#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Monthly Work Session | 12/8/22

001good evening everyone okay are December 3rd 2020 December work session is now in session we will start our meeting with the moment of silence thank you the next item on our agenda is a gender review and approval Madam chair and board I'd like to add recommend we add two items um I'd like to add an item just before number five a superintendent's update so maybe let's call that 4B and I'd like to add an item one moment an item a 13 B uh the paces program contract I'll take a motion to approve an amended agenda if the board so sees we'll approval of them in the agenda it's been moved by Mr Rogers seconded by Ms validarez any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it

002passes unanimously the next item on our agenda is the Board of Education session meeting minutes from November 3rd 2022. move approval of the minutes second it's been moved by Miss buyers seconded by Miss Rogers any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed use the same sign also passes unanimously the next item on our agenda will be a superintendent's update this is our only meeting scheduled for December so we did want to make sure the superintendent has the time to address the community Dr mavinga thank you madam chair members of the board and community and everyone in attendance are tonight I just have one item that's I would like to uh bring your attention to uh the item is about growing together initiative I'm super excited about this work um we study

003this work over a year ago uh since last summer my staff been engaging Community virtually and in person as well we've done a really good work of listening to our community and we're getting really close to coming up with rules and how we're going to proceed with this plan tonight I just want to give you some quick updates uh timeline where we are so that our families will be well prepared as we are pretty much gearing up for the application process which is going to start in January with that the person that's running those slides please first slide please nest so next please this is the work pretty much we've been able to do this in summer uh we're able to engage all kind of stakeholders are there with Town Halls there were Zoom meetings

004they were in person meetings every person that's uh wanted to come and have opportunity for their voices to be heard they were invited and that they attended the sessions as well moving forward as you can see we have a timeline here go to the timeline that's fine this is where we are we're able to partner with RTI we have a great reputation of doing this kind of work they were able to assemble all the data qualitative data of all different kind of conversation that we've been having with our families they're gonna bring the data on December 12th to my cabinet we're going to be the first one to say the data what's those conversation feedback that we've been able to receive from our families I'll say this it's been really emotional a conversation that we've

005been having with families uh everyone will like pretty much uh if they're really satisfied with other conditions they would like to keep it but there are also some folks that are also looking for more access that's the intention of this work that we're doing then on December 14th we're gonna have a rural development work group they'll be able to listen to what RTR we're able to assemble and be able to start coming up with a definite rules of what is going to be before we bring you to the board then on December 19th through December 21st we're going to start finalizing those rules then on January 12th we'll bring you to the board as you all can see that the January 9th through February 6th that's the town we're going to start opening this uh

006application Lottery process so that our families will be able to make the decision but we're going to bring this to you on the 12th I think that's going to be the first time you're going to listen to this we are going to try to call for a special call meeting on the 19th that's a conversation that we're going to have so that you can have two opportunities to be able not only to listen and then get feedback from the community then on the 19th you're going to be able to react to it again the 90th is going to be a call special meetings is going to be up to you if you are going to agree on that particular date the time is of essence we really want our families to be well informed as

007they're going to start filling up those applications next please [Music] for secondary programs pretty much we've taken a lot of times just to have the foundation with Elementary but secondary is going to be a little bit quicker next slide please here's the timeline we're going to start identifying secondary programs in Fall 2022 all the way to February 22 or 2023 and then we're going to have those program placement and boundaries in March and April 2023 secondary schools rules pretty much what we're going through with Elementary that's going to be April and May 2023. we hope by June all the way to November we are going to finalize the whole process and be able to communicate all the changes that we're going to have for this particular initiative that took us really long time again for

008those that are hearing this for the first time it's been over 30 years we have not done this work um it's not easy work are there going to be some pains but I'll say this to our families we are increasing access to what our family's been asking give us a little bit of time by next month you're all going to know the rules it's my students so it's my child is going to be giving the opportunity to be grandfathering in that particular schools those are the conversation that we have in this month we're gonna finalize all this when we come to the board in January 12th our board is going to hear this for the first time then we're going to have another meeting where they're gonna react after hearing your feedback so hopefully we're

009going to be in a good place so that all our students and our families they will be able to choose to be with DPS because we are going to increase those access Madam chair that's pretty much conclude my remarks thank you Dr mavinga for providing that update we know that there's been a lot of working groups um regarding growing together excuse me not working groups meetings regarding growing together in the last couple months so I think families are interested to know where we are with that process all right the next item on our agenda is going to be general public comment I also want to acknowledge we have two interpreters for tonight Martha Romo iguireless and Marty Ramirez we appreciate them for their hard work for public comment I'm going to do a quick review

010of the rules please state your name and if you are speaking for organization please state your name in the name of the organization second that we asked the speakers present their comments within 90 seconds all right we have a large group of speakers tonight we want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak so you have 90 seconds on the podium there is a um marker when the yellow light comes on you have one minute left to start winding up your remarks and when the red light comes on it will beep which indicates your time is up complaints about named staff students or parents will not be voiced in Open session however we are very interested in hearing your concerns with regard to the public education safety of students or to the operation of

011the school system finally board members will listen carefully and will consider your comments but we do not engage in a discussion with our speakers the name of the first speaker is Jonathan chairman excuse me we have all she said that we that we are you saying you have to suspend your rules you just can't just say to spend we have three minutes to speak that's what your policy said are you changing those rules and if you are you have to vote you have to vote on as a board uh Mr Malone I believe it has a specified minutes um I mean it has unspecified time in there it says three minutes it's early in the 100s thank you here's something think the board should so if you could use your microphone Mr Malone excuse me

012I would love to run and share this meeting Mr Malone okay so um the way the policy is set up there's a 30-minute period of time that kind of caps the overall amount of time that's available for public comment it says citizens must sign up with the board clerk prior to the meeting it says then that the chair shall Grant one to three minutes to speak per person depending on the number of citizens wishing to address the board so I read that to say that the chair would look at the number of people who have signed up would take a look at the 30-minute period That's allocated and can then decide whether or not there's enough time for everybody to get three minutes and if not the chair can go down to as little as

013a minute um the way I would read this to assign time to each of the people who are wishing to speak so to the extent that you had said 90 seconds per person that seems to be well within your rights within the board policy I appreciate that Mr Malone can you uh just tell us the oh I'm sorry that's policy number 2310 section B thank you I appreciate that I will say we're going to make sure that we hear from everyone today so we'll give 90 seconds which will take us past our allotted 30 minute period um I will also ask if you have written your comments you can leave those and the board member is going to see the full breath of those you can also email us at Boe dpsnc.net and we'll also

014be able to see the full breadth of your comments so we'll start first in 90 seconds with Jonathan and I apologize Jonathan I can't read your last name so I'm Jonathan Neto uh I don't know what the formalities are but um to The Madam chair and everybody else that's here that um is working in the process I thank you for this opportunity to be able to say something um I understand that it's about the what I understand is it's about what is going to be taught in the public schools here in Durham and so I'd like to start by reading from Psalm chapter 139 verses 13 through uh 19 God you God form my inward Parts you God woe me in my mother's womb I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and

015wonderfully made wonderful are your works and my soul knows it knows it very well my frame was not hidden from you God When I Was Made In Secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth your eyes God have seen my unformed substance and in your book we're all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them I brought this to the um I said this because everybody is skillfully and wonderfully made it's not just certain people you were not made by your mother and father you were made by God you are a special person whoever you are wherever you are working another thing I would like to share with you is um that's it that yes unfortunately concludes your time we appreciate you for coming

016sharing with us today okay thank you the next speaker is candy Gutierrez lubiano and now after that we will have Lorena Perez and I apologize folks if I uh mispronounce your names in advance please correct me when she reached the podium she did good afternoon my name is Candy Gutierrez lgbtq plus latinx Community specialist at El Centro Hispano today we want to advocate for students children in June of John lgbtq plus it is important and urgent that we work together to protect and promote the inclusion of All Families how first fighting intolerance disrespect and misinformation in proposed Vehicles such as HB 755 which represent a threat to our lgbtq plus children and Jews second implementing our school districts concrete actions that contribute to generating healthy and safe environments we need the Durham public school education

017system to set out the developed lgbtq plus policies that promote respect tolerance and the comprehensive development of our children angel our students do not deserve to live in isolation or afraid to express themselves and communicate with their parents family friends and teachers schools and colleges should be safe places for lgbtq plus minors just as much as their own home we need comprehensive training and certificates for all K-12 teachers and administrative staff in our schools as well as informational clinics for parents and students to improve the educational system and the living conditions of our student it is necessary to invest in mental health and Sport Systems thank you thank you Lorena Perez and Ron Duffy will be after Lorena hi um my name is Lorena Perez um I grew up as a public school kid I

018grew up as a queer Latina and I'm now like the proudest parent of the most amazing gender-fluid little kid they're the coolest um and so tonight I really just want to share what it has been like to go to the Showcase and talk to principals and be like hey tell me how you're supporting your gender fluid students the range is there from the one principal who told me we have an anti-discrimination policy and we need it that's a floor not a ceiling to the opposite end of the Spectrum which was someone who was so enthused to meet my child to be who could list off multiple names off the top of their head did not have to look up extra resources they had answers they had enthusiasm you need a policy that is going to

019teach folks how to get there because that's what I want for my child my child deserves to feel safe and supported and wonderfully encouraged to learn so that they can be healthy members of our society um I I am asking it for your help tonight it does not feel like I am looking for the best fit for my child it really looks like I am looking for the least harmful so I'm asking tonight to make sure that your task force when you get to it is not full of people who are transphobic and homophobic who will actively already discriminate against my child against my family thank you Ron Duffy and after Ron will have Nathan foreign my name is Ron Duffy uh I've never done this before and I'm all almost 80 years old but

020I'm doing this for my great-grandchildren now I'm a Christian and it's the first speakers spoke uh I follow the teachings of the Bible there's a lot of people here that are not and that's that's a beautiful part of this country um I I probably deviate because of the short amount of time but I would I will tell you this in 1949 I was born in 43. probably the oldest person in the room but anyway I used to walk from Alma Street the Holloway Street School in the first grade with a buddy of mine and he's still alive too and uh things were not then like it is now now there's a lot of reasons for that and I'm not laying the blame anybody but I served in the military I served this country and I

021got some things I just happened to see on Fox news last night Laura Ingram show about LGBT Mr Mr Duffy I'm sorry that concludes your time all right thank you the next person is Nathan topam after Nathan will be Faith Neary good evening my name is Nate Topham I'm the father of two kids a fourth and a second grader at Club Boulevard Elementary I'm here to voice my support for Swift passage of policies training and enforcement supporting lgbtqia plus students staff and families in DPS to my knowledge my kids aren't members of this community neither am I but that doesn't matter this still is incredibly important in my house because in order for my kids to be good allies to this community they can't just hear it at home they have to hear and see

022it modeled by the adults who they spend the other half of their Waking Life with so these policies aren't just for the kids who are already members of this community these policies are for all of our kids the materials and programs being discussed are not controversial they're not going to change anyone's kid from this to that from here to there they're going to recognize and validate and celebrate what kids are already are so in order for for Durham to create the next generation of kids that are the best allies they can be training is going to be a key component so the adults in the building have the tools to meet kids where they are and Foster a learning environment where kids feel safe to express their true selves with those around them equally important

023is enforcement so that individual School administrators cannot stall or prevent implementation of policies that can help kids today thank you you Faith near after faith will have Karen press hi there my name is Faith Neri thank you so much for allowing us to speak thank you for the policies that are going into place to protect against bullying to protect against harassment but my concern is recognizing that the human brain is not completely developed until the ages by 25 and actually the impulse reaction is the last to develop in the mid-20s so I'm concerned with where our academics here why can't we let children be children just protect against being bullied protect against being harassed and accepting but let them grow up in the system of education for the academics the academics are falling behind and

024that is what's going to move them further along in life anyway because there's going to be unfairness unfortunately because of the world we live in and that is just my biggest concern with this thing we know that it doesn't matter how smart they are or how well they scroll the SAT good judgment isn't something that they can conceal in yet and we need adults to guide them and protect them and laid them and show them and give them the opportunity to learn and to become who they're going to become before they're directed in a way thank you Karen press next will be Seth Van Horn good evening my name is Karen pruce and I'm a long time resident of Durham and the mother of Durham public schools graduate it's been about a year since the

025board passed a resolution calling for an action plan to reduce dps's non-renewable energy use intensity by 85 percent 80 by 2035. thanks to your foresight and the dedication and hard work of the staff much has been accomplished in energy conservation in the past year I would respectfully urge you to consider the development of a renewable energy action plan to complement the ongoing energy conservation and efficiency efforts and to achieve the target set out in the resolution this would also serve to fulfill the wishes of Durham residents who overwhelmingly voted in favor of the education bonds for Durham Public Schools an energy management plan that includes not only Energy Efficiency but also renewable energy generation would be better positioned to receive funding that is currently available and will be available for the next 10 years under

026the infrastructure investment and jobs Act and the inflation reduction Act renewable energy can form an important part of a comprehensive multi-decade climate action plan similar to the one developed by Denver public schools that includes student wellness environmental justice and career curriculum thank you Steph Van Horn and Joel Mueller uh I'm Seth Van Horn I'm not with anyone I'm just me uh I was scared to death when my kid came out um because I'd seen it come in and I've done a little research so I knew that trans kids were four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime I knew that 47 of trans adults reported being harassed within the last year nine percent reported being assaulted within the year I knew that kids were told to hide or stay in the closet

02740 percent of them considered self-harm 42 considered suicide 15 attempted so what's the dad going to do either you're the one telling the kid to hide and hurt themselves or you're putting them out there in the world where others are going to hurt them uh but I also knew that uh research in the Journal of adolescent psychology says that for every environment in which a child is Affirmed it about halves the chance of suicidal ideation uh so really it was no choice at all uh it strikes me that we here today are facing the same decision we can either be the ones telling children don't ask questions because we have a lot of luck with kids not asking questions uh hide or we can be the ones saying we're here to support you and reduce

028your chance of suicide and protect you from those who would do those results thank you Joel Miller Joel Miller Dale evarts will be our next speaker Dale evarts dude thank you Dr mabenga and to the chair and to all the current and new members for hearing us today I'm Dale Edwards I'm homegrown former DPS parent and I'm here to talk about solar energy and the inflation reduction Act I think you may have heard that those billions of dollars literally in that act for schools for you know upgrading buildings not just schools obviously but I'm thinking about schools in our schools and my colleagues at EPA where I used to work are now working on the programs developing the programs to get that money out to us so um and these would include you know energy

029upgrades for our schools solar panels on the schools energy efficient appliances all the things we want to do to make our schools um instead of being energy drains to being energy providers and saving us all money so for instance DPS can get a 30 percent tax credit now we don't pay taxes so it comes directly to us we can have a direct pay option you get that money uh and plus 10 percent uh for U.S made materials and 10 if it's in a low income Community that's 50 that's a half off sale on energy upgrades for our schools um I know there's lots there um I can I'm going to pass around some guides here that I've uncovered but the next two years are key for us addressing getting this money we'd love to help

030our solar schools team would love to help identify opportunities and get us and help you you know write grants and that sort of thing so I hope we can do it thank you if you can leave those uh right here with Mr Malone or Mr Giovanni yeah right there we'll make sure that all the board members get a copy thank you is Joel Miller I just want to make sure if Joel was in the outside in the hallway they have an opportunity to speak all right Whit Williams Black who's our next speaker followed by Hannah Donahue hi hello nice to see you all again my name is Williams Black and I live off i-98 I have kids and DPS and I am a working parent um I was up here a couple weeks ago talking

031about how this is not just about making sure that trans and queer kids are seen this is also about making sure that all kids who are marginalized those kids with different abilities those kids who are not from here whose parents may not be documented whose families are Farm Workers whose families are on Medicaid living in the project so on and so forth feel safe at school feel seen and heard a lot of what we're talking about today is queer families but I know I need for you all to understand that this is an intersectional issue and that if you do not move as quickly as we can we will be seeing um more more students afraid um to show up authentically because of folks showing up into their schools pretending like what this is about

032is anything other than about the kids I also want to say as a parent as a working parent as a young working parent it's and I'm not quite sure the protocol is but it's a little bit ridiculous how many pages this thing is I think across six tabs on my laptop are dedicated to finding an explanation in a true Direction a true belief from this board um it's buried in six tabs in the internet no working parent has the time to do that and ensure that the policies that you all are making are actually going to do the work that we've asked you to do to protect our children thank you thank you thank you sorry what uh Hannah Donahue our next speaker followed by Jennifer Garcia hello my name is Hannah I'm a parent

033of two young children one is a kindergartner at Club Boulevard I'm also a pediatric nurse and I've recently started working in the schools as a nurse in my practice I've seen lgbtq and gender diverse students bullied they've been pushed shoved and had crude names yelled at them I've seen administrators turned a blind eye to this Behavior I've seen students crying in my office because their teacher called home and mistakenly gendered them outing them to their family who was transphobic this teacher did not have Mal intent but was never provided education or resources on protecting a gender diverse student because there's no policy driving them to do so and staff gender support training currently is based on the individual preferences of school administrators last year 45 of lgbtq Youth considered committing suicide this is a huge

034crisis in our community of no lgbtq and gender diverse students of color are not only facing homophobia and transphobia they are also facing racism these students are less likely to report harm and harassment to Educators even though two in five of them experience both racist and trans or homophobic comments and a harassment at school half of lgbtq and gender diverse children do not feel safe at home or school however the amount that feels supported at school is double the amount that feels supported at home when these children don't have support at home school is quite literally the only place we could feel make them feel safe we have a duty to support these children I urge you to pass this policy tonight the kids are not okay but we can do something foreign thank you

035Jennifer and then next we'll have Lauren Sartain hi my name is hi my name is Dr Jennifer garish I am a parent of three children in DPS two second graders and a sixth grader um at my elementary school is Forestview Elementary and I'm not sure if you all are aware of the tremendous EC crisis at our elementary school we have zero zero EC resource teachers no facilitator EC facilitator kids are not getting the right education they are not getting their legal legally provided for free appropriate public education at our school and this was covered up hidden from us as families what I want to know since I only have 90 seconds and I had to ditch all my other comments was what is this board willing to do to solve the EC crisis at my

036school because it's not just about EC kids it's about all the kids in our school because every time an EC kid is not provided the appropriate education it affects every child at our school are EC teachers are stretched to the break they are about to fall apart We cannot put any more work on our school teachers especially our rec teachers who work so darn hard to provide a quality education for kids that most people want to pretend don't exist and shouldn't be in public school I'm standing here for my child and every other child that should get quality education I appreciate that thank you Lauren fartane and then next up will be Dean Fitzgerald first group of people who signed up it looks like you started from the bottom we have a public uh comment

037speaker that has the floor right now so I'm going to pass it over to her and I am calling the names as they are uh listed on the sheets so I'm going to give the floor over to Lauren thank you Lauren hi my name is Dr Lauren Sartain I'm a professor of Education policy at UNC Chapel Hill I study educator quality and education markets I'm also a DPS parent where my son has a developmental delay in speech and my daughter has two diagnoses but does not have an IEP we're able to make sure that she knows how to read because we have the resources the center to the Hill Center other families don't that's a huge Equity issue in this District particularly when you start to look at the number of vacancies and easy positions

038that are listed on the DPS website a quick glance at that showed that there were nearly 80 BC vacancies and DPS has 50 schools so that's typically a GPS school then has more than one easy opening and this may take me more than 90 seconds but I just want you to hear the names of the schools with these EC shortages w.g Pearson y.e Smith CC Spalding Club Boulevard Burton Pearson Town Oak Grove Eno Valley Parkwood Hillandale Little River eastleigh Watts Lakewood Merrick Moore Hope Valley Forest View Neil Rogers Herr Carrington Brogden Shepard Lucas the school for Creative Studies Hillside Southern Northern Riverside and numerous positions that are listed in central office which are shared across schools I look forward to seeing you guys in January to talk about growing together thank you Dean Fitzgerald is

039our next speaker followed by Jill Stewart good evening my name is Dean Fitzgerald I represent myself I'm here to Advocate that we passed a city-wide policy for lgbtqia plus training and support tonight and not wait for a task force as you already heard some statistics from another parent lgbtq youth who report having at least one accepting adult in their lives or 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the last year and that's from this year's data my sister is a teacher in New York state in the last few years she's had many students that she teaches come out to her even before they did for their peers to test the waters just on an adult to see it was going to be safe she's been that one adult for so many kids

040who didn't have support at home and she still uses dead names with those parents to protect those children she did that without knowing the benefit that she had in keeping those kids alive and that's because she is kind and respectful and because she had State mandated training with recent acts of violence against the LGBT community in Colorado Springs and here in Moore County please act with the haste a life and death issue demands declaring that certain members of our city are important and ought to be respected is not oppression nor anti-American nor Is it child abuse idleness is not fairness inviting anyone who doesn't understand that to join a task force is wrong they do not need a seat at the table they built the table please reset it thank you Jill Stewart is our

041next speaker followed by Kelly Bowers hi my name is Dr Jill Stewart I'm a neuropsychologist and proud DPS parent my thoughts are my own not my employers I'm here tonight to advocate for the right to vape for all DPS students especially some of our most vulnerable who are in or eligible for EC Services I'm also here out of the profound gratitude and respect for our remaining EC teachers some of whom are with us in the hallway tonight just days before Dr Bell's October 20th update at the board meeting I learned of significant gaps in the resources at our school including the loss of our entire EC resource program for a school of 700 students of whom 10 receive EC services and that number is rising because there are more in the pipeline the last of

042our resource program is crippling in terms of the ability to meet academic safety and socio-emotional needs of arguably all of our students as some have yet to be identified perhaps some of the saddest things I've been shared or that not all of our families are aware of this crisis especially our Hispanic families and I am here using my privilege to speak for them too parents are now being asked to allow Service delivery from substitutes most without any EC or teaching credentials while they're being trained on the job does this seem appropriate to you and that's me trying to provide physical therapy to your child is this Fidelity to evidence-based intervention I hope that you not only are alarmed by my message but that you feel compelled to act we don't want to be who you

043don't want to hear actually thank you Dr Stewart all right Kelly Bowers is our next speaker followed by Anna Velasquez thank you I have no children I have no grandchildren and yet I'm here today and you gotta wonder why what I have is a childhood spent in the military between kindergarten and high school graduation I went to seven different schools so I know what it's like to be the new kid in school I know what it's like to be the stranger I know what it's like to be the one that doesn't fit in and I know how much that sucks and that's from somebody who is white CIS straight american-born and Christian now imagine you aren't one or more of those things and it sucks even more and that's not what schools should be about

044when you create anything that makes School a better place for anyone who doesn't Naturally Fit in you create an environment that starts to move towards being open and acceptable to all when Jesus was asked when did we see you in prison when did we see you hungry when did we see you homeless he said whatever you do for the least of them you do for me thank you thank you hello my name is Anna Velazquez I'm a bilingual family Advocate I represent a focus group photo de Padres I'm here to talk about the Mental Health crisis in our community and I thought we had three minutes uh what it looks like is um what we're looking for is training training teachers staff and how does this look is for goals to assist the teachers and

045the staff to identify and assess and intervene we're not looking for doctors within our schools what we're looking is for how to um hard to give a one-on-one therapy a non-medical wellness service within our schools to help uh when crisis come up we have seen too many suicides in elementary itself that is very sad um how does this look clinical Wellness Services peer-to-peer youth support groups or programs how how can we do this is DPS can educate train staff teachers parents on symptoms of how to help mental health problems how do we how did the uh Durham County help all these officers with intervention crisis to help the community I think DPS can do can do the same thing with our teachers and our staff there's more to that but I guess we all we

046all get the picture thank thank you and I want to remind folks if you have written your comments out you can leave a copy we'll make sure all board members get it but you can also email us at b as in boy o e at d p s n c dot net just want to make sure that you have an opportunity to reach us our next public comment speaker is RSL Hernandez and following her will be Victoria Peterson uh hi my name is Araceli Hernandez I just want to say my name in English and I want to speak in Spanish more quickly um I have 22 years I'm sorry hold on one second Mr Nanda we will um allow you double time so that you have interpretation and you all have the time to go

047back so I can't have my 90 and 90 seconds yes exactly okay foreign anadia [Music] I'm here to advocate for the students not only emotionally but mentally I feel that in schools there is no respect for religion of children and they ask them to stop and there is a lot of violence around and that's why we are in this predicament autos I need all the help that they can have not only for children but also for young people because they um there is a lot of violence around and the children need to be safe and they need to have a God in their hearts and we need this um support from he from you I just want the respect to every doesn't matter what relation from whatever the country they come from they just respect

048because when you guys not respect and the school each other so they can do everything they want is the violence is coming so we just need please but they can help for that respect doesn't matter they teach us doesn't matter they bus drivers doesn't matter whatever who is it the students but they need to respect each other whatever they think and the mind and the heart so please help the kids because we don't want no more crimes thank you next we have Victoria Peterson followed by Patricia arbiccon Opera can you can you start your thing here please let me know when you're okay um to the school board I really have some real serious problems with this draft and to the attorney I would like to know what is lgbtq lgbtq you're asked in the

049public to support this LGBT but you have not put in here and Mr attorney I hope you don't mind me addressing this to you by law we need to know what this is now my understanding of these of these initials it means lesbians engaged and we can go on the public school system should not be enforcing homosexuality to our children that's not why the school system came about and matter of fact the school system in this country came about because of the churches we have a foundation of trying to teach righteousness you're asking Christian teachers that are part of your system because I used to be a substitute teacher in your system so you're asking Christian teachers to wink when you have homosexual boys who want to go into the girls room because they want

050to change their thank you their agenda and because Miss Peterson that ends your time one of those that ends your time thank you so much for coming we're going to turn off your microphone excuse me I'm just asking can we get an understanding this ends your time you've extended over the the 90 seconds so we appreciate you for coming and your public comments are in the record I'm sorry do you understand that Miss Peterson this ends your time thank you I'm gonna ask that you have a seat to get some to get some additional information yes ma'am we do not uh correspond to public comment but we have heard your comments we have your contact information and someone can follow up with you okay but that ends your time she can have a seat she

051can have a seat uh Patricia Arbor Grande I apologize again if I'm incorrectly pronouncing your name excuse me and then Jack turnwald will be after Patricia to interpret yes ma'am we'll have The Interpreter come back oh thank you I'll reach out to you to get that effort um foreign um I am Patricia Obregon I'm part of a group called um photo de Padres a parent's forum is I'm here to give a suggestion about the 18 million dollars that DPS has available we think that part of this money could be used for tutoring and for Elementary School students pandemia who were affected during the pandemic statistics okay and they haven't been able to recuperate um by the statistics we know that children African-American latino children and other children of color were the most affected by the

052pandemic education and I think that implementing tutoring would help them to reach a better level in their education is we appreciate your time and listening to our comments about how to improve education and DPS thank you thank you next Jack turnwald followed by Rachel Owens my name is Jack turnwald and my pronouns are they them I'm here again tonight as a former DPS educator and a trans person to lift up all the voices asking for DPS to put a gender support policy into action I hear folks on this board saying they want to get this right and I support moving in ways that Center harm reduction and I keep hearing the voice of a friend who reminded me that Perfection is a tool of white supremacy that friend is a brilliant queer educator who was

053pushed out of this District by discrimination and the absence of a policy like we're asking for tonight their voice reminds me that boards governing bodies and individuals throughout history have quashed the advancement of actions that would better communities because they put Perfection as the goal they called for more research which was already plentiful they expressed the need to follow procedure to a t usually designed without the input of the global majority and historically excluded voices they wanted everyone to be comfortable including those who espoused views of hate and they asked for more time to design the best possible policy while people experienced ongoing harm in the absence of any policy in the name of perfection communities have resided in systems of inequity for too long I would urge this board not to make the same

054mistake thank you for your time next we have Rachel Owens followed by Ernesto Lopez Molina good evening my name is Rachel Owens and I'm a science teacher environmental Club advisor at Northern High School I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of my students the current students of Northern and the future students of the new Northern High School currently being built and set to open its doors next school year now we all know that a building does not define a school it is what goes on within those walls it does but the building itself does play a role in how those things take shape and how they mold a child's perspective when it comes to what value they think they have and the value the school district places on their future when I was writing this

055speech I Googled a synonym for the word new in reference to our new building because I felt as though new was too simplistic a word it was very interesting to me that terms like advanced modern and state-of-the-art popped up when the new building currently has no plans for renewable energy features in a day and age when this generation of children is having to deal with and will have to deal with the brunt of the effects of climate change effects of which the causes were not their fault and we as their role models cannot ensure that their brand new school has a sustainable clean energy source like solar especially when North Carolina is a leader in that area in this country is a bit mystifying to me now it's my understanding that the window of opportunity

056for rooftop solar at Northern has passed but Durham and DPS have an opportunity here we have an opportunity to lead the state in what is called canopy or parking lot solar it would be such an amazing feeling for students parents and staff of Northern to drive up and park at our modern state-of-the-art advanced and Innovative building thank you good evening everyone my name is Ernesto Lopez Molina and I am a student at Northern High School I'm here to argue what the new Northern she will be solar powered our new school is around 2 000 290 000 square feet and American schools spend an average of 0.67 cents per square foot which means which indicates that the county will spend approximately 800 I mean I'm sorry 188 500 on non-renewable energy per year we could dramatically

057lower the cost of electricity by using solar power renewable energy resources are more vital than ever and with 8 billion people on this planet we are polluting even more if we want to our children to be aware of what's going on in the world we must begin incorporating eco-friendly materials into our learning settings and this are some of the many reasons why we should incorporate solar power into your new school I would also like to live in a world where I I know that the people who educate me care about me I want to live in a place where I don't have to worry I want to live I want to know what actually goes into my lungs when I'm eating and I diet one for the future generations to have clean place to live

058I don't see why schools don't Implement green power without us asking for it thank you so much for listening thank you and thank you students for coming out to our meeting tonight we appreciate seeing you all here our next public comment speaker will be answer Cowie him Street followed by Freddie Perkins hi everybody it's hot out there um well yep that's going uh my name is Ann so Kelly hemstreet and I'm not going to give you all the other details um I am here on behalf of rainbow Collective for change we've been here since April 7th um when we submitted a letter to you with 662 community members students parents and staff signatures supporting the very policy that is on your agenda tonight eight months later um so you've had eight months to do something

059as a board you've had eight months to get community input from local lgbtq organizations families students and staff and I also know that you've received Community input for years before that we've lost Educators and students and their families because DPS is an environment in which educators are fearful to be out students are bullied Educators and families are told they're not allowed to read books about families like mine or talk about pronouns in the classroom enough is enough you have received enough Community input to know that we want a policy tonight you have had enough time to figure out your plan for protecting lgbtq students and staff it's time now to prioritize the safety of lgbtq and gender diverse children over the discomfort of a few adults I'm also just kind of tired of hearing about

060this and it sounds like you've heard about really important things tonight about EC shortages and mental health and tutoring for students and I think it's important to be able to focus on that I have the letter and the signatures to hand off if that's okay I can pass it right here to miss Giovanni thank you Freddie Perkins is our next speaker and then Christina Baldridge a lot of people out there yo good evening my name is Freddie Perkins and I'm representing the lgbtq center of Durham specifically the youth center I am here to represent the youth that I have talked to first hand I think as a board it's important to remind yourselves like what is the work that you're doing and who is it for it's not for parents right we love parents they

061have a role it is for the students it is for the children that you see that the teachers see every day and are the ones that are going to make or break what our County looks like once they graduate right these students have said we don't have safe spaces the only thing we have is a GSA which is great but there should be more we don't have policies in place we need them we don't have curriculum that helps us to be safe and be our best authentic selves right we want kids to be kids there should be policies in place that allow for that to take place and until that is done you're going to continue to see dis distrust within your community you're going to continue to see kids having to deal with mental

062health issues like suicide right and then we're not even looking at it from an intersectional point of view right like in EC classrooms queerness is a thing and we don't even let EC kids be kids on already right we don't talk about queerness and immigrant populations we don't talk about queerness and all these other avenues where it exists and if we can't do the bare minimum by letting policies exist that at least allow that point of authenticity then what are we doing why are we here right and so I'm here to say please make this policy happen and listen to the students thank you Christina Baldridge followed by Jacob Baldwin Baldridge hey there um my name is Christina Baldridge I'm a mother of two children at Forest View Elementary School and I'm also the PTA

063president there um and I'm here tonight because we have an AC crisis on our hands um I think Dr garish talked about the fact that we have about 70 kids not receiving Services it's a massive legal liability it's also an equity issue and it's appalling and we have gone through the right channels Dr mubenga I've not heard from you um our families have not heard from you and we'd like to hear from you we'd like to know who's in charge who can make decisions happen and how we can get Solutions in place for this year and set ourselves up for Success next year um and I'd like to know what the next step is by tomorrow because I think there are really big issues happening and we're about to break and these kids are going

064to come back on January 5th and be alone we're talking about marginalized communities tonight this is also a marginalized community these are the most vulnerable students who are not accessing education this is our future economy these are our future colleagues our friends our children's friends and we are leaving them behind and there is no plan I have a paltry few ideas to share but this is not my area of expertise I think you are all here because you are experts in this and we'd like to see some leadership um and I also want to make sure that I uh the tell you that I want to make sure we're voting on this issue tonight as well because our children matter okay thank you thank you uh hello everyone um ladies and gentlemen the board and

065uh on our on our guests um my name is Jacob Aldridge I'm a DPS parent of two uh amazing students um and it's made me proud tonight to hear the testimony of all my neighbors calling for stronger protection for queer students and staff um some of our most vulnerable students um allow me to add my voice to that resounding chorus please do reject the hatefulness wrapped in a cross that you uh have heard from some of our community members uh tonight and passes a robust set of productions for our lgbtq neighbors quickly but my primary purpose here tonight is to alert you to an issue facing another group of dps's most vulnerable students as you now know Forest View first few currently have no easy resource teachers and no EC facilitator well I believe our

066school administration is working as fast as they can they've received zero support from the district and they've made zero progress this is an equity legal and moral issue um tonight I would like to ask Dr mabenga can you commit to taking action and updating the public on that action before the end of 2022. and I'd like to ask the board can you commit to providing more aggressive oversight and Leadership on this issue than is the norm in Durham we work to protect our most vulnerable neighbors we don't always get it right but we have an obligation to solve this problem now thank you thank you our next speaker will be Mary Hinton followed by Rhonda Lee I just like to say that we all need to respect each other and that means let kids be

067kids parents be parents and teachers teach reading writing and arithmetic diversity seems to be we all look different but we must think alike that's not what we need we need people to respect each other this the the division that's coming in all through the states is is just the crazy it used to be people were different they were just accepted they weren't God if you don't wear a rainbow on your shirt lapel if you're in the soccer team you were taking off the team that's ridiculous it's it's it's discrimination public restrooms um uh School restrooms open to both things most sexist that's crazy that's all I have to say I wasn't planning to speak tonight but my kids went to the Durham School I believe everyone should respect each other I respect all of you

068guys respect my opinion they come I don't need a pronoun a separate pronoun to recognize you as a good person have the same pronouns we're we're all the same thank you next speaker is Rhonda Lee followed by Courtney gills thank you good evening my name is Rhonda Lee I'm a priest in the Episcopal Church a parent and a resident of Durham as such it is vitally important to me that our public schools be saved and welcoming spaces for our lgbtqia plus students for the sake of their holistic well-being physical emotional mental and spiritual therefore I ask you to pass the policy before you this evening I agree with many members of our community that the policy needs to be revised after being adopted I think it's absolutely necessary that the people entrusted with making those

069revisions should have a clear understanding of the issues involved and how high the stakes are their goal in revising the policy should be to support the flourishing of lgbtqia plus persons in all possible ways our children's lives and well-being deserve nothing less thank you thank you Courtney gills followed by Tracy Campbell hi my name is Courtney gills um I had a few things to say but I think I'm going to start with um what we just heard a few minutes ago hatefulness wrapped in a cross just gonna let that sit I'm gonna use my time to let y'all think about that the amount of times I've heard hate speech in the past couple years that was hate speech and it's disgusting and it's entirely offensive to me and it's offensive to a lot of people

070that are present today um I came here to voice a couple concerns about the amended guidelines for gender support and lgbtq policy um on page four it says the student support student support team should start with the students parents and then after parents it says in parentheses as appropriate based on the age and maturity level of the student this is a very vague part of the policy if you choose to adopt this I think that you should edit there to put some objective information there who is the one who is deciding what the maturity of that child is on the previous couple of pages under privacy you already have something listed about the parent that someone can't get information about transgender children absent per absent parental consent or the student's consent if they are 18

071years of age or older um so I do think you should add in there that the parent would have to be part of that support system if they are under the age of 18 as they are legally that is legally appropriate so thank you so much thank thank you Tracy Campbell followed by Brian gills according to the National curriculum all compository teaching on sex and relationship education known as human growth and development in primary schools is to be taught in science lgbtq gender identity is still debated in the science community and no final indisputable evidence has been shown on either side opinions widely vary with each side making their own points however making up pronouns or identifying as an animal is not science it is simply a social construct in fact according to the diagnosis

072and statistical Manual of mental disorders which is used by the psychiatrists in the medical community defines gender identity disorder as a mental health issue stating gender identity disorders are defined and marked as incongruent between their experiences or Express gender and the one they were signed at Birth according to the Civil Rights Act of 1969 schools cannot promote the beliefs of one group over another everyone is to be treated equally and fairly but when schools begin to convert LGBT Lifestyles to children they are abusing their power and their political positions as Educators as a medical professional for 31 years I've witnessed this I've seen this destruction with firsthand on kids that are confused who they thought they were in the opposite sex of who they were born in I've seen elementary and middle school kids who

073wanted to be accepted went along with this fad by succumbing to peer pressure and bullying tactics Middle School girls told me they joke yeah that concludes your time thank you it's wrong for you uh Brian gills will be next followed by Nicolo roditi hello thank you for uh let giving me the opportunity to speak to y'all um I'm here speaking out uh to help support the underprivileged children that my wife and I Mentor we've seen some of the problems in the school going on right now um and I think one of the biggest things right now is we're not focusing on education like math reading science um there's a lot of these Equity policies that are being passed in the recent 10 years and we're not I guess I'm asking whether that is improving outcomes

074um we I think this policy was actually pulled from another County I'm curious if we've studied if that has actually improved the outcomes there um I'll remind you that we are accepting public money so this is taxpayer money we're talking about so everything we do here needs to be for the benefit of the entire community at school and I just hope that you all will consider that when you uh Vote for This policy thank you Niccolo and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing you're not right congrats thank you hi everyone my name is Nicolo my pronouns are they he I first just want to start with logic so when we talk about hate speech and when we talk about a lot of these things we're not talking about education and education is a defined relationship between

075the educator and the child and there are different methodologies used like Montessori and right we don't have to go into the evolution of school systems right that is just one example when you have these things and you want to control how that relationship is made it is about you you are not in those schools so you can have your opinions but we are here to talk about how to better those relationships between educator and child because if you don't have bettered relationships it ends into some really destructive areas also culture shifts so if you are upset that culture is shifting then understand that that's what happens new kids come along the things move forward if you feel like you have all this power and control to want to stop it you're creating a power dynamic

076because you don't want to relinquish something in you and that's fine but those are opinions we are here to actually create concrete and tangible goals with our children and I'm an example of I'm an associate director of the lgbtq center of Durham the youth center I am a public school student I am Queer as hell I am 25 and if it wasn't for teachers especially when I grew up in Charlotte I would not physically be here thank you Amy Bender followed by Hollis Scott evening my name is Abby Bender I'm a DPS parent of a non-binary student and a family physician practicing Community medicine due to continued safety concerns of students and staff I would like to strongly push for Orange County the Orange County gender policy to be passed tonight without delay a task

077force full of knowledgeable lgbtqi people and allies can then strengthen the policy in coming months my child while in a safer Place doing into an environment created by a former principal is now again at risk because as the current guidelines Stand action or inaction is largely up to the principle in charge our school currently has funding to perceive the training of staff and incorporating affirming books and lessons into the classroom but this vital need is being blocked because of a belief system that is a history of hurting lgbti people in the last two weeks I've had to listen to the person in charge of my child's School talk about a plurality of beliefs surrounding gender and how that should influence our decision as to whether these life-saving lessons and trainings should be allowed to happen

078my child and their teacher have been misgendered multiple times even in front of the principal and vice principal without correction DPS currently have people in charge of our children's schools that are concerned more concerned with the discomfort of straight often religious cisgender adults over the safety of our queer children in addition over the last two years I have encountered multiple incidents at both elementary schools where staff were inclined to step up and support my child but had a fear of retaliation from the people in charge whether that be the Principal or the district people have stepped up and spoken out despite their fears and those staff members have expressed that at a minimum it was not easy to do and often not well received I will say my child and I are eternally grateful for

079these brave souls thank you please pass a policy tonight thank you Hollis goth our next speaker hi my name is Hollis Goss and my pronouns are she and her and my daughter is in seventh grade at Lakewood Montessori Middle School she came out as transgender at the end of last year I am so so grateful for everything that Lakewood has done to support and celebrate my kid and to keep her safe I urge DPS to pass the policy and also to look to learn from the faculty and staff at schools like Lakewood that have put queer affirming policies and practice into place lgbtq plus kids are at much higher risk for depression self-harm and suicide research is clear that strong support at home and at school makes a huge difference in their well-being queer affirming

080policies and practices at school keep our children alive thank you next we'll have Teresa black blackington followed by Dylan Evans or Dylan Evans hi my name is Teresa Dow blackington and I'm a parent of two children at Club Boulevard and the PTA president I'm here to ask that you vote tonight to put this gender policy into effect immediately we must act now we must make it known that our LBT lgbtq plus students students and families are not just seen but they are also valued and affirmed that they have dignity and worth that their lives matter and that we recognize their full Humanity we cannot be a school district that touts its progressiveness or that makes loud claims of how much it values the social and emotional health of its students and then not act immediately

081on this we must pass this policy now and then we must work to improve and expand it with the assistance of lgbtq plus and allies not a task force that includes alternate views because there is no place at the table for homophobia or transphobia in our school district we must not make false equivalencies or care more about some people's personal discomfort than the safety of our community members additionally this District must affirm that teachers have the right to use books lessons and materials that are inclusive and supportive of lgbtq plus and gender diverse students and families we cannot have schools that are safe for certain families in schools that are not and we cannot have this safety dependent on changing teachers administrations or zoning decisions please pass this policy this evening thank you thank you

082Dylan Evans followed by Abigail Martin my name is Dylan Evans my pronouns are heide and I go to the school for Creative Studies and I'm president of my GSA I fought for gender initial bathrooms and respect from teachers but the problem with these efforts is that there needs to be policy in place they're not these changes are not going to be effective or worthwhile without you guys passing a policy one or two teachers in my entire School are not enough to create a safe space for the dozens of kids that go to my school and there are hundreds that exist within the entire Durham Public School System last year at my school a student was berated in front of their class because a teacher thought they were using the wrong restroom they ended up in

083tears and very little action was taken by the school after the teacher publicly humidity this gendered them and the action I was taken had no effect on this teacher's Behavior because there's no protection for queer kids in our school these are our lives it's hard to explain how demoralizing and disheartening these experiences are I see safe space posters everywhere I look but no one is practicing what they preach no one is practicing what they preach some people's only Refuge is school and it's a poor excuse for a safe space you aren't being respected and it sends the message that we don't matter it's dehumanizing we need training for teachers to educate them on how to accommodate queer and trans students gender neutral bathrooms we need to normalize asking pronouns and using them out of respect

084the discomfort of a few adults does not outweigh the need to protect some of the most vulnerable populations at our schools a population that is far more likely to attempt suicide than our cisgender and heterosexual peers thank you next we have Abigail Martin followed by Jenna wine I am a teacher and I'm a parent of two DPS students it hadn't occurred to me that there could be um retaliation or concern about that for a teacher to speak so I'm here and I'm assuming that is not going to be the case um so just to mention um the social studies standards that we teach in kindergarten students must understand how individuals are similar and different they must explain similar similarities in their self and others and they must explain the elements of culture how people speak

085how people dress Foods they eat Etc so when my kids went to kindergarten they learned those standards they got very explicit instruction about Concepts like skin tone melanin words to use to talk about groups of people that they are in community with and this really gave their whole class a language a shared language to talk about race and specific strategies to be an ally I want the same thing around gender it's developmentally appropriate and factually accurate for kindergarten kids to learn what gender is the full range of genders in their community and the full range of families in our school and how to be an ally so if a recent survey I think said 18 of DPS middle and high school students identifying the lgbtqia community so we are already behind the curve if we

086want to talk about the community that our students are in thank you of genoine followed by Anna Allman hi everyone I'm Jenna wine I'm one of the Librarians at Riverside High School and it's actually very timely that this is happening tonight because earlier today we have multiple non-fiction sections and we have one called social issues um lgbtqia and when I was shelving some books I found a plastered behind all the books up against the wall for who knows how long um these notes one that says God said that man shall not lay with man and another one that says 500 years from now when the world ends in an archaeologist digs this up you're either going to be a man or a woman two genders so I don't know how long this is up I

087talked to my student assistants they said they don't think it's been up long they didn't notice it but I'm just I'm a queer individual and I felt sick to my stomach just seeing this and thinking what is going to happen to my students that see this and so I just I hope so much that I was the first one to see this because it's it's apparent and I've been dealing with teachers who have misgendered my students and just actively doing it even as I stick up for them and I know that students are going to be like this but it's so harmful they're not doing it to cause a rise I know some students do it too just cause a rise around their friends they deliberately left this hate mail to the students that are

088interested in learning about their history and themselves and I just I have looked at the policy and I agree my colleague is going to talk about the policy later and I just you have to pass it now so please because it's happening thank you thank you and Anna almond will be our last speaker for the night we'll end on a high note okay um hi everyone my name is Anna Allman I am a teacher at Riverside um I went there as well when I was a student um I wasn't out in high school but I am out now um today at our qsa meeting I handed them your proposal and I said give me your feedback and I'll take it to the board tonight first my students want to thank you for using expansive and

089inclusive definitions my students also acknowledge there is federal and state law we have to consider as well they did ask how much wiggle room is given with regards to student privacy and students consenting to share information both before and after they are 18 with phrases like case-by-case basis who makes that decision is it the principle is it you is it a team is it all of us is it the faculty member deemed the LGBT liaison and support AKA The Token gay right what is a specific educational interest and who determines the validity of that interest my students felt it was strange to focus on the date of transition for staff members and were concerned that dead names would be trans would be still on transcripts sent out to colleges ultimately however my students felt that

090this policy should be put in place immediately with any proposed task force or group meeting in the future to clarify and make changes as needed this protection is needed now because violence against students is happening now we don't need to go down to Moore County to find evidence of anti-lgbt sentiments becoming violent I was at a funeral last month for a trans DPS graduate who took their own life I alone cannot protect every single student I need your help thank you thank you thank you and that concludes our public comment there are some seats in here some folks want to come in all right the next item on our agenda is our consent items we have four listed the board members have reviewed all of these items in advance and I'm hoping for emotion move

091approval of items a b c and d on the consent agenda second the move by Miss Byers seconded by Miss vegadares is there any discussion I do want to highlight in here some contracts to put some electric charging stations and a lot of our comprehensive schools and preparation for more transition towards electric vehicles which is exciting around our sustainability goals so I just want to appreciate the administration for that any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously the next item on our agenda is the Board of Education lgbtq policy update I'll pass it over to miss Giovanni Mr Malone is going to take the lead on this Madam chair thank you so what I forwarded to the board um and what you'll find

092in the board packet is the Orange County Schools policy I'm sorry see I did it Orange County Schools regulation um that they have in their policy manual with the required changes to convert it from the Orange County Schools to the Durham Public Schools I provided it in a track changes format so that the board could clearly see exactly what changes we I made to that um most of them are simply changing it from Orange County to Durham I some of those are trying to track the manner with your policy and regs are done compared to how orange does some of theirs but those are the only changes noted in the version that I sent to you there are a couple of other small changes I would propose but after I read it more thoroughly but

093it may make sense to just start with what you asked me to do which is what I sent you support members do we have any feedback for rod on what we have and then we could also hear those changes Mr Sears yeah I did want to point out that it's not um explicitly put on our agenda but I'm hoping that perhaps after the policy discussion is finalized we could take a point of privilege to talk about the draft training plan just to uh see if there's any feedback on that and make that available to the public any questions discussion board members promotion misfire so Mr Malone I appreciate your work on this um and one um wanted to thank you it's it's obviously been reviewed by Farrington Smith prior in a different District um I

094would be most interested in making sure that we label it and call it policy and I don't know I just wanted to clarify from you why you use the word guidelines rather than policy and I also look to kind of our race Equity policy it has a policy number it lives in the policy manual and is there a way to do that with with some edits tonight so this would be in your policy manual as I've presented it to you it would appear three different times in your policy manual it would appear behind policy 1710 which is uh what are your harassment policies it would appear behind policy 4021 and it would appear behind policy 7230. so it would actually be in your policy manual three times your policy manual currently has many regulations that

095are attached to policies to regulations kind of implement the policy so you've got your strong policy statement in 1710 and then this rag is kind of how you go about implementing it it's more of the the the direction to staff about how to implement your policy statement so it would definitely be in your policy manual as I have provided it here which is my understanding from the last meeting it would appear in three different places in the manual if you were to go into the policy manual and search for transgender or victimization or you know any of these words that are in this policy they would show up this this rag would show up just like any of your other policies so it would be there it's just this is really technically not a policy

096it's more of a how you're going to go about implementing the policy and it would be very similar to the other regs that you've got within your manual so like if you were to open your policy manual go to the 3000 section is a is a good one as any and you'll see you've got various regulations you know in that section currently so how is it different from our Equity policy which has a number and lives as policy that's what I and I can't remember it's number 1910 anybody know 1900 thank you um same different that's what I'm really trying to understand and and I think others have had confusion I know I continue to have confusion when you go policy guideline policy guidelines like have you had a chance to review that when Mr

097Malone to me they have the same they need the same weight and level that's what I'm hoping I'll be honest if you feel that you want to call a little policy that's perfectly fine I defer to your judgment I'm just telling you that it's more of a rag than a policy but if you feel that it's more important to call it a policy I mean it's I mean there are probably other um policies that aren't really policy anyway in the sense of the way that the school board association's manual is structured um so if if you're preference is to call it policy then I mean it's you can give it a number but it as it as it is being proposed it would appear three different times in your policy manual um it will be

098attached to those three policies and if you want it to um you know Miss Giovanni and I were talking earlier I mean if you wanted to change it the name of it and maybe call it board adopted regs um you could do that if you wanted to add language to it to say that um that the ranks can't be changed without board approval you could certainly do that but if if you just feel like it's important to call it policy then um that's certainly fine too I mean it's it's really up to you to decide how you want to proceed I I'm I just don't view it as a policy but that's um that's just me so categorized into Orange County um as this is exactly out of if you go into Orange County's policy

099manual and search I mean this is it it's a rag it's called a regulator it's called a regulation and it's attached to the those three policies well it's the same policy in three different places but it's attached in three different locations within the policy manual it's a rag and that's how they've got it set up um again it's it's it's in your policy and some of its semantics and which is why I've decided that if you really want to call it a policy it's not worth um I don't think it's worth um you know making that big a deal about it at the end of the day it and if that's how you want to proceed but it's it is a rag any other questions or comments from board members Miss Rogers thanks for your

100work on this and for bringing this to us I appreciate it um I'm gonna weigh in and say I think we should push forward and make it a policy because we may not always have an Administration that's as welcoming and understanding as the current Administration and we need this to be in policy so that the guidelines can't be modified in the future without bored ratification and again I think you could address that by making it a board adopted regulation and putting in the reg that it can't be changed without board approval I mean it's that could be easily done is that something that the board would be interested in making that addition that these are board adopted regulations and need board approval for change I I'd be more interested in just calling it policy if

101Mr Malone says it's policy what I hear him saying is this is different than standard cookie cutter language that North Carolina School boards brings or or it it's the function I'm trying to interpret your attorney to speak okay um you I think it's because it's more of the how that you see it more as guidelines regulations rather than the whatever the overarching correct like a policy statement would be We're Not Gonna um bully kids we're not going to have harassment against kids okay and then how do schools Implement your direction would be in the regs and that's how the policy manuals were typically set up so the policy statement is what you've already made this is what you're telling staff how to implement some of those things or what the superintendent would be telling staff

102how to implement those things so but again I mean it's not there are probably other examples in your policy manual where it's not simply a policy such that if you know if it's something that you feel compelled to do um then that's that's your your prerogative as the board I'm just saying that it's it is a more of a rag it would appear in your policy manual you could say that it can't be changed without board approval you could make it a board adopted regulation so just a little clear that this is not something that the superintendent implemented and I think you would be accomplishing all of what your seeking to do but at that point I mean we're so close that it's it's however you want to proceed Mr Mill can I ask you

103a question I'm going to miss the list so um board policy always needs to be approved by the board right correct okay correct Miss Lewis I definitely hear what you're saying as far as policy and regulation thank you for the clarification for that and whether it's guidelines policy regulation there has to be measures of accountability my question is regarding um policy the reason policy is very broad is so that when there are certain regulations happen you're not in violation of your policy if you're not implementing them um to the T like people say we're gonna have a meeting every Wednesday but you're don't meet that Wednesday you gotta either go in and change a policy it just trips you up more if there's more regulations in the policy so I I I I think that

104here's what I would say to you whether you call this a policy or a rag it has the same enforceability the same applicability across the district you're in the same level of violation regardless of what you call it okay it's it's it's the same so you're not making it more enforceable you're not making it apply anymore by calling it a policy it it will have the same applicability across the district either way it's just that the structure of it and what it's doing is more of a regulation then it is a policy but it but once it's in your manual which it would be really the version that exists now that's not in your manual still has the same weight of this is what the board is described and this is what the superintendent has

105described as the rules yeah so those rules apply now they're out there right now but this whether you call it a reg or policy it's still the board's expectation that everybody follow it and if they don't then they would be in violation of what the board is established as the as the rules that was the Crux of my question as well um just what does the accountability look like so yeah I'm supportive of calling it a policy with our attorney says it's a regulation and where there's language we can use as a regulation but what I hear more than anything it's important to our community to hear it as a policy that we all understand that so I don't want us to go back and forth I'm just going to say I'm supportive to calling

106it a policy and ready to make a motion all right are you going to make emotions I want to make sure I want to leave the door open we have an opportunity for a discussion as well we do have an opportunity for discussion so I'll pass it over to Mr Chavez I had a couple of content of comments on the content um I also support making it a policy given the our communities calling for that and that it sounds like it's amazingly Samantha whether it would be a regulation or policy and it does seem consistent with the um racial and educational Equity policy that we have but um my comments on content um are one on page 10 um well there is I want to put something around curriculum and um this is something that

107we had talked about adding there's nothing on there on page 10. um uh currently but um we had talked about adding something on curriculum to the guidelines before and strengthening them that way so in any case I want to add that in here and I want to thank members of our community um and I'm going to try to say your last name so Cal the Cowie hem Street and um rainbow uh Collective I know your name but for Change and the lgbtq center of Durham and um the campaign for southern inequality all made comments on this earlier and gave um input and so there's a a paragraph that they wrote which I think is succinct and and covers things on curriculum and it would give explicit um Direction on inclusive curriculum which to me is

108an important part of this whole um initiative and effort and so I can read that paragraph or yeah I'll read it out loud if you can read it out loud but then also maybe send it to um Smith so she can put it up on our screen I always want to make sure everyone has an opportunity in the public to see what we're presenting great okay sending quickly so the paragraph reads um there'd be a The Heading would be curriculum development selection of instructional materials the board is committed to allowing administrators at individual schools to develop and Implement plans necessary to ensure the educational success of their students the board believes that each student be given slash not be denied the opportunity to Foster respect and appreciation for cultural and ideological diversity and differences including

109an age-appropriate understanding of gender expression gender identity and sexual orientation in the long-term interest of the DPS Learning Community to maintain a safe and supportive School environment for all students and staff uh the board recognizes that inclusion of age-appropriate lgbtq plus inclusive supplementary materials will nurture the cultural well-being of all students and it references DPS policy 3000 3100 and 3200. we can comment on that I have other comments on content but I don't know if we want to talk about that first Mr Malone I think Miss Chavez emailed that to you as well in case that's helpful for you to them oh good thank you did you share with all of us I'd like to see it if you could share really quickly please talk to everyone if you can email it to the full

110board that would be helpful yes but and you can go ahead through your other comments and then we'll if other board members have questions we'll Circle that okay all right I just said that to you all and then um another item was on page 11 about the professional development um there was um Miss Chavez there's two packets with different numbers yeah so if you could give us the heading of where you are that might help us out thank you I have too many different things open so hold on um all right okay heading um let me that's an older version do you want to come back to me while I find this we can Mr Sears okay thanks yeah I have a quick edit um good luck trying to have everyone I'm in the public

111packet page 70. 7-0 in the notification section the second sentence starts with developed collaborative collaboratively with Community groups and other school districts this policy is dot dot um I was going to recommend that we uh remove all the words developed collaboratively with Community groups and other districts this policy is um no not this policy is leave that in there but the developed collaboratively um segment um and then start with this policy is based on current data so it's a small edit um I think we we the collaborative part is coming in the task force and so when we okay that's my thought uh Miss valladaris I am very proud of this board for unanimously supporting um policy that gives visibility to all our families and our students on that piece of collaboration I mean we

112have been engaged going back from the beginning of the year and we've gotten the engagement of many different organizations of um meetings even with elected officials um and parents and families and so that piece of collaboratively has to me it's very important because it this is policy that the group sevens Chavez mentioned um Miss Chavez I want to go back to you because I know you weren't done um and you were mentioning all the different groups that were involved in providing edits to us and we've had this document from uh early on and so it is collaboratively and board members here and also Community groups and everybody has come together and we've had these drafts so I actually um don't see any reason to scratch that but I'll go if I can go to miss

113Travis are you ready yeah there's Travis yes um let's see here so it's actually on page 10. I wanted to comment on the professional development section it says what's bold it as a professional development and um in our in the guidelines that we actually have it's actually more specific about frequency of um of training and so I wanted to suggest that we take from the guidelines and put that into the something about that into this section um let's see here so in the guidelines it says that it says in alignment with this board directive Durham Public Schools office of student Support Services human resources department and the office of equity Affairs will create an initial training for school-based staff to familiarize them with the DPS gender support guidance as well as an annual training the

114annual training may be paired with school planning and can be led by school-based Representatives um is there something we might put in here about an annual training or um something along those lines as is in the guidelines currently can I just throw out a thought for you to consider yeah there's nothing that would really prevent you from adopting it relatively speaking as is tonight um bringing having board members present kind of attract changes version for you to consider at the next meeting and then if you want it to make changes at the next meeting do that I mean that way you're not kind of piecemealing reading proposed changes that people can't really see and digest um and because I think you're otherwise gonna end up making it really hard for Tanya to figure out what

115gets posted tomorrow [Music] um and you can make the point of we are serious about this you get something on the website um and and then you know again you can come back at the next meeting and and have you know a version that people can see and and have time to review and think about I would I would throw that out and then the only other thing is that I would go to Mr sears's proposed change I as the lawyer if we're especially if we're calling this a policy I'm a little I'm not a huge fan of having language in here that would suggest that this policy was developed by this board collaboratively um with Community groups and other school districts when we know that you basically are grabbing it from Orange and changing

116the names and saying we're adopting it today and you know it's I I think that it's it's okay if you have collaboration over with the task force Etc and then you can add that kind of language in to a later version of the policy but I I do agree with him that it you did not really do these things from what I've seen so I don't in the development of this version of the policy um so I would I would encourage you not to have that particular language in this version we have a proposal of kind of adopting what we have here and then having the opportunity to do another I guess not another reading but to make edits and changes in our next meeting so um and that we could adopt it striking that

117comment or that phrase of the sentence in there it's Travis and just like with any policy I mean you could change it every meeting for the next five meetings until you got it right but I may not it's that's the great thing about the way this process can work so I mean you shouldn't feel like you're not going to be able to change it or if you miss it at the next meeting I mean you can change any policy anytime you know with a majority vote of the board so Miss Travis I um I feel fine about that that's great I understand the complication of doing little edits all throughout the only thing I would push for is adding that paragraph on curriculum I would ask that we adopt that today and put that in

118there um and that's the hill I'm gonna die on today I I am just a little concerned about adding that paragraph without having it in our materials so people other folks could have an opportunity to see it so our community hasn't had a chance to review and respond um that that's the only concern I would have since with the policy adoption we try to have that available for the community Miss buyer yeah I I really appreciate everyone um thoughts and and uh Collective Vision I want to be clear to the folks that have come to join us for the first time on this issue that we have been um working on this for months and um we welcome you and and all opinions and voices um our students are already protected in policy already protected

119by similar guidelines that you can find on our website um this vote tonight I think strengthens and makes explicit this board's ongoing protection and best practices I would just be interested in in renaming it as lgbtq and gender support policy and then um anytime y'all come to to any edits that we need um you know I stand ready to support it thank you for all the work on this board if Mr Miller so one other thing if that would be useful in Emotion um would be a name for the policy in a policy number um I know Miss Giovanni's been looking at some numbers that she may want to propose that you consider I went through and proposed 1735 slash 4035-7235 because they kind of track each other and then when we went go into

120the four thousands there's already like a 40 25 and just to kind of track them along and then it kind of aligns also with kind of a similar policy like with the non-discrimination based on disabilities so that would be my proposal and thank you if y'all can give us a name that would be helpful because the only thing I have right now is lgbtq plus and gender supports so you said 1735 40 35 and 73.25 no because I got something wrong yeah 72.35 yeah so 30 Mr Malone indicated like it's you know a triple code policy so you have to so that would be 17 35 40 35 72 35. and none of those numbers are already taken and it kind of tracks with the others that's not proposal and obviously like Mr Malone said

121if it turns out that it doesn't work we can y'all can change it right okay thank you I'm move approval of this policy as the lgbtq plus and gender support policy um as policy 1735 40 35 72 35. with the addition of that paragraph on curriculum second would you include Mr Sears edit that strikes the velocity with with Mr Sue's edit that's Stripes uh strikes the line on collaboration it was moved and properly second any other discussion Miss Lewis yeah so I'm looking at the curriculum development now on this Chavez I do have a question for the administration regarding the development and Implement plan necessary and does this curriculum development piece here impact the curriculum we already are using well we need to be reassessing that curriculum what is their impact of this statement to

122the curriculum we already have this was can you read the lines that you're referencing the very first one um so the people who are watching and things online the board is committed to allowing administrators at individual schools to develop and Implement plans necessary to ensure that educational success will Implement plans necessary and ensure that educational success once again so just I'm just one with the selection of instructional materials if there will be any and I didn't look at the other policy 3100 3200 what does that mean in regards to the curriculum we already have as their competing curriculum is I just want to get clarity about that if you know Miss Chavez what you what what is the spirit of this portion and is it in violation of would it cause more work for the

123curriculum we already have review or things of that nature I can I can respond from my point of view but also um I heard that as a question for the for the administration as well I see this paragraph as being consistent with the equity policy and our efforts for students to see themselves in the curriculum and um not to um not to severely change the curriculum or certainly interrupt the standards that are taught but to allow for the inclusion of lgbtq plus development developmentally appropriate materials um in schools that validate lgbtq plus identities families um and and allow students to just feel embraced um just the same way that we want to have more materials that include students of different racial identities um National backgrounds language um home languages Etc Miss Lewis did you have

124anything to respond with that no that is very helpful that explanation um I just would like a little time to look at the policy I'm trying to pull up the policy that's referenced below it uh Dr mabinga did you have a comment yes I just want to make a comment and I'm gonna toss you back to um Dr Hardy we have curriculum in place so just want to just say clarifying question about the rotation of the curriculum do we need to be able to seek additional materials based on the curriculum that we have or is something that's uh when we're doing rotation of um Ela social studies and that's the time that we need to be able to consider those items as we're including in our curriculum so that's a clarifying question to you uh

125then uh oh let's also Dr Hardy jump in I don't have anything additional to add I was not able to see the full language I know it was sent to Miss Smith um and I know um we were going to add it consideration of adding that to the policy I I would like to and I appreciate you bringing this Miss Chavez I would like to give the administration time to like review it understand what it means until they be ready for implementation and then again try to make sure that we have an opportunity for our public to see and respond I think that's just an important part of governance to make sure we have an opportunity for folks to do that so I just I know your emotion included that but would love if we

126could look at it when we return for our next meeting in January so the Administration has an opportunity to review and understand how it fits with the other policies that we have uh Mr Sears has a comment I think I need a minute to frame it uh Miss validaris I'd like to amend the title um so lgbtqia Plus and gender supports we've got a motion on the floor it's been moved and seconded we would need we want to make changes uh Miss Chavez who we need to vote on this motion then we make a new motion or her motion I would Peg it as a motion to amend the title of the policy to be asked if there's a second for that then you can see if there's you know then you would change the

127title then you would vote on the overall policy all right I I would also because we had a lot of public input this evening and um if and I just scanned if the acronym is not spelled out anywhere I would recommend that we do that especially if we're going to add two more letters which I would support that we allow the administration to insert that as early as possible into the policy would you be open to that miss it wouldn't come back come to the micromise mall I mean I don't think we can just have well it would not be normal policy development for the board to just say to the administration that they can just go and insert something into the policy okay yeah I can be specific can we amend the motion to

128the first time we use that acronym that we designate what the acronym stands for in the policy I think that would work thank you would you would you accept that Amendment Miss Travis yes that's a great idea so an exception of Mr Sears Amendment is amendment as well yes okay so your new motion is to pass your motion can you respect restate your motion Mr Chavez yes um so uh I am moving approval of the lgbtqia plus and gender support policy which will be policy 1735 40 35 and 72.35 and with the um taking out the statement on collaboration naming the um what lgbtq plus lgbtqia plus stands for leave it at that for now all right so miss Chavez has put a motion on the floor do we have a second second it's been

129moved and properly second any other discussion sorry Mr Sears and then Miss Lewis yeah um briefly I I just want to encourage both the administration and my colleagues that if around the the paragraph that um Miss Chavez added if there's anything urgent in the community that we do what we normally do and communicate that directly with the administration the reason I'm raising this is that that word allowing um leaves a lot of wiggle room and we don't often direct the administration so I think the paragraph in general is kind of Hit or Miss I'm willing to go with it um but um policies are going to live for a long time they're going to be informed by the task force Etc so um yeah I just felt like I had to say that thank you

130Miss Lewis I just heard the restatement of emotion but I was not sure if you still included the paragraph for the curriculum in light of what here I'm still sharing as far as having some time for the administration to look at that and maybe coming back to it in January I took it out and we can come back to it in January I do think it's important and I think the question that you asked Dr melbenga is important and we shouldn't have time to discuss and for everyone to look at it thank you I'm clear so it's been moved by Miss Travis Miss Rogers is there any other discussion do want to say thank you to all of the community members who came out tonight thank you to the students and the student voices that

131came via their teachers and other Representatives it's important for us to hear from you all and really appreciate your advocacy on this so with that all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign and it passes unanimously thank you Madam chair sir Madam chair just can I get some clarity just to make yes ma'am so we're gonna post it online with those changes that have been improved in the motion but when it comes back in January is when you want Administration and Mr Malone to come back with kind of some proposed language to the board for for action or for discussion in January proposed language to the board could we do it for a first reading in January and there's a couple of different things here around professional development

132curriculum and then some language around this so so what I what I what I understood different of what she understood would be that the board members would be proposing the I mean I don't know we don't know what you're thinking so I mean my thought was that you would now have this time to drafts your proposed changes and to bring those proposed changes to the board for review in January not that we were drafting anything that was how I understood what we were doing that's why I asked for clarity because I've misunderstood that then I thought y'all wanted me to look at adding in the training language because we didn't talk about that y'all added that and so that's why that's why we needed Clarity so thank you I mean if there are specific things

133then let's be clear I I didn't because I thought that the board was going to generally now review the policy in more detail and bring whatever proposed changes to to the board the board would bring changes to the board for reviewing consideration now I mean if if there's stuff that you want to send to us to review with some language you know make sure this looks like policy language or whatever I mean that that would make sense but I thought that we would get emails from you saying what about this can you help us with that not that we would be doing anything until we heard from you about your thoughts on that that makes sense I think I was asking for you well because I want to make sure that what we bring also

134has been reviewed by the administration with some time so if we brought something to the meeting without that opportunity for you all to review that would be my concern but with this direction if board members you all can send something before the holiday break winter holiday starts that should give Administration sometimes I'm looking at y'all's faces because I don't have the calendar in my head um to review before we have our January meeting and then one is that Phil okay Mr Giovanni that Clarity board members need to send proposed changes and ideas to miss Giovanni Mr Malone Dr mavinga before the holiday breaks ends on what day December 20th December 20th December 20th all right second clarifying question we passed this we normally do two readings on policy so do we need to have a

135motion to have this waive the second reading yes I would make a motion to waive second reading of this policy second it's been moved by Miss Byers seconded by miss variadaris any other discussion so when we vote this through right now this becomes policy tomorrow tonight tonight wonderful all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously all right any other clarifying questions we were going to have an update on train a draft training yes they will yeah we do um I'll pass this over to miss Chavez we also have copies of this that are available outside if other folks want to see it and we'll also put it up on the screen okay well miss Giovanni and I have been working on drafting a um an

136outline for this pal for this training that we agreed to hold for the board and for upper Administration and this is some a kind of condensed uh version of what we're thinking about and we'd like feedback from the board um to see how this how this sounds this would be a three-part sort of set of trainings with the first one being about a half day training on the landscape for lgbtq IA plus youth um and we would bring in a um a professional uh probably a scholar who has done work and researched around lgbtq plus youth specifically youth of color who can talk about best practices and who also ideally is familiar with the Durham area and um art context our local context the second one as you can see would be a more legal

137focused training and we already have someone pretty much lined up for that and that will give us sort of a sense of legal parameters major cases things of that nature um that will help guide us in our decisions around uh around policy and shaping uh inclusion for lgbtq plus Youth and then thirdly um a training with a National Organization who can talk about best practices on a national level um look and we looked at a lot of different organizations um gender spectrum and Trevor in the Trevor Project were ones that stood out as having applicable trainings for educational settings and we would talk with them more if we went through with this and make sure they could kind of give us a training that was applicable to our um to a board level in a

138district level so we'd love your thoughts and Miss Giovanni do you want to add anything okay thank you Miss chaveza just also remind folks we the board made some commitments earlier one of our discussions on this topic to work on strengthening our guidelines which now our policy to have training for all of our staff board members participating in that as well as the third commitment commitment to convening a task force to help support us as we're implementing our work and thinking about strengthening our policy guidelines so those were kind of the commitments that the board made and I just want to acknowledge the progress that we're making on that so thank you Miss Chavez Mr Giovanni for working on this plan together are there any questions or concerns comments Miss buyer I just want to

139express deep appreciation for Miss Chavez and um also miss Giovanni for working on a brilliant plan it looks really well thought out it looks really comprehensive and a great starting place for for this level of work I'm wondering if we see this potentially being open to principles either now or in the future and also um to the task force themselves to join in on this training those were some of the things that came to my mind as I looked at this I would I would appreciate that I think I would love the task force to have some of the similar training so we're using similar language as we're discussing topics it's important for people to start out with shared language Miss Lewis because this is a training for the board members would it have to

140be public oh they'll end up being public then in essence others could see the training look into Mr Malone our attorney oh yeah no it definitely would be public this would be a public meeting for sure yes but it would be a public meeting um I'm good is Mr Malone is that also with four board members being invited it's a public meeting because typically trainings are not public is that correct I'm trying to decide how to answer um if if the board is convening for board business then it's and you have more than four members then it's a board meeting and it should be noticed as such um it may very well have been that that didn't happen every single time but that's what should be happening yes I understand and that I asked the

141question Justin that if we feel we need to have it that it's not an open meeting I might ask us board members that we figure out a different a rotation or a schedule so that we can allow our staff to participate in that professional learning I think that's a good idea but also I think there are ways to structure this that we don't necessarily have to discuss tonight where um we can do our our very best to have the space be both open to the public via a meeting for instance broadcasting and we go to the County Commissioners or even here you might sit in the hallway you may not be in the room I'm not confident we have to have public comment at every meeting um so I think there are ways to get

142um get this done in a way where we can all be present and that's part of the thing I'm most excited about in the training plan is having us all at the table and I would encourage us to fight for that in every way we can also respecting um the fact that this needs to be safe and considerate um and uh trying to keep an eye on that this is for information we're moving forward or do we so I think this was just added as an information piece for the task force and Mrs Chavez and I are still working on we're going to take some of the feedback we get from the board and meet again and then bring back okay bring it as a presentation I think to share it with the public and

143let everyone know what the training is going to look like and maybe share some of the things that the chair and vice chair were mentioning like what that meeting structure would look like et cetera with consultation with the board attorney as well that that sounds good so I um I was looking at you Mr Giovanni or not we put this out on the agenda that's what I apologize for that um so thank you all for I was like we we added this not you uh thank you all for working on this we'll continue to keep you all updated as we move forward Mr Sears I would say with the fact that we have a date in mind and nothing we're not voting to set that date but April 30th um do we have General head

144nod consensus that this is a direction we want to go so that if if Miss Chavez wants to move towards working with the administration on setting some dates getting all of the people we wanted this around a table you know three times is ambitious I think given where we are in the year so if we can start to go ahead and block those calendars uh so everybody can make their vacation plans for other weeks possible there will be no perfect though but thank you appreciate that thank you all looking forward to moving forward with that I'm going to move us to the next item on our agenda uh Chief of Staff policy 6 6220 operation of school nutrition services thank you madam chair good evening board members Dr babanga colleagues and stakeholders if you could

145please pull up the PowerPoint and I'm going to ask um Mr Palmer and Dr Thayer too it'll be on call to answer any questions and we're going to go through the PowerPoint and um and then they'll be prepared to answer well I will as well but um all of us will be prepared to answer any questions that the board may have next slide please so initially um there was a change in the law and the policy 6220 was going to have to be changed based on that change in the law regarding indirect costs so that was initially when we met with the subcommittee that was where the conversation initially began and then it was shared that based on some pending regulations coming from the Biden Administration and regarding the Child Nutrition program from Mr Palmer's

146team we then helped pulled that back and didn't bring it and then worked with them and collaboratively came up with this policy so the PowerPoint is fairly short so I'm happy to just kind of go through those and then any questions most likely Mr Palmer and Dr Thayer will be able to answer and or of course um Mr Le Jour regarding any indirect cost questions so the first thing is that in order we had to increase the amount that we our operating balance in order to assess indirect costs and if you look at the prices that does come with a price tag of approximately a million dollars because we won't be able to assess those indirect costs um under a certain amount next slide please when we met with the subcommittee the there was already

147an existing operation of school nutrition services policy so this is um an update and an amendment so the first the original language or existing language the current language is listed that there would not be any discrimination based on race sex color national origin disability or age the subcommittee um members recommended that we track the language from our other discrimination anti-discrimination policies and so I highlighted the ones that weren't included previously um and so that would be our recommendation that none of those areas would be areas for discrimination next slide please there was also it I believe maybe in 2020 when we the first time we started looking at this policy and don't hold me to 2020 but it was pre um covet I do remember that um one of the conversations was the board wanted

148kind of some aspirational language added in regarding kind of the the way that the Durham board felt around the school lunch program and meals being provided to students so I did cross out um the breakfast indication because we do have Universal breakfast in Durham and that was not crossed out when we met with the subcommittee so I want to make that clear for the subcommittee as well next slide please the new policy provides clearer mandates on addressing failure or inability to pay two principles so that it is clear that in Durham if a student doesn't have the money for some reason that they will be provided a reimbursable meal and a lot of times people um and I would defer to additional details on what that looks like to Mr Palmer's team so that is

149something that Durham has all has been this board in the past has always been fairly clear about but we wanted to kind of codify that into the policy so that it was clear up next we wanted the recommendation from Administration is that principals go to contact parents and Guardians and not students so um just another you know kind of debt shaming which is kind of as a concern around the country right that students are kind of pulled out so we're making sure principals understand that any meal that should be addressed to the adults and not to students um and Dr Thayer can speak on this um what she shared with me is that the pending regulations from the bite Administration indicate that school systems can no longer use third-party debt collection so Durham Public Schools

150does not use third party debt collection but it does make sure that that is clear to our Child Nutrition program and our Administration and our principles that no one should be calling and you know hiring anyone to um as a third party debt collector it doesn't mean that we can't still make some efforts to follow up and collect the meal debt but just not third party and next slide please and this one is going to require some additional conversation but when the subcommittee met with Administration the instead of going out and saying like you can contact social services and do all of these other things if there's bad meal debt what the recommendation from Child Nutrition Services is that principals because they know their families in their schools should determine the next course of action

151what we did say and what we are working on Dr Thayer and Mr Palmer's in collaboration with Dr Hardy and maybe another person I'm not sure I know Dr Hardy is involved is what that course of action looks like so the principles cannot can have a menu of what their options are so that we're not just waiving necessarily you know debt that could be collected but we're making sure we're not shaming children and Etc and that we're providing supports to families that may not know that they qualify for you know free and reducing so there's a there's going to be a Litany of those things but that would be in a regulation or a procedure to come after on Dr Hardy's recommendation consultation with principals as well so it wouldn't just come from Child Nutrition

152Services it's going to be a collaborative effort words and next slide please and at this time um I would ask Dr Mr Palmer and Dr Thayer to be ready to answer any questions that and Mr as well and Dr Hardy and myself thank you uh Miss Chavez I had a question about if a parent applies for a free and reduced lunch and they have a balance um Can the will those unpaid meals be taken care of retroactively I know that there's in the language that you just commented on said ask Mr Palmer to step up to the podium thank you thank you Miss Chavez and we do have our entire School nutrition leadership team here tonight uh I am going to pass it over to director James Keaton Mr Keaton thank you that's a wonderful

153question because that is happening right now whenever a family is identified as free or reduced we are allowed to go back to the date that they put on the application so if the parent dates the application from August and we don't receive it until April we can retroactively refund not refund but we can reprocess those meals to receive the proper Federal reimbursement and that came out of a situation that happened several years ago where a teacher had the applications in her desk all school year and never turned them into Child Nutrition so we were given guidance that we can do that process so yes that does happen on a regular basis thank you other questions and Miss Rogers you all know that um well this is one of my favorite teams because when it comes

154to Student Success we know that our kids need to be nourished and they need to be ready to learn and so I'm very very very grateful for the work and for the sensitivity that we have in terms of understanding that you know there are community members who struggle Durham is changing really quickly and very fast and so we just want to be able to just yeah applaud you for for this work um for the intentionality behind the policy and the way that you that that you're writing uh and the ways that we are committed to not being debt collectors you know in in a in a very um uh aggressive way this is this is definitely in alignment with um just a school system that really understands its community and the students um I do

155have a question um just in terms of ways that the information can be more available I've heard stories many many stories but in one particular case the parent didn't know how much a lunch meal was and it's something that I I know what you know like we look at the the the we can look it online and we can figure it out but there are families and this is what really hurts me and hurts my heart that they were told by the person who's caregiver that you know they had to pay um for lunch meal and you know this is a family that is is vulnerable struggling and so I'm just I'm just wondering as much information as we can always put out there so that there isn't any discrepancy about what the price is

156um and families are having to like rely on somebody else maybe a middle person um a caregiver um to do that and those from photos who were tonight know about the story because this is something that um uh we we definitely continue to hear about some concerns with this so just ways that information can be out there and definitely I'm so grateful that we have a form you know that that that we use for the free and reduced lunch because I continue to share those links over and over and over and the fact that they are available to switch into um Spanish so um Kudos on on that I don't know if I should give you all the Kudos or if that's that's probably a state right that's a state okay I'll give the state

157Kudos but I also give you all kudos to continue to figure out ways that we can continue to we can ensure that every family has the information they need because food is essential it's one of the basic needs that we have and so as much information as we can have out there so that no child um is deprived of of necessary nourishment thank you Miss Rogers yeah my question is for Mr list here um because the reason we're visiting this um policy is because we have to change the Mandate it um amendments relative to the indirect costs right what's the deadline for us to do that by do we have a deadline in regards to charging them indirect costs no until you um change policies changing the policy to make sure that we have the

158expense that they are requesting in the new statute I don't know that I mean you're updating your policy so this would be the time to do it to put the two months that they say you have to have as an operating balance to charge indirect costs um so uh we haven't been able to charge it for 21 school year 21 or 22. um and from that standpoint uh we just have to follow the legislative policy and and not charge the indirect cost when we have less than two months operating balance that answers my question thank you inspire so I just want to clarify um Mr Giovanni this is here for actual action tonight I think that crazy says information at least yeah it's for this is first reading first reading yes um and would you

159be amenable if we were able to waive second reading since I'm going to defer to Mr as the board attorney right but I believe he said the last time that if the board y'all follow motion to waive your policy and for a second reading you're good I just want to um extend such gratitude to our uh Child Nutrition services and their leadership that is visionary and Equity focused um these are issues that we've been working on a long time um in Durham to try to move towards a more Equitable model we know that actually Universal meals for children paid for during the pandemic made a difference in families lives and so that still is best policy whether it comes from the federal or the state level and I think this board will continue to advocate

160for that but also knowing that on the prices y'all have told us this may cost us we don't know yet because it's our first year post pandemic really with this trying to qualify folks and everything this may cost us a million we may need to be aware of that going into a budget cycle with our commissioners I believe it is something that in our last joint meeting we had great enthusiasm about food and some of you were here for that and some of you weren't but um it's definitely something that I feel like our community will support if needed with local money so um I didn't want to talk about it forever but I do do want to just appreciate Charles work on this as a fundamental Equity issue and anytime that emotion is ready

161I'm ready to make it is there any other questions Miss Travis I have one other question about um the courses of action that might be taken if um a parent does not pay I was just wondering um what those might be given that we're trying not to um trying in every way to um allow the the family to access um you know benefits that they qualify for speak to them I know we've been working with uh our CEO for uh for the past few years where our average pretty much we have to chip in around 250 a thousand dollars for unpaid uh balance so with this policy as uh Miss buyer said they're going to be implications as well and uh that's something that we just need to keep in mind as we're doing our

162budget uh going to Commissioners and if we don't get those funds and I think our fund balance will be the place that we'll be going thank you do have a couple questions um but when it comes to the reimbursable meals that we give students can you all speak a little bit to what those look like or and I asked that question because I've heard in some places that people students get different meals when they can't they didn't bring their money and I don't think we do that so I just want to get a sense of what that looks like right several years ago the board determined that they did not want the children to have a differentiated meal so it's sort of been an Unwritten policy that we just feed the children and we let

163the balances be what they are and that's why we're trying to solidify that in this project um a reimbursable meal for breakfast it has to be a two ounces grain product a half cup of Fruit a half a second half cup of Fruit and a milk and then for lunch it has to be uh eight ounce milk two ounces of meat two ounces of grain a half cup of Fruit and a half cup of vegetable for elementary and middle and then high schools have to be offered a full cup of Fruit and a full cup of vegetables so that would be the reimbursable meal and we are reimbursed for every student we serve regardless of their meal status even the paid children we receive 41 cents for every paid student we serve from the government

164so we're happy to at least receive that amount thank you thank you Mr Keaton your team is a really phenomenal work I Echo the appreciation of our colleagues and um throughout the pandemic and also continue again to do really great work I think one question I have and I could argue why we wouldn't do this too is increasing the number of families that complete that application who might qualify and if we do we universally also give applications to everyone to maybe try to get more families who are going to return that freedom reduced lunch application as a way to make sure everyone is aware and has access to we know that every single family won't qualify but at least would give the opportunity in people's hands and families can decide from there just a thought

165I don't know if we do something similar to that already but sorry yes um we're required by law to send an application to every family in Durham County so every family on the rolls at the post office receive an application at their home we also have online applications available and we have paper applications available at all the school sites however we were just informed that a community eligibility school which we have 19 we are not allowed to give out applications at those schools because they're already receiving benefits so applications should be available at any school online in English and Spanish and through received at every home thank you thank you that's helpful uh Miss Valley Norris um yeah just just to follow well first of all commending again the work um this is very important

166uh to me particularly a bit to this board as well the um the comments about the 1919 schools that are Community eligible schools that get uh so it's free breakfast and free lunch essentially accessible lunch to everybody in that school is there anything um because I actually want more information than what's tonight and I know that you keep bringing these things to us but I'm thinking in terms of like initiatives to kind of ensure that that those schools that have meals for everyone quality quantity is where I'm going so in terms of like continuing to assess like you know what does that look like across those 19 schools that pretty much have uh food accessible to everybody that that quality is not compromised in any way because of quantity um what are some of the

167things that we're looking to do So currently we have a set of standard menus for the entire District so there are not separate menus for Community eligible schools there we have the same menu for all elementary middle schools and then we have a same menu for high schools with the exception of performance Learning Center because it's a satellite school that doesn't have the ability to serve all the same items but we have the same menus regardless of Eligibility status of the students and and thank you so much for um all answering all the questions tonight appreciate you all I would move that we passed policy 6220 operation of school nutrition services and waves second reading unless you want me to do that as a separate motion Mr Malone which you probably do I I think

168it can be one militia I did want to normally when this comes up everybody is looking to wave it so it's not technically an issue but I do want to just point out what the policy says so we can all be on the same page in the future your policy is 24.50 and it effectively says the board can waive its own policies and then it temporarily suspender waive their policies at any time on a two-thirds vote so I do want to point out that to waive the policy you technically need a two-thirds vote a lot I knew the other one was going to be unanimous from the night the week before so that was no big deal this one probably will be also but four meetings from now I don't want to have somebody say

169well can we wave in that wave and it's really close so I just want to make sure we're all clear that it does take a two-thirds vote to actually waive your policies thank you Mr Malone that emotion Miss buyer can you restate it yeah I would move that we adopt policy 6220 and waive second reading a second to move by Miss Byers seconded by miss valiadaris any other discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously the next item on our agenda operation Services the energy conservation program thank you madam chair and good evening Board of Education and Dr mabenga I'm joined tonight by Mr Frederick Davis and Mr Aaron hope and we're going to provide an update of our district-wide Energy Management program with

170that I'll turn it over to Mr Davis thank you Dr Monk good evening board members superintendent uh about a year and a half ago Administration brought a recommendation to uh into into contract with third-party Energy Management program in site logic we came to you a year probably around this time last year with an update of the trajectory of where we want to go in terms of energy management and energy conservation program I'm here today with Mr Aaron hope who in a second provide you an update on the things that we've been doing internally and externally I did want to make a couple of comments that we've heard here today as you are aware we did negotiate through Administration and direction of this board to start a energy sustainability Fund in which projects such as the

171solar roof project at Lyons Farm as well as a sustainable Alternative Energy measures throughout the district where we can find ways to use alternative energy sources as some of our existing schools are currently in play one of the things that you will see in this information is that in order for us to adequately use those alternative energy sources we need to make sure that we reduce our current energy usage Mr hope will tell you the things he is currently working on and provide an update as well as statistics on where we are here in the district so without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to Mr hope to give you the energy conservation program update thank you uh good evening board members good evening Dr moonbenga thank you for having me today thank

172you Dr Mont and uh Mr Davis uh for inviting me here to give you all an update about our energy conservation program next slide please so we wrapped up our first year of the program um at the end of fiscal year 2022 and we are very happy to report that we together collaboratively save the district half a million dollars uh in Energy savings um that is equal to in terms of our energy usage about eight percent uh energy reduction that is what we are equivalating to um in terms of our carbon footprint is a reduction of 7.4 million carbon uh co2s and uh metric tons of carbon to kind of break this down and you know friendly terms that people can understand we generally will provide some kind of equivalence to that um you know

173you know when looking at that one of the things we could look at was like okay well how many terms if I plug in my phone in the wall would that be and it came up to something crazy like 10 million but um one of the ones that we're going with tonight is Acres of forest sequestered is about 4 000 Acres of forest um carbon offset so the more we reduce our energy um the better we do for the environment for our for our uh Community next slide please it just to remind you all as well um our goal is to really kind of ramp down our energy usage slowly um so that it's not a you know just a a jolt on the system on how we use our buildings and so our goal

174is to hit um 36 energy usage intensity which is just a it's just a measurement it's kind of like your gas mileage in the car it tells you how well your buildings are doing on an annual basis and uh so not including uh fiscal year uh 2020 2021 because uh you know the district was impacted by virtual learning and the pandemic in terms of uh you know the buildings not being utilized the same way that they introduced and they've been we've decided to Benchmark fiscal year 2019 and we want to see this slowly ramp down uh to where we hit our goal at a fiscal year 2027 2028 next slide at least all right and so what all went into getting us to that half million dollars in savings um it really took a lot

175of inspections uh me getting about 112 uh steps where we inspected 53 buildings uh campuses in the district working with teachers working with principals assistant principals to really begin to understand what are the status of our buildings what do the buildings need and um how are they currently using energy and so we're very very proud of that work and also the fact that this work was collaborative many teachers sent us photos of how they were beginning to shut down their classrooms and I wanted to put that on display here during our breaks so that we have plenty of opportunities for Energy savings and a lot of our teachers are taking advantage of that and answering the call that we're putting out um so that when folks go on break that we really really shut these

176rooms down and conserve energy next slide please and with that this school year we started many of the teachers the feedback that we got from teachers was like hey it's great to do this over the long breaks what about every day how about we do this every day how about we get our students involved in this process and so we just distributed just something simple which was the big three close your blinds turn your lights out close your door on your way out um each and every day if you're going you know out to specials or uh for lunch things like that and then again at the end of the day so this is a message that we're trying to get out and uh we they have a lot of teachers have responded very positively

177to this next slide please and then we're also going to try to standardize those longer shutdowns those longer energy conservation opportunities so by doing that we're categorizing things in terms of how long are these breaks and what actions need to be taken at each one and for example the upcoming winter break we're going to ask teachers to do the big three things your blinds your doors your lights and also unplug any of your personal appliances and so they'll get some communication about that over the next week or two and I will be out there um to really kind of see how we're doing next slide and so as I'm out there you know during a teacher work day before the break um I'm probably going to run into a few folks shutting their classrooms down

178this was uh captured last uh holiday last winter break where I was able to surprise some teachers and say hey are you sitting at your classroom um great good for you here's a here's just a token of our appreciation um they were completely surprised and taken aback by that but I was able to kind of ask them to walk me through their process and some of these responses actually went into us being able to kind of craft that big three those big three items um so good good getting good feedback from teachers and also giving them some appreciation back for helping us kind of implement this kind of process change next slide please coming soon up in uh hopefully during Earth month we hope to launch the go green challenge which would put you know

179basically establish the next step of this program which would be to begin to get some student involvement in engagement so for Earth month we're going to try to provide some learning activities for students it will be kind of like a teacher-sponsored based challenge appropriate at different age levels uh and we'll try to provide some awesome incentives for folks to participate we're looking forward to doing that next slide please and we're just going to talk about some other sustainability efforts around the district especially coming out of a construction Capital planning um and uh you know Building Services in general um we've been doing some LED lighting conversions at several schools and those projects are continuing we're always looking for which schools need to continue to be updated and uh those projects are underway and some of

180them have been completed over last summer we're very very happy about that and want to continue those those efforts um you know looking at HVAC upgrades uh HVAC equipment uh and how we run our air conditioning and heating and ventilation uh is probably the number one contributor to our energy usage um and so finding ways to uh bring in more energy efficient equipment as we're doing our systems upgrades uh also looking at control systems and how to bring our controls up to date in a way that we can manage the buildings remotely uh and understand how the buildings are using energy and find new opportunities for conservation and uh you know this this will also have a knock on effect in terms of indoor air quality because uh as the systems are being improved and

181we'll be able to kind of make sure that ventilation is at a an appropriate level other uh opportunities we are pursuing um would be uh you know just looking at what's coming out of the federal government um they recently passed uh if inflation reduction Act and also the bipartisan infrastructure law they are issuing several grants and rebates uh one example would be the uh clean School Bus program uh that the EPA has launched and the department of energy is launching a program called renew America schools so we are looking at those programs and gonna make sure that we have uh Durham public schools in the race and in the running for any grant opportunities that are coming forward uh to help us continue these efforts and uh I think some of these opportunities will also

182uh impact our ability to expand our renewable energy and I want to kind of talk about that on the next slide please and uh yeah and just kind of echo back I think it was just a little over a year ago that the board uh approved the resolution for renewable energy at Durham public schools and I wanted to highlight that at Lawrence Farm Elementary School we have a shining example of what the future of renewable energy at Durham Public Schools could like look like and this is not a render this is a photograph of what it looks like today so I am amazed by this uh and we estimate that this system here will should offset about 40 40 percent of the building's usage we don't necessarily know exactly how much it would be because

183it's a brand new building and there was a perfect opportunity here with the south facing roof uh to place this system and we thank the board for really uh charging ahead with this opportunity here and uh we're gonna be looking at Future opportunities uh to continue this work right now we have a construction Capital planning we have a solar feasibility study underway with a contract director who is going to be looking at each and every site in the district to understand and evaluate the opportunity that is before us to place solar and renewable other renewable energy on our campuses and not just not just on the roots but uh on the campuses and District facilities because we have a lot of land and we have a lot of surface area that we can um really

184think about and evaluate um for the potential another project that we are undergoing I think you guys looked at it as well and approved earlier this evening was for electric vehicles um we're kind of seeing a transition in the state um our governor has really made a point to uh study zero uh zero emission vehicles and as we begin to see Vehicles come on the market and opportunities coming out of the federal government to help supplement some of the costs to transition to electric vehicles we are placing um a lot of effort and energy into studying you know at some of our course core campuses where you know electric vehicle Fleet operation and uh I would say uh faculty um parking and student parking and things like that where those opportunities are and uh I

185think we're moving forward with that and you guys will see a little bit more of that uh coming soon uh next slide please and this is also a uh I just wanted to highlight this before I take questions but this is a uh just a smaller system at Watts um that was kind of PTA LED um in partnership with uh NC green power and uh so the community is really coalescing around solar power and giving uh you know providing opportunities educational opportunities here for students um as this was being constructed I really witnessed uh teachers walking their students out to the playground to play and stopping and going you know this is helping power our school isn't that incredible and so uh with that I will take any questions which I had thank you this

186is really exciting um How Far We've Come in such short time and it really I think takes some of the values that we have and put into action so thank you all so much board members questions comments Mr Sears yeah thank you um a few questions [Music] um heating systems are they all gas or the majority gas or what's the percentage of gas electric uh yeah I don't have that number I would say the majority of our schools do have uh gas appliances and gas heating I would say that there is opportunity for us to look at decarbonizing um I failed to also mention that Durham Public Schools is also partnering with Duke Energy the county and city of Durham to establish a solar Park and we believe that solar Park the amount of renewable

187energy that that creates will help offset about 10 percent of dbs's energy usage as well so as we look at like you know moving forward and thinking about how we want to address the climate crisis and things like that um and you know how we're utilizing energy and what energy sources we're using one strategy is to do carbon offset it through renewable energy and I think we're thinking think still thinking through what that looks like uh you know moving forward yeah um I think I'm confident this is a part of your daily work but you know sustainability yes on saving the planet but also on keeping things running and keeping things affordable right and so as we have a war that's disrupting energy markets in Europe um electricity is a little more available than gas

188and perhaps more stable um plus there's also been Recent research around the health of cooking with gas or using gas and the byproducts that come out of that everyone the millions listening should switch out their gas stoves tomorrow then if I could energetic I think he's talked a little bit about appliances as you recall as part of our Capital Improvement plan I remember yeah is to do retrofits to our kitchens and to replace those Gas Appliances with electric and Mr Palmer his team have already evaluated every single kitchen within DPS to uh to come up with that number we've already started to make some of those Replacements excellent yep I do remember that conversation and I'm I'm not trying to put you on the spot with uh the uh the percentage I don't expect you

189to know that but just a ballpark so that a similar question uh what what percent of our year do we run our ACS versus our heaters oh that's a very good question it's about half and half um so it's about 50 and in some schools we actually will run both concurrently um just for humidity control and things like that um so there are some those are more of it Advanced systems um in some of those buildings but generally we we are Heating and Cooling the building uh with the seasons um and I would also just want to kind of piggyback on on cost um or the affordability um and also mention that part of the savings um that we are seeing here is due to avoided costs and doing reducing the amount of gas that

190we are using here at DPS we are avoiding a certain set of costs due to inflation because natural gas prices just like your gas price at the pump um between the fiscal year 20 19 and 2022 Rose by 20 percent and it's on track to probably continue Rising a little more steadily than your vehicle gas it doesn't really go down um like you know or fluctuate like like gasoline does but uh natural gas is yeah on a traction to be less and less affordable okay I would have guessed that we were a little higher on the AC months than given that it's like 70 degrees some days right in the fall and winter so historically most of our schools are what we call a two-pipe uh either are we either heating or we're cooling as

191we continue to retrofit and build new schools we're going to a four-price system which allows us to modulate our thermal comfort and so when you have fluctuations in the weather that you see over the last couple of weeks uh you don't have to have Hall heating or all cooling so we in Building Services we have a cut off around the end of October those schools are to continue on the two pipe system to now switch over to Heating and likewise in the spring we switch back over to Cooling and so uh with the continued process of renovating those systems we hope to see that modulation help with our efficiency and then reduce our energy usage as well okay final question um I know we do four by ten days in the summer at central office

192do we do that out in the schools that aren't providing student services can you just remind me yeah I believe mostly we do um we we will run to a 4x10 uh schedule um and also to kind of get to the core of your last question um electricity is about double of what we pay for uh gas um in terms of our our usage um overall over over the year okay so there is opportunity to you know as we look at decarbonizing to you know bring in more renewable energy and also provide you know more of this program where we are reducing our energy because as we reduce the energy that each building needs um then that also will reduce the size of any solar systems or geothermal systems that we will need to apply

193to offset the campuses so I know I should remember this but just to confirm in the summer any school that's not having students is on a 4x10 schedule and closed on Friday staff are not in the building that's right until that switches over when year round comes right right thank you thanks for those answers the questions or comments some board members us I think that's miss validaris's hand it is I'm just looking at my colleague because we've definitely been um so grateful for uh this work and and recently talked to some very involved community members who have noticed a change so our community is noticing um and y'all are part of that thank you for Leading The Way with this um some of the questions that I have um when it comes to uh what

194my colleague Matt Sears is talking about the HVAC and and going electric um that's definitely a commitment you know that as much as much as possible Right to continue to just invest in electric um and I'm thinking specifically as it relates also to some of the other uh initiatives that you mentioned on here like LED lights I remember when LED lights were put in my children's elementary school and it was a celebration um there were also censors so for covet I was so excited that you know during the the height of the pandemic you know you didn't have to touch any switch these things already have the sensors and so I know that not all the schools have um uh that project is still ongoing and and I'd like to see that project just every

195school having access to this um it makes a big deal and I know that Pearson town uh one like I'd like to see that also with Pearson town I wonder if if there's any um updates on on on this project specifically there because I know some other schools especially the elementary schools that I was noticing we were approving contracts for the LEDs and so just wanted to make sure that we keep in mind um uh LEDs for for everyone else and no need to you know just I'm just running through a couple of things the other thing is when you mention sustainability um I'm still I'm seeing the fleet and I'm seeing all these things and I celebrate that but even small things like bike racks and already I'm grateful because I'm seeing that I

196was asking for Hillside High School right because there's there's along the ATC um I'm so grateful that we are starting to do that because it's going to take the you know putting you have to build it right you have to build that and we already have the infrastructure that has a Greenway um and so I'd like to see more of the supports from the community in terms of biking and by culture around these schools um the way that we have seen it expand so kudos to uh bike Durham and everyone else who is doing that that project and the last thing also is um going to solar there's two things on that that I had in terms of comment when is it when is a common and one is a question so um there's 7

197000 schools in the United States that are solar schools considered solar I I don't know what the percentage is by which they can qualify being that they're a solar school but um um it does provide I when I think about hurricanes and climate change and I really appreciated you mentioning um the climate reality that we have I just know that we have some schools that are shelters for our families I mean I I've been one of those community members out there with like a Facebook live saying hey come here come to the school you know we have the Red Cross you know the Red Cross will be there putting out the mats um and I'm thinking about just how important solar is because you know battery storage the the use of having um a building

198that is really reliable for Community it's just something that I can't understate and I can tell you that even as early as me being a child I have just the stories of having to evacuate um and seek shelter and so I really do want us to um continue to really really prioritize solar as much as possible especially in in in the climate reality that we have where we have hurricanes and we don't know when it's going to be one of those things again because it wasn't too long ago when we had to you know evacuate and um I was it's it's just not too long ago um and the question that I have around this is Southern School of energy and sustainability is the school that in the title has such such a name such

199an important name like energy and sustainability and if there's a priority in terms of any of these projects that would be that's like a a flight what is the flag Flagship is that the word Flagship school um it says energy and sustainability in it and so I just loved for that school to have priority you know in as many ways in terms of solar panels and I'm gonna actually pass it to my colleague Natalie because I know that we were in some of these engaging in some of these meetings and so um with I'm just gonna leave off on on Southern and I guess that was a question about like you know can we do more for southern School of energy um of energy and sustainability um you want to take that so we are

200working in tandem with the curriculum that at Southern School of Engineering we work with them with the Hub farm and designing a tiny office um and I think there may be some opportunities once that tiny office is constructed uh to provide maybe some solar backup to power some things so we are in conversations with them as we continue to map out our sustainability plan we definitely will encourage uh curriculum working with construction and capital planning to teach the future of America how to be sustainable and build um better buildings thank you Miss Barbados I I want to celebrate the amazing amount of work that you all have been able to do in a year and I hope that in an upcoming meeting with a county we can share an update on this I think that

201it's a value that they also will uh uplift and you have just you have led us so far in the right direction and so quickly um I think when folks were asking about southern they were asking if we had done the LED lighting both within the gyms and within the school yet so is that still on the lighting project list yes it is still on the lighting project list we don't have a current timeline for that um but we we are definitely exploring some of those opportunities and also there's an opportunity there to turn that into a learning exercise for the students you know to have them begin to understand how do you perform a lighting audit you know and uh what are the numbers what is the opportunity for savings here at Southern so

202we are connected with Southern and uh the CTE coordinators there and uh are basically uh you know and also the sustainable Spartan student group to bring forward some of their ideas the students are bringing forward a lot of ideas they are the future they understand the sustainability is going to be intertwined with many different disciplines and um converting that campus into one that's speaks to the theme is going to take time and is going to take investment and that is something that uh we discussed with the principal there and um they would like to see uh you know more engagement um there as well and but I also as we are you know beginning to look at that campus I want to make sure that we are uh not missing the educational component opportunity to

203engage with the students so that they can be a part of it yeah that goes to the piece about curriculum that I think is so so important and I look forward to kind of the curriculum side of our folks bringing us what kind of resources we have in the future because this is so important to children and um they are leading in a lot of ways um they feel it in their hearts they know it in their brains um I'm so glad y'all are in the tier two group for federal for electric buses we're in a spreadsheet we've requested 25 I think did I get that number right I found this one 25 buses yes 25 buses so when maybe when the next federal round rolls out they might choose Durham which would be exciting

204um the speakers tonight said something about solar at Northern but what I and it not being on the roof and what I heard you all say is that we were exploring all options can you clarify or restate that for folks that we we are current in the midst of a solar feasibility study that will look at every campus in the district including uh District facilities um not all of the roofs right now are good candidates due to roof age and due to the infrastructure uh that holds up that roof with the capacity uh for additional weight um and wind load and so uh with the new Northern campus uh one option would be canopy or parking lot coverings uh and uh you know also you know walkway coverings field an opportunity to get creative and

205look at the whole campus as a whole we have lots of surface area and uh phase two of our solar feasibility study we hope we'll look at what are some other opportunities for renewable energy specifically solar energy on campuses where rooftop and um may not necessarily be the best option or where we need in addition to Rooftop solar um and so that that might be something new as well for North Carolina's opportunity for Durham Public Schools to lead the state um because you don't see that here very much um in terms of parking lot coverings or you know walkway coverings and things like that um but that those those are an option and uh we're looking at we're gonna be looking at that with the second part of our sole feasibility study that'd be fantastic

206and and I saw the I love the pictures of lion's farm and I don't even know that the news did a story on that but that needs a story like that needs to be shared broadly um because I think they that would be celebrated um I assume you're looking at Murray massenburg as well with that part of that study and then my final question is you have a lot of a lot of initiatives going on and but the city and the county have had system-wide Consultants they've brought in to do a system-wide analysis climate plan do we think that going forward budget wise that we should also do that comprehensive thing um the second part of the board's uh resolution from last year did mention um creation of a climate action plan that would be

207something we would uh definitely need a lot of collaboration with um both internally and we also believe that um you know there are Partners out there that would really be able to help us kind of gather things because at that point you're also looking at Transportation uh carbon emissions through you know our buses our current Fleet Our Food Systems Waste Systems things like that so that's something that would kind of stretch a little bit beyond um construction Capital planning's capacity um right now but um that that's something we're taking seriously when you think about sustainability and uh I would say that would be kind of a next phase of what what this program could do if if we are able to uh kind of move in that direction thank you so much that answers all

208of my questions that's it's just exciting thank you um I also mention um the city and county also they do have a uh climate action plan in place um and I am in touch with their sustainability managers and uh hope to get together soon to kind of see where DPS kind of fits in that plane because I think the goals are uh for us to reduce our carbon footprint by or I would say maybe our energy usage um and energy usage intensity eighty percent by 2035 and then 100 offset by 2050 um and I think that that's very close to what the city and county um have in their their climate action plan so our goals are there um and we we're kind of looking to kind of think through the roadmap any other questions

209from board members Miss Chavez thank you so much great work and it's really exciting um I had a few questions one was I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the partnership with NC green power at watts and just how that came about I'm wondering who the uh folks were that moved that along and if there are other opportunities or Partnerships that you see on the horizon like that one yes um I don't know a whole lot about how the the actual program got started okay can you speak to it yeah actually Dan schnitzel that was the sustainable what was this title before what's his last name oh my goodness yeah and if you're listening who was the director of construction Capital planning and sustainability um was the spearheaded all of

210that work with NC green power I think he had worked with them um in Chapel Hill and then he and I worked very closely on getting that installed but he did the um Yeoman share of the work on that so can I answer all your questions I will say that NC greenpark also has a similar kind of solar tree at Jordan High School um and this is a process that takes a while it has to have a lot of community engagement and input I think there's some uh you know donations that are you know basically got it's it's really Community Driven um and uh and school school driven by the principal uh to really have to kind of take on um doing everything that NC green power has uh for them to kind of get

211set up with that and to raise the money thank you that I was just wondering about other other Partnerships on the horizon but I don't know if you know there are other things to say about that specifically yes um Duke Energy is going to be a big partner um moving forward with this um as I did mention the uh the the solar Park um and and in partnership with the city and um and County um but in addition to that they are also offering rebates on some of the uh electric vehicle Fleet preparation um uh in in conduit and infrastructure that's needed there um so they have a lot of programs that are there that we're looking at we're in constant communication with to kind of figure out how DPS may be able to take

212advantage of Grants and rebates and again we're looking at uh you know grants and potential rebates from the state and the federal government as well um so we're we are looking for partners we're we're trying to make the phone calls and and figure out what where we can get help from because this is something we're planning ahead with and again um going back to something like the LED lighting and things like that if we're able to kind of keep a green revolving fund going um you know using our savings to get more savings um with additional projects um that that has an impact on learning you know as you as you visit these sites and you go there you kind of see our task lighting is a lot better um and and that that helps

213with Focus that helps with you know reading and comprehension and uh attention so that this is this is a benefit for uh you know how how students learn as well and again the learning opportunities that are available too some uh Partners uh you know could potentially and even some corporate partners and uh you know thinking through like uh the solar spark I'm sorry the sustainable Spartans group are thinking through uh who can we partner with to you know really get established with recycling programs and things like that and there are you know a lot of Partners in Durham uh that uh you know are able to really kind of help us uh you know think of think through some of the process changes that's great and I just appreciate what you said kind of connecting

214it back to the the implications academically in the learning environment so thank you for all of that any additional questions from board members that's why Mrs how could I forget to when I did my whole litany by holding it's not a litany actually it's a good list right of things that that are good things that are happening and I was saying you know we're moving towards Electric solar panels bike racks um The Outdoor Learning spaces that was one of the things that was most celebrated I just wanted to let you all know that the community is watching every single thing and the fact that we have uh invested as I think about these these led projects with sensors that can tell when there's nobody in the room those lights go off kids are outside you

215know what I mean it's it's all these things that are absolutely related so I just did not want to end you know my comments or or like leave tonight without just letting you all know that the outdoor upfitting every single school for Access Equitable access to Outdoor Learning that has been such a such a game changer and and there's such excitement about that um some schools are you know further along others you know are starting there and we've also here's a little shout out to community members because um uh we went to a dedication uh that happened at EK PO for shade structure right I mean we were just mentioning that it was the Dermatology Dermatology Association that decided you know in Melissa Rooney uh doing that work and we got to see it and

216then there was also like the Ellery Creek Watershed Association at that same school was doing a beautiful storm water uh amenity it was just gorgeous right and so when I think about Community Partners kind of like Community Partners we need y'all um but we're definitely if you build it they will come I think that the fact that we are committed to Outdoor Learning to sustainability it's in your title and I love your title because it has that in there and so um uh just keeping in mind that the community can can help us and any grants any projects that community members that you all know about I don't even know where to look but I guess right there um community members any projects that you all know of please just send them our way we

217appreciate all of this development for our environment for the good of our environment and our students as well thank you all this is for information if I'm correct we appreciate you uh and excited and think about in this new Bond and new construction what more we can really do thank y'all we are going after we take a recess I think there needs to be a vote on that is that correct a vote for recess or can we just take one okay all right let's do that let's take a five minute recess and uh we will return promptly at nine o'clock all right we're now back from that recess we're gonna pass it over to Dr Hardy for academic Services updates good evening chair Umstead Dr marbinga community and board members um we can go ahead

218and pull up the priority to strategic Plan update slide tonight we are exciting to bring an update on priority two in the culminating 2022-23 school year I'd like to acknowledge my colleague and fellow Cabinet member for priority Two Chief of Staff Tanya Giovanni Esquire for providing guidance as well as oversight to the work that we've been doing with priority two since our last update in February 2022 exciting things have been happening in our schools and we're happy to share a few of them with you this evening next slide please next slide please members of our priority to um strategic plan team are with us this evening although there have been some changes along the way each team member has contributed to our successes that we have seen in goal 2A and 2B I'd like to

219ask these team members to stand to be recognized at this time our gold team leads include Dr Laverne Maddox Perry senior executive director for student Support Services miss Karen Beckett coordinator of Title IX and Grant procurement Dr Kelvin Bullock executive director of equity and professional learning and Dr Melissa Watson student services director for student Alternatives and supports in addition to the members of the team listed on the slide we want to make sure that we acknowledge all of the team members work as a collaborative team engaging with our principals assistant principals restorative practice coordinators teachers school counselors social workers and most importantly our children next slide please our voices from the arena are going to be quite far this evening our voices we did have some teachers and School staff and one of our principals

220that were here the hour has gotten a little later than we anticipated and we need them to be fresh for our children tomorrow so in preparation for this section I am going to have Dr Maddox Perry and Dr Kelvin Bullock share with you however I did want to just preview for you we really wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to kind of bring this work to light and we started to really look closely at the data and we had asked and Dr Logan was here we looked closely at the data and Hillside High School really is resounding example of some of the work that is happening with restorative practices as well as creating the culture that needs to be there so that our students feel not only safe but they also know

221that it's a great place to learn some of those data points when we look at our restorative practice centers that have multiple data points I'm only going to share a couple of with you is that when students are going to the restorative Practice Center what we want to do is make sure that they are not having repeat events so that they're not continuing with code of conduct violations and then getting short-term out-of-school suspension so for example at Hillside High School 13 of black males who attended our restorative Practice Center for redirection while only 8.6 percent of those students receive short-term out-of-school suspensions for our Hispanic females we had 3.16 percent that attended the restorative Practice Center and then none of them had any other incidents that resulted in short-term suspensions Hillside High School one of

222our larger Comprehensive High Schools over 1500 students has an overall suspension rate for 2122 of just 5.42 percent which is well below the state our district and local high school average and so those are just a few data points I'm going to turn it over to Dr Bullock we do have a slide with some information that he's going to share regarding Hillside High School and then Dr Maddox Perry briefly regarding what we've heard from some of our students at Rogers Herr Middle School in Lakewood Elementary Dr Bullock all right thank you good evening board Dr mubanga Durham Community if we can go to the next slide we want to thank Dr Logan and his team members who were here tonight um assistant principal Harrison assistant principal worthy and also their restorative practices coordinator on Mr

223Denzel Keenan they were here this evening and again as Dr Hardy mentioned um it's gotten a little late so we want them to be prepared for school tomorrow but with that we did um we they submitted um this information regarding their approach to restorative practices in the school and what has led to the lower ring of suspension rates and out of class exclusion at Hillside and some of the in the foundation of what they shared is the intentionality behind building relationships within the school so just really quickly I just want to note on some of the points that they shared here some of the clubs and activities that they create to develop a sense of belonging among students is one of the price primary things that they credit for the low suspension numbers in the

224school I'm responding to feedback from students via the student climate and Panorama surveys fostering relationships with the community with parents and building Partnerships with local organizations also there are restorative practices coordinator Mr Keenan not only specializes in coordinating circles for um for students but also for staff members so the theme of building relationships goes throughout the building other things include consistency with all students regarding the code of student conduct being visible at all times the principal Dr Logan and I can attest to this and my visits to the school definitely has an open door policy it has relationships with all the students in that building and they also talk about leveraging DAC drug education and counseling on when students need that support support new directions community-based mediation and services through their school resource officers program

225so those are some of the things when asked what has led to your success and that you know low number of exclusions um in your school these are the things that they noted so and again we just want to thank them for you know their what they're doing for students and also being here to represent tonight good evening everyone thank you Dr movinga board members um so just to add to some of the contributions from Hillside High School we also had a team to go visit Lakewood Elementary and Rogers Herr middle school because we really wanted to as Dr Hardy said bring this presentation to life and so I just wanted to to give kudos and to thank other team members who actually organized and were present at these at these visits Dr awanosa Idaho

226from the office of equity Affairs and miss minafore our mtss Behavior specialist and a member of our student services team they actually share the artifacts and came up with the ideas to get student voices from these schools and I'd like to present some interesting perspectives from the students at Lakeview excuse me Lakewood Elementary and Roger a middle school and we would also like to thank the staff and principal of Lakewood principal Jerry Jackson assistant principal Nan Luan and Miss Campbell for having us in her classroom so we actually not only had artifacts that we could take with us but she actually had let us come in and talk with her students and then at Rogers her of course we like to thank Dr Keisha Rogers principal Dr Tawana Stewart the assistant principal who was our

227guide that day and the teacher seventh grade teacher Mr Rhonda ranshaw and so we were in those classrooms and these are just some representative examples we were really interested in the elementary school finding out about students voices around their SEO curriculum implementation and could students really tell us you know what they were learning and what it meant and so we had a series of questions and he said what do zones of regulation mean to you that is the curriculum at Lakewood and this student says and it's an inventive spelling so please be patient with me um the zones of Regulation makes me think of things that make you mad or sad or calm or even in between what do you like about your social and emotional learning in your classroom I like that we get

228to get class dojo points and we can get a party plus our parents can see it on class dojo and then the last question was is learning about feelings and emotions important and explain how yes it is very important because being sad is important because you can get help and learn to trust being happy is important because you want a healthy brain that's a third grader at Lakewood okay and then we had another one and I I chose this one for the beautiful artwork um what does zooms mean to you zones means a lot to me I think about my feelings and every good thing what do you like about SEL in your classroom we learn to talk to each other and this time we have a lot of feelings that our class put together

229and then is learning about feelings and emotions important and you say feelings and emotions are important because if we don't talk about our feelings and emotions we'll do more bad things so students understand and then he did write an example at the bottom of what life would be like if he didn't talk about his feelings and it was yelling and then if he talks about his feelings how he's saying please and thank you so those are just representative from from Lakewood and then we did have the students at Rogers heard just look at their PBIS program and the implementation of their Matrix and their Rams rock is what it's called so we asked some seventh graders what does Ram's rock mean and stand for and each of them could tell us that acronym stands for

230reach achievement and motivate and respect ownership character and knowledge so they could rattle it off because they had it all over their classroom what does Ram's rock mean to you and it sees they said it means to respect others and to be prepared and then how do you rock as a ram I respect others and I own up to the things I do have you received any Ram rocks Rewards or incentives and he says yes I get to go to the ram store you get to get Rambo books if you're right how has ramrock impacted you as a student Rams Rock has helped me show respect to others and help others so those are the things that our students are saying about their experience not only with our social emotional learning curriculum and we do

231have other artifacts that we will share in the board update as soon as we can figure out how to make those accessible to you all but we did want to give it some voice from students at this time turn back up to Dr Hardy thank you Dr Bullock and Dr Maddox Perry if we'll go forward to the next slide we did just want to make sure that we had an opportunity all of the data that we're going to share with you today represents the young people that we have the privilege to work with and serve every single day the work that priority two really focuses on is making sure that our young people are seeing that we think about and care about them each and every day so we thought hearing what's happening in the

232schools really is a great introduction as we now are going to transition to seeing the data you'll go forward to the next slide so what you'll see here is in goal to a is a hundred percent of our schools will Implement a cultural framework and we are really pleased that we have been able to almost meet that Mark at 98 and then what you will see for goal to be is um that four percent or a few of our students will be excluded out of school and what you will note is as we go through this data is that we were on pretty positive upward trajectory um and then we did take a slight detour during our interrupted schooling for 2019 20 and 20 20 21. however we are pleased as we look at our

233preliminary data for this Academic Year that we are are seeming to be on on the right course the bulk of this presentation is in regards to the very explicit data regarding what you are seeing with student restorative practices as well as exclusions I'm pleased to turn our presentation over to Dr Al Royster our executive director for research and accountability we are going to go through the data slides we'll provide an overview of each slide we are not going to go through every row or column that is in each slide but please know there's always ample time at the end of our presentation for questions and we have all of the data readily accessible so if there are some questions specifically we'll be more than happy to address those Dr Royster thank you Dr Hardy next

234slide please and next slide please good evening board members Dr mabanga Durham Community I'm happy to be in front of you this evening to provide an update on DPS District level and school level discipline data this overview will seek to provide the following information overall DPS student population compared to the number of restorative Practice Center or RPC referrals and short long-term suspensions in the district for the 2021-22 school year the number of reported discipline incidences over the course of four years a comparison of frequency of incidents during the 2018-19 school year and the 2021-2022 school year and comparison of discipline data across racial and demographic groups my presentation of the day that will be from an impartial perspective I will identify any emerging Trends after the data has been presented my colleagues will use any

235strategies and pertinent information to address the presented data next slide please in the next three slides we'll review the 2021-2022 overall student population of DPS compared to the number of students who refer to RPC short-term suspended and long-term suspended next slide please this first slide shows the overall student population compared to the restorative Practice Center or RPC referrals as shown the total DPS population of 32 188 as compared to the 2042 students referred to RPC which is 6.3 percent of the total student population next slide please this slide shows the overall student population compared to the short-term suspensions as shown the total DPS population was 32 188 as compared to 2012 students short-term suspended which is 6.4 percent of the total student population next slide please this last slide shows the overall student population compared

236to long-term suspensions as shown the total DPS population was 32 188 as compared to 88 students long-term suspended Which is less than one percent or 0.2 percent of the total population still in two total student population next slide please in the next five slides we review discipline incidents over the course of the last four years as we look at the total number of incidents and students for in-school suspension ISS last referred to in the 1819 school year and the total number of incidents and students for restorative Practice Center RPC with restorative practice and implementation beginning in the 1920 school year please note that students who are reassigned to New Direction centers are included in the ISS RPC number and finally we'll look at the long-term suspensions which is defined as students recommended for long-term who

237did not attend Lakeview secondary school please note that due to covid-19 students were went to remote learning in March of 1920 school year and remained in remote learning until April of the 2021 school year next slide please as shown in the bar graph the total number of incidents for ISS and RPC for elementary and secondary students has decreased yearly since the 1819 school year from 8656 to 6158 to 3501 and the 2020-2021 school year the total number of incidents for all levels was 24 as students returned to in-person learning in April from the 1920 school year to the 2122 school year for elementary there was a drop of 524 incidents on the secondary level for the same time period there was a drop of two thousand one hundred and thirty three incidents next slide please

238this bar graph shows a total number of students assigned to ISS and RPC for the elementary and secondary students has decreased yearly since the 1819 school year from 3438 to 2746 to 2042. in the 20 20 21 school year the total number of students for all levels was 24 as students returned to in-person learning in April from 1920 to last year 2122 for elementary that was a drop of 193 students who were assigned RPC on the secondary level for the same time period does a drop of 511 students who were assigned RPC next slide please our next bar graph shows a total number of short-term incidents from the 1819 school year to the 1920 school year the total number of short-term incidents decreased by 798 incidents from 3852 to 3054. however after returning from covid-19

239in the 21-22 school year the total number of incidents increased by 370 incidents as compared to the 1920 school year from 3054 to 3425. for the 20 20 21 school year the total number of incidents for all levels was 26 as students returned to in-person learning in April even though the number of incidents increased after returning from covid-19 into 2021-2022 school year the number is still lower than the 1819 school year pre-covet by 428 incidents next slide please this bar graph shows the total number of students who were short-term suspended from the 1819 school year to the 1920 school year the total number of short-term students suspended decreased by 361 students from 2125 to 1 764. however after returning from covid-19 into 2021-2022 school year the total number of incidents increased to about 248 students

240as compared to the 1920 school year from 1764 to 2012. in the 2021 to the 2020 excuse me 2021 school year the total number instance for all levels was 20 as students returned back uh from remote from in-person learning in April even though the number of students increased after returning from covid-19 in that 2021-2022 school year the number is still lower by the eight and then the 1819 school year pre-covered by 113 students next slide please our final our final bar graph shows a total number of students who were long-term suspended as you can see respectively the total percentage of long-term suspended students for the 1819 and 1920 school years was less than one percent of the student population at point one percent and the 2021-2022 also less than one percent of a student population

241at 0.2 and the 2020-2021 school year there was no long-term suspensions next slide please in the next three slides we'll review the frequency of incidents occurring during the 2021-2022 school year also we have the frequency of incidents occurring during the 2018-19 which was pre-covered we will break down the frequency of incidents for RPC short-term suspension and long-term suspension each slide will show pie charts for school years for 2020 2021 2022 and 1819 side by side breaking down incidents by percentage along with the table underneath showing the number of each incident for each of those school years next slide please this slide shows a breakdown of the top five incident frequencies for RPC for 2021-2022 and 1819. insubordination makes up the largest largest percentage of incidents for both 2021 and 2022 and 1819. there was a

242decrease of 1 369 referrals for insubordination from 2021 2022 to 1819 from 2022 incidents to 653. you can see the rank of the remaining four incidence frequency for both years next slide please this slide shows a breakdown of the top five incident frequencies for short-term suspensions for 2021 2022 and 1819. fighting makes up the largest percentage of incidents for 2021 2022 and 1819. there was an increase of 91 referrals from 2020 2021 to 2022 and 1819 from 1 264 to 1 355. you can see the rank of the remaining four incident frequencies for both years next slide please this final slide shows a breakdown of the top five instant frequencies for long-term suspensions for the 2021-2020 school year and 1819. fighting was was ranked first in 2021-22 but ranked second in 1819. even though they

243ranked differently there was an increase of 27 incidents from from the 2021-2022 school year to 1819 from 9 to 36. you can see the rank of remaining four incidents frequencies for both school years next slide please our final data set review our discipline data across racial and demographic subgroups and DPS in the next four slides will review ISS RPC and short term for all long for all students for all students black males black females Hispanic males Hispanic females white males white females and students with disabilities each slide will have a bar graph with a visual representation of the percent for each group along with the table underneath to give the actual percentage also on the table each subgroup has the total number of students in that subgroup along with the number of students who were

244referred to ISS or RPC or short-term or long term as for our previous data sets please know students went to remote learning in March of 2019-20 school year and remained in remote learning until April of the 2020-21 school year next slide please this slide shows a breakdown of the RPC referrals by subgroups over the last four years each year since 1819 school year the percentage of students assigned issrp has the ISS or RPC has decreased for each group keeping in mind that the 2020-2021 school year had less than one percent for each group due to students remaining in remote learning until April for all students as you see the percentage decreased respectively from 10.2 percent to 8.1 percent to 6.3 percent with 2021-22 at point seven percent next slide please this slide shows a breakdown

245of RPC referrals by subgroups for elementary and secondary for the 2021-2022 school year as shown our district breakdown is that 2042 of the 32 188 students which is 6.3 percent were referred to RTC our highest percentage of RPC referrals occurred on the secondary level with 1 828 of the 17 939 students or 10.1 percent being referred to RPC on the elementary level 214 of the 14 249 students or 1.5 percent will refer to RPC next slide please this slide shows the breakdown of short-term suspensions by subgroup over the last four years we see the short-term suspension percentages for all groups decreased from 6.1 percent in the 1819 school year to 5.2 percent in the 1920 school year for the 2020-2021 school year short-term suspensions were less than one percent for each group through the students

246remaining in remote learning until April however after returning from covid in the 2021-2022 school year short-term suspension percentage increased as compared to the 1920 school year for each group except for black males white females excuse me black males white males white females and students with disabilities the 2A goal Mark the 2A gold Benchmark of 2122 is to reduces the percentage of students suspended out of school from kindergarten through 12th grade to less than four percent or lower our percentage of students suspended last year was 6.2 which is above the Benchmark however please notice that the percentage of students suspended in 2122 is only slightly higher 6.2 than the 18 19 is a 6.1 which was pre which was pre-covered next slide please this slide shows a breakdown of short-term suspensions by subgroup for elementary and

247secondary for the 2021-2022 school year as shown our district breakdown is that 2012 of our 32 188 students which is 6.2 percent have been short-term suspended our highest percentage of short-term suspended students occurred on the secondary level with 1 710 of the 17 939 students or 9.5 percent on the elementary level 302 of the 14 249 students or 2.1 percent were short-term suspended next slide please and now we'll turn it over to Dr Maddox Perry senior executive director of student Support Services to review progress goals benchmarks and strategies for priority two Dr Max Perry thank you again um next slide please in case there's a need for for a reminder or details about goal 2A this is a familiar slide that outlines the strategies as a reminder go to a 100 of DPS will Implement

248cultural Frameworks with Fidelity I'm proud to say we have completed all the associated strategies with some variants at schools who've decided to either add to their culture and climate toolkit by selecting a new implementation team or a new implementation lead or even selecting a new cultural framework next slide please likewise we have made commendable progress on the strategies for attaining goal to be as Dr Bullock will elaborate on when he uh explores goal to be later in the presentation but these are the strategies next slide please our priority two team often shares in place in progress and next steps with our community during our updates in a slightly different approach this year we want to share some of the accomplishments we can highlight as we Sunset the current strategic plan next slide please strategy one

249once again we thank our superintendent and this board for prioritizing the use of research and evidence-based SEL curriculum to support whole child Wellness our Pre-K students use teapot or uh you know the the pyramid as their uh approach to sel we have K-5 schools using responsive classroom Second Step zones of Regulation or move this world and hot off the presses we have five early adopters secondary schools implementing one of two choices character strong or rethink add the early adopter schools are Lowe's growth Magnet Middle Lucas Middle Neo magnet middle school for Creative Studies and Jordan High School the other secondary schools will finalize their SEL curriculum choice this month in conjunction with beginning their implementation planning for January 2023 strategy too culture and climate learning walks began in October 2022 and we have had many

250fruitful discussions with school leaders and their team members based on our observations the principal's request for specific look fors related to culture and climate as well as evidence of the shared framework indicators which is an instrument to document Fidelity of cultural framework implementation strategy 3 and collaborative efforts across academic Services departments we've been able to offer professional learning in each of the outline topics in strategy three most notably in this school year the advancement to equity 501 focused on black and Latin Excellence for all DPS faculties strategy four through analysis of seven data points student Support Services provides a tiered support designation for each DPS school the four designations are awareness as the schools demonstrating the greatest need for culture and climate support progressing emerging and maintenance and those are schools demonstrating the least need

251for targeted support with Cloud culture and climate once these designations are determined the academic Services departments partner to provide additional support in the form of professional learning culture and climate learning walks and any other innovative ways to support improvements in data as well as student outcomes and strategy five and as you can see here our Equity Affairs team has centered the equity 501 professional learning around the data but specifically the insights gleaned from the student climate survey at this time I'd like to transition to Dr Bullock again thank you Dr Maddox Perry so um next slide please so our team is excited about continuing to work towards key accomplishments in the final year of our current strategic plan some of those projected accomplishments will include developing and implementing trainings and data analysis for schools and

252District departments to identify bias in this discipline practices and to create a more Equitable culture and climate for black students and Hispanic males where those two groups were our primary target groups to bring our discipline data down to our Target and our goal for the Strategic plan so this is a practice that we developed in our initial year of the Strategic plan and we will continue this this year by analyzing And discussing discipline referrals across the district and determining which infractions are leading to which consequences or supports from school to school or within a school to ensure that there's consistency across our district we're also in the process of rebuild loading our restorative practices District leadership team with certified trainers student Support Services has initiated a professional Learning Community for restorative practices coordinators again to

253ensure that there's consistency in practices across our district we are also continuing to provide professional learning for leadership on monitoring systems and Educators handbook and our pet Panorama data dashboard both of these databases are able to produce Equity reports and resources so we want to make sure we're utilizing those additionally we continue to implement creative use of homebound Services virtual learning and hybrid learning to support students that may need Innovative learning opportunities for different reasons some of those may be connected to suspensions or exclusion from school finally student Support Services monitors suspension rates for schools and individual students monthly to ensure there's targeted support and to prevent escalation of negative outcomes with that I'd like to turn our presentation back over to Dr Hardy and we will close up thank you Dr Bullock thank you

254to our board and our community for allowing us this time to share with you our progress regarding implementation for priority two I hope you can see from what we were able to share from actions at our school level as well as from our team and the data that we have been strategic and intentional we've had a data-driven approach to create the conditions in each and every school for our young people to be successful I would also like to thank our gold team leads and team members but more importantly our teachers and our students who are actually living this every single day and really making conscious decisions regarding their own well-being and so that we can make sure that we create a sense of belonging for our children at this time we have our gold team

255leads and other team members that are here and we're more than happy to take any questions and discussion chair Umstead thank you Dr Hardy and to the team who's here for the presentation on your work and uh and goals for this upcoming year of questions or comments from board members don't we all jump at the same time Miss Rogers thank you all for this David um and making this presentation um I'm really appreciative of the work that's happening on the school levels with the Educators the principals that are really working hard to um reduces attention rates in our students we see the work we see the progress but I do have some questions I have a lot of questions um Dr Hardy you mentioned for this Academic Year we're trending to be on course to

256meet our goal how are we measuring that so far so we monitor our discipline incidents and data every single month so that happens in a couple of ways we use Educators handbook and then that data is imported into PowerSchool we monitor that every month and then we have the opportunity at the end of the month we verify that data and then that data is ultimately reported to the state and will be reported out um to our board and will as well as to our public so for this particular priority I feel confident in anticipating that we will have a hundred percent implementation with Fidelity for 2A you will see some progress in um the work that we are doing with excluding students um and so you will see some progress in that data I don't

257want to make we're too early in the year um for me to make an anticipation about exactly what that data will look like but you will see some progress as we wrap up this particular strategic plan and I would also like to note this this kind of work is I think our board and Community knows is ongoing work whenever we have any transition with staff we want to make sure that we're retraining that we're making sure that they understand the cultural framework of the school they understand implementation of the SEL curricula this is definitely ongoing work for our students and our staff thank you that's helpful um is there anything specific that's happened this year so far as we started out the school year that from like August to December or July to December if

258we're including so we can be inclusive of our year-round schools that didn't happen in July through December of last year anything specific that changed based on the outcomes we had last year so there are a couple of things that's a great question one thing in particular is what Dr Bullock was alluding to with the revamping of our restorative practices training team District team so we were able to get to more schools and help support more schools who wanted to either retrain staff on board new staff with that so there's been a renewed dedication to that and as we do our visits we can see that it's a very almost revitalized energetic field like it was when we first started some of this work pre-covet another thing would be the restorative practices PLC each month there

259is something that either student Support Services is leading or that they're leading themselves in working on their leadership their ability to work with staff members expanding their scope not only being in their rpcs but also helping team members understand how they too can model restorative practices and affect language in their schools and it's having an impact on the culture and climate to a person the principals are telling us that thank you yeah I'll just add to that also our Equity 501 training which is a district-wide training has taken into consideration where we are with restorative practices in particular and thinking about our approach in building relationships with students and um just challenging some of the biases that we might bring towards our black and Latino students or latinx students in particular so that was integral

260in US developing that training and that's new this year thank you um then I guess I would ask um we keep talking about RPC and ISS together are there schools that are not doing restorative practices all of our secondary schools have restorative practice centers the reason we have continued to use that language is pre that that 18 Academic Year it was still referred to as ISS and so just want to make sure that we're kind of speaking true to what was actually happening we know that this year to Dr Maddox Perry and Dr Bullock because of some of the transition of Staff we really thought that it was important that you have almost a resetting in terms of what was occurring in our restorative practice centers and also making sure that we're continuing at the

261Mind shift of restoration and that was one of the reasons why the data that I shared regarding Hillside was so important I may have an experience where I make a poor choice the intent is is that when I go through that restorative practice that I'm not repeating those same behaviors so that I am then at a point where I am excluded out of school for out of school suspension that I do have that process of restoration and learning so that I can make sure that moving forward I'm not having those same experiences I think one of the things that I would ask for as a follow-up and then I'm going to stop and give other people an opportunity um I would I wonder if we can see information uh about students with disabilities that have

262are overlapping in the other like the disaggregated data for students with disabilities and that are being suspended or push it outside of the classroom for whatever reason and then the data of overlapping identities how many of the students have a behavioral support plan that are being suspended even on any level do you understand what I'm saying I do I'm I'm going to want to consult with our team to see if I can actually pull that data so we obviously have access to our students with disabilities however I'm not certain that in ecats I can differentiate students with disabilities and students that have have had an FBA and a VIP so I'm not certain um now and there might be a way to identify if they have a social emotional or behavioral goal I give me

263some time to do some digging to see if that particular piece is possible um but we can um look at that particular subgroup and the experiences also note as we are looking at data if there is a point where it becomes identifiable I have to mask that but we can give us an opportunity to take that back and Dr royster's here and I'm sure members of the team are watching so they're already trying to figure out how we can do that thanks y'all if we have time I'll go back around other board members Miss Chavez all right thank you so much for this presentation um I did get to see it last week as well so it's been sitting in my brain for a week and um I I appreciate all the work that's being

264done um I also really appreciate the the voices from the arena and thank you for pulling them in even though folks could not stay it's very late um but that was really nice to hear and it's nice to see some of the strategies that we're using that are um that are making a difference and um and I'm glad to see the overall Trends improving even with some of the obstacles that have come along the way um I am um still just um you know very uh stuck on the the demographic data the disaggregated data um and the comparison between particularly uh white female students and black male students um and I was just doing my little math so for 2021 short-term suspensions it was 0.7 white uh 0.7 percent of our white girls were suspended

265um and then 12.9 of our black boys so black boys were 18 times over 18 times more likely to be suspended um last year short-term suspended um so I was just thinking um you know about the the equity trainings and and all of that and the uh climate and culture walks culture and climate walks which I think are so valuable because I think um they get a lot of the um they can get a lot of the more nuanced things that happen that we don't necessarily pick up on um at a like a higher level and [Music] um and so um my question is about the equity training more specifically I was thinking about you know I'm so glad that they're we're dressing implicit bias um and keeping in mind especially black students and um

266and Hispanic male students I was wondering if it also addresses um implicit bias toward white students and perhaps giving more second chances to um to our white students maybe particularly our white girls um which and I'm you know I think these are children are going to make poor choices as you say sometimes we're here to um to be that support that you know to teach them in every way um how they can um come back how they can be you know restored from that that issue they were having um and come back to the classroom and continue learning um so you know our students are going to act up at times um hopefully you know in ways that are um you know in ways that we can really support and bring them back um but

267I'm just wondering about that um as I'm looking at the data not only at the at the black black boys and um the high high percentage that are suspended but also um you know are we addressing whiteness so um in our Equity 101 training so we're in 501 now um that was actually one of the foundational conversations we had and we in in talking about bias we um we included in that training was referred to we referred to it as favorable bias versus unfavorable bias and how if you have a bias that assumes that has a positive assumption you you're more likely to have that towards you know more privileged um people from more privileged backgrounds or identities and so with that I will say that particular conversation was probably most um Direct in equity

268101 but in 501 the conversation is around having an asset-based approach um to our students of color and what that really does is kind of takes that idea and kind of flips it for us to think about what does it look like we don't name it as you know um looking at our students of color and giving them the benefit of the doubt the same way we might a white child but it's essentially trying to make sure as we're building relationships with students of color we're doing so through an asset-based approach and we are not looking at them through a deficit lens which makes us more likely to suspend makes us more likely to exclude Etc so thank you I'm very proud of the work Equity work in our district thank you as validaris thank

269you so much I'm so appreciative um I I do want to um just share that same sentiment of lament uh that we continue to have our boys of color especially our black students uh both male and female but then also Hispanic males um and then um you know Hispanic females um and then our students with disabilities and and you know we're going to start looking at this data to look at the racial component but also the class component I mean I I do um hear from community members about like bullying happening in the schools and and who's you know on the on the receiving kind of bullying um so that there's there's more analysis to be done and also in some of the data that talks about like truancy you know how many of the

270students that are um affected or or in that percentage is truancy how many of them are food insecure or you know are dealing with mental health so we can always go dig deep into like disaggregating further by you know truancy by um disruption you know um some of some of the other ones but I just want us to continue to keep in mind that the work that we have taken with the Strategic plan is the whole child approach and that is something that I'm so proud of this district for for adopting um the cultural Frameworks are a part of that the restorative practices are a part of that but I continue to just bring it back to um the fact that we have curriculum for everything and um including social emotional learning but when it

271comes to actual practice or something like restorative practices it says it in the name it needs to be practice based and I can't dig that in so much there was an invitation that I put out to all all the board and and the admins early on when there was a coalition of restorative practice uh practitioners from around the country um and they were trying to connect with the Fidelity with the process of where this comes from Circle process right circles our indigenous Community Native Americans who have been doing this for a long time it's just part of like a way of life in terms of like accountability in terms of like being connected um and we have talked about how sometimes you know in the effort to try to just bring to curriculum from any

272any place there's a lot of distilling that happens the distillation sometimes fragmentation of these Concepts and it becomes more of another curriculum and it's not really going to the relationship aspect and so I just want to continue to ask about the trainings that we have and make sure that we understand where curriculum fits like with instruction and all that but when it comes to practice based can we really hone in the practice and I know Miss Chavez that you participated in a training for a restorative practice with some of these National um uh practitioners that I also um respect and admire and and and they continue to just drive in the fact that relationship is the key you know and if we really want to change behavior um we have to come from the approach

273of really just building trust um establishing interconnectivity between every stakeholder so the the Educators and the students and so for the trainings I think just more more of a thing I know that we've in the past used the international um RPC what is it called the international Institute for restorative practices and I did have some some consension with some of their their definitions in terms of how managerial they were addressing and I really appreciate and I applaud Dr Killen Bullock because when you brought the equity uh presentation and there was just it was just a definition that was on there that was not the spirit of the restorative peace and it didn't talk about relationship just talked about like again from the standpoint of the curriculum and um and it was very fragmented and so

274I just want to continue to um just continue to to to support the work that you're doing and also hope that we can um really utilize some of our our local Elders um in in what ways uh when we're at the conference right now with uh the conference that we just went to in Greensboro that was National No the North Carolina School boards Association I went to one of the talks where they actually um talked about leveraging local community elders and folks who came in and they paid 500 who would come in and do a training for 500 so I know our curriculum costs are way higher than 500 for a community partner do we have that in uh my question is do we have that in in mind in terms of um when it

275comes to practice based are we leveraging our local practitioners as well in terms of um if you're talking about SEL curriculum we do have Partnerships with uh local Partners um dangers of the mind it's very active at we're actually expanding that this year with Lakeview and we're also in communication with a local gentleman who had who's interested in providing some not just restorative practices but mentoring to Young students and young Educators so we are continually and also we've provided some leadership training for our restorative practices coordinators from a budding company locally appointed to lead and so we are trying to and and our restorative practices training just so you know we have Diversified some of our providers so Lions farm and a few other schools actually have worked with some of our our practitioners and

276the conflict resolution center and other places to provide the same or similar training because we did feel that it was important to have their perspectives of how you you can engage in that so we are trying to increase it always Miss Lewis yes thank you for this presentation thank you for just your continued work around discussing our strategic plan and where we are in process and progress and the accomplishments for this work thank you for the data that you share around that I have a lot of questions but I'm not going to ask only any of them I just want to just give um or make two recommendations for our strategic plan that's coming up I just wanted to just appreciate and remember the work that was done in 2017 with our student code of

277conduct that we had a task force that came together to improve um how discipline was being interpreted what was being done around discipline and things of that nature um and I one thing I really appreciate about this presentation this strategic plan is having a cultural Frameworks looking at the whole child the mental health the social emotional learning balancing out what's happening around suspension and behaviors my greatest again where I lean the most is where are we with our subgroups what are we doing to address those inequities and before I can even ask a question Dr bulla comes up and says you know we have this developed and implemented training and we have this data analysis so I would say let's go deeper let's go deeper with this data analysis for our next strategic plan and

278add some breakdowns of these subjective consequences in subordination disorderly conduct and disrespect are those that are truly subjective so what data analysis can be pulled um regarding those designations when we're looking at restorative practices when we're looking at um short-term suspension and then creating some educational gaps um sorry not creating education that was a something else there uh well what do we what are we doing create a okay here we go that was what it was so that was one thing looking at the data analysis for the breakdown for those subjective terms right and then the other one is also going deeper and collect referrals for the insubordination disorderly conduct and disrespect creating a plan based on what the supports our need around there there may be some hypothesis of who was making these referrals

279how often what is the trend what is the pattern around these referrals and what needs to be in our plan to help support around those areas so that we can reduce suspension for those specific specifically for the subjective matters and ways that we could be supportive and then the last thing specific Target around our swd students with disabilities decreasing their suspension rates um someone sent us an email earlier this evening saying that that is the second highest suspension rates in our district and I had not looked at it across in that way but they're the second highest behind our black boys so again whatever we can do to have specific Targets in our strategic plan would be greatly appreciated thank you thank you uh Mr Sears yeah I just want to quickly go back um

280even further from 2017 and and back to the the Victor report in the office of civil rights complaints that that lent that put us on a path to the um student code of conduct uh task force and what that Victor report found was that um the disproportionality was not in a simple um if you're this subgroup you are more or less likely to be suspended they found disproportionality in if you were at this school you are more likely to get a suspension around smoking a cigarette in the bathroom um than if you were at this school and so a question I have I I I'm going to ask and answer the question because I know you're looking at this the subgroups that I'm interested in is going back to that how are we doing across

281the different schools I used to bring up Carolyn Pew a lot who would suspend no one and then you'd have another school that's suspending 200 students and part of that disparity is why we typically don't get school level data anymore because there's a de facto shaming that comes with looking at that kind of data so my question that I'm asking is is this something that you all Monitor and work on and I know the answer is yes further the subjectivity is is not only at the teacher level and that's where we have the most work that's where we have 2500 teachers that are all across the spectrum of their understanding um but I I think an interesting question to ask and to look at if we have time and of course we don't because we're

282busy and we have lots of things going on is we are I think at an interesting point where maybe with the exception of a few um our our secondary principles um are typically leaders of color and has that had an impact that is something that that the community has pushed for is professionals that that look and come from backgrounds like our students so I you know I know that's touchy to talk about but I think there's some excitement around the number of leaders of color we have and are we seeing positive impacts beyond the high level data so for what that's worth thank you Mr Sears um I do want to um in the I think it's the most recent and maybe in the previous board update we did include an easy access link for

283the school level data and it has also posted on our district website so it's public for the community as well there are lots of places in that school level data and that predates since I've been in Durham Public Schools I want to say even in the early 2000s you all had been sharing that school level data so that has been um an expectation of from our community and from our board so it is it is there um there are lots of places where we have had to mask that data due to the number um so do one I did want to let our community know it is on our website um and we have provided just a quick link um for board members as well um so that you can access the school level data

284and I've made some notes Mr Sears in regards to your comments um across schools teachers and leaders thank you Mr yeah I the hour is late and I just want to show gratitude and appreciation to you all for continuing to hold us accountable while we hold this community like holds us all accountable for keeping our students in schools we acknowledge that none of these disparities in data are Equitable and that's not the kind of community that we aspire to for our students and like Mr Sears says we've been working on it for a long time and I know you all are equally frustrated to see data going the wrong direction postcode like it's not shocking because those relationships have to be built and rebuilt and we know the virtual learning wasn't adequate but you know

285consequences for truancy being out of school no I mean or even in school suspension no like all of these categories are so subjective so subjective as folks are trying to to use these as teachable moments so just continue to to help us look for best practices in this I know you all are um we got to keep our children more than ever in our buildings and not in alternative settings but really where the core instruction is taking place um and if there's budgetary implications please hold us to that as well I mean this this is core core work for some of our most vulnerable students um and I don't see maybe it's too soon to see it I guess it would be in next year's data I don't see any dress code changes that are

286impacting Behavior because it would be in next year's data but y'all aren't seeing that if you were you would come tell us that that you know the changes we made were having issues at the school level but I haven't heard that or seen that so that's good to know as well um thank you and thank you for staying late with us this evening thank you I got a few questions though uh I want to say I want to appreciate starting and amplifying what's working and I think so often we have these conversations around like what's not working and the more we can amplify what works have people share from each other I think that is great and Hillside the moment you step in the building you kind of feel the culture and the connection there

287we know that when students build positive connection with each other and adults in the building like that's the first part to restorative practices you've got to have a community that I want to be a part of so that if something happens I want to be restored back to that community there are a couple of questions um fighting was like the number one number two in the data and I know we do have an appeal process where families can appeal can you all just let us know how families are made aware if they have um long-term or short-term suspensions what that appeal process looks like so in our policy we have both the level one appeals which is um in advance of the superintendent's decision it actually is a part of the information gathering process for

288the superintendent's review but in that level one appeal parents are made aware of their ability to do that upon first notification of a recommendation for what we call in Louisville and out of school suspension or an immediate reassignment so students are immediately reassigned there's a automatic generation of the form that they could use for level one appeals that would be in front of the impartial panel and then uh pending how that panel recommends and then the superintendents review parents are immediately given by our hearing officer and with the paperwork the process for appealing to the board with the recommended time period and we really emphasize with our parents um that there is no particular form necessary that was one thing that I think could have been a potential barrier in the past but we really

289just say you need to just get it in writing to the the office of our school board and we have had a a few who have thought they wanted to do that we have not yet um held as you know a panel in front of the board just yet thank you that is helpful I think it's really important I'm glad it's automated automatically given to a family so that they are aware knowledgeable of the process I'm looking at the other questions that I wrote down and a lot of them I think have been covered it did strike me looking at black males data students with disabilities and black females coming afterwards so I'm glad to hear that 501 is thinking about that asset-based approach um to working with students and I also heard another school

290district who talked about how do I increase uh on task time how do we increase curriculum time as a way to measure thinking about um suspensions and so it's like okay if students are being suspended what's the way that we can get them more engaged with learning and I keep thinking about that um for a lot of our students um yesterday the NC what's it bcn had a luncheon here in Durham and our CTE students were there and were able to the governor came and was able to Showcase all of their skills it was incredible and a great day for Durham public schools and when I talked to the barbering and the cosmetology and the skilled trade students and the CMA students they talked about how those classes are what motivate them to come to

291school and they were like oh this family that I've created with this class or this thing that I'm doing like this is what motivates me and some of them were admitted they didn't have all that motivation before right they were trying to figure it out and so how do we get more of our students I think especially some of those students as we disaggregate data are they in the right courses and curriculum they'll keep them engaged with school so I hope to hear more kind of I know that y'all are doing that work but how do we do more of that especially for those subgroups that we see and for some that might be repeat unfortunately students who've been in the office several times so really thinking about how do we connect our kids with

292learning with careers with job opportunities as a way to get them motivated and staying in school any other thoughts questions can you um use your microphone um I just I just um I know that the long-term suspension by disaggregated by race and uh that one is is not included because it's it's such a small percentage and um I I also just want to thank you all and especially um Dr Oliver Royster um that presentation I was sick when we did this meeting so a lot of my questions I will say you know um during that time uh I just I just wanted to thank you all so much for meeting with us in advance and also for presenting the data and I think that we have a lot of work to do but there's definitely

293just a lot of appreciation for your leadership um all of you every single one of you this this is this is what makes us proud to be here in DPS and we hope to continue making improvements and I think um you know those percentages from covid those those are attainable I just do believe we can we can definitely lower them so just wanted to say that uh Miss Rogers thank you again thank you um I know that you all just like the rest of us as we are supporting the raising of the children of DPS uh get frustrated it's like we make two steps forward and then there's a step back but thank you for hanging in there with us um and you know I just want to make sure everybody knows that we are

294all really committed to reducing the school to prison Pipeline and this is part of that work do we still have representation with the juvenile crime prevention Council are we still connecting with Community Partners um to help get to the root causes of the truancy okay can you share who the representative is for the council so um previously Dr Al roister was our representative with jcpc and right now we are trying to determine who's going to be I am serving as the as the contact but we have not yet assigned one but we do still have the relationship and we um are continuing to to work with the partners that we have on the jcpc if there are things that they need from us as well thank you thanks I do have one more question I

295don't know if you can do this because of the identifiable data but I see the school level data is working out on our website and if it's possible to get school level disaggregated data as well just to get a sense of what that looks like different schools for different students and their experience who get that in a board update everyone uh Miss buyer I just had one small question back on this Hillside slide and and maybe it's just it's small so the very last Point says leveraging DAC new directions community-based mediation and services through our school resource officers program and that makes it to me grammatically sound like our sros provide those services and make those referrals and they don't we pay for all that we do that we support all that so that that

296word one word in that word slide kind of bugs me if it's misinterpreted by our public and by the community I don't know if y'all might choose a different word or if I'm misreading that I mean can you can you verify that my understanding is correct that is our district initiating and paying for all of these things supports for students multiple referrals to diac I mean not one time it's not it's not I don't know maybe it's just bugging me and it's late but that word through is kind of making it sound like the sros are the ones leading that work to me so so maybe I'm just oh yeah I was just gonna speak to it briefly yeah I think um the the statement is intended to say that we have those services such

297as diac new directions community-based mediation and there are Services through um the SRO program gotcha so those that General services with maybe with our yeah yeah okay is that what you're yeah okay that that helps so yeah these are the words from Hillside but that's my interpretation that's how I read the statement okay that makes a whole lot more sense thank you that that helps a great deal all right thank you all for that update but think um Dr Worcester was just trying to to give me a note that the disaggregated data by school is on the website I will we'll make sure I think we've sent a couple of links in the previous board update so it may be tomorrow um that we follow up with the board about that if that's okay I

298currently see it disaggregated by school but not racially okay okay could I quickly just say thank not only for your time here tonight but the board updates just your entire staff the board updates are really appreciated we know that takes work to they're red but you guys answer all our questions that way so thank you for that cool we're ready for the next presentation the Strategic strategic Plan update so um just want to thank our our partners from RTI I want to thank the engagement um from our strategic plan steering committee um all of your comments and questions regarding our priority to update um were a great preview to what you're going to have the opportunity to hear about our progress so far in working on strategic plan 2023 and Beyond want to take the

299opportunity to bring up our our partner um this is one portion of our partnership team from RTI and just want to appreciate they have been working multiple hours working with our team and really have engaged you'll hear today with multiple groups and really just appreciate their facilitation and helping us and our board think through um what our strategic plan is going to look like so I will turn it over to Kyle good evening thank you so much Madam chair board superintendent mobinga staff and Durham community so excited to be here to discuss the progress on the next strategic plan I believe I have some slides that should come up in just a moment um uh my colleague as Dr Hardy mentioned Dr McKenzie is uh under the weather's evening but he sends his his regards

300and would much rather be here I'm sure uh than sick in bed at home um I'm sure it's coming um well I guess I'll start just by saying um the objective I want to sort of get at with you this evening is I want to make sure that we have a chance to um provide a next slide please to provide just a general update on the the process where we are now share some merging themes uh and give you a little insight into our data collection process to this point um and then potentially give you a little bit of time to provide some feedback and input on some of our priorities and potentially some ideas of some activity strategies and goals which have already been coming through I've been taking notes this evening on a

301few things I've heard um but go on to the next slide for me please next slide so just a reminder I think it's important just to note that we still are using this idea of building from a strong Foundation there are core elements of the current plan that we are continuing with we are not uh changing anything about the Mission Vision or core beliefs this we feel like is very strong representation of of the needs and values of Durham's Community um next slide please but the other elements are things that we are going to be uh addressing here this slide gives you just a an update on our timeline as similar to the one you've seen before with a couple smaller edits our first phase of data collection and staging really getting information from the

302community getting an information from the district itself has gone pretty well we're going to extend it a little bit you'll see the questionnaire um rectangle has extended quite a bit because we want to continue to get community input I'll get to that more in a moment but now we really are into our phase of identifying the key themes and priorities that we can then use with step input and additional Community input to really get at the meat of this plan um once we get to the new year we have a few points we'll be giving you some more board updates Vision to this evening we will be back with you in late January I believe I'm sort of giving you an idea of where we are with some of the goals and actions um and

303then we will have some Public Town Halls some more opportunities for Community input and engagement before coming back to you in March and uh on track for a April approval hopefully next slide please so let's jump into this data collection and emerging themes here next slide I want to really talk about what are some of the things that we heard um so through stakeholder feedback uh vis-a-vis uh questionnaire and focus groups at this point we really have identified eight sort of core topics that we presented to the steering committee for uh priority engagement these are listed based on the frequency of reference in either the questionnaire or the focus groups I won't go through all of them but you'll know you know recruiting supporting retaining a diverse high quality staff is number one that's the

304thing that was mentioned most by Everyone by a mile and then next into the whole child uh social emotional learning mental health supports was our second a few things that I want to point out that sort of diverge from the previous strategic plan there's a lot of uh talk here on career in college readiness particularly from some of our students in our notable passion points that pop up there's a lot of ideas about you know how are we thinking about District perception of student nutrition some of the community members and parents are concerned about and talking about here obviously access to funding and resources things like that but this is what we sort of use to help us kind of get a direction for our steering committee of what it is that we want to

305delve into as our priorities which will then beget our goals and actions and measures the subsequent slides Are all uh quotes connected to each one of these I won't belabor the point by going through and drawing on each one but I would encourage you to go through and read some of those particularly the student ones we had two really great student focus groups and they mentioned so many of the things we've heard this evening things like cultural responsive pedagogy environmentalism how's the district think about the environment is an extrategic plan nutrition career Readiness opportunities mental health supports so I'd encourage you to go through and take a look at some of those we also have teacher and parent and principal responses in there as well if you could navigate to slide 16 we're going to

306jump quite a few here almost there one more wonderful I wanted to make sure you had a chance to sort of get a look behind the curtain and see how we went about uh getting this uh this this feedback um this is what we're hearing and I sort of phrase that intentionally because we are by no means done soliciting Community engagement and feedback right we are going to continue to keep our questionnaire open we're going to continue to leverage the town halls I mentioned um but I think it's it's pretty clear you know we had 800 as of today 850 responses we've uh coded about 700 of them half those respondents are parents um but to this point we have not met our goal of having a representative response rate on our questionnaire from parents

307um you know from our first meeting together we discussed and you guys expressed the importance of making sure that this process is representative and it speaks from the community and what they need and so we are continuing to work on our engagement efforts to make sure that it reflects the will of our diverse Community um I will note the first time you know we pulled this data end of October that share of parent completion by white families was 75 so we are making progress we're closing that Gap but we're to continue to think about creative ways that we can do so as again this is a continuing process where by no means done collecting feedback so again with that in mind we're keeping the questionnaire open I'm also working with Dr Hardy Dr Stewart Dr

308Danner Pablo from the um MRC to really think critically about you know what are some additional Innovative strategies we can try to use to continue to hear from a representative sample both in the questionnaire but also as we're getting those Town Halls how we're making sure we get people to come and give us some feedback on what will be a more substantive state of the plan um just some ideas of some things we're continuing to do we're going to continue to leverage strategic principles in communities that we know um reflect the diversity that we need to have represented among parents in this plan um we're going to continue with partnering with computer organizations like the ministerial Alliance we're really reaching out to to have them share the questionnaire with their congregations and again working closely

309with Pablo of the MRC to think really critically about how can we maybe convene some stakeholders to figure out what what do we need to do what levers are we not pulling right now to make sure that the questionnaire but also information about the process gets into the hands of our families next slide please we also had uh now 18 focus groups um you'll see the breakdown of the participants by roll here on this slide and also the the different focus groups that we had um I will say we're excited to share that you know every school had been represented in this process either as a focus group member or as a member of our steering committee we also were excited to leverage our parent ambassadors to try to as a creative strategy to engage

310folk who may not uh engage with the questionnaire typically we ask them to use the primary question of the questionnaire to go and interview folks in their Community come back and share in a focus group what they heard we had a really robust discussion with them that like a lot of great ideas out of um also note we had a focus group specifically for parents of students with exceptionalities another fantastic conversation we had about 12 or 14 folks in that conversation it was really really powerful um I think the the big thing that we want to do moving forward though is really again consider how are we taking these lessons we've learned about the importance of Grassroots engagement about the relationships that matter and getting this information in folks hands and how we're going to

311use that to continue to think about our next step of engaging folk in those Town Halls next slide so where do we go from here um now that we have this information from the community we want to be refined this information through board input through staff input through our steering committee input to funnel us into these strategic priorities goals actions and so forth next slide please and so in November we met with the steering committee um some of you were at that meeting and we uh that meeting was dedicated to reviewing this information uh from a data collection as I've done with you but also reviewing or establishing some of strategic priorities that will drive the work within the plan um next slide what you'll notice here is there was quite a bit of overlap

312in what emerged in those breakout conversations among our 60-member steering committee um that really aligned with the current strategic plans priorities but also a lot of opportunities to refine that language change things up a little bit and so we really thought that we would take what we have um and flesh out certain elements that really align with the core beliefs of equity and shared responsibility and provide a little bit of rationale here so underneath each of these priorities there's a paragraph that sort of explains what we sort of Envision as being included within each one of these priorities um they do look I'm sure they do look somewhat familiar here but I think there's a lot of value in continuity particularly in a district like this that has done been so successful and like really

313integrating everything you do as part of your plant um and I think the Innovation is really going to come in how we are taking this and continuing to address these priorities with our measures with our uh uh refined strategies here I won't read through all them the blue languages things that have been um been edited or changed or added here but we've had some initial feedback from our steering committee it's been quite positive uh I will say there's a quite a bit of excitement around in the first priority around academic achievement um discussing opportunity gaps and disaggregating some of that information um that said there is a push from a few folks who uh refine that title a bit more be more aspirational include things like the rigor and Excellence that we provide here in

314Durham Public Schools there's also been some feedback on ensuring that we're really thoughtful about the goals that we have here and how we can really effectively measure progress with each priority particularly around uh priorities two and four sometimes it's we want to make sure we can really dig in and have clear goals that we can come back to as we measure our progress um and also there's a quite a bit of conversation around how are we being thoughtful about how can we you know potentially like alter our course or change things if we aren't meeting our goals a year or two down the road how are we going to be really strategic and thoughtful there um you can continue on to what's going to be slide 25 it's called looking ahead we're not going to

315break out any small group discussion here I wouldn't do that to you at this time of night um so what are our next steps here uh we're going to continue collecting sort of feedback on these uh questionnaire responses we want to keep that open at least through the New Year potentially longer we are compiling steering committee feedback on these priorities and so the priorities you saw were sent out to be a Google form to all of our steering committee members to provide us feedback in you know what language do you want to change what aligned actions or goals do you want to see align each one of these is there something we're missing so we want to make sure there's opportunity for everyone the Syrian Community to give us that bit of feedback there we're

316going to identify and convene internal and DPS thought leaders in a working group to sort of support in the development of these actions and measures building these priorities and then draft the core elements of the plan for Community feedback in the new year that will come to you before we uh release it everyone for feedback so you can have a chance to look at it and dig your teeth in as well and the last the thing here at the bottom about the open questions are things we're trying to continue to think about throughout this process how are we making sure the process is accessible how are we making sure that the the benchmarks that we're including are really powerful for accountability and how do we make sure that it's sort of inclusive development process so

317that everyone feels like they have some degree of ownership over what's going on with a strategic plan with that that's all I have for you I would welcome any questions comments feedback on the priorities we have here I'm happy to take anything thank you for the presentation and the update thank you for hanging with us in a late hour we appreciate that board members are there questions concerns I'm at Mr Sears Rogers and Miss buyer yeah um thank you for for this work uh and that was a very concise presentation thank you well done um I I do and I think it's it's at an appropriate stage that that I make this comment um with the draft priorities how do we keep the Strategic plan from becoming unwieldy I didn't see any strikethroughs I saw

318additions and I think those are all going to lead to sub goals um and you know I applaud the the plans ability to be digested in its current form um and so it doesn't mean we we can't just add but you know where does the adding stop and so just from a community representative perspective you know can we can we keep some level of focus on making it manageable absolutely yeah I think that's where we're really going to dig into those actions and goals like it's not going to be exactly the same sort of goals and actions we're going to try to refine those and changes uh as much as we can to like get what we think of the heart of the the challenges in 2023 versus you know 2018 and so that's great

319feedback though I think it really is easy to sort of throw everything in the kitchen sink in there and so really being intentional is so important you can call me old school but um I'm really appreciative of the work you're doing I am wanting to know if there's a possibility to activate the parent ambassadors and the network that they're connected with they're going to kill me but I am a parent first so I am volunt telling them that we need them to take pen and paper to parents where they are so they can fill out the one question survey and really have it authentically from the perspective of the parent that um are offering that feedback so we can get some more responses um I'd like to see us spinning out the electronic version of

320the survey and asking our partners at all the organizations and Foundations and the County Commission to send in their newsletters so that we can get real good Community feedback because everybody wants to tell us how to spend 18 million dollars but we need to know what we need to do for the next five years thank you so I really appreciate you being here um Kyle and staying late with us um and I appreciate colleagues that are serving on this strategic planning committee because it does Focus the work and it is so so important I kind of thought we were gonna innovate more I didn't know think we were going to build essentially our version 2.0 and so I hope that you all feel free to just dream innovate Vision in a Durham way that is

321unlike any other strategic plan ever so I hope y'all feel free with that at the same time we focus I mean I don't you know it is that balance right but I don't see what you got and I'm glad you're aware you got way too much white perspective um you know I want to know kind of going forward that you've reached out into language communities that are not English really deeply and um not just small focus groups but authentic conversations from people that might not have ever been hurt or thought that they could bring their voices to power it's super important um I don't see pre-K in here I don't see that commitment to Early Childhood that we know is one of our key literacy strategies and it might just be a whatever but it

322kind of got left out of last time and if we don't push it with our community we're just going to stick to talking about it and not expanding it I don't see the sustainability kind of focus that this board has as well that we talked about some tonight and you've you've heard some of that's just enjoying time with us but I just hope that y'all will continue to feel free to keep what works and just really dream and innovate um because if we don't stretch we don't get anywhere we just stay here so thank you so much for all the work on that thank you any other comments from board members I'll follow up and say um I was in the meeting where we talked about the priorities and it was hard because we were

323like oh we have still so much work to do on these things right here and we could go in a lot of different ways but I I appreciate the challenge and the push to innovate um I just Echo the sentiments of getting more families um to fill this out especially our black families about nuts families and other families um I think if we I don't know if we need to put a little money in getting some signage out at school buildings as well little QR codes having parent ambassadors go into Community some of our apartment complexes that we know have large groups of families so if we need to put some signage out there I don't know how many people read this pamphlets and their water bills that also might be partnering with the city

324to get that in there because the water bill comes with a normally announcements for the community so that's going to hit a lot of different families so it does a couple different things of thinking about how we can get it out there because we we can't bill the next five years without having those important perspectives so I appreciate y'all for that foreign you were mentioning you know the the engagement with with families I will say that I've seen the survey coming through the WhatsApp threads so um our our parent ambassadors they are sharing it but I do believe that um you know the question there's there's there's the cultural piece about how people want to be engaged in The Conversation Piece that my colleague I think Natalie you mentioned conversations like Rich conversations um the

325kinds of things that are um uh Beyond just just just just a survey um going into these groups going into these communities I like the idea that um Millicent was saying about like some of the board member Millicent Rogers was saying about going into communities and making sure that they're also partners with us um so just more encouragement about about that and and thank you for working with the MRC uh the multilateral resource center is definitely um a bridge you know in in so many ways uh for services but also like in terms of the the engagement with families and um I think we we we are best served by hearing from everybody so thank you you have no further comments thank you so much for being here tonight we look forward to hearing more

326in the spring and with that we've come to the summary of our follow-up item I can only imagine what this list is like four members will send revisions by December 20th to Dr mabinga Ms Giovanni um board attorney Malone regarding our newly adopted policy lgbtqia Plus um in terms of our energy and sustainability item update in the future regarding LED lights and for us to include to provide bike racks and continue to work with our biking culture and the community lifting up the school the southern school for energy and sustainability is part of our plan for other items partnering with curriculum curriculum resources and sustainability um an update as we continue to get information from the solar feasibility study and how we can use renewable energy on our campus um making sure there's more publication

327and lifting up the story on Lion's farm and looking forward to how we can do some of those same energy renewable pieces at Mary massenburg also update regarding Outdoor Learning in regards to Priority two disaggregating the data in that subgroup for students with disabilities also other exceptionalities such as twice exceptional as well as students with disabilities that may have a behavior plan or behavior or social and emotional goals making sure that our professional learning is practice based and that we're focusing on building trust how we can potentially leverage Our Community Partners and elders doing a deep data analysis I'm sorry I couldn't read some of my notes I apologize doing a deep data analysis in regards to the subjective incidents um looking at that data analysis so that we can identify Trends and then making

328sure that we have a plan to address those specifically having a plan to address specifically that will Target our the data with students with disabilities also looking at the data across schools looking at the data by teachers as well as schools where we have leaders of color if possible disaggregating the long-term suspension data by race making sure that we can disaggregating the school level data by race and then I think the last comment from Aspire in regards to the hillside side I think we discuss that I don't know if that needs to remain a follow-up and then for the Strategic plan keeping our strategic plan manageable um in regards to engagement using our parent ambassadors any newsletters such as newsletters that go out from the County Commissioners making sure that we're really being intentional about

329our language communities not just having the survey but having authentic conversation thoughts about making sure we name Pre-K and early learning thoughts about sustainability and what else can we do if that means signage apartment complex at apartment complexes or potentially putting something in the water bill to get it out well done Dr Hardy it's a comprehensive list and you have two major things at the end of the agenda today um thank you all for all the presentations and all the hard work I will now accept a motion to go into closed session motion to go into closed session for the reason stated in the agenda I can't it's about it's been moved by Miss valiadara second up but I'm Inspire any other discussion Mr Malone can you uh turn your mic on sorry can we

330add to the motion in addition to the items listed uh two pieces of litigation one is Ki versus DPS and the other is KBB versus DPS that's why eight hours would you add those to English yes um uh in addition in addition to the items listed in addition to the items listed uh I want to add the um you said Ki k i v DPS and KBB versus DPS okay the DPS and yeah what what Rod said and kbd versus DPS second yeah it's been moved by Miss valuedara second if I missed buyer any other discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign passes unanimously we're now in closed session absolutely I don't know does this belong to somebody we are back in Open Session Dr mabenga

331Madam chair I'm here to seek your approval for the Personnel report as discussed at a closed session the move approval of the Personnel report dated December 8 2022 seconds it's been moved by Miss Byers seconded by Miss Chavez any other discussion all those in favor please they are uh any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously the next item on our agenda is the paces contract I make a motion to approve a contract between the positive attitude concerning education and socialization program and the school system as maybe revised and approved by the board attorney and superintendent for the 2022-23 school year second it's been moved by Ms Chavez seconded by Miss Rogers is there any discussion Miss buyer yeah I think we had considerable discussion in closed session and the board is concerned

332that the Department of Public Instruction continues to have responsibility for all students in North Carolina but thank you for allowing that comment thank you Miss bar any other question any other comments all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously and with that we are adjourned