they're basically saying our spaces are not sized appropriately, which means that you may not have those supports. So, we really had to go meet with the principals and inventory their schools to learn that since we had not redistricted in quite a while. So, the analysis that they did, and I don't want you to think there's not a huge report that NC State did for us. They've got a, basically a database of best practices and they help us facilitate by taking all the information and putting it in to help us determine what that percentage of utilization is. That's what it is. So, in the
084end, this chart here, that is like the culmination of all the work that they did. And what it does is it shows you the difference in capacities between Wolpert, Sappho, our program capacity, and then taking what we've determined is our program capacity and then looking at the current enrollment from the PMR-2 and then coming up with a utilization rate. Our utilization rate Dr. Dollar would, would probably say that with his using the SAFO number, our utilization rate was probably about 74% because of the most recent decline we had this past fall. He said 80% to us a year before. When we look at the program capacity, we look at what does it take to get all of our children out of modular units, back into our schools with a minimum number of flexible spaces for
085schools to use for school-centric needs. We're at 81%. Now ideally at the elementary level 85 to 95% is really a program capacity range for an elementary school. When you get into middle and high school, those numbers go up because children are taking electives, they're moving around in the building, and you have the ability to pack the spaces more. But again, we have class count max sizes by the state at certain grade levels. Our children are not born in those sizes to where some schools you may have 3 sections of a kindergarten one year, 2 sections the next year, and those cohorts move through the school. So those are examples of where you got to have some flexibility in the building to be able to accommodate that. So taking all that account, if we were to
086redistrict today, we would probably add about 80 from 81% to be able to ensure that all of our schools have that flexibility for the future, we'd probably add about 3 to 4% to that number. So, it would take you to, I'll say, 84%. Now, what they came in and said is that in doing so, bottom line, if you were to close one school, they believe that it would take our rate without the flexible space, that 3% that I'm talking about, that it would take it up to 87 to 89% with just closing one school. If you close two schools, you're pushing past 95% range. And that does not include providing schools with the flexible spaces that they need. And this is where I got to go back two slides, or one slide. If you look
087at McDougall Elementary on this chart and you look at the far right, they're at 118%. That's an example of where if we only allowed them to use they have one flex space in their school is what we found. They've got pre-K in trailers, they have put all their core classes in the school, and they have one flex space to use for calming, sensory, resource, world language, AIG, whatever they need that for, which means they're putting all that stuff into the regular classrooms because they don't have the flexibility. That's where you get that extra 2 to 3% that I've kind of talked about, where you need to be able to give schools, because that would reduce or increase that number from 81. It would raise it higher than 81 if you did that at McDougall. So
088it's not just that you have schools that are under capacity. We do have some schools that are over capacity. And again, for the study here, you see Ephesus Elementary is at 100% utilization rate predicted in 5 years. Sewell Elementary is at 81%, and then Glenwood is at 100%, and that's including the dual language program. Now, when NC State looked at Glenwood, they did not use Dr. Dollar's housing projection. They used the fact that what is the what is the class the cap that we have on the program. That's why it shows 100%, because our the goal would be to always have that program at 100%. Utilization to the best of our ability. Not that every year it's at 100%, you know, it's based upon how many children and families choose for their children to apply
089to it, and then it's lottery based upon that, because we know that there have been some years where Glenwood has had cohorts that are a lot smaller than other cohorts. So, it does vary, but we shot that to show 100% there. So, with that being said this is the other epiphany. I kind of started with Dr. Dollar in the beginning saying that hemorrhaging or that decline, it's really slowing down. It's, it's occurring at a lesser speed. And I'm ending it with saying that if based upon our diligence going through the school criteria for closure that if I was to recommend the number of schools that you could consider, I would only be able to recommend one school to you, not two. So, for your consideration, it's either no schools to close or one school to
090close. But I and our staff cannot recommend that you try to pack the closure of two schools within the redistricting and the process when it comes to program capacity. If there is a, you know, there are districts that have to do that when they're, they cannot make payroll for people and they have to do it. I don't believe that we're in that position. We've had to make a lot of tough decisions with you and Dr. Trice in the district. And I think that we're at a point where I don't believe we're at that stage where we have to do that for survival or necessity, unlike a lot of our colleagues in other districts that have had to make those difficult choices. But for me, it would be one school. And again, I can't reiterate that
091enough. So, with all that being said, our next steps, obviously the board's going to be having a public hearing May 21st, and that you as board will continue to engage in discussions. About making those informed decisions. So, you know, with that being said, I'm happy to answer any specific questions that you may have on what I've presented or if there's anything within the report that you may need clarification with as you deliberate. Thank you, Mr. Sciarrocchi. I know this is just a high-level summary. We didn't go we didn't do a page turn. So thank you for not doing that. We would have been here all night. I know, board members, this is a big study that we, we just received, you know, yesterday, kind of to help us do at least a pre-read for this
092meeting. The community just saw it today. So, I don't know if anyone has any initial thoughts, comments, or questions or anything you want to share right, right now. Obviously, we've got some future meetings as well. Go ahead, Meredith. Yeah, I just jotted down a few questions while I was looking at the report and listening to you talk. I wrote down a couple more. So you might have given this number, but I may have missed it, so apologies if I missed it, but do you know what percentage of utilization, and that accounting for the program utilization, not just the straight up and down building utilization is considered the best practice for an elementary school? Yeah, I think that when you look at utilization, I would say where the rubber hits the pavement, it's got to be
093program capacity. And what I, what I will say is that you need to be somewhere, I think 85% of just straight 85 is on the low end. But I do think that when you start getting 92, 94, there may be some discussions that we have to have in redistricting. And I'm not here to tell you that we're going to get every student out of modular units. That is the goal. But we may find with, say, pre-K requirements that maybe only one has to be in a trailer or two and not four in one, as an example, or that there may be a decision because there is a cohort where a class may have to be in a trailer for one year, but they know that they're not going to be in there. But program capacity,
094and I would say I would not go higher than 93, 94, I think that's pushing it. School districts that are able to hit 95% at the elementary level, they my experience has been that they don't the children only go to those schools and they don't travel with programs where there's transportation that takes them to a dual language program or a magnet program or an AIG program that's held at a different school. It's very fixed because then they're able to keep everything focused and under tight control. And I know I've mentioned to you in the past all of the opportunities and choices that we provide to our students. The cost of all of that on an operations side is always inefficiencies, especially when it comes to transportation. But that really has an impact on our program
095capacity. So I it would make me very nervous if we, if we're in this process, if we're hitting 95%, I would want the demographer to be able to demonstrate where, based upon the enrollment that they see at specific schools, that it's not creating a problem. But if it could be balanced enough to where you can hit 95% is where you want to go, but I don't think, I don't think we'll get there. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I mean, I, I take that as very good news. Like, I'm glad to hear that recommendation of one school versus two schools. I think that that is a less painful outcome. So, I'm happy to hear that that's where the numbers seem to be trending at this point. I also wanted to ask about criteria one. Does that
096not encompass geographic distribution across the district? In what respect? Like whether, you know, we have looking at whether we have an absence of schools in like a certain quadrant of the town. It doesn't. But when you get into criteria number 2, where it has an increase or decrease, that is really where you can see where there are pockets of student capacity currently within our schools. You know, the geographic conditions. I mean, when you redistrict, your goal is going to be to balance that. So, it does not cover it under geographic conditions, but it does cover your question under criteria 2. And when you look at the chart, you can see where, where we stand with schools where, let's say their capacity is 390 kids, but they have 280 kids in the building. You know, they
097may have pockets where we have schools where there's 150, 180 seats. Other schools, there might only be 30 seats available at this point. But that's where you'll see that geographic the distribution of where And you know, what I will tell you is that's all about I call it the life cycle of communities, where communities will age out and then they will regenerate and they will start again. So when you're looking at it from a redistricting balancing standpoint, you have to keep that in mind because you know that if there's a community that is not yielding as many kids in the future, that could change over time. And you know, planners out there, you know, they've got a lot of knowledge on the number of times that communities can kind of regenerate or recycle. To help
098us facilitate that. But that would all be part of the redistricting process. I mean, I guess my concern is more would be more pertinent if we were considering two schools versus one school, because you don't want to close two schools that are like right next door to each other, leaving a pocket of town without a school. So that was my concern. But if it's only one school, I feel like that may be less of an issue. Right, right. No, you know, in this case, and again, I'm just going to use examples. Well, If we were to close Sewell and Ephesus, we know that there are pockets of space and I'm just going by memory tonight. You've got Rashkis, Estes Hills, Northside. So in essence, if you were to close a school that's adjacent to schools
099that have capacity that ultimately could create more movement of students because you're going to have to move students from an, an not the adjacent school, but beyond the adjacent school. So, yes, it does improve if you only have one school with that respect. But again, that would be knowing that our districts and our schools are so close. The redistricting process, I think, would address that because we do have schools that could use some relief that could also balance that out. So, I don't see that as a problem in this case, but it could if those pockets of vacancies or capacity were not in the right spots. Got it. Yeah. And then the last thing I wanted to raise is just, can you describe a little bit, like, more about what the public can expect with
100the public hearing? Like, is it going to be that options will narrow and then that's what's going to be the subject of the public hearing, or will it be that we're going to just discuss every option that's on the table? Like, I'm just getting the sense from some of the public that, like, it's a little unclear kind of what that evening will look like? Yeah, well, I think a lot of that's going to depend upon what you and the board here deliberates and decides. I mean, it could be that potentially there is trending to one or two schools, or it could be that we leave this meeting tonight and there's discussion to where that public hearing could be for all three schools. At this stage, I mean, you guys have not been able to deliberate,
101but I think you could plan on it could be that there are 3 schools where the community would need to come and continue the public hearing process if there's no further discussion that comes from you as a board collectively, because we're not making any recommendations tonight as far as staff. So that's how I envision it. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Barb. Thank you very much. This is obviously a lot of work and you did it very quickly, so thank you. I have several questions, but I just want to ask one first. So, criteria 5, that chart about recent and projected capital expenditures. I think you explained it, but I just didn't get it. So, so like Ephesus, between 2020 and 2025, $678,000 were spent, right? And then Why does the number become $16 million in
1022025 and $20 million like, just explain that again. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the first chart is what we have spent between the years of 2020 through 2025, and in the report it shows you the types of projects that were done. You see the categories. What it's showing beyond that are projects that we are projecting based upon life cycle, age, and condition that the school we would ultimately have to plan to replace over time. So we show that over that time, and we show the escalation of 5 years and 10 years so that you can kind of get the magnitude of though you may only have to invest if we were able to get the money to do all of that work in the first 5 years, it would be less than what it would be
103due to escalation, rising costs in 10 years. So it's just a 2-year escalation, 2-period escalation that you're seeing. But those are for projected projects. They are not projects that we've done. But you'll notice in the report, you will see things like, again, sewer replacement, storm sewer replacement, domestic water piping, roofing, air conditioning. Those are things that we know we're going to have to replace in those buildings within the next 10 years. But what I tried to say is, with the level of funding that we have, I can't tell you that we're going to do all of that work. We're only going to do what we have to do unless our funding ability from the county changes for our maintenance. So, I didn't it's a risk. There's a need out there, but it's going to be
104responding as just in time as things are need to be replaced, if that makes sense. Related, then the same criteria. So that chart, the numbers are pretty different from the Woolpert chart. And I think you explained this, but could you just explain it again why? Yeah. So, Our staff went and looked at the basic systems within our, within our schools. Woolpert went in and they looked at what information we provided, what they grabbed, and it's they're not the same. The methodology and what they chose, it's just not the same. And I've always said not to focus on the Woolpert report, but I showed both because there is a disparity. And I just want you to know it's somewhere in between. But Woolpert has already demonstrated that what they identified for us, they didn't hit the
105mark because we've had things that they didn't even identify that have failed. Or things that they said we probably had 10 more years, and they were low priority and they have failed. So again, that's the nature of working with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. And you just have to be able to respond just in time. But I wanted to show that as a comparison that they're both, they're both up there. And I can, you know, we have other schools Because the Woolpert Report you've heard this, but the public may not you know, it showed East Chapel Hill with a huge amount of money that was needed. And that's not one of our oldest schools, but the school has reached an age where all of the major infrastructure systems have to be replaced. Carrboro High had
106infrastructure systems that needed to be replaced. McDougall Elementary and Middle was very high on cost. Because there were systems that are hitting that age. So that's really what they were looking at. But they are different. They are. And I, I could tell you right now, if the county was to hire another company to come in, their number is going to look different than that. But I feel pretty confident though, what our team has come up with, that those are things that we really have to look at from a hard level just to be sure, because that's what they're monitoring with our facilities. Yeah, I have a question. I think one of the things I found really interesting was looking at the new developments and kind of the estimates about number of students. How confident are
107we about those numbers? I mean, I know they're estimates. Yeah, so I can only go by what the demographer tells us, right? I mean, I'm not the one that created them, but You know, again, the demographer, Dr. Dollar, said that he felt very confident in the 5-year. But again, that's a very subjective approach. And, you know, other demographers might look at it differently and have a different number. So, I think we have to take best faith effort. But, but in my mind, there was more diligence done by them at the request of the county to be able to, again, that ground truthing, because that had not occurred before. And we know that the previous SAFO reports, they would show numbers that developments would yield a certain number of kids. And I can always tell you,
108I've told people, but our buses aren't going there. They're saying that they're going to yield this many kids, but we only have maybe one kid coming out of it, or our bus is only picking up one. Now, there could be parents that are taking kids, but then when you look in the system and you see the addresses of where our children are and they're not in some of those developments. So, the ground truthing at least brought it to what I believe is a more realistic expectation. But again, that's where, for me, I think you have to take that with a grain of salt and you have to say it could go either way. And that's why I that's part of my rationalization. Program capacity is not taking that prediction into account. It's looking at what
109is there today and then what are they saying. But it's got to be we just have to monitor that. And that's why I kind of use that analogy of headfirst versus feet first versus headfirst. Because again, if we close 2 schools and we find that in 3 years we didn't have to, that's problematic for everybody in our community. And that's not a place that I think we need to put ourselves into. At the same time, it does validate some of the housing and maybe some of the housing changes of policies that may have occurred, possibly. But time will tell on all of that. I just don't think we should go that's why I showed 5-year and 10-year, because the bulk, though, the demographer said the changes were in the first 5 years, not the 10
110years. So that's why we've got to monitor that, and I think that's why we have to be cautious, because that greatest amount of fluctuation could occur between 0 and 5 years. Mr. Sciarrocchi, I've got a question while other board members think and ponder. When we're looking, and this is kind of like, I guess, aligned with what Melinda was asking, on criteria 8, that site adequacy. So as we're going down this path of discussion and we're considering number of schools, it feels like 1 is bubbling up based on some of this information. I'm looking at any receiving school, right? So, we've got a number of schools that are not at that capacity, I guess, sweet spot that you mentioned, right? And so how much, you know, how many students, like what's their capacity to receive students?
111So I'm looking at, I think it's the, it might be a couple more down from there. Yeah, it's further down. We've got, you know, schools like Rashkis at 55%, Northside at 60%, Scroggs at 62%. So if you look at the program capacity where it has CHCCS program capacity, that's the capacity that NC State is saying. I just use an example. If you could see what's on here, we just use Carrboro Elementary. It says Wolpert said they were at 543, Sappho said 518. The program capacity that NC State is saying, it's 520. So, if you go down and let's say look at Sewell, it would be a program capacity of 416 kids. That's what they believe that Sewell can hold today. What that number is not taking into account is any modifications we make if Sewell
112needs an additional flex space based upon something that's school-centric. And that's where I kind of added to that number of, of program utilization because you got to have a little extra there to meet the needs of some of our individual schools. But that chart right there shows you where the program capacity is. So you can look at that and you can look at where we're projected and you can kind of get a feel trend-wise. Because again, I think with this report, you can't lock yourself into specific numbers and say, oh, it's 520, you know, the enrollment is a certain number because that enrollment changes. Number of people moving into the neighborhood might change. So you got to you just got to take that into account and use this as a from a broad stroke perspective.
113But clearly you could see where the other chart that's in the presentation, we do have schools that have the ability to accept new students. And where we've talked a little bit about, we know when that time comes, there's going to have to be a lot of work that's done to preserve the culture of that school. But also to allow the school to embrace cultures of other schools that are kind of blending in with it because you are kind of changing that recipe a little. But you want to try to preserve the best of both, and we've talked about that as a need. But there are, there are schools that through the redistricting, depending upon what decisions are made by the board could have substantial numbers of students coming into them, if you want to call
114it that. And I think right now the biggest three are Estes Hills, Northside and Raskis would be the 3 that probably have the greatest capacity, though there are other schools like Morris Grove has some capacity. But again, that chart is just an approximation to kind of give you that ballpark. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, I'm, I'm curious. I mean, I'm, I'm going to keep going down this redistricting rabbit hole a little bit because obviously I think that's something we have to think about in parallel to this decision, cause it's like we make a decision and then we have to kind of immediately think about redistricting. And so, you know, thinking about like, we've got 3 schools we're considering, and we've looked at information on like transportation. You know, I just asked the question about
115capacity of some of, some receiving schools so that we do have some capacity at a number of our schools to receive significant number of students, not a whole school, right, at any one school without being disruptive. And so my question is, as we're thinking about disruption, because I think for me that's like a goal, like if we can disrupt as little as our communities we can with this. And then also I think you've hinted at, we've got some redistricting things that we probably could clean up. As a board that'll help give us some efficiencies as well that, you know, have, have bubbled up over the years as, as our district has changed. Is there something, or, you know, I think a path that we should consider in your opinion in terms of like the least
116disruptive option for us to think about as a board that we should probably just kind of think about over these next few days and weeks? The one thing that we continue to talk about is, you know, we always say, what is the least disrupt what could you first of all, closing any school is disruptive. Yeah, I want to be very clear, I don't want anyone to think that that's easy. It is one of the toughest decisions that any school board could ever make and staff to make before a community, right? But if you're thinking about what is the least disruptive for students, for parents, for staff, for staff, because literally staff, a lot of staff potentially could be moved. You want to, you want to try to do things that mitigate that movement if you
117can. Meaning if you close a school that's far away, real far away from the schools that have capacity, then you're going to have to have a domino effect. You're going to have to move kids. Kids from one school that closes is going to have to move to another school. That adjacent school is going to have to move to the school that has the capacity. Because again, we're not going to take kids from the west side of our district and move them all the way over to the east side and say, you're just going to be on a bus for 45 minutes every day, guaranteed. That's not what you're going to do. So anything that you can do to prevent that movement, because if you can mitigate the movement of masses of kids to the best
118of your ability, then you are moving less families, you're moving less staff. So, then you're not taking I'll just have to make up a number you're not taking 150 kids out of a school and moving them into another school and then moving 100 of those kids out to make room in a third school. Then those staffs have to be moved accordingly. So, if you can make it to where one, a small pocket of students and a small pocket of staff move versus a large pocket of staff and students, That helps. And I think that, you know, there are opportunities that are out there with some of those scenarios that will allow that. It's just you guys just having to figure out which ones you prioritize and which ones you believe have the least impact. And,
119you know, I can help and other staff, we can help answer those questions. Our transportation staff were very, very helpful for me when I worked directly with them to understand how they operate and how that all, how that all works and how we get children from point A to point B. And it's, it's pretty amazing. We provide a lot of not just general bus stop pickup and drop-off. We provide a lot of individualized transportation because of the program offerings that we have. And it really, it has opened my eyes to that even more so of how we have used that to leverage opportunities for our students here. So, I always say inefficient transportation is actually a good it's a healthy sign of a school district because it means that you're providing choices to your students.
120If you have the most efficient transportation department in the state, it means you're probably not offering those choices because choices mean inefficiency. It's just a reality. Go ahead, Ronnie. Mr. Shoroki, thank you so much for all the data. There is a lot of rich richness in the packet. So I know the public will likely spend some time digesting it. I know I was took me some hours to get through it, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. I am particularly glad to see we are now just thinking about whether it's one school or zero schools. I think I've always had concerns about our ability to logistically manage closing two schools and all the accompanying changes that that would require. I do think, Lisa, as I ponder your question about minimizing disruption, and I
121think that is sort of the key question of it really makes me think about how do we preserve programming? How do we think about what sites would impact transportation in the least way? And so that leads me to Glenwood as a potential site for school closure. And so my question is, how do we think about redistricting in a way in a way that preserves our commitment to programming. And so maybe one question is like, is there an opportunity to convert another school to a magnet school and take at least some element of the programs that exist at Glenwood to that site, that location? So you'd like for me to use Glenwood as an example? Sure. Okay. So, what we determined with, with Glenwood is a program school. There are no children that just by residential
122address attend Glenwood. You, you move to that area, you go through a lottery system. If there's availability, you get in. If there's, if there's no there's a waiting list, you don't get in. And then for people who live in that community, they have other schools that they can attend, you know, up to 4 schools that they have the ability to attend. The. What we've determined is at least that, you know, and I know the community has said that, you know, they have desire to keep both programs together, but from a structural human resource standpoint, program delivery standpoint, from staffing and teaching, the two programs, they are independent. So, you know, we've put out there that you could move the school as a whole, or potentially you could separate the dual language the world language from
123the dual language Mandarin components. That's been out there. It's been in community meetings. If you were to move the entire program, you know, we have two schools that are in that boat. It's FPG and Glenwood that are full program schools. FPG is far greater in size and capacity in comparison, right? They're close to 500 kids there. But either way, if you move a program, if Glenwood was to move, you're going to have to move an entire school that you move it to out of their school. Because you it's not designed to have a residential component and then to have those other two programs. That's just too much for a school to have three tracks, if you want to call it, is what, you know, it's been communicated with us. But that would be a challenge.
124I mean, obviously, if you were to move an entire program, then you have to work with that community, decide which school that would be and which community those children might be displaced. And of course, you could pick a school that has the, the least number of students in it right now, meaning they have the greatest unused or underutilized capacity. So, you would be moving less kids in that case, but you would be again taking away that, that residential piece where people have walkability. You know, you're taking that component away as well. You could also, if you were to split a program school, if you have that ability At Glenwood, it's pretty much all rounded, 200 kids in each. You could move 200 kids into one of the schools that has capacity, especially if the data
125is showing that it looks like that enrollment's even going to continue to go down. It'll give greater flexibility because you know that if you move the students and there were other students that moved into that residential area that where it now became a program, those students would still have the ability to go to that school because you would have two tracks. You would have the Mandarin program that's there and you would still have a residential program, very similar to what we have at Carrboro Elementary. So, you could take those pockets of vacancies with Glenwood as the example, and you could put you know, throw it out there put one at one school, put one at the other. Then when you come to redistricting, if Glenwood is the school that was selected, if you go to
126the redistricting, those schools have been filled. So, we're now you're not moving masses of children to backfill to balance. So, when it comes to moving, less movement of students, moving a program school, you're going to reap more benefit from doing that than you would if you chose another school. And again, I'm not saying that that's the reason to select a school, but it is a big one when it comes to reducing the movement because you're filling those gaps So then you're not forcing more and more kids to be moved to be able to balance that. You know, the downfall is if you don't do that, let's say we didn't close Glenwood and we closed another school, you might have to make a decision to have a school that maybe doesn't that you don't fill the
127capacity and you don't balance it with compared to the other schools because you decide that you end up moving more kids and that's more disruptive to fill that school. From an efficiency standpoint, you need to do something to fill your schools. It's putting programs into them, if it's redistricting, you've got to find a balance. But Glenwood, as the example that you've asked, I mean, that would, that would fill the void of possibly two schools if that program was to split. But, you know, if you kept the program as a whole, you're just going to have to determine which school you would put it in and then have to work with that community as we've gone through this process with multiple communities this past year to be able to work through that as well. Both can
128be done. Yeah, so I just, I guess, thanks for that. That's super helpful because again, like, you try to minimize disruption in one place and maybe unwittingly create it in another by, you know, changing, eliminating another walk zone. But the one thought I had is if we converted another school to a magnet, you could potentially allow those walk zone families to become part of that magnet program so that you might have you are probably going to lose some students who are currently in the program who may go back to their home schools. And so you could imagine a scenario where you might have an additional 100 school students or so, 200 students who are already at that school who want to then continue to stay there, but they would join the magnet program. In the
129scenario where you split the where you split the programs, not moving the entire program. It's moving the entire program and allowing current students to join the program. So they wouldn't be able to join the dual language, but they could join the world language, for example. The only piece that I think about in that scenario is if we had a school that was that large, I think if you move 400 students out of Glenwood into another school, you'd have to have a school that's got, you know, 500 to 550 capacity so that you've got students that can choose to stay at that school and it just doesn't fill it. Or you'd have to say, well, it's a I'll make this up it's a 460-student capacity school. There's 400 kids from Glenwood. There's only 60 seats for
130the people who live in that area that can get into it. All the rest would have to go to another school. So, if you had a school that was large enough that had way extra space, I think the model that you're suggesting that could work. And you could I think when Glenwood ultimately, when the STEAM program was added, you know, there were legacy students that were there that were residential students. And there was ultimately, I believe, in the beginning, there was some weight that was given that allowed them, and then that weighting changed, and it's no longer part of the factor. But you could put some kind of weighting that gives them priority if you were to do something like that. Yeah, I'd be interested in continuing to think about how to not eliminate walk
131zones. I think that's like a high priority for me. And that's love to hear from other board members. Any other thoughts? I'll just say that's a big one in your scenario, that it's a that's a negative impact because it would be I mean, you could think about how to do it creatively, right? Like we talked about offering, you know, because it would only be the kids that within the walk zone that go to the program that could benefit from that. Everyone else we would still have to transport. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Ronnie. Any other questions or comments or thoughts? Go ahead, Barb. Mr. Shoki, is it we did start am I right to say that it's less dire than it seemed when we first started this process? I mean, it kind of seems not
132as terrible. It's it has simmered. Okay. And that's because it started full bore because we saw the decline. Right. The piece that was missing was the program capacity. We were using legacy numbers, and I think it started the conversation and it got us moving in the right direction. But I think that is probably one of the best things out of the diligence process is that we have to do program capacity no matter what because we have to redistrict. And by including that in the initial study, I think it is allowing us to make a very better informed decision so that we didn't overdo what we thought we were going to do. Okay. And the other There's new information that we didn't have when we first started, right, about the enrollment not being the decline not
133being as steep as we thought. Right. The housing. The two big factors that have come to you have been Dr. Dollar when he brought back the housing component that the county had part of his contract, and he told us that. That was a big piece. And then the program capacity was that's really new to you. Mm-hmm. And that really just I'll say, sealed the decision for staff in their recommendation because we were kind of on the line until we really started looking at not taking away from our schools for the things that have allowed them to be successful with respect to programs. Okay. And you said initially we were all talking about this through almost purely a fiscal lens and that you've shifted. You've had an epiphany. And are we basically saying that the difference
134in projected capital expenditures in the 3 schools It's just too hard to tell, and then it's not a meaningful the differences between those numbers is not a reason to make a decision one way or the other. I don't think you can put all your eggs in that basket. Okay. But I will say this, we as a district, and you've heard me preach about this, we have tremendous risk, right, when it comes to the, the condition of our buildings and the fact that at any given moment we could have an air conditioning die that may take weeks to get a wired in a portable chiller into, to get a component replaced. We are at that risk, and the longer that we do not receive that funding, the greater that risk becomes for us. And, you know,
135we could give examples of where we've had some failures, but so it's real. But when it comes to actually being able to say that we're going to spend that money, right, unless something changes, I can't tell you that. So it would be hard for me to say use that as your exclusive reason, because you got to put children first and instruction first, because we know that our buildings are used differently than the way most people use buildings, and you just got to balance it. Okay, and so I know the answer to this, but I could see somebody writing in to say, why don't you just close the smallest schools? That's the least disruptive thing to do. If we can't really figure out the projected capital expenditures with the level of precision that we'd like to,
136then why don't we just close Rashka? I mean, I'm not you know what I'm saying? Like that And I so could you just help us? Yeah. You know, I think I think if you have any school that is 50 to 60 years of age that has not had any major capital investment by its locality are all schools that are probably under consideration to weigh closure or not. And when we worked with Woolpert, I always say they were given targets to develop their recommendations and they worked with us, our staff, I mean, directly. It wasn't like they just created something and didn't talk with us about it. But if they were given the blank check, they would have recommended replacing all 6 elementary schools, not just the first 3. But they were told they only had
137a certain amount of money because the county was trying to sell a bond, and they had to go with what they felt they could afford. And so that we had those numbers that were set, so they were asked to build scenarios based upon targets. That's, that's where that originated from. But again, our schools, they do need to be replaced. I mean, we can renovate them, but people are going to go into the buildings, they're going to say, yeah, you got new lights, you got new plumbing, but that wall was there in 1952. It still looks the same, or it's not meeting the flexibility and the space requirements. Or we could spend a lot of money and we can move the walls around, but then in the end you're still in an old facility. And I
138think that we're at a point where We, you know, ultimately the mantra has been fewer, newer schools, and I think that we need to leverage that when we can just because the funding is not there, and we need to be fiscally responsible in that respect. But that need is it is there. I don't want to dismiss that. It's just the fact that if you don't have the money, it's kind of hard to say that that's the case when you don't have the money you don't have the money to fix it. So, you know, closing a school reduces that investment because if you get any money, you don't have to put it into a building. You can lower your denominator to where you have less buildings that you have to focus on. That's the gain. So,
139closing one school in this scenario, if that's all we can do, that helps us, helps us tremendously. It also allows us potentially to look at options for that space that could be used. And I've thrown out there, and again, I'm not saying we're doing this, but we may need a flex space. A swing school space if there was ever something catastrophic. It just gives you that ability. But again, that building, that whatever building is chosen, if that's the decision of the board, that building only has but so much more life to it before you'd have to invest the millions of dollars because something will fail. And then you're going to say, do I put $5, $6 million into these two investments at that school when we're only using it as a swing school or not?
140It's a tough predicament. But again, we could have failures at any of our schools. It doesn't have to be our oldest. You know, we have examples of that. Go ahead, Vicki. Thank you for the report. There is a data point that I would actually be interested in if someone might be able to get it. For me. The under Criteria 3, the inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected, and where and I'll read the, the reasoning, and then I'm going to ask the question. Where it's saying, to stay grounded in student experience, universal risk factors exist that should apply across all schools. These include the importance of stable relationships with peers and teachers. I would like to know I would like to be able to get the data points for the 3 schools in question, the breakdown
141that we have of our students. I would like that for staff and teachers. That in that same way, I'd like to see those numbers. So, the breakdown for student groups for staff at the 3 respective schools. Yes, I would like to see that. I can work with human resources to see if we have that data or not. I will say we do have the on our website, we've got the school profile site. I use it all the time. And so, if you go to CHCCS School Data Profiles and search that and pull it up, it gives you that, Vicki. So, you can. I've seen historically. I want it today. This that is it's. yeah, it's updated. And so, when you click on it, you can see the faculty right beside it. So, for Glenwood, You've
142got the ethnicity side by side. And then sorry, I just lost I can't go back. You got to and then Ephesus similarly. Were you able to find that? Okay. I'll go through and look at it. I just wanted to be able to have it. Okay. Yeah, it's under for the public. I think the way I get to it, and I'm looking at the path, it's under academics, assessment and research. And then it's CHCCS School Data Profiles. And then what you're going to need to do when you do go to that site, you're going to click at the top where it says School Profiles Web Application, and then it'll open it up. So, I use that a lot, so that's why I know where it is. Somebody pointed it out to me a couple years ago,
143It's really handy. We've got a great team that keeps it up to date. Any other comments or questions or thoughts right now? It's not going to be our last time. George. I was waiting. I kept looking. Well, it's been a Al, it's been a great presentation of the thorough report, and I've been listening with interest to all of my board colleagues. I mean, great points and good questions. Very helpful. One thing Miss Dossi said that really kind of resonated with me is and the question was, I think, from Meredith about what's the context of the public hearing in a couple of weeks? And we set it up, as I recall, to give the community a time to comment on what we're talking about tonight, as opposed to asking them to react tonight or do something
144like that. And I also know a public hearing is a public hearing, so you can't put any parameters on what the topic is really, or what people say other than what we've done. But Ronnie's comments about the future have really resonated with me because this whole discussion is going to be more important What's our vision of where are we going in the next 6 to 12 months with our redistricting and our planning? You know, can we have some new programs? Can people start to offer some things into the discussion about what are we going to look like a year and a half from now when we redistrict all of our schools? And when I say all, maybe it doesn't mean all 11 or 10 schools, but maybe it does. I mean, maybe every school has
145X number of students who are affected by redistricting. And I just I don't want to have the 3 schools that we're talking about tonight feel like they have to it's all or nothing for them. So, I'm just proposing. I'm not asking for anybody to say yes or no or anything, but I would like to start to hear from people. What can we look like here? It sounds like we need to make some changes. So, what can that be? And this, I just wanted to kind of put that out there. Thanks. Thank you, George. We do have a retreat next week, so we may be talking about some of that. So great. Any other thoughts or comments or questions? Okay. All right. So, at this point this is a work session topic. I know we have
146one person who signed up in advance and they asked to be moved to, to work session, so we can have them speak. Let me, let me just go over work session public comments. It's the same as our general public comment section. It'll be 3 minutes. I think many of you have heard the rules. Do you need me to repeat them? Okay, thank you. It's long. Okay. So, we will start with Liz Vale. And if you do see your name as next speaker, why don't you go ahead and make your way. And I'm just I'm going to look at Ms. Holloway just for her to give me the number who signed up so far. Just Tamara, can you just give me a number how many have signed up? Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So,
147hi, Liz. I'm Liz Vail, and I come to you tonight wearing multiple hats: a former classroom teacher in this district, a formal a former central office staff member, a current substitute, and a parent of a future Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools student. While I'm not employed full-time by CHCCS, I've been closely following the board's discussion about the future of our schools because I care deeply about our students, our families, and our district's future. A close friend and mentor of mine, Coretta Sharpless, always says, "We are in the business of serving children." And that truth has to remain at the center of every decision made here. I'm not here to recommend or defend which schools should stay open, but I do want to name what I believe is the most important piece of this process and the
148piece that has not yet fully been centered: what happens after the closure for everyone. Because closing a school is not the end of the decision, it's the beginning of new ones. How will you intentionally design and redesign the absolute best schools possible from the inside for the students who remain? The kind of school's families move here for, the kind of schools where every child feels known, challenged, and supported, and where access to those experiences is intentional and not accidental. If this is truly about becoming a smaller, more sustainable district, then it must also be about becoming a stronger, more innovative one. I know Dr. Trice, and I know that innovation and bold thinking are core to how he leads. This is a moment for that calls for exactly that. So, thanks for mentioning that, Dr.
149Griffin. This is an opportunity not to just consolidate, but to rethink programming, strengthen community, and build schools literally and figuratively that are not simply maintained but intentionally designed for excellence. And that thinking cannot wait until June 4th. I urge you to begin building that vision now so that when a decision is made, families and staff can see the outline of what comes next. No one expects a fully formed plan in 3 weeks. There should be evidence that a thoughtful, student-centered vision of what's to come for the entire district is already taking shape. Because students deserve more than a decision about what's closing. They deserve clarity about what is coming next. For families, this process is hard and is deeply personal, and I hope we can begin shifting some of our energy toward the collective future
150of all students in this district, because how we show up now will shape the schools our kids experience moving forward. So my question to the board and staff is, what is the plan to ensure on the other side of this, CHCCS has schools that are stronger, all stronger, more cohesive, more innovative, and truly designed to serve all students well. Because that's the long game, and that's what our students deserve. Thank you. Next is Carly. Hi, I'm here as a teacher at Sewall, also a parent in the district for 11 years now. Looking at all the different schools and everything that's going on, I was looking at the data before I came and some of the things stood out to me that didn't seem like quite as clear-cut as the numbers on the page. We're looking
151at the walking, the number of kids walking specifically to Sewall. I know for a fact from before I was at Sewall, friends talking about how their kids should be able to walk to Sewall because it's right there, but they're in a different district. So really looking at like the full district map and where the neighborhoods are and where those kids are actually going, I think is important. I know there are neighborhoods that back up right up to Sewall School Road, and those kids don't go to Sewall. And I know, like I said, I had friends in those neighborhoods who were questioning why. Like, I moved here because we were right down the road, and they couldn't walk to school. Another thing I was looking at that really stood out to me was looking at, like,
152the test score data. We have transfer portals. Teachers are switching schools all the time. The teacher retention is like it's one of the highest turnover jobs. And so, we know that teachers are moving between schools, and when a teacher moves from one school to the other, their effectiveness goes with them. This is my first year at Sewell, but I've been in the district for a few years, and each year I've shown growth in my schools. But that doesn't mean that my growth didn't come with me and I can't do the same at another school. So, when we look at that, we have to keep in mind that teacher retention in each school, whether through the district or to other districts or to other jobs, is not consistent from year to year. I think when you
153were talking, Dr. Trice, when you're talking to us, you were saying something maybe it was not you, maybe it was HR that there's about 40 new teachers each year being hired because of the turnover rate. So, looking strictly at those numbers as one of the criteria, I feel like, is not as clear-cut as what it looks like on, on paper in the graphs. So, I think all that should also be considered while you're looking at it. And I do appreciate what you were saying about The satellite neighborhoods, those ones with yes, there are neighborhoods in where I live where the kids are going to Rashkis and some kids are going to Ephesus and some kids are going to Estes. They are some strange district lines, but it should all be taken into consideration on when
154we are moving the kids and where they should go and what makes most sense for them. Thank you. Thank you. Those were all our speakers who signed up. Oh, sorry. Those were all our speakers who signed up in advance. I do see some people who would like to speak. Can you guys Emily, thank you so much. And if you don't mind introducing yourselves. Hi, I'm Emily Kreutzer, PTA president at Glenwood Elementary. My comment tonight is mainly about the May 21st meeting. I've reached out to several of you about having a better space for capacity and parking. I think it comes down to equity and access, and also optics is who can get here early to get space in the room. It's going to be the parents that have the ability to sit stay at home,
155have childcare options. So, I think we just need to be really mindful of like preparing our communities for success. We can't expect our community to show up well if we're not doing the best for them. So, I would love for us to consider options where we're not just in the same building together, but we're under in the same room together, and we're able to support each other that way. So, it's not quite as divisive because I understand that there's I understand high schools are out, but middle schools are still an option. And the problem with rooms here is that it's if we're trying to come together as a community, we're already divided if you show up late because you had a work meeting and you're in a separate room. So, I would just love for
156you all to think about how we can best serve our community in that way. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Rachel Rossi. I'm a parent of a Glenwood student. I just kind of had a question for you guys to ponder and maybe a scenario that might help make things more clear. That utilization chart to me is inefficient because it's based on what you've said is outdated redistricting, correct? So, what is the true utilization based on redistricting scenarios? I think would be interesting to see what is the true capacity of this school once you redistrict. Is it less than it was? Is it more than it was once you redistrict? Like, how do you balance that in those scenarios? Would that help the board understand where the true capacity is? Because you're saying McDougall
157is over capacity. Well, where would those students then matriculate once you redistrict? Does that actually take away from McDougall, or does it put in a place that is then going to be over again? Like, how, how does that shape how you guys feel about who to close? Based on, like, proper redistricting based on new numbers, not what was done more than 10 years ago or so. I think that might be enlightening for the decision. So that was just my thought. Any other public comments? Good. If there's anyone else who would like to make a public comment, why don't you go ahead and head over. We've got that wonderful first row over there to the left of Andy. He'd love some company. Hi there, Sarah Abrahams. I'm a CHCCS alum, PTA board at Sewall, GPAC snack
158rep, and a parent of a current second grader at Sewall. I wanted to speak very briefly about some of the material presented, in particular co-location about Sewall and its unique profile in relation to Smith and Chapel Hill High. And I, I want the board very much to really look closely at what analysis was provided because it really isn't only about convenient drop-offs and pickups. Having a Pre-K through 12th grade campus is very rare and has incredible value. I can say personally, just my child's class and many classes in school, we have 2 students who come from Chapel High School who support the class twice a week, every week of the entire school year. And that's not minor, that's significant, and it adds real value and meaning, so with that in mind, if the criteria requires
159consideration about academic impacts, cross-school collaboration, and long-range planning, that campus connection piece really deserves serious analysis. I'd also like to note that the report only really gives minimal attention to Sewall's non-portable assets. The Critter Corner is mentioned, but the garden and the adjacency to Carolina North the outdoor learning environment and the campus design are not meaningfully assessed. I want to note that these aren't generic features that can simply be moved to another building. As you consider your decision, please do not ignore what has been omitted from the report, that Sewall has unique and highly valuable features that are worth preserving for the future of the district's portfolio. Thank you. Anyone else? Sorry. I'm Hannah Murphy, a parent and teacher at Ephesus. I've been following this process closely, and it occurred to me tonight sitting here
160that May 21st is coming up really quickly. We haven't seen any formal scenarios proposed related to this process. And I'm wondering if it's possible to make some sort of scenarios that were discussed tonight available to the public in a clear way before May 21st, especially since there are what Mr. Shoroki called receiving schools that could be deeply affected by this process and who should be involved in the public hearing. I think there's still some confusion about May 21st. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? All right. Thank you everyone for coming out. Go ahead, Ronnie. Yeah, I did want to sort of maybe have excuse me a conversation about the meeting on the 21st. Sorry. Location-wise, if we expect a lot of people, should we consider a different site? I know that the team
161has been working on that. I know some of the PTA leaders, they have PTA council emailed us. We've been looking. All of the high schools are booked. I know, I because I even did an outreach for one of the high schools too. I did not I did not I was not successful. So we, we are looking but I think I think right now, obviously, we have this space, but the team will continue to, to look and see in terms of options. I know we're we continue to work with the PTA council on this. And so, I think for those for the 3 schools, we'll continue to work with them, give updates in terms of what, you know, what the team has come up with. That meeting is going to be the most highly attended meeting
162out of all of them. So if there's meetings where people can't fit in the room and can't find parking and can't sign up in advance, like, because all 3 schools are going to be there, and then there's also talk about other schools coming because they're concerned about how it's going to impact them as well, I think we need to be really mindful. Again, if you redistrict, you're going to have do this anyway. 11 schools can't fit here, or 10 schools, or however many schools are left. So like, how can we Yeah, and yeah, and I know other schools are interested. Obviously, we won't until, until the board makes a decision, one, on whether to close a school, number of schools, and which schools. Obviously, we're going to have a lot of people interested, but we
163got that. That's like the first, first step, and then then we'll be able to do that. Again, I think the team is working really hard. I keep asking. So, we will keep you guys up to date on that. Okay. Thank you. Ronnie, did you have Yeah, I was just going to say, is there any opportunity to think about a different date? Because I agree, I think like it will be important for this to feel inclusive and be a space where everybody can hear the same conversation. I can't speak for that on the fly. I know it's not just the community; it's also the board. It's, it's hard enough at times to get us there, and so we want to make sure this is a date that's a standing board meeting. We want to make sure
164that we have all 7 board members. I think my board understands that whenever we have big decisions, I like to have all 7 of us here as best we can, and so I think that's I think, Ronnie, that's the tricky thing. I mean, we can look at it. I can ask board members. I will be candid, my schedule is really, really tight. So yeah, I appreciate that. And mine is as well. And this is one of the biggest decisions we're ever going to make. And so I think to the extent that we can be more flexible, you know, if it has to shift out a day or so, like, I appreciate how tight schedules are for everybody, but I'd love to. My job would beg to differ, you know, every day, right? So, but we'll
165Ronnie, we'll, we'll look at it some more. I'll work with Dr. Trice, Andy, and, and our clerk just to see if we can put a feeler out there if we have an alternative day. Also, I think because we have publicized this date, I think the community is anticipating it too. So, I think I think people probably have moved things around themselves as well, but we will look very quickly over the next couple of days to see what we have available to us. Meredith, I think Meredith Yeah, I just wanted to point out for the public's benefit too that, you know, it's not just a matter of moving the board meeting to a different location. There's a lot of things that have to be in place in order to have a successful board meeting, and, you
166know, you'll notice that we have all these cameras and mics and other things that are set up so that we can project this out onto the internet so folks who can't attend in person are able to watch it. And so, you know, just picking a middle school, like, we don't, you know, the board members don't know offhand, like, whether they're equipped to handle that. So, I just wanted to point that out. It's not just as simple as it might seem at face value. Yeah, thank you. Go ahead, Melinda, I see you down there. Two quick suggestions. One, I wonder if we could talk to our friends in Orange County Schools about are in one of their high schools. And the second thing is, one of the things I've noticed at a lot of our meetings,
167there's been a lot of public comment. There's been people who've come forward and read statements from people who could not be here. I am wondering if I'm guessing that will probably happen again. There's some people who will want to be there, can't because of childcare. I wonder if we would consider either reading out loud statements that they send to us as a board or something like that to accommodate those folks. Thank you, Melinda. Anything else from board members? Go ahead, Vicki. I, I would like to say, just while we're all thinking about ways to try to help build capacity and space as we're trying to have a community conversation, we do also need to make sure that while we're trying to solve certain dilemmas, we're not creating others, because while we may not have people
168who can get here early, we still may have people who can't come at all because they're still at work. It may not just be a childcare issue. It just may really be that they can't get here, or they may not be able to get here because they're not on the bus line. So, we're still then even talking about the other side of the county. That could be even more of a dilemma. But even just when we're in these spaces, if we're going to be looking at thinking about our community as a whole, whether we're all in one room or we're in multiple rooms in different pockets. If we're going to consider each other as a community, we need to consider the ones who are in the space and who are not in the space. It
169doesn't matter, or it should not matter, if we're physically the ones here or not, because it takes a certain level of privilege to be able to be here anyway. Just like when we're talking about high school students to have the opportunity to go into elementary schools, we have to realize that if you're a high school student and you can go into elementary school in the morning to help volunteer, that also takes a little bit of privilege. Because if you're a bus rider, you're not going into elementary school before you go to school to be able to volunteer, whether that school is next to you or across town. These are things that are wonderful, and I appreciate being able to do them. And I'm thankful that we have high school students. I think the ones that
170are going into the elementary schools and middle schools are awesome, But we still have to be mindful that no matter who's literally in the space, we need to be cognizant of the fact that we can't be dismissive because they're not here and think about elevating and uplifting their voices for them. That builds community, and that's what we need to be responsible to be doing for each other, no matter where our meeting is. Thank you. All right. Any other comments or questions on this? We will, we'll continue to work. We'll continue to make sure if anything changes, you will hear something from Mr. Jinks. It won't be me. It'll be Mr. Jinks via all of our communication channels. Okay. Thank you. Our last item on the agenda are committee reports and sharing. Let's see, starting with
171Finance, Facility and Operations. I think your meeting is coming up next week, is that it? We have a meeting May 12th at 5:30. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you. Policy. We last met April 20-something, and we discussed a number of policies that were on the consent agenda today. And we meet again May 19th at 5:30, and the meeting is open to the public. The agenda will be on the website under committee meetings. Thank you, Ronnie. And Student Success. We will meet on 5/26 at 5:30PM online. At our last meeting took place on April the 28th, and we talked about a few different items. We talked about letters training and where our staff is in terms of there are various cohorts that are going through letters training, and it sounded like a really exciting development
172and like a lot a lot of our students are really benefiting from this increased training, this new program that's slowly making its way through all of our educators. We also got an update on our summer school program. We had a brief discussion of the 4x4 and how it relates to AP exam review. So many kids are taking advantage of some of the review periods that are being offered during flex time. And then we had an up finally had an update on the digital learning plan and the evolution that it's undergone over the past year as that committee has worked towards that. I don't know, George is on that committee as well as the student success. I don't know if you had any additional comments about that, George. Oh, Barb. Well, I forgot to say what
173we talked about at our last meeting, which was the Carrboro Elementary School replacement project. There are some really cool slides and also campus safety monitors. Thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you. All right, anything else? Okay, I see Mr. Jenks is over there, and I was reminded that he wanted to I'm sorry, I forgot about public comments. So, we're going to go back to our work session really quick. Madam Chair, thank you very much. Sorry, you can flag me. This is a little less about the 25 people who have been in the room and more about the folks who are watching at home or who might watch a recording this evening. We've handed out copies of the study, we've copy handed out one-page summaries of the study, and everyone in the room already knows this, but
174what I want to introduce to the folks at home is CHCCS Together org. We've said already that the study is posted to the board's agenda, but that's not often a one-click experience to get there. This is. And so, beginning tomorrow, we'll communicate this more broadly. But if you go to chccstogether.org, you will see not only the summary, but a one-page summary available in multiple languages right there on the home page. So, you can either read one page or you can read all 100 104 pages of it. It resets for our audience what the study does and does not do. And if you scroll a little bit further down the page, it resets the issue as a whole so folks can get caught up if they're just tuning in now. And they can also revisit previous
175communications and other materials that we've put out leading up to this moment in time. But I also want to direct your attention to the tabs at the top of the screen, such as the document library, if we click on that, it pulls up the things that the board has reviewed today. And this is what we're asking the community to do: spend time with this material. So, look at the summary, get into the pages of the full report, and then prepare yourselves for that May 21st public hearing, or at least May 21st is where things stand at this moment in time. The FAQs also on the page, this is a summarized version of questions that the board and staff have received over the past several months. So we've summarized those into some of the most commonly
176asked questions with some answers there. Not every question has an answer at this time, and if that's the case, we've said so on the page. But this is an opportunity for us to answer questions that are current now, and as we get new questions over the next 2 weeks or over the next month, that's an opportunity for us to put some updates in that section of the site. Lastly, I want to point out contact. So, what you can do after you're familiar with the contents of the study, you can share your feedback through this portal. Put in your name, put in your email address, write your message there. We have the option, if it would please the board, to make those responses public. It does not work that way right now. It does work in
177the sense that if you fill it out and send us something, we'll get it. Similar to an email, but this particular form could be made public. We can direct people's attention to an inbox, and anyone with access to the internet could scan a variety of things that are being sent to the board. Ideally, we would set up some parameters here because it would need to be on topic. We don't want to hear about individual students or identifiable staff members, but with a little bit of staff review, we think we can manage incoming messages on the topic of the study, school closure in general, or any of the issues that are related to the discussion that the board is having with the community. So wanted to make sure those watching at home are aware of chccstogether.org.
178We will once again communicate that more broadly starting tomorrow, and you'll see that reemphasized over the next several weeks leading up to the public hearing. Madam Chair, thank you for the time. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me about this. Yeah, so I would say This is one of those lessons learned from this whole process. And so, I'd encourage people on this topic, please, please use this contact form. It is, it is a place where we're going to have all the information. So please use this form. It just helps. We do have other things that are going on and other people will use All Board for some of those other topics that are not this. This is just a way where for board members' ease as they're assessing and looking at the study and looking
179at feedback. This is the one place they're going to go to, to get that information. So please, to school leaders, community members, please use this, this site to help get everyone the information they need. And then also where people should be putting their comments as they read the study and they have some thoughts. And ideas that come to them. Well, thank you. All right, go ahead, George. Risa, first of all, I want to acknowledge I know you've got a lot coming at you as meeting chair tonight, but Mr. Jenks did ask about it being public. I wonder if we could see if there's support. I think the more we can be public about everything, the better. Yeah, we don't, we don't have to take a vote, but if board members are okay with when the
180comments come in, if it's an it's able to be viewed, obviously, viewed by the public. Are board members okay with that? Go ahead, Barb. With the caveat that my understanding was that that was contingent on someone reviewing it to make sure we're not naming students or staff or That's right. Yes, what we'd like to do is put some guidelines before people go through the act of filling it out, and then you would check an acknowledgment that you did not include identifiable student names or staff members or speak about something that's not intended for a public audience. There is an element of trust in doing that, but providing access to the inbox does allow you to see what people have submitted. However, staff have the ability to monitor what's coming in and remove anything that might
181be off topic or results in personal attacks or other things that are not suitable for a public forum, very similar to how we conduct our business here at the board or on our social media, for example. I think if we're going to do that, I wonder if we could remove the option to submit anonymously. Yes. Right now the form would not be anonymous. I would have to acknowledge that nothing stops you from making up a name. Not that I want to give anyone that idea, but nothing stops you from doing that. Go ahead, Ronnie. Who's going to be reviewing all of the myself and the communications staff. Do you have capacity for that? We'll find, I mean, I'm being kind of serious because I know there's a lot going on. This was our idea, so
182we, we take ownership of the work involved. It was not my idea. I've seen the board's inbox before. We think we can take this on. Okay, right. Yeah, just everyone just stay on everyone agree to stay on topic, please. Don't name names. Madam Chair, I will note with the previous comment form that it will be important to emphasize to people, please do not put information about your children or your job in this form because it then creates a lot of difficulty for the staff to have to go in and remove that. That's right. And this does not replace the board's email address that will exist same as it always has, but this is created specifically for contributing something public on this topic. That's right. Thank you. Go ahead, Monica. I think I like the idea.
183I think something we've been hearing from the public all along is as much transparency as possible, and I think this adds to it. So, I think it's some risk, but I think it's worth it. I'm not hearing anyone against it, so I think we can go ahead and do it with some of the caveats of they have to put names and things like that, and also the reminder that, I mean, we have a policy around public comments, and it holds true even for this forum too, Andy, as well. We actually do have ways of verifying that the names and email addresses are submitted. If they're a staff member or a family member, we have ways of confirming that. We can cross-reference it against the contact information we use in our day-to-day messages. Okay. Thank you.
184Ronnie. All right, this is probably my last question. I just did we do a retreat agenda? I couldn't remember. Has that been circulate? I think we the retreat agenda is coming out tomorrow. Yeah, did we talk about it? I usually we agree on topics. I think one thing we talked about was a vision forward. I think that's what the community had asked for. And so I think we were going to we got Dr. Trice and the team working on that, like what some of their ideas about the vision forward for the district. So I've expressed interest in a board assessment probably a couple years now, and this is nothing on this current board because we've been talking about and there have been other priorities, but I do want to make sure we keep that in
185front of us. I'd love to have that be if we could take some time to talk about that and actually make that happen. Yeah, and I know we've got that tool that we did 2 years ago or 3 or 9, you know, time. I've done it a couple times. It has like 400 questions. I mean, yeah, no, I agree. Like, I think we could contemplate a simpler, like, 3, 4 questions, kind of what's working, what's not, what should we be doing differently, that gives us at least some context to have discussion around. Doesn't have to be super complicated. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thank you. All right. I know we were in the middle of sharing. Any other board members have any sharing for the roles? We did committee liaison sharing. I have a number of
186them, so I will run through mine as quickly as I can. So, I attended all 3 of my sit meetings this past month. So, I serve as the SIT liaison for Glenwood, Carver High, and Sewell. Glenwood, SIT meeting they were looking at their SIT goals, and they actually broke out into going over some of their sub goal discussions with their subgroups. So tiered instruction, school-wide data and professional development, resource allotment, and parent engagement. Again, I like attending SIP meetings because it's kind of that buildup to our districtwide data. So, I get to kind of see some kind of what's going on in the schools before we see some of the data at the district, at least for at least the 3 schools I serve on. That meeting went a little long, so I did get
187to the Carrboro High SIT meeting a little bit late, but I've been attending that one as well. So, they've got 2 goals that they're focusing on, which is around absenteeism and also oh shoot, it's about student data. But so, I actually sat in on the goal one where they were looking at indicators and action steps to help support students. And so interim principal Moreno shared the science of reading and how it's been incorporated in all plans regardless of subject area. And then finally, Sewell, they we actually did a couple of breakout sessions which were interesting. One, we did a reflection on ways in which to have more, I guess, parent engagement and things like that. So there was some discussion about bringing back some of the literacy and math nights, how Talking Points is used,
188and also training, tabletop trainings for a lot of the tools, because we do have a lot of tools in the district. Thinking about Talking Points, I don't think anyone named it, but obviously Infinite Campus is new in that kind of tool and app that people get. And then we also looked at some of the Panorama data. And so, we looked at specifically creating a culture of safety and wellness. And so, we broke apart the 4 aspects of it: climate, safety, belonging, and relationships. And I was I actually sat at a group where we were talking about safety, and there were just some terms that we wanted to dig into that might help informing and get more information around students in terms of like who is creating, you know, some of the concerns and things like
189that around safety. And could we do more SEL work? So, I would say kudos to all these SITs for like digging in deep in terms of their data and some of the goals that they have in their school improvement plans or SIPs. I think Mr. Link did do a reminder about our county commissioner public hearings that are coming up. May 12th is at the Whitted Building in Hillsborough, 7 PM. May 28th is at the Southern Human Services Building here in Chapel Hill off of Homestead, again 7 PM. And finally, May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We are a district that is 13% we have 13% of our students who identify as Asians. And many more who identify as biracial who are also, who are also Asian. And approximately 8% of our Orange
190County community identifies Asian. I am Filipino American and African American. So, the AAPI community includes over 40 countries of origin. The largest groups include Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese Americans. Asian American and Pacific Islander community members play an important role in the beautiful diversity of not only Chapel Hill, Carver City Schools, Orange County, North Carolina, but across America and internationally. And I'd like to close with a haiku by Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa: A world of dew, and within every drop, a world of struggle. And with that, our meeting is adjourned.