001we will call the durham public schools board of education work session for thursday july 9th to order we'll begin today's meeting with a moment of silence thank you at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining us this evening the purpose of this meeting is to inform our parents staff constituents about the work aligned with our mission to embrace educate and empower every student to innovate serve and lead the interpreters for tonight are martha romo and marty ramirez thank you for taking time the time to join us board members we're at agenda review and approval i'd like to add an addition of a resolution against house bill 755 to the agenda it's been sent to us beforehand and if we can add it right after the consent items maybe
002the first items and academic services okay the approval of the agenda as amended a second it's been moved by miss beyer seconded by miss umstead that we approve the agenda as amended uh having a resolution against house bill 755 as 7a and sliding a b c d down one slot is there any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed the agenda is approved as amended item 5 4 is the board work session minutes from may 5th 2022. move approval of the minutes second it's been moved by ms lewis seconded by miss buyer that we approve the minutes any discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed the minutes are approved unanimously item five is general public comment we have five people signed up to speak we'll allow three minutes for each speaker we
003may adjust the order we are providing okay then we may need them at the podium we'll start with umberto trejo and if any uh of our guests want uh interpretation services okay just wait one minute interpreter yep and we'll we'll do six minutes when there's a interpretation they'll be here in just a minute i'm sorry sorry i i forgot to read my statement give me just a minute a quick review of the rules um first please state your name if you were speaking for an organization please state your name and the name of the organization second speakers are asked to present their comments in three minutes when the yellow light comes on you will have one minute left to start winding up your remarks when the red light comes on it will beep which indicates
004your time is up complaints about named staff students or parents should not be voiced in open session however we are very interested in hearing your concerns with regard to public education safety of our schools or the operation of the school system finally board members will listen carefully and consider comments but we do not engage in discussion with speakers again our first speaker is umberto trejo thank the micro okay you all know me i work for el centro hispano in the education department community is but also concerned parent and citizen i'm very concerned about safety of our children right now safety of our children in public schools of durham and all over the country and i have a question for you what are you doing to prevent a tragedy like what happened in um texas um
005i'd like to know what you're planning to do to prevent a tragedy like what happened on may 24th in novade texas what are you doing in terms of training uh dps pers personnel working with the sheriffs uh training the students uh how are you working um together and how many times a year is this happening because we're very concerned about this moment much is the parents right now we're afraid to send our kids to school but we're still sending them anyway and um just want to um avoid any having any tragedy like what happened in novaldi texas imagine my daughter my son or anybody's child you know having to go through that and parents not even be able to recognize their children because of what happened and i saw a post from dps right after
006the tragedy in novalde that you know our prayers for the families and so forth but the same thing happened um after a situation in florida and then like three weeks later like didn't really hear anything else about it so um i just like to have like trust with the board and with the school district to understand you know what's being done to prevent this and um i just i'm not hearing anything about that i would like to hear at the next board meeting i would like to hear like data about how many times a month they're doing these kind of drills i'll definitely be here next month so i'd like to to hear about that thank you thank you mr true our second speaker this evening is lords yes absolutely and for those that that
007may be arriving we we will um ask at the end of the five speakers if there are additional speakers department it's my first time speaking at a board meeting but i'm always keeping up with you know what's happening at the meetings and paying attention [Music] happy to see you and dr mubenga i haven't had a pleasure to meet you before but i'm always you know keeping up with what you're you all are doing i was getting emotional listening to alberto talking about the situation in texas because that's very hard for all of us but today i also want to speak about early childhood education i like to ask for more support for latino children who don't have the same advantages as some of the other students and some of the needs that they have are
008correct pronunciation reading and math we have a tutoring program at el centro hispano but it has practically collapsed or been overwhelmed as a result of the pandemic we're serving about 200 kids but we don't have enough staff and volunteers to um you know meet all the needs but i know that they are they do have tutoring services in schools and i would like for that to be publicized better to the parents in spanish so that they know that the services are available and can take advantage of them and we wouldn't have situations like mother who came to me recently last week and said that her child was going to be um was going to be retained because he didn't know how to count to 200 and and is that n is alphabet foreign we can
009collaborate with tps and vice versa um to to help and support these children with their development with correct pronunciation reading writing math um because we know that it's partly intellectual and it's partly development they need support like to give thanks to the esl registration department that's always been very open and we met together in december to discuss issues of some of the youth that are going through different emotional situations abandoning school dealing with bullying and so forth and looking for different options and opportunities for them and i would like to know also how we can collaborate in that area yes yes thank you our next speaker is and suit kyle hemstree you're learning how to say my last name at this point um good evening superintendent mubanga and dps school board members my name is
010anne sakauye hemstreet my pronouns are she or they i live in durham with my wife and two children ages 3 and 6. first i wanted to say thank you to the board members for unanimously passing a proclamation that recognizes june 2022 as lgbtq plus pride month many lgbtq and ally educators and administrators felt empowered and encouraged by your proclamation to implement developmentally appropriate lessons and special activities with their students on lgbtq families gender diversity and lgbtq history i have heard from multiple schools and educators about some of their activities and i would like to share some of them with you now at one elementary school they are sharing about lgbtq historical figures and playing songs performed by lgbtq artists over the morning announcements this same school is conducting developmentally appropriate lessons around being who you
011are and love makes a family during morning meetings and they are having a wear rainbow day another elementary school's parents painted progress pride flag palettes to display outside of the school and they are displaying pride flags on display in the hallways as well they are also having a pride station with temporary tattoos pronoun stickers rainbow rock painting and more at their party on the playground event that they already had scheduled i've heard from multiple individual teachers who felt empowered by the proclamation to read books that they previously felt pressure to keep out of their classrooms this felt like a win for many of us especially in the context of hb 755 at the state level and what feels like a whole country of pride events being threatened with violence as the rhetoric surrounding lgbtq issues
012becomes more charged and we see rising levels of violence toward lgbtq people our lgbtq and gender diverse children and families need to know that their school their home away from home is a safe space for them if they don't know and feel that how can they possibly learn and become all they are capable of being well this proclamation is a good step there is still much to be done as board member sears and administrators sorry as board member sears acknowledged at the last meeting many teachers and administrators aren't yet prepared to implement pride month activities or lgbtq and gender inclusive efforts throughout the year they aren't prepared to do that appropriately or respectfully i urge the school board to pass a board approved policy that includes required training for all district staff and developmentally appropriate
013lgbtq and gender inclusive curriculum for grades k through 12. this will take time which is exactly why i urge you to take action today thank you our next speaker is abby bender hello uh my name is abby bender i use pronoun she her i'm a dps parent of a third and first grader i have returned to talk to you all today to primarily to thank you for your pride month proclamation that was issued because of the proclamation my child's teacher felt encouraged to support them fully in sharing their pronouns and my child is finally living in their true identity at school since i spoke to you last we had made efforts to move things along but their teacher and i were told expressly by the principal which she states came from the district that no
014mention of gender was allowed in the classroom after my child had their pronouns shared they were not even allowed to answer questions put forth by the students when i reviewed this with my kiddo they felt like this would only create confusion and possibly even lead to more bullying so they opted not to share at that time once the proclamation was issued we all felt this was giving green light to share about gender in a developmentally appropriate way in the classroom and this has made all the difference in the world their teachers shared their pronouns they read a book a children's book to help describe their identity and did an exercise on gender stereotypes my child returned home glowing and told me right away how well it went they said the first thing that they heard
015from a fellow classmate was i understand your gender now they respect it this was one of the same children who had several times that their clothing was for girls in the weeks since this exercise in the classroom there has been a gender there's not been a single comment about the gender of their clothing and they have been welcomed in social circles in the classroom that they were previously shut out of i cannot emphasize enough how important this has been for my kid the sense of belonging that they have felt in the classroom has made the school feel like a safe space again and unfortunately because the principal has not been on board with this progression we are moving our child to a school and within dps where this kind of representation and acceptance is standard
016we could not guarantee that our child's teacher for next year at their current school would feel emboldened enough to support them in the same way as it appears to be contrary to what their principal desires we are so thankful for how this board has stepped up to support this community in an impactful first step i encourage you to continue down this road and pass a policy that will not only allow but normalize and standardize all teachers creating this environment in their classroom thank you very much thank you maria lariat good evening my name is maria fernandez and i am the dual language kindergarten teacher at lakewood i feel the need to share my thoughts on why i think eliminating language dual language program may not benefit a lot of families but specifically the hispanic ones
017i can tell that almost everyone can anticipate or be informed of the benefits behind being part of their dual language program when you're an english speaker but i think not much is known about the benefits for those students whose first language is spanish while i could list several different benefits i will only name a few i want to invite you to reflect and put yourself in the shoes of a five-year-old hispanic student we could even say this student is a newcomer they enter a regular kindergarten classroom with an excellent teacher but everything is new and nothing has prepared them for that moment the language barrier is real it is present every day and at every moment they don't understand what is being said and teachers don't understand what they express imagine what it's like to
018feel misunderstood repeatedly i'm not going to focus on how this will impact the student's self-esteem i want to say that i'm not an expert in neuroscience but i am aware that when we are subject to stressful situations like the one being described our brain enters a state of alert and just seeks to survive our brain is not going to be learning when focusing on surviving new and unfamiliar situations to me the lower grades are the most important foundation for learning it is when we learn to read and all the skills that go with it a brain that is worried about survival will not reach its full potential and might not even learn at all latino students who are part of the program do better on standardized tests starting with a solid foundation of their native
019language and transitioning to english over the years will give them the opportunity to learn the necessary skills and then transfer their knowledge to the english language with a more mature brain and their self-esteem intact i have a feeling that our hispanic community is going to remain in lakewood even without the program because it's their neighborhood school that they know and love and to which they walk finally i want to say something about the diversity that takes place in our dual language classrooms our program aims to have full classrooms 24 students that will represent our community we have 12 spots for students who speak spanish and 12 spots for students who speak english the previous name spots are divided evenly between white and black students we have something beautiful going on at lakewood thank you thank
020you mike silver thank you i'm not going to take up too much time my name is mike silver i have a second grader at lakewood elementary school what i want to say is that i was very encouraged after our prior meeting of being able to speak to so many administrators staff school board members about the issue of having spanish immersion at lakewood what i am encouraged about is the idea that we can get to a workable solution i know you have a long consent agenda and i know there's a lot of things that need to get discussed so i don't want to take up too much time but i do want to say thank you to the board to the staff to everyone for being so open so being so willing to engage with so
021many parents teachers faculty and staff and we are very hopeful that we can find an equitable solution to this issue thank you thank you eleanor morris benedict hi um my name is el morris benedict and i'm about to graduate from durham school of the arts i've been there since sixth grade and i'm here to speak about the dress code um and in support i would encourage the proposed changes to the dress code um tomorrow will mark exactly a year from when um an op-ed that i wrote was published in the indie about the dress code and i would love to read some clips from it for you guys um administrators often focus on girls with more curves who are therefore deemed more distracting this type of enforcement where our teachers are deciding whether or not
022our bodies are considered too sexual for a learning environment is detrimental to a growing young woman's mental health around her own perception of her body there is a culture of sexual objectification in durham public schools disguised as a dress code the idea that a dress code is designed to create a safe learning environment is difficult for me to accept when it's paired with stories of enforcement that prioritize preserving modesty over facilitating a person's safety for example one student recalls being told to stand during a tornado warning when everyone else was told to crouch for their safety quote my dress was an acceptable length she says but moved up so they had me take off my blazer to cover my bottom but when my teacher saw i had spaghetti straps on she suggested that i quote
023just stand it's extremely uncomfortable and demoralizing to constantly be reprimanded for my body being sexualized by the staff at my school while the dress code is dps policy not all schools enforce it to the extent that dsa does style and fashion norms in 2021 have changed astronomically since those in charge of writing and enforcing the dress code were growing up meaning crop tops and tight-fitting clothing may seem out of the ordinary for them while our generation is accustomed to seeing influencers in the media wearing this clothing all the time still this is no excuse for discriminatory disciplinary practices for dress code violations enforcing the dress code seems to be a priority over our education and mental health which sends a message to young girls that covering their body to the standards that won't distract boys
024is more important than growing into a confident body positive young woman along with teaching boys that sexual objectification is normal and okay thank you that concludes the folks that have signed up if there are folks that came in since the sign up sheets were taken we can allow for public comment time from mike because i'm speaking about the same subject which is the dual language program uh good evening my name is angela i'm the mother of a second grader in the dli program at lake elementary three years ago we emigrated from colombia to canada and it took my kids two years to be able to communicate in english with confidence and with confidence and to reach an average understanding of the academic contents although both of them are bright kids who had previously received a
025fair amount of english exposure it has it was extremely challenging to deal with the frustration of note getting most of the teachers and classmates wards and even worse not being able to respond ask or demonstrate in full their intellectual abilities whereas in spanish they already had a tremendous vocabulary and advanced grammar this is our first year in durham and in the dual program it has served my boy and my family on three important aspects first to help him to help with his anxiety and self-esteem by being the spanish pundit of the classroom and having the options of expressing his needs in his native language second to keep alive his maternal language that at his age tends to easily be displaced and last but not least to facilitate our transition as newcomers and our access to
026the school staff and the community i'm here not only for my cause but to advocate for the many families i've spoken with who were uninformed and unaware of the implication of these changes and who are not able to come to this meeting for their work until late or for any other complicated reasons i heard lake elementary was not performing well i also heard that the dla program took a big part in its resilience lake elementary is now a community school a community where more than 50 percent of the students had hispanic the vast majority of hispanic hispanic students enrolled at lakewood come from families of low educational and socio-economic studies who do not speak english the dual program has given these families the opportunity to send their children to school without the fear of language
027barriers and racial discrimination as well as the confidence to communicate with the people who care for their children seven hours a day five days a week the dual language service provides spanish-speaking families with a powerful sense of cohesion belonging and significance the opportunity to have the dominant language in their classroom gives hispanic children a more adequate pace of learning and grants them with a sense of equality that the american dream promises likewise the program offers english-speaking children immediate access to the reality of a globalized planet and a diverse society broadening their learning horizons with just three years of implementation of which two and a half operated under the catastrophic circumstances of kobe the dli at legute hasn't had the chance to show results or compare data the creator of in two years is to take
028away that chance may i keep going it's just a few paragraphs we have to call time there okay i i just want to set my request which is allow lake elementary to continue with the spanish immersion at least until the rising first graders finished fifth grade and a proposal to make uh the spanish immersion at lakewood a pilot project for this country's unstoppable bilingual future and let's give this school the opportunity to exist for the community and because of it thank you very much thank you i saw an additional hand a moment ago please if you could state your first and last name good evening my name is erica clowney and i am a parent of two daughters who have been educated and dps although both my daughters were raised in the same household they
029have had extremely different paths my oldest daughter graduated from hillside new tech in 2019 the top of her class but i'm here tonight speaking for my youngest daughter sorry she was diagnosed with autism at the age of three and i would like to say that i've i've had the pleasure of reading your growing together plan but unfortunately it's a year too late for my daughter um we live in the southern most part of the district but due to overcrowding in the autism classrooms and the availability of them she has scheduled to attend lucas middle school which is the very northern part of the district it's not a good for hit for good fit for her due to her severe medical condition she has very bad food allergies and she needs to attend a school closer
030to her home um dps always prides themselves with the abundance of choices for families be it year-round ib cte um however for children with disabilities like my daughter the child the choices are very limited i humbly respect the school board consider taking a real look at the systems in place for children with disabilities and how hard it is for parents of disability disabled children to help them thank you one last call to see if there are any additional public commenters anyone in the hallway all right thank you thank you everyone for joining us this evening board members we're moving on to item six consent items uh for our community the board reviews the agenda ahead of time including the consent items um we have an astonishing number of consent items this month and uh all
031very important to keeping our system functioning properly um board members are there questions discussion or emotion on the consent items i um don't know anything i do have a comment i want to highlight because these are so many items on consent and i just want to highlight for the public um especially with the public comments that came in earlier um consider item 6a staff has identified six high school campuses and one conversion site that require comprehensive door access systems so that's one of the things we're looking to approve and consent i just want to highlight that as we're talking about security and safety being important so thank you for bringing these items forward uh i would move approval of the consent agenda do you need them all read out or items a through s that's
032sufficient i think second it's been moved by miss buyer seconded by ms lewis that we approve the consent items is there any further discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed you can send items pass unanimously all right we're moving on to our amended agenda uh item seven a is a resolution against hb 755. am i saying that correctly ms pyre would you mind introducing it yeah it's a resolution opposing hb 755 um the bill entitled parents bill of rights it was emailed to you all on wednesday i think that's you got it who who is it from if you don't mind the email and it's from me from you thank you yeah okay so board as is our um standard practice here we will read the resolution as presented once we make sure
033everybody has it up and then we'll go to discussion and see if this is something we want to approve board members could give me a thumbs up if you've got it there you go mrs vaidars would you like to start durham board of education resolution opposing hb 755 parents bill of rights whereas on june 2nd 2022 the north carolina senate passed hb 755 parents bill of rights and whereas hb 755 has been sent to the north carolina house for an expected concurrent vote and whereas in north carolina parental rights are already protected by extensive legislation and many of the quote unquote rights created by hb 755 reflect existing rights and other laws applicable to public school units and whereas parents and school staff in north carolina already collaborate and partner to support students using north
034carolina standard course of study which is thoroughly vetted by a bipartisan state board of education and whereas many of the rights in house bill 755 are unclear or unqualified in their scope and expand beyond federal ferpa family education rights and privacy act legislation and we're at whereas in german public schools we uphold an environment that is unbiased welcoming and affirming for all people including all sexual orientations and gender identities and i think you jumped ahead at least i'll follow it whereas hb 755 creates unnecessary penalties and disciplinary action for school employees which could further exacerbate north carolina teacher shortage and whereas hb 755 creates additional burdensome administrative requirements for public schools including the creation of a parent's guide to student achievement unique to every individual student and whereas hb 755 requires public schools to develop
035policies to improve parent involvement and unnecessarily burdensome requirements regarding instructional materials and whereas in north carolina public schools already have effective policies for parents to opt students out of specific lessons assignments testing field trips and other related educational content and whereas house bill 755 requires principals superintendents and boards to respond to information requests within 10 days rather than as promptly as possible or not to exceed 45 days as required by ferpa and whereas in durham public schools we uphold an environment did i already read that one yeah you can read it if someone knows what's next please just go ahead that's why it ours yes um i think we can finish that one unbiased welcoming and affirming of all people including all sexual orientations and gender identities and thank you hb 755 requires public schools
036to provide notifications to parents regarding student physical and mental health including requests for changes to pronouns and whereas hb 755 prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in the curriculum for grades k through three and whereas hb 755 provides for appeals to hearing officers appointed by the state board of education and the option to file a declaratory judgment action and seek injunctive relief against public schools and whereas house bill 755 prohibits health care practitioners from providing medical treatment to minors without parent parent consent it may prevent public school nurses and personnel from providing emergency health care when needed and whereas public schools in north carolina are required to keep every student safe in north carolina's anti-bullying law and c general statute 115 c-407.15 protect students and school employees from acts reasonably perceived as being
037motivated by any actual or perceived differentiating characteristics such as race color religion ancestry national origin gender socioeconomic status academic status gender identity physical appearance sexual orientation or mental physical developmental or sensory disability or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have one or more of these characteristics and whereas hb 755 would undermine trust cause harm and oppress children families and the educators who serve our school communities therefore be it resolved that the durham board of education calls on north carolina general assembly to vote against hv 755 and if necessary calls on governor roy cooper to veto this discriminatory and unnecessary legislation signed this 9th day of june thank you board any discussion regarding the resolution before we consider voting on it okay we'll entertain a motion move approval of the resolution
038opposing house bill 755 it's been moved by misfire seconded by mr raven uh that we approve the resolution as presented is there any further discussion thanks to our parents thank you uh sorry i just jumped in but i just want to thank you all for you know continuing continuing to engage us around uh creating the kind of school communities that all our kids deserve thank you all right all in favor say aye aye any opposed the resolution is adopted unanimously thank you all right moving over to the administration item 7b is strategic plan mr series members the board we have a special guest here with us today i just want to recap a little bit where we came from with our strategic plan so 2018 we started with a strategic plan and uh the sunset
039is going to be next year super excited about the progress we made in spite of uh the setback of this pandemic for the last two years um those of you that's been around here i think myself dr hardy and jim key we were very instrumental to be able to facilitate the strategic plan that we have today very pleased as uh spoken with other colleagues very well done instrument with good smart goals strategies in place that's uh we've been presenting to you as we're making progress now that we're getting close to the end of this particular strategic plan i felt it was really appropriate for us to set back after five years to bring another organization that will come and facilitate this process and with rti i remember one of my uh colleagues from duke told
040me they are very golden standard when it comes to this kind of work so without any delay i'm going to pass it on to dr hardy who's going to introduce our guest today thank you dr ravinga and if we can pull up the presentation rti international is an independent nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition with roots right here in the triangle for years rti led by the center for education services has partnered with schools districts state agencies to complete strategic planning that includes a reflection on the status quo and imagination of the future design strategies and metrics to make the future a reality and the translation of steps from a written plan into concrete action intentional stakeholder engagement is an important element of this work and rti leverages their breadth of expertise
041and well-tested approaches and tools to gather and analyze community inputs and other data to inform a holistic strategic plan along the way rti team members former educators and seasoned business professionals integrate both project management and change management principles to ensure that the strategic planning process is organized deliberate and inclusive in a way that anticipates and mitigates against challenges to the transformation efforts it puts forth while each strategic planning engagement is unique rti understands the job at hand and stands ready to work alongside dps and our community and building a clear path forward at this time it is my pleasure to introduce our two rti consultants mr d mckenzie and mr kyle canyon thank you dr hardy it is indeed an honor to be with you all tonight uh many thanks to dr mubanga and dr
042hardy and to everyone that's responsible um as far as enabling us to be a part of this incredible important work here in durham public schools so our presentation this evening is meant to basically be high level introduction of our vision for the strategic planning that road that will travel that lies ahead and so we'll do our best to keep things brief tonight uh we certainly welcome any questions that you may have as we um in any insight that you may have throughout anything we're unable to answer uh in the context of our conversation tonight we will gladly take back um to rti and follow up with an additional insight as we move forward you can advance aside please so before we get started we want to recognize we recognize that um the context and relationships
043matter with that in mind we want to take a quick moment to share a bit about who we are as well as um the work that we will do advance the slide thank you so um many of you are already familiar with rti and its impact in research as well as staff develop in in staff development place whether through the work that we've already done um as in partnership with durham public schools uh within rti you'll click that's the slide sorry it's animated we represent the center for education services and within that center the strategic consulting group our diverse team of former educators and business professionals offer a wide range of services of to districts and organizations seeking to enact meaningful change in today's complex and evolving education ecosystem that includes policy implementation school startup
044community engagement and input program audit and evaluation and of course strategic planning so with that said uh you advance the slide uh advance it one more time thank you i am d mckenzie you probably would like to know who's the team that you'll be working with my name is dean mckenzie and i'm an education consultant at rti international prior to that i started out as a secondary math instructor in wake county public schools and then moved on to serve as a school level administrator then moving to become a district level administrator where i supported first-year teachers and first-year principals and then later working with the state department supporting cooperative innovative high schools throughout the state in that role that was where i had my first connection with durham public schools supporting some of your cooperative
045innovative high schools and uh my name is kyle canyon so excited to be here with you i am a former teacher instructional coach curriculum writer i also have experience in in the policy space um most recently with the hunt institute um but uh so excited to be part of this this team here um i think to me what's most important is i am uh the parent of a three-year-old who will in two years be enrolling in parkwood elementary um and so i'm so excited to be part of this process it means so much to me that we do this well and we get this right um advance the slide for this animation uh while d and i are the stewards of this work um we also want to and you know we are here to
046answer any questions you have throughout the process we also want to know that you know the full strength the knowledge and expertise of rti and the center for education services remains behind us to support with any issues or questions we have along the way in advance please uh it's really important to us that you know we think about where we are in in the district's history at this moment and it's so important that we celebrate the strategic plan that you guys are sun setting as dr mobinga referenced earlier today you know it's such a formative and influential uh document that's really shaped the way that you guys have approached your work the way you've monitored and implemented have have been fantastic i mean uh you can move the next slide the second you walk in
047this building the second you look at this agenda you really see and feel that this document matters um and that means so much to us working with districts that's not always the case that it's so well ingrained and so we are so excited um that it is here for us and that we can use it to sort of uh inform the the work we do moving forward please advance the slide for us here you can do it until all the text is on the slide here um you know we can only imagine how proud you are of the work you've done to this point and we're so excited to build on things specifically like the mission the vision the core beliefs we think those things are so strong they they don't need to measurably change
048here in this work um as we develop the next strategic plan next slide please at the same time you know the the plan the the world that created that plan five years ago is no longer the world we live in things have changed so much uh the ingrained pre-existing challenges continue to demand our full attention uh but new issues like the coven 19 pandemic really have exacerbated these existing inequalities and demand innovative and community driven solutions which we're excited to bring to this process next slide please regardless of the priorities we will remain focused on measurably and equitably improving outcomes for every child across durham public schools now we think it's so important to look at the why here the why of developing a strategic plan and our approach is really rooted in this idea
049the power of the plan lives in his ability to connect and align and inspire a set of diverse stakeholders around clear goals founded in these beliefs that really reflect the needs of community and then holding ourselves accountable uh to these uh um goals that we have created next slide please um now d is going to talk through our uh approach for strategic planning but before he does that i sort of want to echo what dr hardy mentioned a moment ago you know we know we know that from experience the strategic planning process is different in every instance in every place some of you were involved with the last strategic planning process but the challenges and opportunities will be very different here we're committed to working in partnership with you to facilitate a process that's inclusive
050and data-driven uh while remaining nimble enough to adapt our approach at a moment's notice next slide i'll pass back to d right thank you so at the core and you can go ahead and advance the slide thank you at the core we just want to understand that there's there's an underlying framework of a strong strategic plan which is built on a few key foundational pieces and most of which we know that durham public schools has already you've prepped that you've actually shared it you viewed it you've embraced um that work and so it certainly puts us in a position where we have a leg up in moving forward first and foremost it's imperative that we have a clear vision that speaks to the future that we imagine for our students secondly you must have a
051mission that articulation advances slide you must have a mission that articulates what we would do to achieve that future advance the slide now a shared set of core beliefs underscores both the vision and the mission all of which then serve to inform a handful of strategic goals that reflect the top priorities necessary to achieve the stated mission and vision you can advance the slide so as you can see here um now we're not saying that we're that you must have four priorities um that may vary either any anywhere from three to four but um together these foundational elements must be packaged and delivered in a digestible format using language that is accessible to all please uh advance the slide go ahead thank you so um and we want to ensure that every community member across
052durham public schools can see themselves reflected in this plan we do acknowledge that this can be a tough task to accomplish but we're we're willing to take on that challenge we believe that there is power in simplicity and clarity always with an explicit and unwavering commitment to serving students which are at the center next slide now when we zoom um at uh for we'll say a 50 000 foot level uh if you will this framework will then be further developed into more robust set of aligned actions and supporting measures per priority to ensure real and meaningful path toward progress built on real metrics that can be tracked and shared out for accountability purposes aligned actions reflect those primary strategic initiatives that will enable realization of our goals while measures are the tangible metrics used to
053assess progress toward the goal next slide now in applying this framework and approach to durham public schools your exemplary works to date in establishing a clear and meaningful vision a mission as well as a set of core beliefs positions us to really focus our efforts on if you'll thank you you're already there efforts on refining the district's strategic priorities moving forward actually if you'll advance the slide one more now each of these will um then dive will dive deeply enough to develop new as well as um some modified actions and measures to bring them to life in real and uh measurable ways give us a slide for me uh one more time sorry too many animations noted uh so next uh you can see on the slide here we have uh three different phases for
054our path forward uh the first phase through the spring uh uh and summer of 2022 really is establishing a landscape for ourselves so analyzing uh quantitative and qualitative data to figure out where we are to inform where we need to go next in the fall and winner that will oh sorry back thank you uh in the fall and winter we will identify and socialize and refine key themes and priorities that emerge through that first phase to really shape the meat of the strategic plan and then finally in that third phase in the spring of 2023 will be fine-tuning with input from stakeholders culminating with board approval in the spring of 2023. now throughout this process we really want to maintain effective and meaningful engagement opportunities for stakeholder groups including the board so we look forward
055to opportunities to share our progress with you along the way uh next slide so role clarity is is such a vital part of any efficient and effective process here and we've talked about engaging different stakeholders in different groups here so we wanted to make sure it's sort of clear our structure for this work um you can advance the first thing is this dps project team um which is dr mabinga dr hardy and the rest of the team really being our primary thought partners to get us started on the work next then the steering committee which is a a larger group of key community stakeholders parents teachers faith leaders etc we're really putting together that group to be as diverse and reflective of durham county as possible in durham public schools um and they will help
056ensure that our work reflects the needs of the the district across the board and finally uh advance the slide we recognize the importance of engaging those who often find themselves left out of the conversation so really being thoughtful about building support for strategic plan across all members of the community and making sure that we are really intentional about finding out whose voice has not been heard to this point and how can we make sure they're involved in the process next slide so finally here um he and i are so humble and so excited to be part of this process we have a few priority action items that we will be engaging in the next few weeks confirming the project plan and timeline confirming our steering committee membership that i just referenced and reviewing that data
057to understand that landscape we talked about now we had a few questions here for discussion that we welcome you to react to respond to but we also want to make sure there's time for you to ask us any questions you may have here i'm not sure how close we are on our time here but we'd love to open the floor if there are any questions or usings or or if you want to even share any expertise or advice that you have having done this process before alexander i'm really excited about this um everyone on this board participated in the um when it was actually was it 2018 sorry 2018 to 2023 um strategic plan and uh you know there was it was definitely involved process uh so many stakeholders uh so many rich discussions and
058so i'm excited about continuing this work and also entrusting it to you all to facilitate and continue to engage so already what you're putting in here is definitely resonates for me um i always and in 2018 when we did this process i think believe it was january january maybe 25th or so i came to the board and i was requesting for there to be representation of spanish-speaking stakeholders we have more than spanish-speaking stakeholders we have multiple communities that are thriving in dps and so i'd like for the for you know at that point i was requesting five seats you know to this board actually i was appealing to all of you like five seats and dr mubenga thank you so much um i think the community definitely appreciated um you know having a voice in
059that process out myself being one of five but um just to keep that in mind representation um of stakeholders and also different cultures that we have in dps thank you miss lewis i thank you for the presentation um i'm happy that we have done this before so to hear it again is a refresh and it's just good work that's going to be going forward and following the same plan and having it community driven i just have a couple of requests um i know we had about 30 people from the community 30 representation representation from the community previously from last year i don't know what it would look like to have contacted those same persons that were involved before and also adding 30 more and i say that because we have what i've seen in this
060community over the past five years has really increased community engagement and have gotten involved with a lot of uh stakeholders and community members and i think that they more people would like to have a seat at the table if that's possible to be facilitated with more from our community representation matters typically after any type of program is done in my own business we do a um a debrief you know what will we keep what we change and what needs to be different or what didn't work and i know that um we made some amendments to the strategic plan because things were not as clear so just make sure we're looking at those things that um should have been in the plan from the beginning that we're making sure we're giving additional attention and focus uh
061to those areas that had to be amended and added too so that we're really doing a good deep dive this time as well thank you mr ava i want to thank you all for the for the presentation as well um the one thing that i would challenge you all to do is to really challenge us i think with the city the county and the school board all having strategic plans the community has become more and more familiar with what that actually means but there's always going to be and there's always has been some some feedback from the community saying well yeah your numbers look good here but what about this so being able to not just to not just really um focus on improving these kpis you know in a cumulative fashion but to also
062look at where are the gaps like for instance if community members have talked about yes dps has increased their graduation rates but what does that mean for the for the career readiness rates you know what i mean so making sure that we're giving them that that full transparency that they're asking for because i think what happens is some people feel like if you're meeting these measures and you're doing this well well yeah this this deserves more resources because we're achieving it and i think we have to show that that other end where we have to show that we're doing good in these areas but we still have these gaps so we need these additional resources to address these gaps that are so hard to overcome so if you all could kind of help us push
063the envelope on that i think that would be um great thank you mr samson thanks again for the presentation i was on the planning or on the strategic planning committee many years ago um and so i'm glad that we're it's time to reimagine this and what you all said about the world has changed it has completely shifted in the last five years and so a lot of context for us to consider a lot of successes for us to celebrate and create a plan for moving forward how to address the challenges that we face um i have a couple questions one in the timeline you all talked about doing some engagement in spring and summer and it is summer but i know it is so important for us to do that engagement so if we need
064to shift that to the fall like let's do that to make sure that we're able to really engage with folks because i know people are on their way to the beach and vacations and all of that so i want to make sure we really get that meaningful community engagement i think we probably also as a this is for dps need to make sure we message the um ways that we have succeeded on our strategic plan i know we talk about that often in our board meeting but i think we might need to update our page and say here's some metrics that we hit over the last five years so we can make sure the community can see that part as well and then one thing i also did not see was the cost of how
065much this is going to cost us to go through this process i think it's just important to be transparent about what we're doing so misspeller while they're discussing yeah there's a cyborg i i welcome to durham i'm glad that you were here i think you heard some of our public comment maybe as you were arriving or um and you see what an equity focused district this is and how there is such urgency for all of the equity work none of it leads all of it works together all of it is is incredibly urgent and we want it done yesterday in durham um i agree with um some of the concerns that others have stated i don't think you've included enough people in durham durham would rather have more people in the conversation early even though
066that's messy for y'all to deal with and facilitate that's okay i think we can do it um i i think it's so so important to open the conversation up to our engaged community because they they are champions with us and partners with us um yeah and and the timeline looks aggressive to me um and i guess i'm looking at the one with the circles the project team the syrian committee the stakeholder engagement i think more people early rather than that there's never trust and buy-in if people think it's that red group of the dps project team making this decision and making this plan and then i just encourage y'all to help push us outside of north carolina for best practices i don't think there's anything best practices as much in north carolina i think we
067have to look nationally and internationally to say how do we actually make innovative transformational equity change in in this community so i look forward to y'all helping facilitate this work and knowing what this costs us because nothing's free do you have some other districts that you've done this with that you want to tell us kind of some examples that of y'all's work specifically i think uh i can quickly respond to that dr hart is still looking for numbers here but i think if i recall on top of my head was like eighty four thousand dollars and again don't hold me to it was about 84 so we're gonna double check on that unless they have uh accurate i do not all right so we'll let you know probably by the end of the meeting i
068had a couple additional things after the cost question um in the last strategic planning committee there was a lot of communication on with the board around here the list of folks that we are thinking about engaging here's the dates i hope that we can continue that level of engagement um we are an active board with an active community and want to make sure that we all have eyes on it to make sure that we have the right folks around the table and and can expand and extend that table as much as we need to so i just really hope when we're talking about the steering committee and talking about that stakeholder engagement that the board is getting updates so that we can add and make shifts and changes as needed great thank you i'll just
069add a couple comments and then we can uh move forward um i would say from my perspective the the bar that we're going to ask you guys to jump over is pretty high i've seen a lot of strategic plans and this one that this community did on our own was what we needed at the time and this administration has been excellent about updating us regularly hitting benchmarks giving us the data so that we can use that in the superintendent evaluation so um i'm confident you'll rise to the challenge but i do think the bar is high um second uh we're going through a massive redistricting project growing together i'm sure you know about it and heard about it um [Music] our team did 28 public engagements last year last calendar year and as you can
070imagine we're still getting people contacting us saying where's the community outreach and we're saying there were 28 public engagements so i bring that to you as a from the staff there are probably lessons learned around what that can look like and to be sure to keep that top of mind as you go forward yes mr raven i had two more thoughts and i don't know if this one would be directed towards you all or towards the administration um moving forward again trying to raise the bar it would be i think it would be beneficial if we could also look at having some type of digital dashboard to where the community can actually see in like near real-time reporting on how we're actually where we're at with with this um because a lot of times people
071will go to the website and it's a bit more stationary being able to have some type of digital dashboard where they can just log on themselves and see it that would be helpful the other thing is i don't think the district gets enough credit for everything that is implemented to help reach these measures so maybe maybe aligning the initiatives you know any type of solution that's implemented to actually you know move these measures along it shows the community this is the investment and this is where some of these resources are going trying to actually improve these measures so that would be helpful as well right ours on that note um as a board member raven was sharing i thought about we just went through accreditation there were a lot of things that were highlighted in
072terms of our strengths um that you know uh are very helpful and also areas where we're continuing to um continue to grow continuing to to to evolve and i do think our administration for resources uh um just i want us to also keep in mind you know that process in terms of areas where we're continuing to to work and what is already in place and what could be in place you know like the the the things that already addressing certain things as uh board member fred raven shared but also in those areas of growth things that um that could be shared and i think we're also working on a dashboard separate from this so in a way i think that there's going to be these things uh are probably going to share some kind of
073overlap in terms of time frame which is always good i think but to tell just a fuller picture the board we we did get the numbers just under 85 000. in the future we can just keep those on the prices just to make sure we know kind of where where we're landing thank you all well mr canoon it's nice to meet you and mr mckenzie good to see you again all right thanks guys okay i'm gonna just take a point of privilege and see if there are any more public comments that may have arrived late this will be kind of our last call i got a note saying that there was two okay and we may need translation service martha's coming great great so if you could estades my name is cristina sandoval tengo dos
074ninos in kinder um in first grade and i don't understand why they want to change it um it would be very difficult for them to change the school and they're very happy they're learning really well spanish and english and i really want them to be able to stay in the program is the father of the children and just want to say that it would be very difficult for us if they had to change schools um it's been good for us because we don't speak very much english and it's been really good to have them in the program the teachers speak spanish and so we can communicate so we would really like them to be able to stay where they are all right thank you and he doesn't want to change schools either all right thank
075you again public comments we'll head back to the administration academic services item c alternative schools modified accountability model tonight the administration is presenting the accountability model for and this is before the board this evening for action we'll turn it over to dr julie spencer assistant superintendent for research and accountability you and if we could pull that presentation up that'd be great good afternoon board members dr mabinga and our durham community this agenda item is before you it is a recurring item that we bring every year regarding the accountability model that is in place for our two alternative schools which would be lakeview school and durham performance learning center while all other dps schools are required to use the state model for accountability that includes a school performance grade made up of eighty percent proficiency and
076twenty percent evos growth these two schools fall under the modified accountability model for alternative schools thus we have some options as to the model that our alternative schools will use for accountability purposes today we bring you the proposed modified accountability model for lakeview mplc enclosed in the board packet we've included several other documents that will inform help to inform our work including the memo from north carolina department of public instruction outlining guidance for the model and the process as well as some additional details we've also included further description and simulation of the proposed models for each school joining me this afternoon is nathan hester director of assessments and accountability who's helped lead this project i would also like to to to thank the project team which has included dr dan davis assistant superintendent for high
077schools as well as dr theresa mcgowan lake view school principal and dr kisha futrell durham performance learning center principal and other research and accountability staff members they've worked diligently to develop this plan next slide please as required by north carolina department of public instruction today we bring you a proposed modified accountability model for lake view school and performance learning center as well as to provide our proposal for the calculation if there were to be insufficient data next slide please north carolina department of public instruction provides alternative schools with three accountability model options historically durham public schools has selected option b as outlined on this slide however our proposal for the 2223 school year is option c which is a customized model next slide please this slide outlines the specific recommendation of the customized model for
078each school both principals requested the customized model and have worked with school improvement teams and school staff for feedback we all believe that each school's proposed model is customized for that school to better align with the goals and the focus of the school and we are confident that this will provide the school with a better framework for continuous improvement and growth as you can see the model is slightly different for each school based on the needs as well as the goals for each school both schools maintain proficiency in state assessments evos growth as well as persistence which is the percent of students who remain enrolled in a school while adding additional specific school-related data points for example lakeview school has added attendance and suspensions to align with areas of the focus for them while plc
079has added test participation cohort graduation rate and earned course credits as their focus areas there's additional documentation in the packet that outlines further rationale and background for each data point you will note that the weight of each data point is also included as well as the designations that would be used for both schools regarding their performance during the 22-23 school year the data points are unique for each school customized and based on the need to focus in these areas for continuous improvement i would also like to add that every year we review the model we share the results and we consider modifications to the model for the following year next slide please for schools using the alternative school accountability model we must also decide how to proceed if there were not enough scores next slide
080please if insufficient data work to be um were if there were insufficient data at either school we recommend option two that the school would utilize three years of data please note that we don't really anticipate that this option would even be needed as both schools generally have enough students and scores to be used for accountability however we are still required to have a plan for this if needed next slide please we believe that this model is more closely aligned to the specific needs purpose and vision for these schools we are excited to align accountability to the work of the schools and this item is in front of you today for action we request that the board approve the customized accountability model outlined in the slides and packet for our two alternative schools as well as
081option two to utilize multiple years of data if needed next slide please and at this time i welcome any questions concerns or comments board members this item is for action so at a minimum we need a motion aspire thank you all for um finding ways to highlight the growth going on in these very unique school communities and this is some of the most important work we have going on in durham and um i can't let the moment pass without talking about how ridiculous school letter grades are and the accountability system set up in the state of north carolina is not set up to help and support school communities but to penalize them and so i look forward to the day that we do away with all school letter grades and get back to actually supportive
082models i appreciate that these are customized and that you have really um worked with the school uh staff and leadership on them and i just thank you for your efforts and in that i look forward to celebrating some of these students graduating tomorrow right um thank you bye doris thank you so much dr spencer um i'm always grateful anytime uh you know you bring information like this that is uh so important i have so many stories of children who have benefited from being able to have access to the durham performance lettering center or also lakeview i love the hybrid i love option c because it does highlight the ways that our kids continue to thrive even despite whatever circumstances needed to be addressed in a certain way we don't throw away any of our kids
083we believe in every single one of our children and there isn't a bad school in dps there are schools that meet different needs and you have made this fairly clear when i look at this option c talking about persistence um talking about you know that goal of considering that giving you know uh or highlighting that particular thing 30 of um what would be the indicator um takes into account students who remain enrolled we want to make sure all our kids go to school and it does provide an option and i'm really grateful for conversations dr hardy ways that that option is always provided to students with long-term um long-term suspension and also the the the one that is uh related to suspensions you know um while they're at lakeview you know being able to engage
084the kids and percent of kids enrolled who are not suspended you know and so there's a there's a lot that goes into this um and i know that you explained it you know even outside when we met um with the team before and i continue to look at this and just highlight so much of it that i'm excited about this particular designed model right for option c i'm really grateful that we have expert advice on all this and yeah thank you so much for all the work dread thank you for this and and when i'm when i'm looking at it i have a question that i i think is something that may come up down the road um because if we are moving from from option b to option c people are always going to
085look for for gaps right people are going to always look for you know why did you do this instead of this so when we're looking at the it looks like the rates on how lakeview and their performance learning center that the kind of metrics that they're using to measure each other like i see both i'm not i'm not going to make the assumption that they should all have the same measurements but when they do have measurements that are the same i can see people asking okay their proficiencies are both 10 that's how they're tracking each other but when we're looking at the persistence one has 20 and one has 30. and i would i think i would just be on more of the side of having both of them have um just to have some
086type of parity you know if they can exceed it that that's great that's fine but but we do want to show that if both of these schools are going to be on option c's that we're looking at at them you know in their totality but there is going to be some natural comparison it's done when people are looking at it but other than that i support it i would just add i think one of the reasons you might find a difference for example in persistence is that it truly is customized to address um some of the challenges and to really quant quite frankly highlight where the school is focused so for example lakeview school is really focused on making sure that those students maintain enrollment and as well as transitioning back to a base school
087whereas that challenge is not quite at the same level at durham performance learning center and there for example they they really are focused on getting students caught up on credits and so that's the item there and so um i definitely see the point of kind of having some com comparison and thinking about that but i think it's it is also based on their data of what they need which would be kind of maybe to help explain why you might see some differences and if i may add to that i i i really love the ways that that some of these schools are particularly serving certain populations we have pregnancy rates in dps and we know that you know durham performs performance learning center with the focus of course you know knowing you know like the
088percentage of course courses um or credits earned that is a major thing for you know families who uh students who are starting families and having to navigate so much in terms of like you know not not being able to uh sometimes that is the thing that will not allow them to graduate and so we are working um i'm i wonder how much of um [Music] this the this option see in in the persistence and in all the participation and proficiency and everything that is on here also reflects takes into account in participation um not just assessments but also um the supports that are there for for particular students i know that there are programs that we have that address specific needs and i'm wondering if participation can not only be about assessments but also engagement
089in some of the supportive structures programs that we have in dps that address particular needs of these students so they did they did not include that in this model but i will take that back to the group that may be something we want to incorporate in um one of the things that we really encouraged was making sure we have um data points that we are tracking and that we have clarity and and we talked about some i'll call it more subjective um things that we would have to create a system for tracking and so i think that perhaps that's something that they would like to do but have to make sure we have a system to to plan for it okay do we have a motion move approval of the alternative schools modified accountability model
090for 20 22 23. the move by this buyer secretary ms amstead that we approve the accountability the modified accountability model any further discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed it passes unanimously thank you thank you so much thank you item 7d thank you mr sears policy 4150 we can pull good evening this evening we have two policies that we are bringing um forward to the board these are before you this evening for action for first reading we will be bringing the first reading in preparation for final approval at our next board meeting on june 23rd policy 4150 school assignment and policy 4132 student transfers you'll go to the next slide please presentation will include a review of the purpose of the proposed policy revisions and alignment of this work to our strategic plan
091an overview of each of the revisions and of course time for questions and discussion please note that within your board materials and for the public there is a complete set of all of the policy revisions where you will also see all of the track changes in your packet at this time i would like to turn it over to dr debbie pittman assistant superintendent for specialized services we also have here with us miss melody marshall director of student assignment this time i'll turn it over to dr pittman thank you dr hardy and good evening cherumstead members of the board dr mufinga so the revisions to policy 4150 of course next slide please thank you thank you are connected directly to our strategic plan and the addendum strategies and specifically the strategy that directs administration to evaluate
092our system of choice and particularly our student assignment policies next slide please so this evening we want to highlight just some a couple of revisions to 4150 school assignment on the next slide there are two revisions for consideration first we're proposing a new section g entitled administrative assignment and this would allow the office of student assignment to administratively assign a student to another school other than an alternative school the alternative school process is governed under policy 3470 slash 4305 and that governs specifically access and to admit to the alternative programs or alternative schools but this would allow transfers to a non-alternative so this revision would clarify the factors that would allow for a student to be administratively assigned or reassigned to a school other than an alternative school based on considerations of health safety and
093welfare and when it's determined to be in the best interest of the student and the school system as a whole and then under section h the policy highlights the effective dates of the new student assignment policy governed under growing together and we have revised those dates to align with the growing together initiative next slide please so this concludes the revisions for policy 4150 at this time i'll turn it back to dr hardy we can take questions and discussion on 4150 we can go to 4132 and do together whatever is the pleasure of the board and board we're probably looking for a motion at some point on these policies to add to our 23rd agenda that'll be the motion i get a question on this one while um we're here i'm sure y'all have reasons for
094this and i i trust that this will be well administered by staff the health safety and welfare do you think the language is written tightly enough to prevent those folks that want their kid in a specific magnet program which is what we hear a lot after every magnet lottery season and did y'all talk about that as you were if i were a parent and i had this artistic kid i mean you know this one we hear pretty often and it's been their best interest of their health i mean would and welfare did y'all talk about that at all do you see that being a problem is that tight enough that language so that it isn't misconstrued i think you're really writing it and proposing it for bullying and and that kind of right indeed so
095if i can chime in that your the latter is exactly what this is about is when there is there are situations and that this has occurred through recent years where it is necessary to separate students and just to get them to a different high school and our principles are highly collaborative and supportive when these needs arise indeed in the next policy miss buyer we'll see that the transfers of the administration's authority will not reach to program magnets or program application schools it is not the intention that this this is the purpose of the policy and if that were presented when the administration is managing this this type of situation is typically among our non-application schools working with our comprehensive high schools yeah i just wonder if we might need to strengthen that language if that's
096it to make that clear to folks it seems vague to me but men and i could be the only one misinterpreting it that way mr dr pittman and miss marshall i've been working closely with attorney raymie um we can definitely um in between this reading if you would like we're happy to have more consultation with our attorneys regarding that yeah i um you kind of answered it but i'll ask maybe a little different way wondering when this administrative assignment is used how often just the estimate is used because it did read a little bit to me that i could just come make a case to you all and i can get a switch and i think that i don't think that's the intent of what the policy is um for a lot of families to
097be able to just come make switches if they're not happy so yeah really good question thank you for that this is under school assignment typically this situation arises when a school would contact the office of student assignment to say we have a very unusual circumstance occurring in our building and we would like the administration to work with us to to separate students or to create to re to allow a student to go to a different non-alternative school for the purposes of safety or sometimes just a fresh start and typically these are initiated not from parents for transfer purposes that would be governed under our transfer policy rather this would be for administrative reassignment any other questions does anybody oppose miss buyer's notion of having attorneys look at strengthening that language i don't hear any then
098administration can you please do that for yep great and we can roll into the next policy we'll pull up the presentation for policy 40 21 4132 thank you you go forward thank you so much so um this policy um just as a friendly reminder was came to the board and was revised december 9th 2021 under the growing together initiative at that time we did note that some of the policy would be relocated to policy 4132 student transfers and tonight we are bringing those revisions regarding policy 4132 this is first reading just like policy 4150 is before the board this evening for action and will come back to the board hopefully for approval given your guidance at our june 23rd meeting if you'll go to the next slide we'll go through the same process we'll talk
099about the purpose we will also make sure that there's an explanation of each of the revisions we do want to make sure that for our public that in the board packet i know it is a long packet this evening but in the board packet you will see the full language as well as the track changes for this particular policy and i will turn it over to dr pittman thank you dr hardy next slide please and the next slide again as dr hardy shared these were the three sections in the revised policy 4150 in december that we shared with the board would need to be reassigned and repositioned into our transfer policy and that's what we're doing this evening on the next slide again we highlight the strategic plan and uh the directive touris to evaluate
100our student assignment policies and so on the next slide we will get started let's go to the next slide so there are many sub-sections tonight and in the process of relocating we also under the direction of uh neil amy's also offered some clarifying language so there's some cleaning up in this policy that i think will really serve our families in a much more user-friendly way so let's just go through under the first section the terms of transfer the duration of the transfer which is not really changed once a student is granted a transfer typically it's for the grade the duration of grades at the school in which they're transferring however there will be new language in the policy in this section two subsection two that may allow that will allow the administration to approve for
101another time frame so that the administration may be setting limits on the terms of transfer and that would be if there is current or anticipated overcrowding we would be looking at grade levels or school capacity and we may restrict rather than for the duration of grades we would we would have the flexibility to approve that for shorter periods of time this next section called revocation really deals with their the office of student assignment is authorized to allow a transfer for a pending domicile and so a family may present documentation that um that we would approve a transfer pending their new domicile but in the event that that fell through or did not occur this revocation section would allow the office of student assignment to consider redirecting the family back to their base school if that
102the new domicile did not pan out could i just ask a question while we're on that how often does that happen and you know we see the appeals that come up to the board i feel like we require documentation before we make those kinds of that's right and i can ask miss marshall i don't think it happens often but would you like to i am not feeling well this evening but it doesn't all um happen often but there are times when a family may be building a new home or know that they've been notified of a move to another development and we the office of student assignment does ask for that that um information for the any on letterhead from hud from the builder even a contract or a vendor contract and we are able
103to assign of that documentation but it happens often enough that you're recommending it go into policy okay thank you so under section two there are multiple areas here where um around transfers of students during the school year so the completion of the school year at as a science school following a change of domicile what we're asking in this section which parents would notify the school within 30 calendar days if they've changed their domicile and typically we then hold this the family harmless but what we do need to know is that the domicile has changed and so this will specify that if a new domicile is located in a different school attendance zone the student would be automatically assigned to that new attendance zone but the parents could or guardian could apply for a transfer and
104the office of student assignment would be able to grant a transfer of stability into the base school for their originating school for the rest of the year we do want an application for transfer to be on the record so we can help with planning and the receiving school to be on notice that a new student will be arriving that student would remain at the previously assigned school the parent is would be responsible for transportation if they wanted to remain at their original school but at the end of the year they would be automatically reassigned to their new home their new base attendance zone section two uh for early change an early change in school assignment based on a pending change in domicile this refers back to what miss marshall was sharing where a family would
105need to provide proof of residency within 90 days that indeed that that new home did come to fruition and that that pending a change of job missile came to be and under section c there's an additional section we've updated the policy to align to new policy 4152 and also the legal reference rather than no child left behind is now elementary and secondary education act and then finally there's a new section um under called new students it replaces the old terms under call of other transfers those terms of are now embedded in our introductory paragraph but this new paragraph six for new students speaks to new students that have enrolled in the district would have ten days to request a transfer should they desire and on the next slide there are multiple items listed but where
106we can go through them relatively quickly for 41 32.3 hardship and transfer and also 43 4132.4 child care these revisions really provide better clarity for families and more concrete guidelines when requesting a hardship or requesting child care transfers which we really feel will lend uh to decrease subjectivity families will have a better understanding of when to when those conditions would apply then for 0.5 the transfer to the application school this is an additional section has been lifted from the original terms of transfer for clarity and it specifies here to ms buyer's point the staff does not have the authority to grant for grant transfers into program magnet schools since those students for those schools are accessed by lottery and preset criteria section six is in essence just updates the language from calendar magnet to year-round
107calendar application schools point eight is how to transfer from a special assignment back to their base and it clarifies for students that have been assigned to a school an application school but they may wish to return to their base the process for doing and submitting a transfer for consideration and then section 9 again updates the legal reference from no child left behind to early students every student succeeds acts section 10 talks about the transfer application and appeal process it updates deadlines to include the term business days and that decision would be made within specified time time frames as noted but also allow for absent unusual circumstances that may require additional time this subject this section has also been updated to broadly reflect that families will receive transfer notification decisions in writing and not restricting only
108to the u.s mail it such that we may be able to notify a family through their email through the us mail or another method that's reasonably designed to achieve such written notice or such notice and then the last paragraph section 11.11 this aligns back to the administrative reassignment paragraph it's it's exactly the same paragraph that is in 4150 that we spoke of earlier this evening just so that it's cross-referenced in both policies so those are the overviews for the policy revisions and this time i'll turn it back to dr hardy thank you dr pittman and miss marshall we are now open for additional questions and discussion both policies are before the board for action for first reading thank you all for this work this is um incredibly important and um also for you all kind
109of tedious and i really appreciate you paying attention to the detail of it the the one i had question about was the 4132.2 the transfers of students during the school year like i believe it has been our practice that if you move during the school year you you stay with grace to finish out the school year because we know that is almost always in the child's best interest to not disrupt that school year um but this actually puts the requirement back on the family to both notify us and i know why we want all of this information right and with it but it also gives them 30 days in the midst of of a move i wonder how you all thought that through and logistically we almost always let them stay right but this is
110this is like you have to let us know that you're going to stay within 30 days um it just doesn't feel like what our practice is and the friendliest um to to the stress that families are going on during a move so i wondered how you all thought about it and whether there was a way to make it a little kinder i don't know what do you i mean maybe i'm the only one that reads it that way um i don't want us to have a practice that will have folks try to be deceitful but you know i want people to be honest and and um but yeah it just it's it it's it seems new and kind of a little harsher handle you want to answer you want me to oh okay if um
111this revision is in a spirit of of helping families we saw we saw tremendous movement and which also impacted transportation families had not updated addresses and it really put a burden on on families and making sure that children were able to get to school having this in policy that a family should and and must update their address is um will benefit both the families as well as as as districts as as the district to ensure that we are able to get children back i'm not sure if they answered your question it does i don't want it to be used by a principal that kind of is like y'all can you can go on to your new school now like i don't want it to be a gotcha like you've been acting up a lot anyway
112because i just heard you moved i found out and you're gone because you didn't do within 30 days do you know what i mean i'm just like making sure that we're practicing what is in the best interest of of students and families the spirit is to ensure that we have the correct address in um for the district as well as um going and the policy still allows for that family to remain at the school and um and prep and also prepares the schools that we'll be receiving the next year as well um to to know that a new student may be coming and i hope i'm making sense i'm probably going to step aside because i'm hoping i'm making sense you are making sense you are making sense and i'm sorry that you're here and
113not feeling well feel better i'd like to follow up on that question because i'm not completely clear either so when they when they move they need to notify um within 30 days and should they feel compelled i'm trying to think from the opposite end right should they feel compelled to inform us if they think it may negatively impact them right so what if they want to stay at their same school if they want to stay at their same school would would it actually benefit them to tell the truth and to come forward i that that's what i'm trying to ask our intention is exactly as miss marshall described number one is to make sure our records are update and everyone knows the the current school of the new domicile it is not intended to relocate
114a child and uproot them and move them mid-year what it does is helps almost authorize and and give out of the office of student assignment a letter of endorsement to that family and to the the cur the current school that the child is entitled to remain everyone is aware of the new domicile and that child is stable through the end of the school year it almost gives endorsement to remain and as ms marshall mentioned we've really got to work closely with our families and we do want it to be safe and not to fear that they would lose their assignment um at their school but that we work in collaboration with the family so that the records are up to date we know what what um that the family is entitled to be there and
115we want to provide stability to that family and the children and the follow-up on that i you know i know this kind of the amount of people that have multiple homes kind of skyrocketed once once we went into this pandemic so i know there's a lot of people in durham that may have multiple homes but there's also a lot of students who have two parents who also don't live in that same that same household so i'm not you know i'm not trying to throw anything else out but i don't even know if there's even been any thought about tracking both of their parents homes to at least be able to have that information on file because if we can maintain two addresses that could be beneficial to know as well i don't i don't know
116how that would work out but i just wanted to kind of put that out there a fam a child has a primary domicile it's where they lay their head at night is the domicile into which that child is assigned to their school their neighborhood-based school there are situations where there is shared joint custody where a child maybe technically qualifies for domicilian to do change you help me if i'm domiciled for mom and dad with dad and those families often will select a school but there is a primary domicile and typically in situations such as you're describing if there isn't joint custody the father's the parent the co the other parents address is located in powerschool and all of that contact information is accessible but that there is a primary resident typically thank you yes ms
117lewis so as uh thank you for explaining this because it does make sense as i read it further it really does allow the family to stay in the school as it's written out and um to change the next year does add that they will be responsible for their own transportation i'm just wondering um in listening here miss buyer if it would be helpful to move it to 60 days opposed to 30 days if there's there's um just families and transitions you know if there's not anything that's hurting within 30 days giving a little more time maybe that would be helpful to families yeah i was thinking that and also maybe even flipping the order you know saying that they how they do the transfer if they want to stay earlier in the in the wording
118rather than you're automatically like it to me it reads yep you've moved you're automatically gone right it's but we're yeah anyway i i trust y'all to keep you know bringing forth what is best and and frankly if it gets to be a problem i know we can change it um but thank you all so much thank y'all for this work on the policies and transfers and assignments i know it's not easy so i appreciate it that is one question under the new students um the students are newly admitted to durham public schools may request a transfer to another school within 10 days of receiving their initial school assignment is that with for that calendar year like how i guess um when we talk about a new student how long are they considered new for that
11910 day window is it that question makes sense newly enrolled so you would get your you would be notified of your school assignment and then within those 10 days within a 10 day window then following school year i'm free to put in my transfer winner okay i don't know if we want to clarify that or not in this part and then it does to say 10 days versus um business or calendar days i'm not sure huh in the same i know we cleared that up in a couple other places but while we do the readings to make sure we here just to clarify is the suggestion the language is newly admitted that is the suggestion enrolled well i might know better which the right language would be and that we could this could be something
120that attorney raymie could we could take back some of these questions if that's before we bring it back for a second and finally yeah and the the earlier we can get it back the better if it's in the packet on monday for a thursday meeting board is at enough time or do we need to see it earlier than that that's enough time okay someone had their hand over here i just on the i don't even know where i am in the transfers of students during the school year there's a there's a 0.4 a transfer of homeless students and i know we had switched in other policies to the people first language the students experiencing homelessness yeah good board i think we're looking for a motion yeah i would move it i would move that we
121um add policies 4150 and 4132 for second reading at our june 23rd board meeting a second the move by miss umstead seconded by miss valladares that we add second reading to the 23rd board meeting any further discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed passes unanimously thank you administration my board we're moving on to operation services um i will do one quick check are there any additional public comments anyone in the hallway hey miss dr monk thank you and good evening board of education dr mubanga tonight i'm joined by mr davis who is going to give us an update on our design development for our six elementary school renovations and addition project this is an alignment with board policy 9020 in which requires the superintendent to report to the board periodically our facilities
122designs at the end we're going to ask the board to approve our recommendation to move these projects forward into the construction document phase mr davis thank you dr monk board members madam chair umstead and dr mobinga and staff it's with great pleasure that we provide you a design development update a little context if you remember our 10-year cip had these six projects as well as three additional new schools as a part of a long-range strategic plan so we're excited to bring you updates particularly for these six elementary school renovations and before i begin i just want to make a statement that even though you routinely see me here i do not do this by myself so i want to thank the staff uh both on the academic and operations side as well as our consultants
123which will be mentioned here in our presentation as well as a cm firm these projects are as you remember you approve the delivery method of a construction manager at risk and so since the beginning of schematic design we've had a construct stability firm on these projects to making sure that we're efficient and making sure that we adhere to our financial stability next slide please so as a goal and base of design uh in 2021 we developed for the elementary schools our learning environment guidelines which is our baseline that we give to all of our design consultants as a benchmark of what we want to have at all of our facilities also come to you last fall with some of the requests that you've had as well as our county commissioners in terms of pre-k for
124all capacity of course safety and security as well as sustainability when it comes to our energy and our system upgrades and so what you'll see in these six elementary schools are provided these goals within those projects next slide please so our first school we want to touch on and each slide would have the same type of framework will highlight when the school was constructed what's his current square footage and what is the proposed as well as what capacity will be drip generated from the new renovations and then i'll highlight a couple of things that you see before your slide so again glen elementary was constructed in 1981 and the last iteration of construction was in 1993 as you can see with all of our renovations we will be doing tremendous overhaul and thus the budgets
125that you see reflect uh pretty much at the end of the day a brand new school for dps which we're excited about as you see the classroom count is increasing as well as at glenn elementary as part of our learning together we're establishing pre-k as a regional approach that was not at glenn currently so again the 20 classroom edition that will be going on in this slide here is a rendering of the activity as well as just highlighting some of the new design features that we'll be installing here at glenn elementary again it's an overhaul of the entire building envelope uh all systems uh will be touched and so again while we call it a renovation uh it is truly uh a brand new uh edifice next slide please this is just a highlight again
126we want to thank our construction design team of little and clancy and days as well as the danielle group and as you see here uh it orients you to the existing uh glenn elementary in the roundabout and if you remember the 20 classroom edition is where we currently have existing mobiles and as we look at educational suitability we want to make sure that everyone has the same opportunity and we don't want to have students learning and mobiles while others are inside the classroom so this really allows us to make sure that our learning environment encompasses all of our students um as you see in the highlights as well we've included outdoor classroom spaces to deal with 21st century learning all right next slide please and again this is kind of a a rendering of the
127front forward approach i mean it excites me those who are construction and design enthusiasts will see that once you build it they will come and this is an inviting well-lit daylight and we're just excited about the opportunity just we hopefully will begin um later this fall uh like late winter next slide please so just to highlight again up in the upper right hand corner you see the existing uh front entry and to the bottom right you see the rendering of what will be of the new glenn elementary again 21 new classrooms three pre-k classrooms improved bus car lot transportation a new gym because we're adding capacity so we want to make sure that our core responds to the number of students that we're increasing at this school as well as our other schools and then
128the two outdoor play spaces as well so currently as again we stated a constructability budget for the cost of work is uh 54 million dollars next slide please bethesda is a similar footprint of glenn thus we utilize the same design and construction management firm because of the uh similar footprint next slide please thank you again this school because of the site configurations is getting uh nine plus two classroom academics plus again the three uh pre-k classrooms as well this is also getting an addition to the gym and auditorium again to support the increased capacity that we'll be having at this school along with the outdoor classrooms expanded dining and outdoor seating and improved parent and transportation drop off again fully built out new systems hvac finishes flooring paint domestic hot water and electrical so again
129while we continue to say this is a renovation every looking cranny will be investigated and touched here as the next slide please in the same iterations highlighting uh the existing spaces as well as uh the new additions that we spoke about earlier and feel free to stop me if you have any questions or there is a slide that sparks your interest that you would like any more detail next slide please and this is just a rendering of the front approach of bethesda and it highlights the media center and the main entry next slide please again the fiction of the existing to the new uh dramatic difference however we've continued to keep the same architectural language uh but making it more inviting and really stand out um as a beacon in this particular community with the
130footprint is a little larger and so the budget of 55 million is a little bit bigger even though i stated that glenn and bethesda are similar size there are some either small adjustments that make the budget of bethesda a little bit more than glenn next slide please oat elementary was built originally in 1958 with this latest last edition in 1992. as you can see the current current square footage uh versus the proposed and as well as the current classroom pre-k count and the propose we're proposing four new classrooms if you're familiar with holt we do have students who have to walk outside of a wing into some of the course spaces like the gym in the cafeteria so a part of our design philosophy is to secure access in those main connections and corridors while
131modernizing some of the existing classrooms to support k through 5th grade learning and also increase the visibility so administration could be at one centralized location and be able to provide safety and support to the students next slide please and this is another rendering showcasing how we are really connecting the building to be one safe and secure location again our partners uh andre johnson architects and skansa have been working diligently together to make sure we can design and construct this within the current budget next slide please as you see uh with holt a lot of people have always said they don't know where the front door interest is next slide please i did have this question as a yes building enthusiast myself um so like for this does the classroom edition um doesn't that butt up
132against the current media center or something so as a part of the programming we've shifted uh where things are located so this has a different facade than what we originally had if we go to the next slide so where you see right there the media center is to the right so what we're going to do is basically a facelift to where the media center to provide context of where the front door is now naturally currently a lot of folks that's going to holt don't know where the front door is so in this design development stage we're providing you a arrival a sense of a point of connection what it does is create safety points and create one main access so you don't have people can enter from different parts of the building that really is
133unsafe i think my question is about lighting and also just to give you a break because i know you got three or four more schools to go but you know like at roger's her if you were to stick an addition on to the front of the building you would lose all those windows in the band room or whatever that room is so when you do that sort of thing do you add additional yeah so we continue to have the appropriate lighting so if you look that's great thank you um any other questions mr davis i don't see outdoor classrooms specifically on the hult design is it just not indicated or is it that courtyard that is central to it that will be that space for them so when we uh frame the building and close
134the building there will be opportunities for um outdoor amphitheater if you see in that slide that shows the various addition points and so we will provide that program within inside of that courtyard area next slide please so again as you see a before and anticipated after we have four new classrooms um full interior renovations and closing the connector bridge providing new cladding to the exterior of the building to provide that sense of arrival and destination with an anticipated budget of 54 million dollars next slide please morehead montessori was constructed in 1958 with this latest edition renovation in 2009 as you can see the square footage versus the proposed as well as the additional classrooms currently this site does have pre-k with the additional classrooms we'll be able to provide more opportunity for students and parents
135who want to be a part of the elementary montessori in this part of the district we also with the addition of classrooms eight classrooms we'll be providing a state-of-the-art gym and auditorium as well as outdoor play areas and the full expansion of the kitchen and cafeteria in the renovation includes a full system upgrade uh and finishes building envelopes tuck points that make sure that our indoor air quality uh is sufficient as well as many exterior site improvements to provide a as you see a front door to moorhead elementary so folks know when they've arrived on campuses next slide please again this is a highlight of showing the existing versus the new on a very compact site and so we're excited but we know that having uh the construction management at risk on board early on
136will provide us uh phasing that will have limited as possible disrupting to the learning because these are active sites as we do these construction uh during the school year does that does that addition go where current parking is yes so the eight room classroom if you're on i think it's uh sorry if i'm miss street name but yes the the park it was a service lot between the existing uh media center and the new the original classroom and so we're filling in that void with where the addition is and then we're taking the generatorium and using that for classroom space and building a new gym addition closest to the cafeteria on the when street parking is available do we do we still have to follow city county requirements around a certain number of parking spots
137per site and all that well that's going to be a part of our site plan review um if that does come up i i'll make sure i can ask that question i i don't know the answer assuming that we will have to follow those ordinance if they're in place we can provide a variance um from when school hours are in so that we don't have that issue because it is a compact urban site so yes next slide please and this is a rendering of the backside uh currently uh where the cafeteria is this is where the new gymnasium auditorium will be again as you see it's very inviting natural light using a simple but um heroes such as metal panel and brick uh sticking with the angular as you would say of the environment not
138to stand out and fit in into this community next slide please so again uh just to read this is existing versus new uh new main entry uh as a sense of arrival the eight new classrooms full expansion of our kitchen as well as our gym and stage which the total cost estimated would be 25 million next slide please club boulevard similar in design and footprint it was constructed in 1949 with this last renovation in 2010 as you can see again the current versus proposed as well as we're adding three new k5 classrooms as well as an additional pre-k the sense of arrival again for this school is important in terms of main entry and wayfinding as well as adding a new administrative suite as well as increasing actions from buildings that are outside to inside
139full replacement of our systems building envelope repairs of the existing structure as well as exterior site improvements next slide please and this highlights the existing versus the new as you can see where we have a pre-k wing and commons connector making sure that once you're inside the building you are safe and secure and students are not walking into the elements and well as expanded mechanicals to support the additional capacity that this school will receive next slide please and this is a rendering a little different of what we see now in club but i think with the support of our transportation department and building services uh this will work more efficiently and students and staff will be excited next slide please again this is a before and future as you can see still staying within the
140context of building but providing a greater awning and support for a front entry again covered outdoor seating and the budget for this is 20 million dollars next slide please mangum is our last of the six elementary renovations it was constructed in 1925 with this most recent renovation in 2009 because of the cip and outcomes report as well as site constraints um this school is not getting an addition but it is getting a renovation which includes making sure that we have connectors so that again these schools that were built in times where it was okay to walk between buildings no longer exist so make sure that we have appropriate ada and building code updates as well as re-roofing with the potential of alternative energy solutions on our roof we're doing a lot of interior upgrades and
141so with the learning environment guidelines and our 21st century learning we'll be upgrading some teacher walls we've created some nooks and pull-out spaces to enhance collaborative learning and so while we don't have any exterior photos this is more of an interior up that will provide some of the same learning opportunities that we have in some of my other renovation projects next slide please i'm sorry can you flip back and talk about this look to me like one that didn't get pre-case classrooms added and how that decision was made it's it's just that there's no expansion coming and we're gonna leave that with zero pre-k up there that that is correct um given um the vip budget as well as what was a priority for this site um classroom expansion was not at liberty to do
142at this site i think there's some engineering considerations too as it relates to imperfect surfaces um in that area that would limit our ability to add additional impervious services which are things that are important right so it's currently we the property that we own we are landlocked so we could not expand uh on this site uh to accommodate additional classrooms yeah it's just such a very very very north durham site to have no pre-k up there i wonder if y'all had considered at least the possibility of converting a regular classroom to at least get one pre-k up there i don't know i just it's yeah and it's on septic as well right it doesn't even have a septic system on the at that school i think yes that's correct yep uh we we these questions
143uh uh at the appropriate time so we can work with food planning to see if we could perhaps massage some of that now again the pre-k is not a part of our capacity but we can definitely take that comment into consideration just for consistency sake can we add a modern awning so that yeah yeah so um we didn't i apologize we do not have the fancy renovations for this but there will be some face lift this that will make staff and students not think that of the six renovations we got the short end of the stick so yeah it is yeah you guys have this cool style going like yes that's that's the new wave for durham yes we apologize if that made it seem like they they got a short a stick but yes
144this will have a sense of newness to it not just uh paint and lipstick on a pig with others would say again we do we are updating the systems as well so uh those are the back house things that uh we don't see but it still costs just as much money to do so uh next slide please is yeah just shout out um i did see that you are installing solar panels at mangum and um offsetting 60 percent of electricity use so that is definitely something to celebrate um i know that there are other schools that have electrical electrical hvac systems that's also something that i'm super grateful for because we're moving away from gas i know that um that is that is definitely something to celebrate in terms of moving towards solar so uh
145wondering bethesda could be what other schools are going to also get all of our a part of our renovations are having a sustainability approach so we all at all of these sites i felt dimension i apologize we are looking at alternative measures and so uh where applicable solar panels will be on the roof but we're also looking at solar hot water heaters as well as geothermal approaches that do the same thing as solar roofs so we have a study that's going on now with the 3 million that we transfer from 16 bond funds to look at the capacity of alternative energy sources throughout the district so where applicable at these existing sites we will have a lens of sustainability muchas gracias thank you so much you're welcome yes um thank you for this presentation it's
146exciting to know how much renovations we're going to be doing in our elementary schools just as a reminder how did these six schools get chosen for these major renovations i'll take that one because frederick wasn't with us back way back then so as you recall um as a part of the 2019 uh 2020 cip um the county had already set us out about 300 million over 10 years that they were going to give us and at the time we didn't have a prioritized list of projects that we were going to do working with the board of education as well as the cummins group who was commissioned to do a facilities condition assessment across the district um and aligning what the uh priorities were were with the strategic plan is how we landed on elementary so
147if you remember out of i don't remember the the letter of strategic plan but it's in priority five um we are to have uh 100 of our seats available for our um in particular k-3 to meet the class size mandate um but in addition to that both the board of education and county commissioners said we also want to expand our pre-k program and our exceptional children seats and so when we looked at which schools had the um the highest fci facilities condition index which basically means the closer you get to the hundredth it basically means you need to tear the building down and start all over again and these schools rose to the top from both a fci standpoint as well as a capacity standpoint from where they're located so if you think about glenn
148elementary for example there's about 15 to 1600 students that actually live in this boundary we're fortunate that not all of them go to glen though because they can't hold about six to seven hundred students and so anticipating all the work that we're doing growing our students academically having this space to bring our students back into the district is going to be necessary and as we can see from even lion's farm it takes a couple of years to build a building so the the more our families want to participate in durham public schools the more they're going to need seats available and this isn't something that you can turn around you know on a moment's notice and so you have to do these long-range facilities plans and capital improvement plans and that's how we got to
149these projects that we're looking at here and they align not only with the strategic plan but also with the growing together boundary changes that we're proposing um in addition to these there are another seven projects um that the the county basically said let's start with d6 and then in 2005 2006 we'll see where you are with this program and then look at funding again with the uh the remainder of the projects that are associated with the elementary schools but we also have jordan high school that we're doing site evaluations on now durham school of the arts the new school and then northern and murray macenburg were also part of the cip based off of basically their existing facility conditions as well as meeting our needs for capacity thank you dr monk that's so helpful i
150mean i remember that but it feels like it was a while ago when we started having those conversations and looking at that needs assessment so i think that context matters into why these schools were chosen and um you know i just know we know hvac may not sound all good and doesn't look as pretty on these but we know that that's also going to change the experience for so many of our students and families who are you know saying they're in educators who are like i'm hot or cold in my building so i just appreciate that work um you all talked a lot about enveloping the schools and there are a lot of questions right now around safety and security can you just speak a little bit to what that envelope does to help make
151sure that students can stay inside and and how that might enhance our security at schools yes sure so as i stated uh currently there are a lot of access points so when you limit those access points and provide centralized locations from a front door approach that limits the access and we found unfortunately people are able to get in if you have too many access points so the building envelope and having that connection the majority of these schools will definitely limit the thought process of those who may want to do harm to our students and staff two more questions i appreciate that um timeline just grand yeah so uh sorry can i add one more part to that oh and then what will happen with students during this construction period so the last slide gave a
152schedule um but i'll just go through no need to put the presentation back up so tonight we asked for a board approval to move forward to construction documents we currently have proposed bid dates for these elementary schools in october as well as a proposed construction time around december this summer we're doing some investigative work to get ready for the phasing of these projects and so for many of these schools we're going to be able to build the new additions that would move the capacities that we have to do the renovation parts to those new so the new portions of most of the additions will happen in the first year and a half and then in the second year we'll do the renovations to those older existing sites so there's going to be constant communication with
153our principals and administration as well as uh constant planning this summer to make sure that we stay on target to finish about 25 26 school year um what was the second part of your question what happens with students when you're doing all this construction yeah so we're going to limit as much as disturbance as possible so we're going to be in constant communication so when there's a testing period we'll be in constant communication project managers with the design and construction team um that built-in time will be in those schedules a majority all of our construction management risks are familiar with working on renovated school sites um and thus uh one would say it's a longer period in a new school because you have those stopping starts in the phasing approach and so we're going to
154try to limit the disturbance as much as possible being mindful uh they want to disturb learning activities mr rib i was looking at first thank you for for the presentation and i was looking through it and i was looking at all the additional classrooms that are being added so it looks like maybe it's even more than 40 classrooms that are being added i'm curious as to i don't want to ask this on the spot because i don't know if anybody knows but i'm just curious as to what our total capacity is for students in the district now and what we're expecting it to be and i guess um the 20 25 20 26 school year after everything is said and done like like like a range are we gonna grow by like being able to
155increase our capacity by like two or three thousand i tell you we can get you what the exact capacity number is we left our capacity guy at home tonight that's mr palmer um but yeah we can get you what the uh the total capacity is going to be after our um at least the build out for these projects but like i said there's another seven projects that will also add capacity to the district that won't even start design until about 2025. but but also capacity is being reduced by the class size implementation correct so utilization is um yeah so yeah but some of it is trailers going away as well yeah correct mobile classrooms will be going away um you're also as the boundaries change you also have a in the way that we um
156assign students you have a shift in some areas being overloaded with students being enrolled which also has an impact on campus utilization you also have classrooms that are being renovated to what we call you can you can call it educational specifications but to provide more educational adequacy meaning you don't have art on the cart and things like that every school i have a music classroom and an art classroom and things like that so um we also don't want to get lost and i think mr davis mentioned a little bit we're not only adding classroom capacity but we're also adding core capacity all right so that you can get kids through the lunch line so everybody can have pe so everybody can have art uh when they're so when they're supposed to in an equal manner
157so it's a much larger conversation than just individual classrooms what we're accomplishing with that but we can certainly get to the number of seats that we're adding with each program thank you and the the reason i ask that is we all know about all these you know companies that are moving here meta and everything else and looking at the growth of durham's population over the last decade and in that decade they preceded it i mean it's going up like 20 to 40 percent at any any given period of time and it seems like the community has been coming out more in advocating for public schools more and i know with the growing together campaign there's going to be that that push for people to give dps another shot right it's time to it's time to
158come back and i just want to make sure that we have our eyes on the ball and are ready for that increased growth and just having an idea because i remember you know before i left um before i left dps and went to college there were these these trailers were everywhere like they ran rampant in in our elementary schools in that area i'm showing my age but i i remember when bethesda and glenn were like new schools so when i was looking at those dates in 1980 what about that's not too old and then i thought about how old i am but um but just but just being able to stay ahead of this i would just love to see that so thank you i have to laugh because i was thinking of some of
159these schools i mean 2005 i was i was visiting i mean i would go to the club of art my brother went there right and so um he's in college now and it's just incredible to see just the complete shift the complete change it's unrecognizable i'm pretty sure like you know talking to but it's but it's a good thing i'm i'm very encouraged by the courtyard you know um envelope that you talk about that lends for security safety but i also just want to make sure there's capacity for outdoor even you know in these spaces whether it's a courtyard we continue to hold on to the the outdoor learning space um i'm very encouraged by all the work that is happening even even now you know with with structures with shade um with community like
160school gardens and and different projects that are that are happening and so um we're really excited and hey we're going to have rooftop gardens too at some point i'm i'm telling you like the sky's a limit so thank you all so much and and also the again hvac solar outdoor seating all these things i'm really excited thank you thank you all thank you to your team this work is i mean some of these schools have not been touched in 30 years right they are even though mr ruben is very young um and this work is overdue and i appreciate that you all have um set a vision for it set our learning standards high so that we protect space and grow space for those core components and for music and art and things that this
161community values you're looking at sustainability you're working with architects that are taking these tired buildings and giving them more than a facelift like new life is coming in and i think it's just super important to know that this is not all of our projects not just for elementary school not just for high schools but middle schools could have need this same level of face lift and attention in that next bond um i'm really interested in us making sure that we bring them forward as well um a great work um if this is going to be on the bond with these great images for folks to vote for in november and then we'll be ready y'all are ready to start these projects really quickly and i'm so glad that that we're ready and then we'll come
162right ahead with another cummings report and another bond so thank y'all approval of the recommendations um to approve glenn bethesda holt moorhead club and bank of elementary schools capital improvement projects campus program and design and authorizing dps staff to move forward in the construction document and bidding phase of design this has been moved by miss lewis seconded by mrs mayadares any further discussion i wanted to add a thank you to our county commissioners who have allowed us to be able to start moving forward on so many of these projects like you said from schools that haven't been touched for 30 40 years and the needs that have been really pressing in our community so i just want to give that shout out and appreciation yes as well as to dr monk and his team mr
163davis and all the folks who aren't here but have also worked on this so thank you all and i echo those same sentiments this is for durham this is what makes durham great and as all we have all these new buildings around us um even toward a building and what's going on the museum of life and science and a library we have to keep up we are a part of durham and these are the needs that's um before us so thank you for this presentation as well and as we again even look into 24-25 and look at the next projects coming up i just also urge you to look into our outdoor facilities our athletics our track and field our soccer fields um as well putting those into the plans as soon as possible thank
164you any further discussion all in favor say aye hi any opposed passes unanimously thank you doctor the same good evening dr mubinga members of the board of education it gives me great pleasure to share information with you about our pending partnership with landed a quick survey of our current employees reveals that approximately 35 of our workforce lives outside of durham and this is largely due to the lack of affordable housing landed expanded its reach into north carolina in early 2022 with asheville city schools being the first school district to take advantage of this partnership durham public schools is seeking to be the second the human resources team has researched the partnership opportunity we've consulted with two different school districts as references both asheville city as well as washington dc we also shared the information with
165two of our major employee groups we have shared this information with dae as well as our ia association and just looked to them to be able to get some feedback and so as a board you have shown your continued support for larger efforts to ensure that we have more options for affordable housing for our employees after the review of all of the components of this program and its success in other areas we recommend formalizing this free partnership as an added resource to accompany our larger efforts for affordable housing so tonight i would like to turn it over and introduce to you claire goble who is the southeast employer partnerships representative along with teresa coleman who is a partner success manager with landed i will turn the presentation over to them to provide greater details and
166to assist with your questions good evening thank you for having us i'm claire gobel it's an honor to be here with you all and like dr lisane said i support our employer partners in the southeast which is not a new region to landed though north carolina is i'm based a little bit down the road from you all in rocky mount north carolina and in the southeast we partner with atlanta public schools d.c public schools duvall county public schools in jacksonville just launched a partnership today so we're growing our presence in response to the housing challenge that is impacting many folks in district hr around retaining employees recruiting employees so i'll get into a presentation in just a moment but want to first have a chance for teresa to introduce herself thank you so much my
167name is teresha coleman i am the eastern partner success manager here at landed really my primary roles and responsibilities are working with our employer partners as we move through a stage where you decide that you do want to onboard with landit so really taking it through the launch getting things up and running and then on an ongoing basis i would work with you and your team to do a data exchange make sure that you're getting information in terms of how the program is running uh look for areas to improve or to increase our partnership and just really partner with you in any ways that's necessary to share landed and and make sure that the program is accessible to your employees thanks teresa so typically how this goes is i you know represent landed from uh
168our conversations on the front end and then once we launch a partnership as trisha shared she would be the ongoing point of contact for the district so you'll hear a little bit more from me today but she'll also preview what it would then look like to get to work together if we move forward so if you can enable screen sharing miss smith i'll get into a couple slides here super thank you so just moving forward we've got kind of the overall mission of landed which is to help essential professionals live in the communities they serve and do so by building financial security in the communities they serve if you want to scroll down and i'm happy to run slides too if you want to send it over my way perfect thank you so on the
169next slide you'll just see a snapshot of some of the homeowners we work with across the country we got started in 2015 looking at the teacher housing challenge in the bay area so some of our earliest partners were bay area school districts who really indicated that this was an issue teachers could not afford to live in the community and as we've grown we've expanded into government and health care as adjacent partners but really the overall mission of what we're doing is working to make homeownership more accessible and we recognize that durham public schools has many different initiatives uh that it has already taken on or hopes to take on in the future to make durham affordable for its employees landed's particular program is focused on access to home ownership so i like to see it
170as just one tool in the overall equation we hope we can be helpful in in the big picture of what you all are doing and just recognize all the need for policy change rental housing and the different things that come with tackling this three-dimensional challenge of home ownership so specific to uh home ownership if you want to go to the next slide the challenge for essential professionals in the communities that we serve which are high cost communities where there's high economic growth job growth and home prices are going up typically what is happening for educators and staff is they're working to if they want to become a homeowner save and save and save to put down that and they often make enough to be able to pay a mortgage every month but they're struggling to
171get to that down payment contribution as home prices go up and so they have a couple choices sometimes they'll you know continue to save and just feel like they're on that treadmill long term which is again what we heard in the bay area as we got started or they'll buy a home with less than 20 percent down and they make some choices there around private mortgage insurance going into more debt putting less than 20 down which means that they have a less competitive interest rate and they're paying more uh or in some cases like dr listen alluded to folks are moving further away so if you go to the next slide the challenge that that presents and i know that you all know this well is a challenge for employers just as much as your
172workforce so it contributes to turnover and retention issues recruiting qualified professionals to come live and work in high cost areas is becoming more challenging and for employees they're enduring a longer commute there's financial strain there's even a case to be made and i'll get into some data here about just overall the importance of having district educators and staff live in the communities they serve to be able to more greatly empathize with children and families so what landed has done if you want to go to the next slide is we've structured a program that has kind of two parts to it i'll get into the down payment assistance piece and then i'll get into the home buyer resources piece so on the down payment assistant side and dr listen and your team have been so gracious
173to share more about the district's policy around racial and educational equity we see the biggest barrier to going from renting to owning being saving up for that down payment and that's systemic unfortunately even federally endorsed policies over years have just made it difficult for black and brown families to access home ownership as a tool to build wealth for generations and one of the reasons is homeownership is really an inherited property so even if a property itself is not getting passed down the financial value of it is and so when we think about having all this cash available in the bank to make that 20 down unfortunately the case is that children of homeowners are almost 10 percent more likely to become homeowners than children of renters so in other words the wealthier your parents are
174the more likely you are to be a homeowner uh and what we've done is we've raised a fund it is a non-profit fund uh that helps make this down payment piece less of a hurdle so what we can do is alongside again essential professionals so for us that means people who work in education health care and government so any of your employees would be eligible we can support them with a down payment contribution of up to a hundred and twenty thousand dollars that goes toward their down payment this is not a loan it is also not a grant it is what we call a co-investment or a shared equity investment and government agencies have been using this mechanism to support affordable housing since the 70s we've helped to really scale it up so that it
175can be more broadly available and we're really doing that by again raising this funding to the nonprofit fund which co-invests alongside each home buyer in exchange for that we share in if the home goes up in value a small percent of the appreciation in value so if there's a change just the the delta the appreciation or if there is a loss in value at the time of a sale for whatever reason we would share in the loss so it's a unique program it's not available on the public market if you work at google you couldn't access this it's just restricted to people who live and work in these high-cost communities that we've identified and in the specific roles that i mentioned in the three sectors of education healthcare and government and so with that co-investment
176there are no monthly payments for a homeowner there's no interest rate really what they're accountable to is once they use this funding to buy a home within 30 years we support them to what we call graduate the partnership with landed and at that point through that graduation process they share back in that percent of gain or loss typically most people graduate within three to four years time they have again that whole time horizon and they're mostly doing it through refinancing so when someone goes from renting every month to paying a mortgage they're building equity in a home at whatever point it feels like they're financially ready to do so they can refinance move some cash out of the home equity that they've built move landed out of the partnership and that way they're capturing again
177that long-term gain so again they have plenty of time to do so and we coach and support on this because our incentives are really aligned here as soon as they exit the partnership the percent uh that goes back into the landed fund doesn't touch our organization so we don't make money off of this down payment assistance program and we're able to then reinvest it alongside the next educator paraprofessional or someone who wants to use it to buy a home so that's one part of what we do did i ask a question yeah of course is that right if if they exit the program early are do you take like a snapshot valuation and if the home has gone up in value um they pay you a percentage or if they leave early it's just sort
178of a clean break yeah it's a really good question so a sale would trigger an exit but again refinancing is by far and large the most common pathway because people are using this program to live in the community they serve through refinancing which is the most common mechanism though someone might also just be saving enough and then they decide to exit that way we would issue a third party appraisal with an independent appraiser who's based in durham there's even a process for someone to contest that appraisal if they wanted to get a second appraisal so it wouldn't be fair if landed determined the home value and that's where that third party comes in and do you take 100 of the value if it goes up no so uh to get into some of the math
179and i'll just give you an example of a 500 000 home which is a bit above the median home price in durham but durham's getting close uh let's say in that case if landed pitched in half of the down payment so if we're looking to make twenty percent down and someone is sitting with fifty thousand dollars in savings but they don't have the other fifty thousand uh we're putting in half the homeowner's putting in half that helps them meet 20 down of the total 500 000 purchase price let's say the home goes up 100 000 in value landed would share in 25 of the gain so the homeowner would keep the lion's share of the game or the upside and they're also keeping all the equity that they've built through paying a mortgage rather than
180renting so in that case it the best way to look at it is the maximum upside that landed can uh partake in from the partnership we can contribute up to 75 of the down payment or up to a hundred and twenty thousand dollars whichever comes first so the maximum upside for landed would be 37.5 percent uh also though the way to just look at that is basically half of whatever equity we put down one half of that percentage is what landed uh agrees to partake in so if there's a a downside let's say with this 50 or 500 000 home example if the home depreciates a hundred thousand dollars in value the homeowner is paying landed back the flat down payment contribution that we issued so again the the 50k but we would take 25
181000 off of that so we're sharing in 25 of the loss in that example so the argument there again is that they've built equity because they're paying a mortgage rather than renting and we're de-risking in the case of a loss let's say if they sold and they sold under the value that they bought it at uh we're de-risking the loss so you buried in there i think i heard that the partnership requires a minimum of 25 of the down payment for for our employees that is correct so 5 of the total purchase price are 25 of the down payment great thank you yep how is how is the home dated yeah i'll get in do you mind if i get into that after i get through some of the next few points here and then
182we can walk through an example there perfect thanks okay perfect um because i do want to get to just the other side of what we offer uh and i think to just this earlier question this is why it's relevant not everyone has 25 of their down payments saved up and so what we can do here as it relates to free home buying resources every employee who wants to buy a home even if they're not financially ready we can coach them and support them on building their savings plan getting ready for the process every employee is connected with a dedicated home buying coach on our team and then in a case where they don't have the savings set up yet we're again helping them think about how to do that and we work with a non-profit
183partner called trust plus which can help people with very individualized needs like student debt restructuring or things that are more specific so we also refer people uh for free to those services as well if it's not something that we're specializing in in-house at the time when someone is ready to go out and start to make offers on a home we're connecting them to experienced agents who are based in durham we definitely are excited to work with you all to potentially get a few recommendations for local agents who really would represent uh dps homeowners well in the process and similarly helping folks connect to lenders and just overall guiding them through the process we're even helping with property reviews document reviews just again demystifying and streamlining all of what goes into the home buying process 70
184of employees who work with landed to buy a home are first-time homeowners but it's not a requirement of our program that said in most cases it's someone's first experience with this so even to the point where there might be local grants available that they would qualify for to support their percent of the down payment contribution we're helping them access those but again if they're not quite ready we're not at all we're just very incentivized to support someone no matter where they're at in the home buying journey even if they haven't built their savings yet so next slide this is just a snapshot of where we've been so far so uh again i mentioned the 70 of our home our customers are first-time home buyers this gives you a window into how we're supporting people to
185build wealth through this process nearly 50 percent of our homeowners identify as black indigenous or people of color and approximately 53 percent are from low to moderate to middle income families so this gives you a view into how we're supporting wealth building i think there's also an argument as we just look at the overall tax base and people who are supporting public schools in your community that we want to make sure that essential professionals who uphold the community are able to buy homes there and be a part of contributing to the tax base for the school district and other critical services locally so if you go to the next slide this is just a bit more around impact we're seeing really strong data particularly as it relates to all the other critical programs that go
186into supporting affordable housing locally with programs like landed if we were to just make them ubiquitous across the country available in every high cost community we're seeing that 40 more middle-income families would be able to buy homes without public assistance which saves critical resources at the government level we're also seeing commute times reduced so there are different arguments it was fun to hear the earlier conversation uh but just around the environmental impact of this as well so if you go to the next slide why durham again you all know bel know this better than i do from where you sit but we're just seeing tremendous growth in durham certainly in the prices of homes but also in the cost of rent and that again contributes to making it difficult for someone to save toward a
187down payment if their rent is also going up while they're working to save so let's move ahead why do we why are we talking to you about this tonight uh we again only have this program available for essential professionals and the way we get the word out about what we do is by partnering with employers to then share this information uh directly because it is impactful for hr uh in a few different dimensions i think you know this text might be a little small from where you're sitting but the point i'll highlight here is that employees supported by landed remain in their profession for an additional 13 years which cuts expected annual turnover in half compared to employees at the same organizations so folks are indicating to us and i'll get into a case study
188from our work with dc public schools that this is supporting them to stay and live in the community where they work but also stay in their roles so we see employers leveraging this in their recruiting cycle in benefits fairs and they're doing so because it's easy to implement so just to speak to briefly and then we'll circle back to it how we partner we don't require a contract or mou or financial agreement with the district to partner it's simply just passing along this information to employees who are eligible and letting them know that it's there for them okay to the next slide here are some specific results around our partnerships with school districts across the country again this speaks to this piece around turnover but we're seeing that the reduction in turnover saves up to
18922 thousand dollars per home purchase in turnover costs for the employer and that reduction has a significant impact particularly on student achievement and math and ela so this is available in our impact reports i'll send those along but just highlighting some of the key points relevant you can go to the next slide this just gives you overall a snapshot of some of our partners across the country so i've highlighted a few school districts as dr lissane mentioned asheville city schools rolled out a partnership with landed in march really feeling the urgency there again given their local housing market and how that's impacting turnover but for some time now we've partnered with dc public schools atlanta public schools like i mentioned getting our start on the west coast you'll see a number of partners from that
190side of the country boston public schools and then again in healthcare higher education and government we're working with cities with counties like dekalb county in atlanta universities like the university of miami so this is not representative of the whole we work with over 300 employer partners across the country but just gives you a window into who we work with next slide so again speaking to how we make this available uh what we ask for from the district is to share information through an email that teresha and our partner success team helps to draft which simply says this is what this program is uh more or less this is what it isn't it's not a grant or loan and if you want to participate here information sessions to learn more or here's a link to talk
191to a home buying coach and from there we would work directly with interested employees we would support them to learn about the program and if it fits for them help them move through further steps we again don't require any sort of contractual obligation at the district level we have additional resources and teresha will get into these uh beyond the the launch itself that many of our school district partners take advantage of so we'll get into those in a bit next slide text is small here again but this is just a sample email this is from lynn public schools which is just outside of boston uh high density community as far as housing and they were seeing the boston housing markets growth just being such a challenge for recruitment and retention with educators and staff so
192i just wanted to give you a snapshot of how this sample partnership rollout looks okay teresha i'll pass it to you for the next slide here just to speak to what comes next yep and i'll just speak on a relatively high level in the interest of time um just to say really it's quite simple to launch with us it's as simple as claire just mentioned by sending that standalone email to all employees to have access to the landed partnership i would partner with dr lisane and her group in terms of additional channels that maybe information should be shared whether they be a newsletter or hr or internet site or whatever the case may be that's really my role and responsibility to see if there are any other channels that would be useful for sharing information
193but as we move forward as there's the commitment to launch then we would partner with you to discuss all of those and i'll just even mention there are some uh situations where we've even done tabling events with our partners going there attending career fairs or some sort of fairs that they have to share information we're more than happy to attend those different types of things as well okay next slide and we'll keep this quick so this is just a snapshot and again some of the organizations we work with across the country i'll focus in on dc and specifically dc public schools if you can go to the next slide we've been working with the district since feb well not since february of 22. that's when we pulled this data since 2018. and right now we
194have 1 200 city of dc or dcps employees who are active in the home buying process we've also helped at this point 44 close on homes which has supported them to build over 20 17 million dollars in home value if you can just do one more click they're having a good experience working with landon which is incredibly important to our team of homeowners through this dc partnership self-identify as a person of color and 83 have indicated that they plan to stay with their employer for 10 plus years or have no plan to leave so as you can imagine the home buying process takes some time we're supporting people again at any stage of it and we're excited though that we've already supported 44 within that specific employer over 100 in the city of dc at
195large where we also partner with gallaudet university prince george's county public schools and more so i won't read through all of this but this is a quote from the deputy mayor who just indicated that the reason that mayor bowser and dcps partner with landed was to help people who did not have access to capital to match a down payment really to improve their purchase power and and be able to go from renting to owning and then in this final slide you'll see a testimonial we have over 60 different home buyer stories on our website but this is from one home buyer in dc who was able to use landed to buy a home both in the community where he grew up and the community where he teaches so this is a win-win on a lot
196of levels so that's a bit about what we're doing uh just again excited to hopefully fit into the overall bigger picture of what durham public schools is taking on around housing and around employee wellness and yeah i'm happy to answer questions starting with this question around the title so as for i think it was around the title uh landed has a second lien on the property so we're highly incentivized to make sure that a homeowner is in a good financial position and able to be in that home sustainably long term so again that's where this coaching piece comes into play we can even support homeowners if they're experiencing short-term periods of financial hardship to make their monthly payments and to date we've experienced zero defaults from homeowners and so the argument here is that there
197are people in our communities and and who work for dps who but for a down payment can make the monthly payment and have the credit profile to qualify for a standard 30-year conventional loan but it's just that gap and access to uh cash up front for the down payment that's an issue and so this is how this is how we've designed our program to support them thank you so much and yeah board i know i think we're going to have lots of questions because this is a new thing and it's it's fairly innovative if we could try to keep our questions short and or get technical answers um because then we're going to have to discuss whether this is something we want to pursue or not thank you mr raven first i'd like to thank
198you all for your presentation and i'm about to share some of my personal thoughts on this and i don't want you all to think that it's anything negative towards anything that you all presented but i have a slightly different perspective on this having been a loan officer myself for one of the largest banks in the world i have a different perspective on this and the first thing that i'll start off with saying is that i have a background in marketing and finance and the first thing that you learn it is there is there's nothing for you mr sears uh misfire you all were both right in the questioning that you had going on what this is essentially shows is that i mentioned meta has come into their area already right and this organization is funded
199by this uh chan zuckerberg initiative which is the husband and wife of mark zuckerberg which owns meta and part of that it's a business right and i understand they they are well intentioned and part of their business is looking at metropolitan areas that are definitely going to have an increase in value in homes because it's a safe investment right so they're not doing it's it's nothing like predatory lending or anything else like that but i think in about 10 to 20 years we may look back on this and realize that it was essentially quote unquote predatory investing because there is no doubt in my mind that if you purchase a home in durham right now for five hundred thousand dollars if we just look at last year five hundred thousand dollars home is now worth
200probably in between and fifty to seven hundred thousand dollars on their website they showed if there was a hundred thousand dollar profit on that they would receive roughly thirty seven point five percent which was thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars which is on their site so that's a that's a huge chunk right so if you're getting ready to refinance your home at the most even if you went with a with a uh a state employees credit union you could refinance your home up to 90 of that value okay so you bought it at five hundred thousand now it's at six hundred thousand you can refinance it at ninety percent which means six hundred minus sixty so five hundred and forty thousand dollars right they get that first thirty seven five out of that so i
201want you to understand that it's it's guaranteed that they're going to get the funding right and and that's not a bad idea i'm not saying it's a bad idea if people are fully aware um but we also have programs like the north carolina finance housing agency which actually prese provides as a down payment up to eight thousand dollars and they act as a second mortgage so they will have a lien on it just like um just like with land landed and what happens is that second mortgage is actually forgiven uh with over over a 15-year period right so that that down payment that they put down on you it could be up towards like maybe eight thousand dollars they forgive that over over a period of time and i just want people to kind of
202be aware of of all of these intricacies that are involved in this i'm not saying that it's not bad i'm saying that it's well intentioned but i think there's going to be a lot of us especially when they're talking about black and brown people and they know that the 50 of the people in dc use that and out of the population of dc i can guarantee you that it's not 50 black anymore right uh which means the people that generally have that lack of resources a lot of times they're not going to be fully knowledgeable when it comes to financial literacy so i'm just sharing that information with you all thank you thank you mr raven i have a few questions but miss lewis my question is for um dr lissane i just wanted to
203know um what was it precipitous how did you get around to finding this organization what led you to even seeking this resource for our employees so actually it's um in my network of hr folks and several committees that i'm on regarding the state okay so in my strategic partners group um our head um actually mentioned landed to me and we then began to look at it i started out with the website i reached out to miss goldball as well as asking for references and mr raven i want to say we had that ms govel can tell you we had lots of questions that we asked and looked into what individuals who had experienced the program were saying and um addressed many of the concerns that you kind of outlined in your comments and in our
204group particularly speaking with hr folks from other districts what we were talking about as the benefit is it gives an option there's nothing that our employees have to do it just gives them access that otherwise they may not have and so basically i got involved in researching this through um connections with colleagues that have seen the benefits thank you so it is not a cost to us as it was shared but i saw that it's an email that gets sent to our employee base what your partnership essentially is is giving access to our employees i would add to that one of the things that we saw as a benefit is a lot of programs that you usually see that have specific access for education are specifically targeted for teachers this would be all of our
205employees and then has this present presentation been given to employees educators i know you mentioned dae earlier have they heard this presentation if so they have not heard the entire presentation but i'm sure that we could work with them to do that i spoke with the heads of those organizations and shared the information with them and um i know housing is definitely a need and an area of concern in durham um in general but do we have any specific needs that have been raised by employees that this is something they would want to look into or have their information accessible for absolutely um even within my own department it's interesting that in the midst of doing this we have an outstanding employee that commutes and i'm hearing more and more with the cost of gas
206with folks considering options when they live outside of durham not sure if i can still stay here i love what i do i want to work in durham but i can't afford to live in durham that is definitely been a growing conversation particularly with the increases in gas costs and without the background as mr raven has shared that he's had and has he has broken this down i am wondering there's options or opportunities that we may offer financial literacy um in addition to what this organization offers when they talk to employees so mr lassour and his team has already been on top of that and we have financial literacy courses available to all of our employees outside of this this would be on top of the remind me what is the name of the program
207mr lassour take 10. that's what i was trying to remember take 10 and emails go out to all staff members regarding our take 10 financial literacy um series that's available thank you that's all ahead i have questions but who who else's question i'm just going to make a comment um dr lissane i mean i am so grateful that you're bringing this information to us because i think just the option when you're talking about a down payment 20 is a lot of money especially for houses going up and that is a that is a barrier um i i also hear my colleague um board member raven and in terms of like the potentiality of every home you know here in durham just going up and there's going to be revenue and there's going to be profit
208and that's just part of the housing market i mean it's it's definitely going up um that is a trend and it's you know anybody who's looking here people are looking into durham for that reason i'm talking about business owners right now um looking to buy purchase their their companies coming to durham everyone's coming to durham because it's a boom you know it's like right now everything's going up and for business owners there's opportunities for business owners to buy their own business for homeowners just similar to this this is an opportunity and people stand to gain but the thing is are we really making a difference for staff who when they're looking at home ownership see that down payment as the biggest barrier um if it's 20 20 plus and we're talking a whole lot of
209money and so i think that giving the option to our employees it's an option you know and we can definitely uh come you know bring other options as well i think it's a start i think they're going to need as many resources i know the city and the county the county has already looked at support for home ownership and i'm really grateful for the county commissioners talking about homeownership being able to help with the down payment and other things and there's all kinds of programs that i think community members are doing but this is one option um i think it would be important for us as we share it that we we talk about language that we're not citing particularly this is one of many options and you know we will provide the financial literacy
210that has nothing to do with home ownership but that maybe in the way that it goes out that it is like you know this is this is one option this is one company that is uh looking to support uh and they cover up to you know um 120 000 worth of down payment so i love that um idea i would want to say that i think that this discussion is very important that's part of why there was not even an attempt to put this on consent mr raven to your point i'm glad to hear about that program that i did not know about i would like to make sure that our employees know about that i just think that when looking at options eight thousand dollars may not be enough for um some of our
211employees but it may be for some that that makes that a better option for them and so i think just in this market in this time trying to provide as many options as possible for our employees to make decisions and to make sure that we are not subjecting them to anything that would be questionable i think is what we are trying to do if i could just add one one point to that just to make sure that we're clear on this part i think part of the reason why they will do that 20 down payment is also to avoid having to pay that that pmi insurance that it gets tacked on top of it um i think with the north carolina housing finance agency you will pay that but again you're not sharing equity on
212on your gains and and that's the real part that i want to talk about because when we're talking about increasing wealth that equity in your home is is the biggest generator for most people so another organization taking one third of that out means that you're not able to leave a job because you can't even sell your home because you know any growth any profit that you get one third of it's already being taken out in addition to the down payment that they had already put up so while north carolina financial agency may only go up to eight percent this i mean excuse me eight thousand dollars that's eight thousand dollars towards a 3.5 percent um down payment so if you're looking at like 230 000 home that means it's flat it's right out there but
213if it's going up to 250 000 maybe you do have to put a few extra hundred dollars up towards it but you're still you're still keeping your own ownership and that was the only part that i was trying to reconvey thank you for some step um thank you all for this presentation i think it highlights the complexities of home ownership and and how um i could spend an hour talking about this during market and i will not do that tonight but how challenging it is for folks to find housing whether that be a rental or a property to buy um i have a couple thoughts one i think the it's important to make sure we message the complexities of this program and what people are getting in it and so i just want to be
214clear about that i think your questions um is are your concerns mr raven is important and balancing the you know fam people might need more money in figuring that out i think the other part i want to also highlight just in general i think i bring this up almost every time is that when we send emails to staff we're not reaching everyone and so how do we make sure whether it be take 10 or this that we're also reaching some of our folks who aren't checking email regularly because that's just not a part of their their role and responsibility um i appreciate landed for you bringing some of the stories from other places i just think we want to be really explicit about what the offering is i think the other piece of this that
215we haven't spent a lot of time talking about was the the guidance and the coaching on the left side or the right side of that column that we saw and working with other grant programs that already exist i think that also just that walking folks through what it means and what it looks like can be helpful in durham the city of durham has a down payment assistance program right that also i think a lot of our staff probably would qualify for based on the income limits on that so i think the coaching part of this also could be really helpful for our staff and i hope that we get this out to folks and are clear and landed i guess that's also for you all too to be really clear and explicit about how the
216program works and what that means for people i was going to say if you don't mind i can just chime in on a little bit of that um part of what we do in terms of the homebuyer coaching is as claire mentioned if they have questions or struggling with uh budgeting savings um what exactly does debt to income ratio mean and what does that look like and all those questions really that front-end guidance uh to determine if home ownership is even right for them we have uh partners that we as claire mentioned can can link them with directly to talk about what's the best budgeting and savings plan for them or how do they clean up credit and do credit counseling and repair and those different types of things that is totally provided for free
217and that is regardless of whether or not they decide to go through our down payment program when our relationship managers are talking to uh employees they're explaining exactly how the down payment program works in fact when we first launch they are encouraged to attend an info session which goes through all of the specifics of the down payment program to make sure that it's clear and we do realize that it is not a good fit for everyone we realize that there may be other programs out there that are available to them that makes the best sense for their situations it is as been mentioned just another option that they have if they determine that it's a good fit um but we have people that come into our program that have been in our program for a
218year or two because it's going to take them realistically that long to be in a situation to purchase a home um one of our biggest things in our assets is really being able to provide them that level of assistance and not just leaving them on their own to figure it out so we're paired up with them as long as they want to work with us we want to work with them it's no time frame to how long that it takes the other thing that i'll just mention really quickly is uh one of the things in in order to do or provide more home buying education is sometimes throughout the year we run different webinars for instance we have one that's called empowered home buying that really has our some of our partners that we work
219with uh trustplus as was mentioned a real estate agent um lending and financing just to kind of go through some basics of you know is this the right fit for you they they can take the steps after those those webinars to be linked up with any of our providers and again this is no cost to them this is really just to provide that education and that extra layer of assistance um because realistically some people haven't really thought seriously about it or explored it so we're looking to provide those options as well inspire thank you thank you all for being here and thank you dr hossain for sharing this concept with us i share uh some of mr raven's concerns and it makes me just fundamentally sad that we undervalue people working in caregiving roles and
220government jobs municipal jobs in this country so much that we would have to ever even consider doing some kind of creative way for folks to actually afford a home um i just have on readiness about it i want to run this by you know some of our our local um housing advocates and and really dig into it a little bit i could see it maybe as one of options that we present to folks but i certainly don't want it to be the only option that we present to folks because boy if if meta and google and apple are coming here wouldn't they better establish a fund that we could use locally for down payments and and recycle back into our own community rather than the equity you know going elsewhere um i i need people
221to build wealth i want them to have their home titled in their name i don't want them to be counseled into buying more home than than they than they can can because it's not just that down payment it is is home maintenance it is yeah it's it's so much more right um and i don't and i'm i'm frustrated because this market is gone so fast so accelerated so exponentially crazy most of us i don't think could afford our own houses if we you know um and and i think we're probably going to bubble out sometime so what do we do when folks are upside down in this i mean i i i have real significant concerns on how any of this is just sustainable um that's for somebody smarter than me to figure out but
222um so that's what i was asking who owns the house because our people think they own it but they don't really they they own it with land ed for a while um sorta kinda and um that's that's how i'm thinking about it thanks yeah yeah if if i can jump in on this the one of the biggest challenges in the financial crisis was when people took out 100 mortgages and then the market went down dramatically and let's say a half a million dollar home it went down 100 000 they owed the bank 500 000 but the homes were 400 000 and so there's so much default foreclosure because of upside down mortgages all people who work with landed to access down payment funds uh one of the the things that makes our program unique is
223that they would put down again that twenty percent down and that then goes to helping them have a 30-year standard conventional mortgage so they're not coming in with three percent down which definitely then increases the potential for an upside down mortgage again pmi more debt so again this is a program that's not contributing to the systematic risk the idea of us being side by side with with the homeowner and supporting them to qualify for a 30-year standard conventional mortgage with that 20 percent down is a key feature of what we do for that very reason uh and we saw in the great financial crisis the default rates were in the 20s some percents during cobid fha and va loans had default rates of high single digits the reason why that wasn't problematic is the home
224still had positive equity meaning the valuation of those homes on the defaulted assets was greater than than the amount that folks paid in because of where the market was so in this case during covid with with our homeowners at landed we had zero default and i think cobit's a good case study well fha mba loans had huge default rates we didn't experience that not a single customer was 30 days delinquent and paying their mortgage and so again we're really seeing that this is for a specific subset of people who just don't have access to that generational wealth for the down payment but they are a a reliable borrower they are someone who again can go from paying their rent to paying their mortgage and sustainably being in a home so i think it doesn't totally
225shed light on all the big concerns you bring up i understand those and share those but just wanted to distinguish specific to our program how this is structured in case that's helpful as you think about this i think dr mubinga would say so i'm going to ask my questions and then i'll see if they're additional thank you mr sears um i was just going to share my two points here my two cents i think mr raven pretty much uh cautioned us as uh this was presented but at the same time as uh we brought this proposal to you we see the serious need um regardless of how much we're increasing the supplements uh there are folks that's not going to stay here because they cannot afford to live anymore so i was just going to
226i know other board members may have other comments or remarks as well so i heard from mr reverence and uh from other folks as well there may be other options as well in a county so i was just going to ask if our body will let us research other options that we have in accounting and be able to bring those options here along with this one that we just proposed with some disclaimer to know because we're going to work with our financial team as well based on what uh board member reverend said um lend it can be an option but we're going to have a disclaimer there to say pretty much some of this stuff that's uh a board member raven presented but we're going to also do our own analysis working with a financial
227team along with other proposals as well so i don't want us to be at a point where we're not going to do nothing because this is a serious problem that we're all facing so if you can let the administration work with other options including this uh be able to educate our folks really well you got two other options but this is one of them as well with a good disclaimer there then they have options to choose and take their own risk as well so that's where i just wanted to share my two cents the board if if i'm hearing that we will see this again before and ask to implement comes up if i'm hearing that then i'm going to hold my questions until then and i'm going to ask that we do that the
228same well are the those consultants going to be here to answer your questions but that you know i would suggest we bring them back the consultants have answered my questions um yeah well no they haven't um we'll bring them back we're happy to come back and share whatever information is helpful i'll also send along uh if you want to attend an information session they're open uh so in between now and the next time we meet you're welcome to do that we have had other school districts roll out landed with a menu of other options as well and and we partner with in the case of dekalb county this is a great example many atlanta public schools educators and staff live in dekalb county and we have a partnership with the county so we're available to
229their employees with the districts so they're available to their employees and we even have a partnership with the dekalb housing authority because many of their employees don't qualify for their programs they make a little too much to be able to qualify for the programs that the authority offers and so in the case of our partnership role with atlanta public schools we shared about our relationship with dekalb and just let them know again that this is an option amongst many so we're happy to present it in that way or put in any disclaimers that you think would be helpful to have and i think it would be great to tease away equity building like um i think the concern here habits out for humanity when you sell up their property you're not making the money you're
230not wealth building in that way but they allow families to you know do sweat equity hours and be able to become to stay i mean the question is can people stay in durham and the building wealth is a component of home ownership for some models not all models i just want us to be mindful to include habitat for humanity as well and some of these other models that we have okay we want to thank um leonard for being here for the administration for bringing this and we will come back to this uh in the not too distant future thank you thanks for having us i would just hopefully soon i don't i want it to be a menu of options that people can start with pretty soon we were looking for that timeline but so
231we'll try to turn the research additional research around very quickly in order to bring it back because we're really trying to hit this summer when people would be looking to move okay thank you all right we are at our esser funding quarterly update good evening board members um dr mabenga uh mr modesto will make his way he's already in here if he can make his way up to the podium he's going to bring you an update on the esser funds through this quarter or the ending of may so that you have a quarterly update to move forward with these funds again are with us for the next two fiscal years for the most part some expire june 23 so and then into 24 so we will be giving you that overview of where we are
232today there are many dollars to be spent but those are planned to be spent in the next fiscal year and in the year of 23 24 as well mr modesto all right uh good evening board members colleagues it's a pleasure to be with you uh if we could open up the slide deck please i'm one slide forward so we're just here with a uh we intend to have it's just a rolling uh quarterly update uh for you all as we look into the next two full fiscal years of having these esser funds at our disposal and just giving you those uh regular check-ins on on where we are with all of various programs so just again as a quick recap we've had three major acts of congress the cares act in may of 2020 sursa
233in december of 22 and then the american recovery plan act in march of so with those three federal appropriations there was elementary and secondary secondary elementary schools emergency relief funding or esser in each of those sr1 for cair's sr2 for sursa and sr3 for arp so that's again just all the jargon all of the various uh abbreviations and everything um is kind of the reference point we had 11.9 million in sr1 that expires this coming september of 22. we have 46.6 million for sr2 that expires in september of 2023 and for sr3 we have 104.6 million that expires in september of 24. uh and dpi has done a really good job of uh really pointing to all of these uh granular details of all of these funds uh so we've just put a link here
234uh for any members of the public that want to drill down some more beyond what we can do in this brief presentation next slide please so looking at the cares act funds that we had about 13.7 million dollars that expire in september of 2022 were um at 92 percent expended as we're looking to wind out these funds this was primarily what got us to one to one in the summer of 2020 got us all over wi-fi hotspot connectivity we're uh kind of winding down with uh some um ec summer funding not the esy but other uh additional opportunities we're able to provide to students as well as uh with our gear funding for at-risk support so we'll be wanting those down the remaining eight percent by september of 2020 uh two so this um and
235hopefully even a little bit sooner uh next slide please so with our sr2 and our sr3 funds um we're at 48 spent on sr2 and 72 percent spent on sr3 normally when we have these sort of rolling series of grants we spend the grants that expire the soonest first and then move on to the grants that expire later however we didn't get all of these allotments at the same time that when we made our initial plan in december when we had source of money you know we didn't know that come march of 2021 there was going to be the american rescue plan act and so that's uh when we got the larger part of money the american rescue plan act that's when we came up with the employee recruitment and retention incentives uh and we
236had already allocated money in esther ii so we had budgeted the employee recruitment and retention in sr3 and that's why you see that kind of larger 18.67 almost million dollar expenditure year to date and sr3 was uh we didn't want to greatly disrupt our s for two plan uh um and so we use that for our bonuses but otherwise we're expending our funds that expire sooner first and then we roll on to the other uh pots and then as is somewhat usual in in education we don't just get one or two um allotments we get scores of various allotments with lots of rules and specific caveats are tied to each of them and it's no different uh in this case with with esser as opposed to some city and county funding that was more of
237just a single lump sum um and so the reason we we focus on uh what are the um k-12 emergency relief funds because those are what give us flexibility the other 5.6 million in the total of the 156.8 million that you have before you um other than the two large pots of k-12 emergency relief they're very specific and targeted for uh some initiatives um and we'll go into a couple of them in some detail um in a few of the slides but just the the high note here is that we've spent just over half of our s or two funds we have uh 72 percent remaining for our s or three we're well on track to be uh completing these plans and fully expanding the funds within the um expiration timeline next slide please uh
238and again just a kind of a quick uh breakdown of where that larger pot of money the 151 out of the 155 million dollars that we have um the full flexibility for how we can determine the use of the funds we have 55 million dollars allocated for academic services or 37 percent of the total that's uh the largest pieces our summer learning are 100 school-based positions for learning acceleration and other needed supports seven million dollars for district-wide uh support positions primarily digital teaching and learning technology support behavioral support literacy support things that are really trying to help us accelerate our learning as we rebound from copen19 next slide please for operational services as we kind of discussed someone at length here 34 million dollars in facility improvements um primarily hvac uh some outdoor learning that
239was approved just uh today in the consent agenda almost nine million dollars for technology continuing to do our i.t refresh having um our our land and land support all of our i.t infrastructure that goes along with the additional devices uh and personnel to make sure that uh we're able to support all of our students and staff with those devices uh six million dollars for enhanced school cleaning and disinfecting which has been extremely helpful in allowing us to to have that additional personnel on site at every school virtually uh two million dollars to make sure we're able to support summer learning and um other contingencies for transportation extended day and some contingency funding for child nutrition which we haven't had to use yet but we still don't know what our usda reimbursements are going to look
240like in the next two years and how those program revenues are going to look against our operating costs so we have some contingency there to make sure that we're program revenues too fall short of expenditures that that we're in a good place to continue full program operations uh next slide please um and then um the other big pieces are for our recruitment and retention and uh at the end of this we're just gonna kind of go over it so you can see what did a teacher what did their bonuses look like this year what did the classified uh staff members bonuses look like this year what did a newly hired teacher look like but we've um we've had our recruitment bonuses for our certified and classified staff and then for our existing staff we had
241the 1500 bonus in march uh we also had one in uh in march of this year we had the 1500 bonus in november of 2021 and we'll have one more in in october of 2022. um our school-level strategies our money that's directed directly to schools um principles apply in consultation with their principal supervisors and the office of academic services those monies are primarily going directly into tutoring and other learning acceleration services for students we still have some of that held back because we have two more years of this and we're kind of waiting to see what larger strategic opportunities we might have um to allocate us as some other pieces become more clear jump to the next slide please oh yeah and so this is just kind of a breakout again of the 151 million
242dollars that we have in terms of academic operational services recruitment school level strategies etc and you can see the uh percent of total and percent remaining because the bulk of this is an esr3 and and we had 72 percent of those sr3 funds remaining you see that um a lot a lot of these funds are um are yet expended um but we're really looking forward to kind of ramping up in the construction and capital planning uh in the next year or so so you'll really start to see that pick up as well and then we've only had one of three summer learnings so um come when we do a presentation in october you'll see that we've really moved forward in that regard one more slide please uh so in terms of positions we have 85
243out of 100 school-based positions uh which are filled um which is a pretty good rate considering that some schools if they had a vacancy and something else they would fill that position first before we had an additional position that they wouldn't have or not for esser for operational services we do have 37.5 positions established and filled providing additional cleaning services for high-touch areas in all of our schools we have three it technical positions that are established and currently filled um with the school level strategies we do have some part-time tutors that have been hired through those funds um so the the line share of those are for tutoring and academic intervention so some of those um they're not considered full-time or part-time employees for dps but there we have brought in a number of hourly
244tutors working in those schools to help students move forward and then resource reallocation we are looking at all of these uh various lap salaries for opportunities to sort of pivot as new needs emerge and we already have three or four sort of new needs that have emerged that we're working through for reallocation that will present in in a upcoming budget amendment uh for esser um but we're just constantly looking to see okay how can we take what monies we haven't spent uh to make sure that we're we're covering our bases um to push forward because whenever we get various um requirements say from the state or the federal government they don't always come with the money that's that's needed to to make sure we can implement that with fidelity so we're looking for this to
245help us on that front um yeah next slide thank you very much so this is just a quick summary there's just so much that's happened this year in terms of federal state uh bonuses um having a little bit of nightmares thinking about september through may but uh uh so we got we got uh color coding here so green is a locally determined bonus that that that we have done uh through you all and the superintendent we had the classified uh employee bonus in september of 21 this was going on two years of no state salary increases whatsoever for classified employees and it would took another three months for the state to actually finally pass a budget that gave classified employees a raise for the first time in two years so we did that in september
246we also had a child nutrition bonus for our folks that have worked in summer learning we had our new employee recruitment and retention bonuses that we started issuing in september we're still issuing them on a rolling basis in november of 21 we had our first retention bonus in december we had a state fiscal recovery fund bonus uh and i was really excited um uh mr keaton uh and his team and dr monk they um as part of one of these grant applications uh we got a uh fund specifically to recruit and retain our child retention staff so we were able to issue them a 900 bonus in december we had um teacher bonuses determined by the state in january along with the principal bonus in lieu of performance bonuses that they had provided in the
247past based on evas scores and then also very exciting that we had the dhhs grant for our child nutrition before and after school staff again one of the hardest to staff and um areas and we've been working on initiatives to uh to get that wait list down and this is something that's actually an ongoing recruitment every tenant grant that we have for another uh until september of 23 so we're really excited to have those resources available to us to recruit and retain our before and after school care workers um so you'll see actually in uh uh june is the next um dhhs payment for that grant uh in march we had our our second uh of three fifteen hundred dollar all staff retention bonuses um and then in may we had the last round of
248our child nutrition bonuses uh so other than october of 2022 we don't we don't have anything uh specifically scheduled uh for all staff we're sort of waiting to see what happens in the legislative short session it there's could well be uh bonuses for staff as there were in the in the long session we just uh we won't know until the legislature passes an appropriations act but that's that's entirely possible um next slide please and so just a quick uh recap so if you're a new newly hired teacher with dps this academic year that's coming to a close uh you received a total of 50 a full-time teacher received a total of fifty eight hundred dollars in bonuses uh through esser and and some funding from the state if you're a returning teacher well so i'll
249correct that so you would have received at least fifty eight hundred dollars if you were a teacher in a high school or in a hard to staff subject or an ec you would have received more money for the higher recruitment incentive if you're a returning teacher you would have received at least 15 or sorry 5 800 dollars as well and then a classified staff dps full-time staff member would have received uh about almost 4 900 in bonuses uh so this you know has been helpful to us to recruit and retain in this time when we're seeing unprecedented um turnover uh great resignation uh just you know hard to staff areas in almost every um facet of our operation so this is um it's been helpful in moving us forward but um i see miss giovanni
250she's got a very uh enlightening presentation next so uh i just wanted to keep it uh brief uh and of a quick summary of um sreer to date and and where we are as of i think the data was pulled may 27th and so with that we'll uh have any questions is homestead i've got a brief request on our website and there's a budget page and there's a great like summary of the superintendent's proposed budget and our sr funds can we put this presentation there as well i've just heard questions from people in the community like what are y'all doing with your funds and i think it'd be great if you could be right on that budget website aligned with the other materials yes so thank you i just have gratitude for the enormous work
251you all have done methodically targeting these funds and targeting them with fidelity and with meeting all the federal guidelines and trying to get them as much as possible to impact student growth um but also that means holding on to our people with all these retentions and it's really helpful to see how we stack that up as much as we could and i don't think we're going to be able to continue doing that i think that was a short-term strategy that we employed so i look forward to looking for ways that we can find uh sustainable state and local ways to pay people better um but i don't have questions i just have deep appreciation for the work that you all have done and the and the payroll cutting checks and everything that you continue to
252do to get this money where it needs to go but thank you dr hardy will tell you that every agenda planning meeting we we talk about s for funding and what happens when this goes away so i know it's on their mind yeah um i don't think the lack of questions uh indicates a lack of appreciation a lot of hard work we know it echo what ms ms buyer said well done a lot of shout outs to dr danner and his team they've been uh doing tremendous work on on this additional workload beyond uh all of the other important federal programs yes mr serious our board members as we're talking about budget um county manager will be presenting the final budget on monday we have had a conversation and our team been cranking some numbers
253and i hope to respond to the budget on tuesday so we are really optimistic that uh we'll be at a point where we'll be able to honor um budget especially the supplements that uh we have promised our staff so we'll see what uh the kind of manager will present and then we're gonna react to it on tuesday great thank you giovanni good evening board members chair sears superintendent manga today i will be presenting the first draft in collaboration with dr hardy of a proposed new dress code that dress code policy would be 4316. by way of some history currently the dps dress code resides in the code of conduct so it's tied in with all of the other disciplinary matters in 2019 when we began the process of amending and updating the board policy manual
254this policy was pulled because there was a lot of conversation around modernizing dress codes throughout the country and it was determined that we would need to meet with the principals and teachers and students around durham so that was on our agenda and then the pandemic occurred and so it was placed on the back burner and then we then proceeded to bring it this spring because those conversations are again beginning to ramp up for various reasons which i will discuss a little bit later you please pull up the presentation the powerpoint so um what we have done is prepared a what i submitted to the principals and the teachers etc was basically the policy that is being used and basically unmodified in portland and oregon when it is organ in oregon and around the country that
255is really was drafted by the national organization for women so with that we will be asking for a motion to move it to um second reading and or consent at the june 23rd meeting but we will be taking questions afterwards next slide please to begin with when we looked at this policy we did review the equity policy that the board adopted policy 1900 which indicates that everything that durham public schools does should be done with a lens of equity and that is equity regarding all different demographics and classes without any exclusions next slide please under the current dress code these are things that would not be really changed that's the verbatim language that you see on the slide and that was basically pasted into or would be pasted into the new draft policy so there's
256not any changes to that and that would be included next slide please where there are some changes are in these areas currently these are all of the things that we list in durham as prohibited for our students to wear and again just to clarify this is a student dress code and does that the employees have a separate dress code so these are the things that the modernized or the now um policy does address so we are making some proposed recommendations to change these areas next slide please the reason that we are making these suggestions and that they we basically started with the most modern policy is because dress codes target women um and girls and women girls even as young as kindergarten are basically have their pants and skirts measured they have their straps measured
257um etc and what we found is that girls when they have a dress code violation are pulled out of instruction so whereas if a male has or a person that identifies as male has um a sagging pants etc they are simply told to pull their pants up and they go on to class whereas if a female or person identifying as female has a skirt that's too short or shorts that are too short or a spaghetti strap they are pulled into the principal's office or into the office until a parent can come and bring them some other clothes or they change clothes so they miss out on all of the instruction that's occurring at that time some of the other things that we saw when reviewing this is that um a lot of the dress codes
258do infor and reinforce gender bias racial bias um etc so that's what we're hoping to do is that this new policy will um alleviate some of those issues next slide please you talked about this but i do want to point out to the board that um people that have adopted these modern dress codes have indicated that they are not seeing um students basically taking it too far so we wouldn't be i mean we are basically this started about 2018 so there's we've had about five years of data and people other school systems that have adopted these types of policies and they are indicating in their data that they are not seeing students showing up in bikinis or other things that would not fit within um they're just not pushing the envelope so they're also seeing
259a lot fewer less missed instruction and teachers having to police what students are wearing next slide please so i wanted to point out the old language from our policy is on the left and the new language on the right as you can see really the only the underlying portion is the same what the new policy does is really sets forth more of the equity piece that the board adopted in policy um in the red language the um exceptional children department did reach out when this policy was shared out to add in physical and mental ability as one of the um because that is listed in our policy just to make sure that that's included we wanted to try to include as much as possible all of the different demographics and classes um in the policy
260that they are protected and are to be protected in board policy next slide please so this sets forth um basically the first part of the policy the new policy says that really says for what the board's goals are we do start with the premise that we presume that parents when they send their children to school that they have done that they are approving of what their students are wearing i do know there's some comments i've had a few comments during our when we shared this where people were saying well the kid comes in one thing and then they take it off in the bathroom and change but as long as it's within the dress code ultimately that would be something that students would be allowed to do but it is going to be our expectation
261that parents and guardians can make those choices for their children uh regarding what it is that they should wear what we also did here is that there were several families that were struggling like financially in order to try to buy clothing that met the dress code for their and this is primarily girls like 99 maybe 100 that met the dress code for the school which required them a lot of times to just wear pants because shorts for young females are not do not meet dress codes in most schools today next slide please this is what we would propose is to have in the policy and the draft of the policy is also included with some additional comments in your packet but the black lettering that you see is what was presented first to principals teachers
262and students and the red lettering and the comments are what the feedback was so we did want to point out that students not girl students not boy students not a gendered student but all students simply must wear clothing and they can wear whatever it is that they wear we spoke with several principals that um we wanted to make it clear that students should feel comfortable in what they were wearing and able to express themselves in their attire without that attire being gendered number two um the initial modern or oregon policy didn't include back uh the principles pushed back pretty hard and wanted the clothing to have fabric on the front and sides and back so that is those what you see in the red is going to be our recommendation as well number three clothing
263must cover undergarments underwear waistbands and bra straps are not required to be covered so um basically we're allowed no more kind of telling girls that they have to pull up their shirts or make sure that their straps are wide enough to cover a bra strap number four regarding the genitals and the buttocks and the breasts you simply have to have opaque fabric over those areas not mesh see see-through or transparent next slide please currently if you look back at what wasn't allowed there was a lot of conversation around leggings and yoga pants and skinny pants basically being too provocative for students to wear it is our proposal and we didn't get really any a lot of pushback got some commentary but not a lot of pushback on allowing leggings and yoga pants and that the
264question was then asked does that apply to males as well again this is a non-gendered dress code so if um any person wants to wear skinny jeans or leggings or yoga pants and they are shooting during they get that is permitted so number six sweatpants pajamas the pushback on that was some concern about maybe some lingerie being worn or some more thinner fabric so we did clarify that pajama slash lounge pants that you would basically wear to your family's house on you know a holiday perhaps midriff bearing shirts um which a lot of these are already happening in our schools and this is just kind of seeking to codify that there was some conversation regarding if you have a shirt that's mid-referring and it is allowed as as long as when you raise your arms
265it doesn't show any genitals or breasts or chest area or nipple areas then it is allowed again ripped jeans are fine as long as the private parts are not visible number seven this policy would allow tank tops including spaghetti straps halter tops and tube tops there was about a 50 50 break and i will be asking the board to give us some guidance on tube tops especially because there was a lot of folk 50 of the people said well that's fine you know it's a tire they're wearing tube tops anyway and then the other group was concerned that kind of with some horseplay the tube tops may be pulled down and reveal what i would assume is the breast breast and not necessarily chest because if you're saying it's non-gendered then um it should be
266something that everyone could wear so i'm going to kind of put a pin in that and then i will be asking the board you know to maybe give us some feedback or some guidance on a lot the allowance of tubes and strapless tops it is currently as you can see in black and i just want to share that with you it does remain the recommendation of administration that tube strapless tops be allowed under this new dress code number eight the original language you can see is hats and other headwear must allow the face to be visible the principals were fairly adamant that they did not want hats and headwear religious hair obviously is expressly allowed to be worn and or to cover the face yes i'm sorry what's wrong with the hats so i don't
267know that it was necessarily wrong i think the commentary was it was they would be make it difficult for them to identify students especially if they're wearing masks so if you have a mask on and a baseball cap like maybe the only thing that the principal will be able to see is the eye area so that was um kind of the thinking on why and i'll ask dr hardy to jump in if she recalls anything she was kind of taking notes while i was and i'm also and i'm also thinking about winter time when like me i'm a person that gets head coats so i'm trying to wear a toboggan on my head the entire day because that air is still blowing down i'm gonna have a chest cold my eyes are gonna be crying
268so that that's why i'm i underst i could see how they may think about hats but headwear as a whole a lot of people wear for other reasons not so so if you look at the well i know it's hard to kind of jump around but the commentary um also there was questions regarding the wearing of bonnets and do-rags i mean there was some other headwear um issues as well which i will be asking the board to provide some guidance on that was kind of a 50 50. the students really didn't have um weren't didn't have any real concerns about it i mean when we met with the advisory committee but i do think that um that when you asked me that was the primary um thinking for not allowing headwear let me just uh
269continue that comment about headwear well you already know how i feel about hats but but i think for our students there's something about mental health and we're aware of ocds trichotillomania kids that are balding you know gray hair there's all kinds of things with you know and especially also something else to be mindful of is that i'm very grateful for crown act however we know that there has been systematic ways that perceptions of what what it takes to have your hair done and for i just want us to be very mindful of ways that we protect the dignity of our students if for some reason they don't want to show what their hair looks like you know that they can actually with to have to wear a bonnet wear a bonnet the next day if
270they want to you know show their new hairdo great but or or not you know but but i just i'm also aware of trichotillomania as well and some of the other [Music] things for which maybe a student might want to hide you know yeah thank you thank you so the next was nine and just to reiterate so everything in black was what we recommended and presented to principals and uh teachers and students and what's in red is what they added and we're recommending be added and what is in strikeout is what was asked to not be recommended so number nine hoodies it was recommended initially by us at hoodies be worn over the head but you have to be able to see the face and ears and it was a similar concern regarding safety that
271a lot of times like the way that we're able to identify um things or people is through the cameras and as you know the cameras in schools are overhead and so it's very difficult for principals when they're trying to you know identify not just students but you know sometimes other people that are trespassers right or that aren't supposed to be there if we wear hats and what one principle did share is they don't allow hats and so someone came into the building with the head and they knew instantly that that wasn't someone that needed to be there so um same thing with hoodies so it is um it is the recommendation and um administration does agree with the principles that kind of given some of the issues that we're having with safety that at this
272point we're going to ask that hoodie's not that you can wear hoodies but you just can't wear the hood over your head and the middle school principals were extremely concerned kind of about engagement as well that with hoodies up like trying to police like whether or not you can see their ears and they have the earbuds in just wanting to make sure like they were very very concerned about just where middle school students are mentally and so they push back probably the hardest about hoodies as well next slide please um allowable this is again just a continuation what we're saying is that clothing has to be suitable for the activities um obviously you can't wear flip-flops if you have pe like or our science lab you have to have closed toes or wood shops same
273thing so you do want to make sure that you are dressed for the hazards that may be existing for the curriculum that is being shared that day of course is requiring a tire is part of the curriculum again cte public speaking like you wouldn't be able to necessarily wear some of the more casual attire that would be allowed under this dress code you would have to dress according to the required curriculum specialized courses and this has been true all along we had that in the older policy of the original policy about uniforms and costumes approved by the principal so that's really not changing next slide please um this is um the inclusion of the crown act that this board adopted just um making sure that um it's clear you know you want it in board
274policy and so that folks understand that you know the current the crown act was the board's resolution and this policy does protect students wearing their hair as they want to it does also include obviously like yarmulkes are religious but we also want to be honored to honor any cultural um headwear that may want to be worn which including the gala and the koofis that students may want to wear and obviously locks and braids and that would again be non-gendered as well however at 13a just to share with the board we have had some issues and i think you're all familiar with the issue with the softball and the hair issue we also have had some concerns with the rotc i am in the process dr bullock and i are in the process now of trying
275to work with the air force to get them to update and modernize their grooming standards so that our students that have this is primarily our african-american students that have locks or braids don't have to cut them according to the grooming standard but that being said currently the parents consent to that following those grooming standards and so that is outside of the purview of durham public schools because they have consented to be under the control of the rotc when they're in that program but we do want to make it clear that durham public schools honors the cultural or ethnic hairstyles of all of our students next slide please we also did want to clarify too just to keep people uh knowledgeable that our purpose is to educate and welcome students and so if there is for
276whatever reason a student that has some attire that may not be um in line with the dress code that we don't shame them i mean we've never done the syndrome but there are school systems that make students wear things that say dress code violator i mean there's things out there so we just want to make sure that no student experiences any additional trauma because they have for whatever reason been deemed to be in violation or not wearing allowable clothing so we also don't want to be kind of one-on-one we want it to be just you know as welcoming and positive of an experience if there is determined to be a dress code violation and as you see in the last bullet that not in front of other students so you don't want to point out
277like oh my gosh what are you wearing you know pull that up those kinds of things we just don't want that um for our students next slide please um again in the rare instance i mean this is a fairly um you know liberal progressive i think it's a better way a fairly progressive dress code that we're proposing but in the event that there are some issues that require disciplinary measures um we want to give the students a chance to make any adjustments and just make sure that when we're giving training to our staff and principals that if a student is having an issue it may be that they need some assistance and we want to make sure that um and dr hardy's team with the student support services if they need some additional supports that
278we make sure that we're getting that for the for these students and that they're not shamed for any potential um socioeconomic issues that they may be experiencing and just making sure that everyone has that lens of you know just being a holistic institution to support our students and again it's only a level one violation which is um if there for whatever reason a student doesn't choose to comply which is the lowest level in policy 4301 next slide please again this talks about training which i kind of just mentioned we want to make sure we give a training at the beginning of the year and then kind of circle back um as we all know you know spring break comes and we this is can all kind of be you know tweaked by principle and we
279would obviously defer to the building leaders for they know their you know when kids are getting ramped up and you know kind of amped up um towards the end of the year or right before spring break i know how i feel right before spring break so just kind of making sure that uh students are you know let's just hold on a little bit longer and not show up in things that aren't allowable and just making sure we focus on the letter and spirit of the dress code and which is one of the reasons we wanted to pull out when dr hardy and i were talking about it move away from the not allowed to what is allowed and obviously you can't include every possible thing but just i think that when you give as many
280examples as we do you kind of get a sense of um where we are and just really not being what we're seeing is uh student gender fluid children we're penalized quite a bit for what they're wearing it's black or african-american girls we're penalized much more than non-black or african-american girls based on what they were wearing or the perception of provocativeness and sexualization so um really excited about to bring this policy for your consideration next slide please and that um doctor how do you have anything to add so we're gonna do school uniforms right i would support that today ms buyer just thank you thank you all for digging into this i know i've been asking for for a long time and um and i know our students will be um empowered by it frankly um
281yeah to to be the parent of a daughter who got dress coded by a male assistant principal not okay not okay for us to approach this like this um so i really appreciate the uh thoughtfulness and the inclusive language the feedback from our principles um yeah i don't think i don't think i would change much i think i would probably take the word tube out and then leave strapless top but i think i'd like i think tube is like old-fashioned from the 80s maybe but um and i don't have strong feelings about hats i kind of tend to defer towards what what principles say and then let it see where we go and how it how it works i appreciate all the inclusive language on hair and um head coverings it i almost think we
282could even add some more about you know clothing that that some of our immigrant students might have from their home countries or things but i mean i think you guys have done a great job getting a great start in improving this like light year so thank you ms vaders thank you so much um i have two things one going back to the hats i went to hillside high school i had a classmate with robust locks who was able to wear right he was rasafarian so he was able to wear a hat and i'm thinking the dignity of my classmate wherever you are but i know that that was something that was meaningful that at hillside like there was protection for something that was sacred you know and it could be maybe it could have been
283under religion but some folks will say it's a matter of again protecting the dignity of students so think about you know arasta families uh and and the ability to protect and be able to wear so again locks the other thing is um [Music] we we have gotten a lot of emails over time i want to thank those folks who engage us over time over their dress code and you know just just things that we've known we have cause harm and i know that because i have children in the school system and there have been schools that have those um that have done their own practices of making students wear oversized shirts to ridicule them to you know put them out expose them and they walk in the school system so i really think the student
284voices that have talked about you know the shaming and i'm so grateful that you included that ms giovanni when you said to make sure that we we apply the spirit of the dress code and and for everyone to be sure to reduce harm like we don't want to cause harm on our students and i'm recently still getting uh concerns about dress code and shaming happening in front of a classroom um you know situations that our board you know all of us received the email and so i just want us to continue to continue to work this with this particular thing but also the training that goes with making sure that no student is ever shamed whether having to wear an alternative that is you know definitely exposes somebody to ridicule or the public thing that
285as you mentioned i think that that is a big thing because i think you know there's a lot of peer bullying peer relations that are those dynamics you know will will tend to affect children who are called out you know um and so thank you so much for for sharing that and considering the the hat or yeah head-to-head headgear it's a raven and i want to harp on the hat thing one more time because because uh you know as as african-american man i remember um you know dr bullock and mr porter and dr mubenga believe you were there as well at the barbershop talks right because the barber shop is like that cornerstone of the community right and to this day i still have friends that if i ask them to go out with me
286friday night if they say they i can't go i haven't had a haircut now this is this is grown men that are working full-time jobs they are not going to go out because they have not had a haircut so imagine that the amount of kids that we have in school because we're always talking about bullying right we talk about the symptoms but we don't talk about the root cause some kids know that if their hair is not cut they're going to get picked on they're going to be part of the dozens all day right people are gonna pick on them all day you can't get a haircut you can't afford a haircut so being able to put a hat on your head can help you deal with that symptom of another issue that these students
287are going through as well so i just want us to keep that in mind lewis i just love your job well done like there's a lot of thought and consideration in these recommendations it's very liberating um non-gender-specific i think that you all did a really good job i appreciate the approach and getting the feedback from the student advisory panel and from their principals as well so thank you for this i do also support hats and echo that headgear for the same reasons that my colleagues have just shared my boys will be disappointed that i'm not supporting the hoodies but if it was a compromise between the two i really would like to see you all take this back to the principles and see if they can understand some of the things and concerns that we're
288bringing up about the head gear and to see if we can get some movement towards that i just wanted to make a point regarding hats i know our board has been really open to engage our principles um this is for first read if you don't mind engaging our principles middle school and high school just to hear the rationale as well we got any hearts as you all know we're going to follow your pleasure but i'm just asking you to engage them to know why they don't want hats on our campuses so before we bring this back in the next two weeks i think uh that can serve as well you want us to engage them or do you want to collect some statements your pleasure if you want me to bring a cluster of middle
289school principles high school points where then set up a two by two uh i think that will be helpful as well so i just want to follow your pleasure why don't you all decide what's best and let us know we also have graduations coming in the next couple of days which is a great opportunity for us to be engaging with some of those principals um yeah so i think that's great i um thank you all for working on the stress code policy this is hard it's sticky it's we uh we all come from a different background which brings our own bias to this work and so i just appreciate one engaging with students but also engaging with our principals who have to implement what is what is being said and as a as a goal
290of them being you know instructional leaders in their schools this is something that ends up taking probably more time than many of them would want um eileen too and what they ask around hats and i'm happy to engage with some more folks over graduation time i think to be a leader of a school of 1500 2000 children and thinking about protecting their safety and their instruction and making sure they're learning like i just have to lean on them a little bit on what on what they suggest and i would also say i think miss valadar said with this as we do our training and we make sure we conclude everyone from the bus drivers to the bus monitors like everyone gets the same training so that we're all in alignment and i think if we
291can model and practice as much as possible when a dress code violation does happen what's the right way as people we often revert back to what we know when we get in those types of situations so how do we model and practice for our educators what we would like to see um if a dress code violation happens it inevitably will happen because we're people how do we be really clear about the expectation around that fire yeah just um one thing that miss um said reminded me of about the training was i think it's really a little bit too specific in here where you said we're going to retrain by march in march before spring break or something i think you kind of want a round spring break or something i think you want to make
292that a little vaguer because i don't that that date always moves around and you know i could see it needing to have some flex there but yeah thanks my only comment is that i i think you're going to have real implementation problems i think as miss hempstead said people revert back to what they know how they were raised and even with a policy and a training and a principle you know stern warning i'm worried about implementation and so i don't know if it rises to this level and i wouldn't micromanage you this but if if we adopt this at the 23rd meeting i think an email to all staff saying something big just changed you'll be trained in the fall like the more touch points you can give because i am worried about how this
293will go this summer as we have our year-round program starting in july so this was a first reading do we need to add this for a second reading on the 23rd is that the goal yes it is do we have a motion this is a long time coming i move that we approve the first reading of the dress code policy revise dress code policy and add it to and add it to our second reading and uh the 23rd thank you second thank you it's been moved by miss valedares seconded by ms buyer that we add this for second reading to our meeting on the 23rd any additional discussion all in favor say aye it passes unanimously and our penultimate item the durham high forever plaque it's you proceed so what we are bringing administration is
294bringing before the board today a request from the durham high forever group to place a commemorative plaque i have provided you with photos of the plaque but there is not a policy that governs this it's not really a donation um it's a so i searched high and low through all of our policies and we really don't have anything that provided guidance to administration so based on that we are asking what i do know is that anytime anything is changed or a permanent fixture is placed on the board's property the board does need to when there's not a policy that guides us the board will need to provide guidance to administration so um just defer to the board on what its pleasure is on the request from durham high forever to place a commemorative plaque at
295dsa board members discussion i'm happy to go first i talked to um a member of the group who is interested in putting up this sign and i applaud their efforts to to work and fundraise and get this built i have concerns about the sign being for alumni 60 years or more for durham that includes a segregated durham high school and after also talking to some durham alumni who were there after the school was integrated really felt like if we want to commemorate the school we want to make sure we're commemorating the integration of the school and what that durham high was at that time so that gives it just a little context to you all board members but that is what gives me um pause about this i think if there's another way we can
296consider how to celebrate durham high and and when the school was integrated i think that would um be something i could entertain a conversation around ours i have some concerns as well um you know i i understand also the uh the memories um durham high the students got to enjoy a pool and that was actually featured in a human relations commission event that addressed inequities in the school system and there's definitely a lot of good memories and nothing takes that away but that pool got cemented as soon as the schools got integrated um dsa no longer the integrated school system didn't have the access to that pool and um during the human relations commission uh event uh there was there were a lot of feelings a lot of dsa students from now are like how
297is it that the durham high students got to enjoy a pool and we you know any any students once the integration happened um it was it was cemented and we didn't get to enjoy that and so i think the exclusionary aspect of celebrating amenities that were not provided to further classes after integration i think that to me it causes concerns so i appreciate this being added to our agenda there's uh um there's certainly troubling history in the past in durham and other places i i would never um try to minimize any of that my concern with this is that i believe that this is a group of our former students who their school so much that they continue to gather they celebrate the memories and the people and the teachers there and that in they
298were promised by some staff member of durham public schools that they could install this in a loving tribute before they went to raise funds and um you know started this project and you know i don't think they did it with ill intent i don't think that they did it to be exclusionary um and so i would love for us to have a way to put policy forward that if other groups in the future want to do similar things at hillside at southern at you know glenn elementary wherever yay whatever i mean it's a it's it's to me like um more positivity about um durham and if we need to add our own kind of commemorative something or other beside it or nearby that kind of talks more about the troubling history that that we all
299struggle with you know let's do that we took the name of the car building off of that school we've you know whatever um [Music] but i do think that that these alumni were were entered into this with good faith of some employee of ours that said yes and so for us to say yeah we changed our mind um doesn't feel like we're um honoring what what they were told um and so i yeah i think many of these folks have passed away um that are that are listed here so um yeah i don't know that's that's how i come to it and you know we probably should have a have policy maybe there's other districts that have policy that we can look to as as ways to to support alumni groups and i mean not
300class gifts and things like that but um i don't see how it actually takes away um yeah yeah i had two thoughts um i spent a lot of time on duke's campus i i wouldn't have a problem with this if it was a bench uh you know alumni bench like something that people can actually use but this is a thing to look at and then you know there's something weird about paying enough to get your name on something and how inclusive is that but my real problem uh with it is is the date linking to you know the era when courts were ordering school systems to merge and integrate and so to literally put the date on there 1993 when a merger is necessary you know to to work on civil rights issues um i
301can't i can't abide that um so i'm not supporting this um going on dsa's campus i agree i don't think there's any malintent we got a nice response from one of the members that's just how i feel today so it doesn't i'm not sure we need to vote there certainly does not consensus that this can go up so i think we're just going to leave it at that thank you um did you the board want me to um share with the vermont okay thank you okay so so let me let me ask this one question because first of all i'm i'm pretty much on the same page you are mr sears i i thought and i responded back to um to one of the one of the donors in this group and i explained to
302them like my own family's history like my my mom and my uncle graduated from durham high in 70 71 and 72 so they're conveniently right there at that 50-year mark all right but not quite to 60. i would hate to see um these donors that have put funds towards this to you know to truly represent that the durham high that that they um that they graduated from and i'm wondering if it is something that can still be shown within the the new durham high and possibly even another one could be done um to represent more graduates from durham right so you can you can actually have more of these dermal forevers and actually have them installed in the new derm high but and then you can actually have more or less a storyboard to kind
303of be able to tell the history of it i don't think that that these things should just sit on a shelf or sit in somebody's garage you know for for the rest of time i think that they were well intentioned in what they were doing um but i think this is a time that we can still be able to learn something from this by putting it in the new durham high um and just kind of take it from there and i think i i am open to commemorating durham high the integrated durham high so if there is something that can be done that is this plus what that alumni group is and i would actually say we should keep it at durham high um but even when we build the new dharm school of the
304arts to keep it at the building that was durham high school i just think this alumni group does not include those folks and that's where i'm having this show if we had another one and then they both went up your family was in there and all the other great folks that we know who are in durham graduated from durham high had an opportunity to be included i think that's a different conversation and i'm happy to share that with with the folks as well all right i think we are on to item 10 summary of follow-up items is a long list in reference to the strategic plan making sure that we have inclusivity with regards to our stakeholders including languages and cultures possibly considering additional to the project team maybe adding 30 more looking to make
305sure that we acknowledge the amendments that we made to our current strategic plan and challenging making sure rti is challenging the team to consider that in this new phase of strategic plan 2023 and beyond i'm looking at the engagement calendar possibly making some shifts to that to ensure in the fall that we are engaging all of our stakeholders thinking about some messages that we can do to share how we have succeeded with the current strategic plan ensuring there are regular updates to the board community and stakeholders making sure that our new plan includes growing together in the community outreach possibly considering a digital dashboard and making sure that we are inclusive of our accreditation reports also a reminder to ensure that all on all prices we are including the budget implications for our policies for
306both policy 4150 and 4132 um consultation with attorney raymie in regarding to tightening some language specifically in 4150 in regards to the student assignment and placing students in 4132 potentially moving that to 60 days a number six um there was one in terms of the calendar days so question regarding admitted or enrolled making sure that we have that language and number four making sure that we're having student first language there is a place where we have homeless students and not the student first language that we have adopted and then now transitioning to operations we need to make sure that we provide total capacity after our renovations and the number of seats that we will have also making sure that we are continuing to look at our outdoor facilities not just outdoor learning spaces but also
307our athletic fields regards to landed the administration is to follow up with other durham housing options regarding home ownership such as habitat for humanity bringing that to be inclusive of all other programs that could be shared with our with our dps employees the budget item making sure that we're placing the budget report that was shared today on the budget website where we have the initial essay information as well as the superintendent's budget with regards to dress code looking potentially at removing the word tube making sure that we are we continue to have inclusive language regarding head coverings and protecting locks and protective styles thinking through the implementation and communication such as all dps staff and looking towards summer training for our year-round schools having opportunities for our board to talk to high school principals during
308graduation regarding hats ensuring that when we are doing our training that that training is inclusive with all staff not just limited to school staff bus drivers child nutrition workers all staff that interact with our students and making sure that we are modeling and practicing what we expect with our new dress code policy word is there emotion oh that was a very inclusive list can you also we were talking about covid at graduation can we make sure will we have masks there for folks that forgot them and stuff our rates are high in the community right now i know we're not probably taking a mask at graduation required vote but um do we have the capacity do you all know i have i can definitely work with dr monk in regards to making sure that we
309provide masks we are lit the graduations tomorrow are our facilities and we are currently operating under mask recommended and the graduations on monday and tuesday are not at our facilities um just for you i was thinking of the bigger ones and so i was wondering if are the are is duke still mass required for large settings at all no can we remind families of the community spread before you know leading up to graduation can we at least do that on our social media maybe i don't know i just probably for monday oh no no the big one will be on sunday right monday yeah monday and thursday and be able to bring those i just don't want our graduations to be super spreader events for our families leading into summer but yeah thank you i'm
310sorry i would move that we go into closed session for the recent state on the agenda second it's been moved by miss buyer second on this episode that we go into closed session for the reason stated on the agenda is there any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed we are in closed session unanimously dr mabinga madam chair i'm here to seek your approval for the personal report as discussed in the closed session move approval of the personnel report dated june 9th 2022 second the mood and properly second any other discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously and with that we are adjourned you