#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Monthly Meeting | 5/19/22

001good evening everyone the board of the durham public school board of education monthly meeting is now in session 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 and constituents about the work aligned with our mission to embrace educate and empower every student to innovate serve and lead the interpreters for tonight martha romo hergilis and marty ramirez thank you for joining us first item on the agenda is a moment of silence just take a moment of silence please thank you and our next item on the agenda is a celebration for our student a month mr sudderth good evening board members mr superintendent um it is a great evening to celebrate a lot of students and a

002lot of durham public schools employees in our nightly and our monthly celebrations and tonight our first celebration has been uh delayed uh from the last month uh we are so glad to have mr frank dumas our very own scripps regional spelling bee champion here with us tonight and i'd like to invite the dumas family to come on in as well as principal shanika moore lawrence good evening board members and all of our guests in the audience it is with great pleasure that i bring today on this evening um a distinguished guest who does not need to be recognized because he is internationally known mr frank dumas uh mr dumas is the regional spelling bee for our area uh mr dumas won the spelling bee at bethesda um a few months ago and he and his

003sister anna due to a challenge that was initiated by their mom have learned two languages have taught themselves two languages um and that's impressive all by itself and i can tell you that this is probably one of the most humble elementary school students that i've ever met he has his own swag as well he's very cool very intelligent but frank is all about celebrating his classmates the bethesda community his family and including us as a part of this celebration so anytime he has been recognized by uh news media etc he always wants to make sure that his classmates his teachers and his family are a part of that and i just want to say thank you frank so much for representing bethesda elementary the bulldogs and also durham public schools so at this time we're

004going to turn it over to frank let's see if he has some words to share um i'm frank and i would like to thank dr moore lawrence mr dr pascal mubanga miss thompson my teacher is smith my aid teacher damian malone governor roy cooper kirby forbes at duke university center for community outreach cb judge this is love podcast and my family and friends and i would be amidst if i did not recognize because again this is part of um frank's standard to recognize mr and mrs dumas and also his twin sister anna so let's give them a round of applause now uh before we before the handshakes uh frank if you could uh come forward for a second i have a favor to ask for it this is a spark pin we give these spark

005pins to leaders in our community and that includes leaders among our students we would feel very honored if it's within the rules of the spelling bee we would feel very honored if you would wear this pin as a symbol of pride the pride that durham public schools has in you at the at the spelling bee in washington congratulations and thank you so much [Applause] we'd love the family to walk the red carpet and be congratulated by the board like we did last week that's right distancing please thank you okay thank you that's fantastic our next presentations are of our students of the month plural for may these are the last students of the month for the academic year and we are proud to recognize them and i'd like to start with um i'd like to

006start with southern school of energy and sustainability we usually have gifts for our guests our student of the month our student of the month was originally planning to be on a plane tonight so we presented her gifts last night and the plane didn't take off so we are at least fortunate enough to have her with us tonight i'd like to introduce principal jerome leathers to say a few words about our student of the month good evening board chairwoman with team armstead our board of education members and our dps superintendent dr uh mabinga i am jerome leathers i'm the principal of southern school of energy and sustainability and it's my complete pleasure to introduce danielle rosario moria as our month's student of the month danielle has more than she more than deserves this honor she has

007exemplary leadership and scholarship while being at southern she will more than likely finish first in her class and she now has a gpa of 4.4 with outstanding a-c-t and s-a-t scores to complement her outstanding academic achievement danielle has plans of attending north carolina state university in the fall de yale's future plans are to go to dental school and to eventually have her mobile dental van to where she can service underserved communities with dental hygiene and knowledge i do believe danielle will accomplish that tonight danielle is accompanied by her parents mr and mrs hollis along with her little sisters aulani and paulina and so to the board of education and dr mabinga danielle moore i mean rosario moyer all right our next student of the month is from hillside high school and we are awaiting her

008arrival um but we may not be able to we may not be able to get her here tonight so i would like uh for uh principal william logan to say a few words about jocelyn castro valadez good evening it is my pleasure to be able to present to you jocelyn valedez excuse me jocelyn castro valedez who has been chosen as our student of the month because she is focused hard and goal-driven jocelyn is currently ranked number one in her class and maintains a 4.7 grade point average she plans to attend unc chapel hill duke university unc charlotte or north carolina state university while she has not made up her mind about where she plans to pursue excuse me where she plans to pursue as a major what she plans to pursue as a major she

009has made up her mind that she has decided that she would carve a path out for herself instead of traveling the path that has been laid for her leading her to her family business in her brag sheet on her brag she she wrote staying in the business would be comfortable and easy but it's not something i'm passionate about is what she wrote she's most proud of the grades she receives in her classes because she and she's especially proud of the fact that the grades that she's earned in her most challenging classes has yielded her results where she's being ranked number one in her class she appreciates the challenge because she understands that if she keeps trying that there are bigger and greater rewards at the end she's a proud mexican-american and the eldest of three

010siblings she tutors at our school and in the community and loves to participate in the battle of the books ladies and gentlemen i present to you jocelyn castro valdez i very much hope that jocelyn is able to watch this tonight and dr logan after you're done i have a i have a few gifts for her as they as they did for danielle yesterday at southern our friends at triangle e-cycling have provided us with a very top-flight laptop for uh jocelyn i would also like to give you her certificate of accomplishment and her spark pin please give her our highest regards our next recognition is also a remote one i would like to call on laura parrott our director of advanced academics as she presents to us our students who were selected to attend governor's school

011good evening thank you good evening members of the board and dr movinga the office of advanced academics is excited to share the 2022 north carolina governor school students and the selection results based on the enrollment of our current 10th and 11th graders in dps our district was able to submit 48 student applications out of the 108 nominations received the north carolina governor school board selected 21 outstanding dps students to attend this year session the north carolina governor's school is a multi-week summer residential program for gifted and talented high school students integrating academic disciplines the arts and unique courses on each of two campuses during the weeks of june 19th through july 16 our students will either be at governor school east at meredith college or governor school west which is new this year winston-salem state

012university at this time i would like to introduce yamel anderson ruff coordinator of advanced academics who will recognize each of our selected students their schools and their area of acceptance good evening board members and dr mubanga oh i'm a little short sorry yes so our governor school students are giovanni alton kelly durham school of the arts visual arts ava says durham school of the arts choral music first soprano tatiana dawson northern high school choral music alto violet de wire durham school of the arts visual art grace dunzo durham school of the arts social science lucy ayman durham school of the arts instrumental music clarinet emily fitzgerald c.e jordan high school natural science next next slide please lisa geisler durham school of the arts instrumental music french horn claire harvey c.e jordan high school english olivia

013henry riverside high school mathematics mary hill c.e jordan high school mathematics malia jackson durham school of the arts dance adrian jacobs durham school of the arts natural science ethan lamar riverside high school natural science next slide please danielle lip c.e jordan high school social science kieran manikumar c.e jordan high school english theodore reeves riverside high school natural science maxwell roselli durham school of the arts instrumental music trombone helena starrett durham school of the arts theater erica ziegler hillside new tech mathematics abigail zerzensei durham school of the arts dance again congratulations to our students on this great achievement and now we come to the spark pin recognitions part of our celebrations our spark pins as i told frank are given to leaders in our school communities whether they be students but adults teachers staff volunteers community

014partners if you have been nominated for a spark pin people have recognized your excellence and your support of public education in durham county and we are very proud of you we start with our office of early education and three great team members and i'd like to invite director sue cotterman to the podium thank you so much and good evening it's my pleasure to introduce mr daniel mabini mr mabini is a preschool teacher at the whitted school mr mabini started his career at the whitted school as an instructional assistant and now is a certified birth through kindergarten teacher who demonstrates high quality and excellence in our preschool programs every day mr mabini was a finalist for the mary y bridgers early education teacher award this year and that is an accomplishment he received a monetary check

015and a certificate of excellence at the triangle early education award breakfast held by child care services association on friday march 18 2022 the mary y bridger's early childhood teacher award is given to an early childhood teacher and three finalists in recognition of their professional commitment and outstanding care to children in the triangle there were 13 people nominated this year which is a huge field so we are very proud of mr mabini the award which was created in the 1980s was named for mary y bridgers in recognition of her more than 30 years of service in orange county as an early childhood teacher and advocate for children i know you're going to be seeing more of mr mabini as he continues to be a creative and compassionate teacher and a role model for our children in

016dps mr mubini congratulations and i also get the pleasure of introducing two of my instructional pre-k coaches miss kushana glass and miss april washington they support preschool in dps in early education miss glassmas washington are preschool curriculum experts however they do much more than coach the 61 classrooms that they're assigned to support they support curriculum they make ec assignments they handle out of county and state transfers and they attend events for early education in the evening and on the weekends they also plan implement and implement professional development they work with families and they support teachers and staff wherever they're needed these two early childhood professionals jump in wherever and whenever there's a need in a collaborative and thoughtful manner while always having students and staff at the center of why they do what they do

017in this challenging year both miss glass and miss washington have stepped in to support schools during staffing shortages and have helped assure that students and high quality instruction remain the focus every day miss glass and miss washington embrace the role of a coach that works with staff to improve their skills which in turn improves our students kindergarten readiness i am proud to acknowledge the dedication to dps and our youngest learners they are truly assets to dps congratulations next and continuing with academic services i would like to call in mary harris of easley elementary and principal jennifer hauser mary harris was nominated for a spark award by a parent and community member and i'd like to invite you up so that we can say nice things about you this is what kristen southworth shared in nominating

018mary harris mary is an exceptional ec teacher who embodies the ideas of embracing empowering and educating all students it's not just in classroom support but her management of many other duties that go with providing ec services she comes to iep meetings with thoughtful insight on how to support each child communication does not stop just at that meeting she is always available to answer questions provide perspective or brainstorm new accommodations to help a student these past two years have continued to be challenging for our ec teachers who have been tasked with supporting our most vulnerable students managing increased caseloads referrals and students who have experienced learning loss and trauma even though she may only work with a student for 40 for 30 minutes she always finds a way to connect with them and build confidence while

019maintaining high expectations by taking time to understand the whole child not just the differences that bring them to her classroom she is more than just a teacher she advocates for neurodivergent students counsels parents anxious about school transitions is a smiling face who keeps the car line moving and much more mary harris i would like to present you with a spark pin uh thanking you for your leadership and service to our students very very honored finally we have a few recognitions from operational services and we'll begin with school nutrition services i'd like to introduce jim keaton our school nutrition director to introduce our two nominees and their guests good evening thank you we appreciate the board of education and dr mubanga and all of the visitors here tonight tonight we'd like to recognize two of our

020staff members in the child nutrition division first we have stefan braswell he's a child nutrition assistant at hope valley elementary and he is supporting our leadership mr brad braswell is a product of durham public schools very proudly and a former student of durham school of the arts he started his career in school nutrition in november of 2014. mr brazwell began working as a school nutrition assistant and moved into a role as a transporter and server for the witted school based out of the hope valley elementary in february 2022 school nutrition services began the operation of moving food directly from the warehouse directly to the schools and mr braswell has been independently pulling the food from the warehouse by himself three days a week and making sure it's delivered to all 47 schools weekly his commitment

021to ensuring that every school has the food they need and the continued support his school base at hope valley is admirable and we really like to recognize him and his family his wife safa his three sons tavion steph and julius so thank you mr braswell let you go through dps student dps proud thank you um our second recognition tonight is robin brooks she's our assistant director and we have her recognized for operational leadership in april 2019 ms brooks came to durham public schools from her prior position as the director of school nutrition in chatham county ms brooks played an instrumental role in providing guidance and leadership for our schools during the covet 19 pandemic and she had the leadership of all of the operational services in july of 2021 i needed to take a medical

022leave to have open-heart surgery and ms brooks stepped in in the as the interim director with full responsibility for the school openings of the 2122 school year she effectively and efficiently transition the program from summer meals to back to school with many new pandemic related challenges since my return ms brooks has assisted in the school nutrition restructure plan and assume the operational aspects of school nutrition programs allowing me the director to focus on the administrative functions of our department and we really want to thank her for her hard work and dedication and making sure that school nutrition did not miss a beat so thank you miss brooks and we have one final recognition and that comes from our deputy superintendent for operations dr julius monk i get applause for introducing people that's awesome um if

023i can ask mr matthew palmer to come in please stand right beside me matthew so and good evening to everyone again um celebrations is a big part of leadership as a matter of fact when you think about the five practices one of them is encouraging the heart and celebrations is a way to do that but it's not enough just to give a pen of the say kind words when we're talking about encouraging the heart the practice requires you to be specific about what the individual did what it meant to you and what it means to your organization matthew was the very first person besides miss shirley young that i met whenever i started we started on the exact same day um i didn't know what to take of matthew because i didn't hire him but

024he was going to be working for me and so we sat at the the conference april in my office and then we talked and i got to know matthew over the past thousands of days that we've been working together and the thing that i like about matthew is that he has an extreme and extreme love for education and public education in particular because that was something that was dear to him in his life and brought him to where he is today and it is something that he noticed as a missionary whenever he was in a south american country i can't remember exactly which one it was but he was going to be a pre he was in school to be pre-med matthew was going to be a different type of doctor than what he's working

025on right now but the people in the village couldn't read the medications that matthew was dispensing that touched matthew matthew said everyone should know how to read because it's more than just getting a job it's about having a life and a sustainable life every day whenever i see matthew and the hard work that he puts into everything that he does it reminds me of his trip down to that country and what education really truly means that's why matthew's important to me why he's important to this organization is because his leadership over our planning department which at the time was just him now we have a school planner for utilization a demographer and a transportation planner i don't know if any other district in the state that has a transportation plan that was matthew's vision for

026our students matthew whenever mr barnes retired this past summer stepped in to fill that gap and took on transportation and school nutrition during a pandemic because education and our students are important to matthew and so without further ado i would like to introduce to you our spark recipient of the month from operations mr matthew palmer um i need you to wear i need you to wear this when you're presenting later today thank you adam chair board members that concludes our celebrations for the evening that's amazing thank you so much mr sutter and congratulations to all of those we celebrate it and our spark recipients um always warms my heart thank you so much for that our next item on the agenda is the superintendent's updates dr mabengo madam fast chair members the board good evening

027it's good to see you all tonight a little bit comfortable here taking off my mask as i present my remarks i want to begin my remarks by congratulating someone who could not be here in person to receive this back but who is in fact a hero as many of you saw on the news one of our bus drivers last week saw a dangerous situation happening in the road in front of him and with quick thinking got his students out of the road get them out of danger that situation is still being investigated by the durham police department and it's essential that we protect this particular bus driver but rest assured that we consider that this driver is a hero to us and we will celebrate him as a district i keep saying that every dps

028employee has a vital role in igniting the limitedness potential of our students this driver is an example of that it's care for our students and their safety was commendable and his actions represent the dedication of all dps staff and teachers this month durham is celebrating an important historic legacy the 100th anniversary of funding of hillside high school that hillside still stands as one of the only five of the 300 historical black high schools in north carolina that existed before desegregation is a statement of the strength pride and determination of its students teachers and staff and proud alumni 100 years of a national treasure 100 years of ever depending i mean deepening roots i want to express my gratitude to our community for maintaining this treasured school this tuesday during our teacher's work day lakewood elementary

029school had the pleasure of hosting a visit from becky pringle president of national education association and her team has learned more about our pilots implementation of community school model which we have in place in lakewood elementary as well as club boulevard elementary it was an inspiring visit and she noted the partnership between our board our teachers and our administration and our partners such as the dps foundation as we seek the funding expertise and buying to take this model further i want to thank our educators and our principals for making that visit possible and i was really privileged to have a mask from misa biki pringle that's our way we're far today finally as we approach the end of the school year we also approach two important events first is the end of testing that is

030required by our state but which also gave us an important information about how our students have performed this year and what they will need next year our teachers and staff and students have been working really hard to come out of this pandemic and to restore the rightful places both academically and socially emotionally this year i'm hopeful for a strong finish to the year our benchmarks has been really promising so far i thought it was going to take us a good three years but i'm hopeful that is going to be shorter than that second you know you're year-ending celebration of all our teachers we went we were going to name our teacher of the year and there's respective schools and the crowning of our dps teacher of the year it will be the first time we

031have seen each other at the teacher of the year event since 2019. many of you will be there tomorrow at 5 00 p.m i'm glad to be able to show our support to our teachers with a good meal and a celebration of excellence as we name one of our teachers to represent us before all of north carolina madame vasquez that's pretty much concluded my remote thank you thank you and i also saw a sign from mr sutter 6 pm for the event for the teacher of the year on tomorrow thank you the next item on the agenda is to the agenda review and approval emotion madam vice chair could we um consider amending the agenda to add a proclamation recognizing june as lgbtq plus pride month in durham public schools where would you want to

032add that at the very last thing end of academic services can be second a second our uh board share i'm set as virtual so we will need to do a voice vote was that a motion i think she just asked to add it i don't think she i don't think that was emotion yeah i moved to approve the agenda as amended can i second it's been moved by mr lee properly second by miss valladeras he's in discussion and board chair umstead is with us virtually so we will need to do a voice vote mr lee aye aspire aye mr raven aye ms validas aye mr sears aye ms umstead hi everyone i'm sorry i can't be there this evening in person my name is bettina umstead i vote aye and i also vote i the

033agenda as amended has been approved next item on the agenda is the board of education monthly minutes for april 21st move approval of the minutes oh second then moved by miss fire second by mr lee was there any discussion big voice vote mr lee aye ms baier aye mr raven aye ms fayo davis aye mr sears aye ms umstead my name is bettina umstead i vote aye and i also vote i the monthly minutes have been approved thank you the next item on the agenda is our public comments a quick review of the rules first please state your name and speaking for an organization please state your name and the name of your organization second speakers are asked to present their comments in a specified time usually three minutes when the yellow light comes on

034you have one minute left to start winding up your remarks when the red light comes on it will beep which indicates your 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 students and or to the operation of the school system finally the board members will listen carefully and consider the comments but we do not engage in a discussion with speakers our first speaker is melissa perez good evening distinguished board dr mabenga stakeholders my name is melissa perez and my pronouns are she her i'm a durham public schools employee since 2006 and i currently work in the department of curriculum and instruction and what i'm sharing with you this evening i represent

035only myself as a dps employee community member and parent i would like to take this opportunity first to thank dps the board and the department of equity affairs for the steps that they've taken so far to advocate for our lgbtq plus community in durham public schools i appreciate the gender support guidelines that have been placed on our website as well as the trainings that equity affairs has been conducting recently however during my 16 years as a dps employee i have unfortunately seen occurrences of discrimination microaggressions and bullying against our lgbtq plus staff and students i've seen name-calling fighting bullying to the point that it drives students to extreme depression even with suicidal thoughts and attempted suicides many students have so much fear that they stop coming to school altogether which contributes to our declining student

036and family population and staff in durham public schools i've seen students who come from lgbtq plus families be made to feel like something is wrong with them because their family looks different than others i see that currently we do not have structures in place to sufficiently teach and so that students can have experiences around diversity including racial cultural gender and family structures in developmentally appropriate ways that lend itself to giving students of all marginalized communities voice and a chance to be heard practicing skills to be anti-biased anti-racist and gender lgbtq plus inclusive humans i even see people instead of supporting inclusivity tried to avoid it altogether i recognize that is the privilege to be able to stand before you as an ally to advocate for those students who have fear and don't feel comfortable doing

037it for themselves so i stand before you to ask you to please consider implementing a policy because guidelines are not policy and are not enforceable we as a school system are the only support that some of our students have it is our duty to be inclusive supported and demonstrate equitable practices some of their lives literally depend on it thank you next we have marcus rowe followed by carrie andrews board my name is marcus roll i use he him pronouns i am a parent of two kids in the dps system one of my kids is gender non-binary um i appreciate the steps that the dps board has taken in putting specific guidelines in place in regards to lgbtq plus students this is an excellent start that needs more attention i hope that the board could set

038a formal board approved policy on formal lgbtq training for teachers and staff as well as gender inclusive curriculum for students my eight-year-old has had a wonderful experience in her third grade teacher they have been able to be themselves and assisted with any needs that have arisen due to them being gender non-binary as well as the needs of being an active third grader it has been incredible relief to me to send them to a place that they are loved and accepted each day however my eight-year-old has also had to provide their own education to other teachers and staff on appropriate use of pronouns multiple times in the classroom setting this can put a lot of added and unnecessary strain on the learning environment while riding the bus to the school the bus driver told all students

039the boys needed to sit on one side of the bus and girls on the other my eight-year-old told the bus driver that they were non-binary and they were told that they were in trouble and needed to pick a side since that time my kid has desperately not wanted to ride the bus due to feeling of sadness and not feeling supported this is the sort of situation that could be easily avoided with some education for teachers and staff i am an educator and a health care provider i have gone through formal training to better assist my patients that identify as lgbtq plus so i think that the board approved policy that specifically outlines necessary training is crucial to ensure a safe learning environment for all students learning with dps thanks mary andrews good evening dps board

040of education members my name is carrie andrews and my pronouns are she her i've been a dps employee for seven years and i'm the parent of three dps students i'm currently the orchestra director at jordan high school i come before you tonight to speak on why dps so desperately needs to form regulations throughout our school systems to support all lgbtqia plus students to feel safe within our walls i'm actually going to begin with my own story i've known i was gay since i was 12. but coming from a rural conservative small north carolina town i couldn't be out i knew it was to come if i was truly myself i spent years trying to cover up who i really was and what others saw was a happy well-rounded super active teenager but they didn't see

041us the depression i was cutting myself i thought about suicide often and even ran away from home once i came out my senior year of high school and basically lost many of the few friends i had to begin with the last two months of high school were more miserable than it had been previously a few people even told me that there was no way i could be gay and be a teacher my story is not much different than many of our lgbtqia a-plus students today i cannot count the number of times a student has come to me because they were made to feel ashamed in the classroom or the number of times that a student has shared with me that a teacher refused to call them by their preferred name or pronouns and i do

042not want to count the number of times i've had to try to talk a student out of self-harming themselves a now retired teacher once told me that she did not have to use preferred names or pronouns for our transgender students because it's just a phase and they had no idea who they are at this age anyway if i had listened to the people surrounding me 14 years ago then that i could not be gay and be a teacher then i would not be the successful teacher i believe myself to be today however unlike me some of our students will listen to those words and those words will break them and turn they we will never know what those students could be as educators we are failing these students if we do not accept exactly who

043they are when they come to us and help them grow it does not matter what gender they choose to identify as or what bathroom they choose to use what matters is that they are our students and that we show them they can be anything they want to be and that we make every classroom a safe space for these students after listening to a podcast my wife katie once posed a question to our gsa group at giftens how are you making gay history as a group that we we discussed that we make gay history by standing up for who we are and educating others i recently learned of a student who was being called the wrong pronouns in class that student was able to advocate for himself and educate others but some students do not have

044the tools to do that dps has the chance right now to make gay history we have the chance to lead the way in ensuring that all students in our school system feel welcomed and safe when house bill 2 occurred i remember receiving an email from dr lahome stating that we are dps we accept all students and staff and we do not accept discrimination of any kind now it's time to make true on those words it is time for all students to go to school knowing there is a home everywhere in a classroom for them it's time for them to go to school knowing that teachers have their back every step of the way and while there are many educators who already support and defend all of our lgbtqia plus students we cannot fully succeed in

045making sure that they all feel supported in love without your help so tonight i stand here before you asking you the board of education what will you do to make gay history and change this thank you thank you next anne the cowie hint street thank you board i have chosen to spend my time reading a lgbtq and gender inclusive book that is developmentally appropriate for elementary school and shows families and schools doing the right thing by this child calvin for as long as i could remember i knew i was a boy i'd draw myself with short hair and a shirt like papa's i'd dream about swim trunks like my dad and brother wore i didn't tell my family until the night before our summer trip to gigi and papa's i was scared they wouldn't believe

046me but i knew it was time to be me whenever i have to do something scary my dad always says take deep breaths and count down from five breathe in breathe out five four three two one i'm not a girl i told my family i'm a boy a boy in my heart and in my brain we love you if you are a girl boy neither or both we love you whoever you are my dad said later dad told me the word for how i felt was transgender being transgender means other people think you are one gender but inside you know you are a different one i wondered how gigi and papa would react as we got closer i squeezed squeezed my stuffed lion to my chest i had already told my family who i was

047now i needed to tell them my name the name of your favorite stuffed lion dad asked it's why i named him that it's always been my name to me i'm going to skip the part where the grandparents were super supportive dad said that there were other transgender people in the world but i didn't know any kids like me at my school and school started next week being the only one felt scary how would everyone treat me what if my friends wouldn't call me he what if what if what if the first day of school i dragged my feet to the door breathe in breathe out five four three two one welcome back to school we're glad you're here when the principal said my name i felt safe and happy violet skipped up to me calling

048out my new name too you know my name i asked yup your dad told my mom you're a boy now i've always been a boy inside are we still friends yes did you bring your jump rope for recess when i stepped into my classroom i couldn't believe what i saw the cubby the lunch chart the homework station and the mailboxes the name tag on the table my new name was everywhere everywhere it should be i felt my fears start to go away welcome back class for morning meeting we'll all share about our summers i knew just what i would say when it was my turn i stood up proudly to share my summer story but first i introduced myself hi i said my name is calvin and i felt my what ifs melt away thank

049you our next public comment is dominate beauty good evening um dominique beaudry but i'll take beauty that works too um my pronouns are she hers i'm a jordan high school social studies teacher i'm our equity champion and i was the beginning teacher of the year for 2018 2019. this is my fourth year at jordan and i'm very proud to work there um light care i have also known i've been a part of the lgbtq plus community my whole life but also growing up in a small conservative north carolina town it wasn't until i was 24 that i felt comfortable and safe to come out to work at a school with a supportive principal is a gift to work at a school with so many out students is a gift this summer i had the privilege

050of working with summer school which was the first time we brought back so many students so with socio-emotional learning at the forefront we decided to paint a mural to commemorate coming back together and making our market jordan i had an idea to print the pride flag but i didn't know how it would go over with students before i could even finish my statement so many students were running to get the paint brushes they wanted to be a part of building out an inclusive school that openly clearly and proudly celebrated all of their friends all of their students and all of themselves i also developed a women and gender studies class at jordan so we could have a safe space to talk about gender and to talk about issues impacting women and students who are non-binary

051we started it by reading a book a similar child book called it feels good to be yourself by teresa thorne and noah grigny to see high school students clamoring over the opportunity to read a children's book to each other about gender identity was one of the highlights of my four years at jordan we read the student we read the book so many times because so many students wanted to read it out loud because it was the first time that they saw themselves in curriculum it is not enough to write supportive tweets it is not enough to make you know small movements towards we need to have policy now for our students it is a life or death situation there are countless statistics and research supporting that we need a policy that can hold schools accountable

052to educate and empower and ignite the potential of all of our students i appreciate ms valadaris and ms buyer for responding to my email about how students are also ignored right now in the data that we're collecting we don't identify whether or not students are part of the lgbtq plus population so students who are having experiences specific to that right now are invisible in our data without the policy students families and advocates will be without a vital tool to make sure that all of those working in schools are aware of the expectations the guidelines and the plan for educating those who work in schools who need help understanding right we all come from different places we understand that it's an education system and we need a policy that includes that education from those who are

053experts in the field thank you so much for your time today for listening and i appreciate y'all having us here thank you those are the end of the public comments that i have here before me are there any others outside i signed up afterwards right thank you so that concludes our public comments the next item on the agenda is our consent items our board has reviewed these items ahead of time and have allowed for consent ford is there a motion or anything to be pulled for items a through i move approval of the consensus second been moved by mrs sears and properly seconded by ms valladeres is any discussion that's why he did us just thinking community members who um have noted the change in the um lunch pricing so just referring everyone to just

054check out the consent items and the details that are on there thank you any other discussion all right we'll do a voice vote mr lee hi inspire aye mr raven aye ms valderrez aye mr sears aye aye ms amistad my name is bettina umstead i vote aye i also vote i and the consent items pass thank you the next item on the agenda is operation services throwing together academics programs and school boundary mr dr monk excuse me thank you chair lewis board of education dr mubanga tonight the administration will show for you our growing together plan which includes our renewed focus on growing great schools together as well as new application programs for elementary schools and a recommendation that designed to increase equity access and diversity within durham public schools for all students and i

055would like to turn it over to dr hardy to introduce the presentations and our presenters thank you dr monk we can pull up our presentation and i think all of our presenters if they're not in the room i know they were in the hall and so the team can come in good evening chair umstead vice chair lewis members of our board and dr mabinga as dr monk said we are pleased this evening to share recommendations from our growing together initiative which is a culmination of the work spanning almost three years our district has examined complex components of the school assignment policy studied its impact on district and school demographics and academic outcomes reviewed research and gather community input to shape the recommendations you were here this evening the growing together proposals and recommendations shared tonight

056include the following if you'll go forward to the next slide a renewed focus on growing great dps schools together the proposed elementary application programs and diversity within durham public schools elementary school boundaries as dr monk said these recommendations are designed to increase equity access and diversity within dps all of our schools and for each and every one of our young people building on the december 2021 revisions to policy 4150 school assignment shaped by input and feedback gathered from both internal and external stakeholders across durham community the growing together initiative emerging from our current strategic plan seeks to coalesce a vision of integrated academic programs school facilities and student demographics i want us to think a little about why the merger that occurred between durham county and durham city schools occurred years ago whenever you bring

057two entities together some things are gained and some things are lost dps has not had a systematic review of our programs since that time durham is very different today than it was 30 years ago our policies and practices have not kept up with the evolution of durham what has resulted is an equitable access disconnection between specialized programs and complex and different rules for our families and communities although there have been some tweaks and changes along the way these changes have been highly localized and designed to fix a problem in isolation the strategic plan reflected and directed the need for durham to examine comprehensively our school assignment policy and then add to the fact that dps currently only has approximately 50 percent of the market share by not addressing these issues this has allowed charter and

058private schools to edge into the public school market share the most important decision a parent makes is where to send their child to school this work is to ensure that each and every parent in durham has no doubt that dps is the place for your child your most precious gift it's my pleasure to acknowledge this cross-departmental collaborative team dr monk deputy superintendent of operational services mr chip sutter chief communications officer missina cooper director of marketing and community engagement dr kelvin bullock executive director of equity affairs dr julie pack executive director of cte and magnet programs ms melody marshall director of student assignment mr matthew palmer executive director of school planning transportation and nutrition mr philip day school planner programs vitaly radowsky school planner demographics dr rita rathbone magnet specialist dr debbie pittman assistant superintendent for

059specialized services this evening's presentation will include an overview of the project identification of our regions the identification of academic programs and the site placement of those programs how school assignment rules will be developed sharing new school boundaries and the upcoming engagement and timeline for next steps it's my pleasure to turn it over to mr sutter to introduce the project with an outstanding video mr sutter as you can see from the agenda that's currently uh on the screen um we're going to start by with an overview and we're going to show you where we've been and then we're going to share with you a vision of where we can go together as a community we're also going to talk a little bit about dreams and to illustrate those dreams i'd like to go to the video

060on the next screen equitable opportunities limitless potential and dreams what does that mean for durham public school students and parents my child has special needs and currently they have to attend three pps schools to get the therapies they need as a student my child of the same access access and equity should be a given our options should not be limited because of where we live my child's school is bursting at the seams and durham keeps growing how we plan to accommodate that growth is important to me my friends speak spanish and i want to learn too they are building a school just down the street from my house i am excited for it to open so i can go i get to go to school with my friends my dad says i could be the

061first doctor in our family my new school has a class that will help me get ready i can't wait this is our vision for growing together every elementary school providing a strong foundation for students every child receiving an enriching experience all of us igniting the limitless potential of our students with our community we can make this vision derms reality is not proud of durham public schools we do amazing things for our students every day we can do better we can make what we shared with you a reality for every family we're going to illustrate now for you some of the challenges that we're experiencing that the growing together project seeks to address and to that i'm going to turn things over to director of student assignment melody marshall thank you mr suttereth and good evening

062board members at our durham community dr mabanga it is certainly a pleasure to be here tonight so i know that this slide is familiar to you you've seen it multiple times and we and it reflects what our families and our students are experiencing due to our current student assignment policy and yes we intentionally we bring this back to you over and over again because this is a demonstration of the why why has durham public schools taken on such tremendous work at this time and the simple answer to that question is because of our families and more importantly because of our students our families and our students cannot wait any longer for more equitable access diversity and equity in our schools as dr hardy shared it's been over three years of studying the rich history of

063durham public schools the complex components of our student assignment policy and its impacts on school demographics socioeconomic diversity and academic outcomes it's been three years of exploring research and listening and learning to over a thousand dps families and students and stakeholders and we have arrived at some possibilities what if pre-k and ec pathways were aligned and regionally connected to minimize transitions for some of our youngest and most vulnerable students what if resources were aligned so that every school had robust arts and stem programs and offered global languages at every elementary school what if all of our families had an increased chance of accessing our high demand application programs and what if the short-term and long-term student assignment plan with boundaries accounted for new neighborhoods and residential growth so that our schools no longer became overcrowded

064what if our district constructed regions of access that were socioeconomically balanced and each offered comparable sets of programs what if our bus rides were more efficient and streamlined for all of our durham public schools students and what if the rules of access for our application programs were simplified so that families could more easily and equitably access our program offerings and choices here in their own public schools let's go to the next slide please so the chart before you specifically focuses on access into our application programs and the impacts on our priority rules in the lottery and as you can see the majority of our magnet or application seats actually 72 of them are accessed by priorities and that leaves only 28 percent of seats left for our left available for our general public so what

065if there was equity and balance between priority seats and the general lottery offering more access to our application programs by honoring the values of our neighborhood schools durham's values of our neighborhood schools so with that i invite my colleague and my friend mr matthew palmer executive director of school planning transportation and nutrition to come up and share more about the possibilities for durham public schools thank you director marshall and good evening everyone it really is a pleasure to be here it's been a journey we have some ideas to share with you tonight on the next slide please let's go ahead so just to recap some of the problems that we're trying to tackle and they are connected i think that's why that infographic director marshall shared is so important number one we have overcrowded schools

066currently today 13 of our elementary schools are either severely over or under enrolled that's where boundaries factors in number two lack of equitable access you just heard about how those priority zones sit on top of the boundaries and create exclusion for other families and number three the inequities with regards to not only access but transportation how long are those bus rides how many schools do i have to go to if i need an ec program that's what we're facing our solutions and we've been very intentional about layering this in one decision at a time right policy 4150 back from december of we set forth on a foundation that is the bedrock of the house right on our policy 4150 student assignment policy layer 2 our updated capital improvement program and the accompanying support not only

067of the board but of the county commissioners and soon hopefully our durham public the third layer here and what we bring to you tonight is a vision for a comprehensive plan this isn't just about boundaries this isn't just about academic programs this is about the connection i want to really emphasize a comprehensive plan involves our academic program our students and our facilities jointly brought together it can be compelling sometimes to want to pull one of those pieces apart but understand that these are all interconnected one decision influences the others right ultimately we in operations are here to support the vision and the leadership for the academic program that's what school boundaries do they help implement the vision for an academic program so with that let's go to the next slide and talk about that first

068layer with respect to regions and go ahead to the next slide going back to policy 4150 that established really three things that regions were intended to do first and foremost how many students can we support within a given geography being mindful of our community infrastructure that might include not only rivers and forests but highways and neighborhoods and history and legacy in addition relevant program options within those regions so that one area of durham isn't favored over another and that thirdly can we increase the proximity or how close those academic programs are to our students in our neighborhoods while also enhancing the probability that family families could access those programs we've spent a lot of time reviewing those disparities as they are today next slide please here's an initial map for our regions as we proposed

069i'll just walk through them very briefly northern durham we're looking at the area north of interstate 85 but also being respectful for the north gate park community that is unfortunately when they built interstate 85 went right through northgate park so we understand that sometimes our communities go beyond just one line in eastern durham we're looking at the area that will be east of the east end connector and north of in highway 70 as well as south of interstate 85. in southeastern we have the area of durham east of fayetteville street and south of 147 and in southwestern the area south of 147 and west of fayetteville street in central durham and this is unique to durham that the heart of our community is encompassed by interstates interstate 85 501 147 and soon what is to

070be interstate 885 or the east end connector that'll be coming online this fall so this is our initial proposal for regions looking at our community and how it's laid out both with respect to its people its legacy and its infrastructure next slide please this lays out elementary schools that are located within the regions and i want to pause for just a moment both for our board and for our public and acknowledge this plan that we're bringing to you tonight this proposal is looking exclusively at primary elementary k-5 schools right i know there's been questions about middle schools and high schools we will get to that but first we have to again build off of that foundation as we look at elementary schools here you see them laid out by region i'm not going to name

071individual schools but take about 10 or 15 seconds to look at each of the schools located within the regions thank you now we've also gone to the step of understanding the comparison of the demographics both with respect to race and ethnicity and household income enrolled students in durham and the capacity of our facilities one thing i want to note here utilization is our enrollment divided by capacity within a region so when you see that utilization percentage that's the number of students divided by how many seats do we have in that region our families of color you can see here each of the regions is at or above 50 percent our medium family income is 50 000 or greater for each of these regions notably the central region does include students that are in the undergraduate

072programs as well as in the community college program at durham tech nc central and duke university so that kind of suppresses some of the income values you might see there for the central region which would pick up on that next slide please with that i'd like to hand it back over to dr julie pack to talk about the vision for the academic programs and possible placements for those programs dr pack thank you mr palmer and good evening board members dr mobingo next slide please this slide reflects what we heard about program interest from our community engagement and that includes the content and programs that are important for all children to experience uh to position themselves for success there was significant emphasis from our community community engagement to consider what if all durham schools were great

073schools and the district were to be growing great schools together in addition we heard about programs of interest that include global and world languages year-round calendar options and montessori programs as well as pre-k and exceptional children's program alignment we were asked about why why do we have specialization at the elementary in some schools when all students should experience high quality programming in the arts in technology science and math particularly in the younger elementary years which are critical for ensuring strong exposure and a foundation for middle and high school where students interests began to solidify at elementary as program considerations were discussed the issue of ensuring all students all children experiencing comprehensive high quality programs was heavily stressed because of the misperception that the district is channeling resources into some schools but not others next slide

074please the north carolina state board of education's guiding mission states every public school student will graduate from high school globally competitive for work in post-secondary education and prepared for life in the 21st century the first goal in the state board of education's future-ready students for the 21st century plan states that every student excels in rigorous and relevant core curriculum that reflects what students need to know and demonstrate in a global 21st century environment including a mastery of languages an appreciation of the arts and competencies in the use of technology so as we are growing great schools together and building on the program interests emphasized by our community we have lifted the areas that are important for all elementary children to experience in order to position themselves for success this proposal ensures every elementary school will

075provide every elementary student the following visual arts and music and dedicated classroom spaces and world languages at least weekly in science technology engineering and math or stem on a daily basis next slide please this slide is a visual representation of the elementary student assignment plan in regards to program options on the left hand side in the blue column we've lifted those programs that i just talked about that would be embedded in every elementary school including stem music visual arts as well as global languages in the middle or yellow column we see those programs that would be accessible to students in each region such as ec special programs ec title 1 and pre-k kindergarten as well as year round and dual language immersion application programs finally the right hand or orange column outlines the application programs

076that would be accessible to students across regions which are international baccalaureate montessori and our ignite online academy the next few slides will outline the proposed placement of the regional and district-wide application programs next slide please this line shows the program placement recommendations for regional access to year-round and dual language immersion application programs to determine placement administration utilize the suitability criteria outlined in our updated policy including centrality to the region neighborhood context capacity and enrollment data in addition to these criteria we included the percentage of latinx population to determine the best fit for the dual language immersion programs this chart outlines the recommended placement of both programs within each region so as you can see uh in the year-round school placement recommendations are in the northern easley eastern oak grove central eastway southeast pearson town and

077southwest hope valley with w.g pearson also serving the central southeast and southwest to provide equity of access to a year-round calendar in those regions the dual language immersion placement recommendations are as follows halt in the northern region merrick moore in the eastern region club boulevard in the central lyons farm in the southeast and southwest elementary in the southwest next slide please this slide shows the program placement recommendations for district-wide montessori and international baccalaureate application programs as you know we currently have two successful montessori programs at moorhead and watts it is proposed that we launch an additional montessori program at little river elementary to increase the access to montessori across the district we currently have a successful international baccalaureate program at burton elementary and we propose to launch an additional ib program at ekpo to also

078increase access for students across the district the intention with these regional and district-wide program placement selections is to be responsive to the community's concerns and interests to that end every school will have a base area or neighborhood with right to attend the application program this plan will increase access and diversity in application schools through the lottery which will balance the diversity of the school through consistent rules and finally the proposal is to locate these intentional application programs in schools where we want to capture the available market share at this time i'll hand it back to melody marshall director of student assignment thank you dr pack and we can go to the next slide please and the one after that thank you so strategic plan priority five and the addendum strategies charged our district with evaluating

079the system of choice student assignment policies and school boundaries and to develop an integrated plan grounded in equity that balances programming policies and geographic boundaries so the focus on equity has literally been the driving force of this work to increase equity and access in our differentiated programs to provide socioeconomic representation and diversity in our schools and to intertwine a cohesive community engagement plan that invites all members of our community to the table for these conversations so as we begin to focus our discussions around school assignment rules we will continue to lift the focus of equity as it again is the foundation of this work we could go to the next slide please thank you again board for your december 9th 2021 adoption of the revisions of policy 4150 school assignment which offers the guidelines for

080the development of the rules of assignment for our application schools as we move forward into developing the rules the district will continue the process that we followed towards policy development which included internal and external stakeholder input and collaboration with our community to ensure that our rules are reflective of our school board our district and our community and that it reflects the values as well as being transparent and inclusive as we do this work so to that in we will establish an implementation work group with a purpose to advise in the development of fair and equitable rules for that for our application schools rules for consideration will include such topics as sibling priorities plans for our legacy students and those are students who are currently attending impacted schools and lottery procedures including waiting program links transportation

081and opt out program options and with that i will pass the presentation back to mr palmer to take us into the next section thank you miss marshall next slide please okay with that i want to just remind the board that again our school boundaries are drawn to support the vision for the academic program and each of our schools as we go forth will be presented tonight we're going to go region by region and take it slow okay next slide so here we are today this is for the 2223 academic year very excited to be opening a brand new elementary school lions farm elementary on scott king road under the principal leadership of dr mr james hopkins and it is a state-of-the-art facility set to open here in august 2022 that brings us to 31 elementary

082schools we have 22 school boundaries and we have 10 choice zones one school has both a boundary and a choice zone which we can talk about that another time this is the manifestation as dr hardy said in her opening comments with regards to we had a vision once durham has changed much when we do small scale adjustments we have sometimes contradictory policies and boundaries that overlay on top of one another that has led to the disparities that we're aware of our free reduced lunch rates at schools sometimes that are adjacent to each other range from 26 to 100 percent similarly our students of color can range from 49 to 100 again often at schools that are next to each other next slide please to do a school boundary especially in a comprehensive plan like this

083and to do it well i think that's important we must ensure that change is well planned we've shared with you a vision for the academic program this evening that includes our pre-k program our ec program our application programs and the location of those programs our school facilities being mindful of capacity where they're located and are they designed to support the academic program and the third layer are students where do they live in relationship to the schools where do they live in relationship to one another and what resources do they have access to and what resources do they need to achieve and ignite the limitless potential we believe every student in durham county possesses so a school boundary in a comprehensive plan like this brings all of these facets together next slide please it is hard

084to visually demonstrate durham county because we are a long tall county we try to do that here reflective of the regions that you see in the darker lines and school boundaries for each of our 31 soon-to-be 32 elementary schools again this is for the 2024-25 academic year for both lions farm as well as murray massenburg we're going to walk through region by region show you where we are today for the 22-23 academic year and what we're proposing for 24-25 next slide please so on the left you can see the northern region's school boundaries you also see our priority zones i want to pause here just for a moment and acknowledge the partnership with the gis department with the city and county of durham they host currently are publicly facing legal boundaries and on the right

085we've been partnering with nc state universities institute for transportation research and education to host and facilitate our proposed boundaries on the left you see currently our school boundaries and priority zones for mangum little river glenn which we'll talk more about in just a moment in respect to eastern durham eno valley easley hillendale and holt on the right you see adjustments to those boundaries for mangum little river eno valley easley hillandale holt and sandy river i will note the boundaries for holt and easley hope being a dual language immersion campus easily being a year-round campus and little river being proposed as a montessori campus each of those schools has a school boundary base and we have reserve seats for application in addition to those boundaries we're going to go region by region here and take it

086slow on the next slide please we're going to go to the eastern region and i'm going to take just a moment to talk about glenn because it's important glenn is a school that we very much need to support its current boundary as you can see on the left hand side stretches 20 miles from main street to falls lake there are 2 500 students that live in glenn's boundary and there are five schools that sit on top on some level of a priority zone or an adjacent campus that makes it very hard to plan for glenn and support that campus and its students in addition i would also note that currently not only glenn but bethesda are in our capital improvement program the proposal that we bring to you tonight will emphasize that we need additional

087support at both glen and bethesda as we move forward having said that we are prepared to support the students as our campuses are currently constituted for 24 25 at glennon bethesda and all the schools in eastern durham you see her boundaries proposed for glenn elementary merrick moore oak grove spring valley and bethesda with merrick moore serving as a dual language immersion campus in oak grove serving as a year-round campus currently there are no application programs located in the eastern durham region with this proposal we will be bringing to dual language emerging in yearbound next slide please the central region as we talked about is bracketed on the northern edge by interstate 85 to the west by 15501 in nc 147 to the south and soon to be completed east end connector interstate 885 to the

088east that's reflected in the regional dark lines that you see we have proposed a dual language immersion program a club boulevard elementary school an international baccalaureate program at ikepo the montessori program at watts and a year around campus at eastway you see here boundaries proposed for those campuses on the left again where we are today with respect to those boundaries and then the priority zones that sit on top of those boundaries in the current constitution next slide please for southeastern you can see in the left we have some schools like bethesda which has 1800 students in its boundary with three priority zones that sit on top of bethesda it makes it very difficult to support the campus and the leadership at bethesda not to mention the students which is why we're here to the right

089you see our proposed boundaries for the southeast region that includes burton as an international baccalaureate program orrin harris fayetteville street w g pearson which we proposed as a year-round program to support not only the southeast region but the central region and the southwest region pearson town elementary school again is a year-round campus as it's currently constituted but now with the base area arkwood elementary school and lions farm elementary school which we're proposing is a dual language emerging campus next slide please our fifth and final region is southwest southwestern you can see on the left the majority of our schools currently in southwest durham are neighborhood boundary schools today there is currently a montessori program at moorhead which we have proposed to continue on with but now bringing a formal boundary to the moorhead base in

090addition boundary adjustments for cc spalding lakewood elementary school hope valley we have proposed as a year round forest view creekside murray massenburg in southwest and southwest we have proposed to continue as a dual language emerging campus next slide please so that's a lot of change that we're proposing question we must ask is what does it bring to our students and our families to what end as ms marshall shared earlier currently of our 5 900 application seats the bulk of those seats are already allocated for our priority zones which sit on top of boundaries which ratchets up the disparities that we've discussed earlier the proposal that you see before you balances out the base area for each of our application schools and provides lottery access to a comparable measure at each of our campuses we're currently

091proposing 49 base area seats for those application schools and 51 lottery seats next slide with respect to the geography of access who has access to which seats you can see our current state of where our magnet program or application program seats are for the 22-23 academic year with the proposal we've brought to you both with respect to the vision for the academic program and school boundaries you can now see the allocation of magnet or application program seats by region so strongly is an administration that this brings about greater equity and access to all of durham's communities and students next slide please to kind of summarize for you we're able to move with this proposal from 13 severely over or under enrolled schools down to three and if those three we have a plan for each

092of those campuses glenn bethesda and club boulevard are all in our capital improvement program which means not only do we need to renovate those campuses but we have an opportunity to grow those campuses and we need support there with respect to equitable access we've been able to align pre-k and ec classrooms so that young children won't have to go from one school to the next to see the academic program that they need for support in addition we've been able to balance out those base area seats with the lottery seats at our application schools we heard from you the board find the ratio that respects both our desire for neighborhood schools and our desire for choice this is an effort towards that lastly every day we're aware of the challenges with respect to transportation we have

093currently students and buses that must traverse all five regions this will ensure that our schools are located in the regions that their students live in which will help us dramatically pursue strategic plan particle 5e transportation efficiency next slide please so for the board and for those at home if you haven't seen them already we have a short link here if you would like to see the interactive map you can plug in addresses you're able to search or zoom in street level or any level next slide with that i'm going to hand it back over to our colleagues in public affairs mr sutterth real quick do you want questions at the end or piecemeal you're almost at the end so uh we will we will take these last couple of slides and then turn it over

094to you next slide please my colleagues uh and i specifically want to cite our director of marketing community engagement gina cooper we've been doing more than two years of heavy community engagement on this we've been learning a lot along the way we've been trying to do this during a pandemic we've been going digital we've been going to community ambassadors what we are presenting to you tonight is the culmination of more than two years worth of engagements more than a thousand pieces of community feedback from street corners from meetings and from online with engage.dpsnc.net we held listening and learning sessions in the spring regional sessions of pro problem scoping uh regional sessions about uh brainstorming for solutions and scenarios that brought you to the regional plan that you uh approved uh last last year we have

095taken all of the feedback that our community gave us and we have shared information throughout this calendar year about where we're going what our ideas were leading up to the presentation that you have here tonight and that work is going to continue particularly you saw the reference to the implementation work group that we need rules and procedures for transitions for families that are in programs now that may be changing for families that are assigned to schools or those assignments may be changing we need to do that work openly with participation from our community um transparently and so the the engagement is hardly done it will continue feedback and input will also take place at a board public hearing for boundaries and i've been informed by ms smith that may 31st at 6 30 p.m works

096well for your schedules we wanted to have that between this presentation and the time that we will be coming to you with a request for action if i could go to the next slide please and then the last informational slide that we have for you tonight is our transition plan we've talked about moving slow to move fast to have an impact on our community but to do it methodically and carefully and systematically we are addressing with systemic issue we are addressing systemic issues they require a systemic response so for 2022 23 for next year new boundaries will be in effect for lions farm parkwood creekside we will launch the growing together initiative for our secondary programs we've been talking about the elementary our families are already asking well what does this mean for the future

097we are creating ib programs um strengthening ib programs at the elementary level to strengthen uh to create a stronger pipeline for our ib middle and high school we'll begin the regional alignment of ec pre-k and ec special programs in 2223 and we will finalize with the help of our community the rules for application schools and lottery procedures the following year 23 and 24 the lottery rules will go into effect for the january 2024 lottery for the 2024 to 25 school year we'll continue the regional alignment of ec pre-k and ec special programs and we will launch with exciting intensity a campaign about growing great schools in 2024 to 25 we will have new elementary school boundaries in effect murray massenburg elementary will open we will phase we will complete the phase in of ec pre-k

098and ec special programs and then in 2025 to 26 if we can't get it done in 2425 we will have completed the renovation of six elementary schools and we are hoping to expedite the launch of the ib and montessori programs in 2024 or 25 but we are giving ourselves a little bit of room to see if we're going to try to do it faster but our target is certainly by 2025 to 2026. to align with the opening of the regional year-round schools and the dli programs i'm going to turn it back over to dr monk and dr hardy open it up for uh questions thank you so much for that presentation thank you for taking it slow for us and just know there's a lot of information and there will probably be a lot of

099questions i want to open up to the board this mr sears thank you could we get the slides uh up again i apologize for the short notice there's a certain slide you want to see yeah i want us to retreat to the slide that talks about going from 72 percent to magnet seats allocated by zone i believe i believe that is slide 31 like six-pack yep one forward yeah so uh one back please one slide um back towards the beginning please thank you so i first off i mean as i've told several community members including my wife i this is a tremendous project you could spend years in analysis paralysis trying to do this right and so administration kudos on the work i sincerely thank you for getting this done we did hit the pause

100button on the pandemic and i think with good reason because we weren't able to reach communities that couldn't be reached digitally and so i appreciate the pause that has been put in place i also want to acknowledge there are several [Music] layers i think that this board or the community could dig into and i think there's some danger in digging in too deeply to the individual regions or the individual lines um we're going to get that feedback i've already started getting that feedback and some of it is healthy and some of it is not very healthy someone is very selfish to be franked um but this this one statistic is one that i do want us to consider and um whether it's mr palmer or mr monk um of the share going to priority seats

101to 49 is a good step but i do want to ask the question and it's perhaps more rhetorical and not for tonight but for further analysis is what if what if we said that's not good enough what if we said we want to see 25 or even 10 percent or even 0 dsa is a 0 right school and half of our lottery seats is certainly better than three quarters but i'm not confident that 49 board members is where i want to land personally if we're going to do this once every 30 years and not saying that that's exactly what we're going to do so administration that's some feedback for me from me is i don't know that 49 is good enough and i i want to see some work on that and what the other

102options are i do want the administration to confirm for the i don't know 35 people that are on facebook live and 10 that are on youtube um we're talking about a year and a half from now is when the rubber meets the road the the assignment schools application is in january of twenty four help me thank you a year and a half from now can administration can you confirm that's what we're talking about okay that was a yes and that and that the decision on all of this as i saw on the timeline is 22 so sometime in the next school year we're gonna finalize this plan that could be this fall which is six months from now this could be this next spring which is about a year from now correct just saying it

103another way administration we're going to finalize the plan right so what what will come next once we get all of the schools and the boundaries solidified comes the work of rules of access what will the priorities be how will siblings be attached there's much work to be done this fall to backward map from that launch of the lottery being ready in january of 2024 there's much work to be done with schools the schools to plan to prepare the training and all of the the staff so yes okay thank you and and the question is coming from a place of we may have a board hearing on may 31st but what are the other access points for community before we're done absolutely yeah i may want uh chip to come back but the engage.dpsnc.net is open

104we are receiving and reviewing that feedback that is a certainly active and dynamic access point for us yeah i'll let mr sutter yeah and and while you answer that i mean i i use that i assume we all use that and this presentation is up there but decisions in 2223 that's abroad right so the decisions that we are asking you to make at the next full board meeting will involve the boundaries themselves we need additional time with our community for the rules of access for the changes in the lottery our goal is to have rules of access to the lottery that ensure that schools that are well resourced that families that do not have those resources have a better opportunity to get into those schools for schools that are poorly resourced that have excellent programs

105that have been put into them that families have the opportunity to access those those programs as well this is where we need community participation over the next four five six months to make sure that people trust the process and have had input into the process so the decision that we are asking you to make at your next board meeting is going to be these are going to be the school boundaries effective 2024. we will work with our community further to answer questions such as what happens if my child is at a school whose program is changing what happens if i have a fourth grader or a fifth grader and the boundary line is about to change we have some thoughts but we don't have answers yet and we need our community to participate in those

106and those will be not just online it's going to be uh it's going to be a very robust uh process and we will have more information about that for you at our next meeting thank you yeah to that point that's my final third item is as as soon as it is possible for you to handle the input the the biggest question i'm getting in the community is the legacy families the grandfathering policies and all i have right now to answer is we did this with lions farm and i don't want to say that too many times and set expectations if that's not what the administration's recommendation is going to be thank you mr sears dr mcbank i also want to answer one of your first questions i just wanted to answer to the question of

10772 verses 49 as we know this work has been done 30 years ago as we're making those changes we're going to be really careful not to change everything that has worked before we've been really successful in other places and we really want to put it cautiously it's not going to happen 30 years again later on so every probably five years and all that will be going back to the table as dorm is growing and making those adjustments our families that's really chose dps we are going to work with them and going with a stream about 10 percent we can jump without some of the programs and the school that has worked really hard and i'm just going to caution you now it's not to go to that issue and mr lee all right um i

108echo mr sears appreciation for this this is excellent i was actually i can't remember who i was speaking to but i do believe that this is something that we should once has implemented you know apply for like the magna awards and the school boards associations and uh for access for equitable access this is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be recognized and duplicated around the nation um so i just i show appreciation for that um my question should be a fairly um short question here is um you know we've had issues like with watts or so forth with diversity right of the population in which we service theirs kind of dwindle over time as far as the diversity of it now look at little river and the little river zone is generally around

109um what is the neighborhood up there turn tray burner right and um although there's diversity up there it's not you know it's not as diverse as it's a lot like what mangum would be right um when we're thinking about these programs are we putting are we putting safeguards in to make sure that we don't well to make sure that we do think about diversity and programs like little river is going to change to a k it's got is it a uh montessori it's going to change to a montessori right i want to make sure that we're putting in i don't know if we put if putting in is the right word but keeping an eye on uh the diversity of these programs because uh one of the things i appreciate about this is the diversity

110aspect of the different programs in the different zones and in durham and i think that is the part i believe we hold up as an award-winning program and i do want to make sure the individual buildings you know are accounting for that continuing that diversity you know i don't want it to um you know watts kind of became a neighborhood technically a neighborhood type of school where certain types you know certain houses were only meant for certain schools you know and and things of that sort so you could get in the watts or so forth but um i want to make sure we're not that we're not falling into that you know as we move forward because i think this program is excellent that's the only observation that i had and but again appreciate showing

111appreciation of there really wasn't a question i just wanted to make sure that we're keeping an eye and i saw head shaking but we're keeping an eye on the diversity aspects or the considerations of schools like little river because it is really just for trevor it the zone really surrounds trey byrne it's a little bit outside of it but it is okay uh we'll go mr raven then aspire first of all i'd like to thank you all for this information i know it took a lot of time a lot of effort to put together and and we you know we've we've heard points from from mr sears and mr lee and i i kind of want to follow up on some of what they said hopefully we if we could actually put the slides back

112up there's a slide called enrollment facilities and diversity and i don't want anyone to look at some of this data and make any assumptions because i don't want to make assumptions myself so it's going to be i think it is actually slide 13 out of 39 it's the elementary regions enrollment facilities and diversity it's the one that has the different regions in the median household so it's closer to the beginning yes keep on going it was early on during the presentation and some of this some of this data caught me and yeah you just you just passed it keep on going it has the slide with the median household income there you go all right so the first thing that i like to kind of bring to everybody's attention without having to go back to

113the other slide is i personally live in that eastern zone and when i saw that zero percent that that was a huge red flag right it's probably one of the fastest areas of durham and it's so many i've been part of it where you see the pta parents after elementary school they just kind of leave and that's that's where we've lost a lot of families is after elementary school but i want to ask some questions on on this because i want to make sure that i'm interpreting this data properly when it says when it um is referencing people of color is that talking about that live within this area or the makeup of the school that is within the area okay so so this is this is very important to to point out if we're

114looking at eastern and southeast okay these two areas have the based on based on its data it has the lowest utilization but it actually has the highest median household income which makes me think that there's a correlation between the people that have the means to go elsewhere they are actually going elsewhere right and and i want to really point that out um because that that's really what we're facing i i really do believe that being able to realign these resources it shows promise it shows all the access that families will be able to receive um and it's the incentive to continue to stay here with dps so i would love to see i know this is going down the road but but from what i'm seeing with the work that i've seen thus far this

115is just the beginning right we're going to look at the elementary schools we're going to look at how we reallocate the resources and that is going to then begin to follow them to middle school and then that's going to begin to follow them to high school so this is just the beginning of what dps is going to be able to again to reinvent itself and reallocate the great wealth of resources that we have in a more equitable fashion to make sure that everybody has access so i just want to say thank you thank you thank you so yeah when when mr raven ends with thank you i start with thank you as well this is incredible work it's detailed work it's also complicated to take in it i think it's the third time i've seen

116it and i still have questions and so my biggest concern is the timeline y'all have set us on and mostly because this is the craziest time of the academic year for our families for our students for our educators and and i want us to get the level of feedback from this community that this community always brings um and so this this vote that you i mean we've got this one hearing scheduled on may 31st which is great i think of that as kind of the start of it and i want to hear from you all about why there's a profound rush i know there's much much more work to continue but like i'd like every school that's going to be impacted on boulevard you're going from a humanities magnet here's what your map looks like

117now here's where your students will come from i want to hear from that school community like same thing are in harris you know you're going to get your students a different way but we're still going to let you do your amazing core knowledge curriculum like i want that school level feedback from the school communities and i don't feel like we've had that yet same thing with these maps which are profoundly logical mr palmer like beautifully designed but i want us to like get that micro level of durham feedback and it feels rushed if we really try to push it as fast as y'all have planned so talk me through kind of the urgency of it and how we can get that level of feedback that you guys know that durham loves to bring with respect

118to the why in the timeline that operations can speak to the additional efforts or efforts in general with regards to community engagement we will defer to public affairs okay i want to first lay the landscape of the why and i'll loop back to the opening comments in question from mr sears the clarifying remark about were we to proceed with this academic program the comprehensive plan when would it take into effect at 18 months january of 2024 which sounds like forever but we've learned it's not right i think we as an administration certainly from the school planning perspective of things would have vastly preferred that lions farm be brought online with a boundary in leadership earlier right we want to get out of that harried reactive kind of we have to bring a boundary forward this

119would allow for families to embrace and understand i think you'll see on the slide if we can pull up the timeline just for a moment and i am going to pivot and hand it to mr settereth the opening of murray massenberger in 2425 is going to directly relieve five overcrowded schools think of all those mobile classrooms you see at hope valley creekside forest view lakewood murray massenburg is in the heart of all those schools right even southwest so they're in with marie massenberger opening in 2425 this is the opportunity um and if we could pull up the timeline i think it will help both this feedback as well as engagement efforts so for rit department if we could pull up that last timeline slide that will go the year by year walk through we have

120been paying attention and learning the lessons of as we open schools how quickly can we make sure that families know well she's opening that up can i while you're still here also if i could just inject really quickly this has been a three year process engagement has been going on with families with schools i remember going to one at club boulevard school in general so when mr sears had asked a question about the 49 where did that come from i know that we had a board retreat last summer and we shared what our desires and input was and i just wanted to know if you also can speak to how many schools or people have been engaged along the way to even help you get to the regional mapping that you have within us today

121and i would even go back to the fall of 2019 when the watts pta invited us to a diversity equity and inclusion night i think miss lucy were there right and at that time i remember i think as an administration we were there to we were invited as observers right and to make a small presentation we did not yet have a formal initiative of growing together and then we shared with the watts pta and the students that were assembled thank you for the invitation you all are actually ahead of us right and in many ways we've heard from our community resoundingly that the community is ahead of us and we are trying to walk with them as we go so our efforts on engagement as was alluded to earlier touching thousands of families has gone

122on for over two years think of right when coven landed you'll remember april of 2020 right we were we were there sharing with you the disparity data two years ago over two years ago um and so i i'll leave the rest of engagement to mr seder i want to speak briefly to one i think very important point of tension that we as a community and administration aboard have to wrestle out and it relates back to several questions we've had in our community we have expressed values around three ideas neighborhood schools proximity if you will how close is the school to my home diversity and choice now there's trade-offs there right there's priorities of which of those three or amongst those three which are the things that we value the most we heard certainly from the

123board during the summer retreat could we figure out this balance what's the right ratio for lottery seats versus neighborhood seats and i think again our proposal here balances that out around 50 50. um but that tension it is very hard to have a neighborhood school that i choose to go to through an application that is also diverse we've seen the disparities and outcomes in the data and mr lita your question we have so much improvement that we can do through the administration of our lottery to pursue our goals around diversity equity and inclusion this is a component of it the work ahead lies in those rules right and reflecting our durham community values so i really respect everything that you all have done to communicate so far and and i'm not minimizing that at all

124i do think this level of detail that you presented tonight where you take one map here's old map and then here's proposed map right is is you know the level of detail that folks expect and i wonder if we can do one-page flyers to go home to anybody enrolled in pick southwest right here's old map here's new map here's existing program here's new program and then come tell us what you think may 31st as a as the next step something that's paper something that like is not just relying on electronics you know and and zoom meetings and things like that i just want us to make sure that we're connecting with as many folks that are going to be impacted as possible and and open that conversation to folks that don't have the luxury of

125watching these really fun board meetings and tuning in to all the the virtual ways that that we've engaged folks already um i mean i attended several of those both in person and online the in-person attendance was earlier in covet it was small right it was you know um so yeah and i know there's i know there's tension and we're never going to hear from everybody but but i do think these are profound changes the map i love that i keep pulling up is this one near the end where y'all have the color-coded stuff right the little so i'm learning that purple means a traditional school right whatever we're calling that green means of montessori school orange means right we don't have a key to it i'm trying to make a key in my head orange

126means year round and red means dual language immersion and then blue means what does blue mean oh no ib which is yeah so that i think is helpful for folks to kind of visualize and see that one that one map that you all have which is fantastic um so anyway mr schneider i'm sorry i didn't mean to ramble on no you're quite all right and i agree with you board meetings are fun um it is important um it's important for us to acknowledge the operational constraints that uh mr palmer uh mentioned um we have schools coming up out of the ground and the work that needs to be done to identify boundaries and make adjustments and programs has to happen quickly the proposal that we have builds off of two years worth of various types

127of community engagement um i take your points about the uh about the potential for print additional print material we have some additional print material that just came out of the pipeline uh today that you received copies of um i will talk with my colleagues tomorrow about what's possible um between now and march 3rd and may 31st with regards to individual maps or something like that i'd like to believe that we can do something but i do think it is important to view this proposal as the culmination of community engagement and the gateway to further community engagement we have a very logical pr uh proposal before you uh that takes into account equity it takes into account it uses um it uses priority zones um as an equity tool um and aft after a time when

128priority schools have evolved over priority zones have evolved over the last 30 years into the opposite so we will communicate as much as we possibly can over the next over the next few weeks and then there will be a massive effort to have the community be part of the transition planning for these rules sorry to clarify like some things that i see all answering people's questions on engage.dpsnc.net which is great people are sending you really detailed stuff and you all have really detailed answers which is fantastic dual language immersion is a cohort within these schools that's what it's proposed to be not the entirety of the school can you clarify that for folks as well whereas montessori would be the whole school year round obviously it's the whole school that's kind of well that's absolutely

129right the dual language immersion would be a cohort within a school building however families within every region would be able to apply for access to the dual language immersion cohort and that then would matriculate through the school keeping in mind that every elementary school under this new model will have global language so all of our students would be exposed to a foreign language at elementary beginning in kindergarten however the dual language immersion is and of itself an intensive program were you done miss meyer i've never done that [Laughter] miss mariotas thank you so much um i really appreciated you know also the meetings that we had two by twos as you call them um to talk about these programs and i think there's there's going back to all those conversations that we've had from the

130board retreat um the study that you all did the analysis incorporating community resources you know infrastructure highways like just looking taking all that into account from a perspective of what a community looks like i really appreciate that and also being able to listen to what the community is asking for more montessori schools more dual language schools um ensuring that all our schools provide arts stem science you know um [Music] i love steam but you know you got it in there arts and stem um and also languages i mean it's so important um i have you know i'm a parent as many of us here on the board a lot of conversations with with community members around what does it mean to really have a community a school that reflects the community a school that takes

131into account that there are neighbors that there are you know folks that live near a school and want to be able to access the playground or want to be able to access certain things and i know we've changed our policies and have looked into ways that we can make our spaces accessible um that happens that is not always available for folks if they're coming from all the way across one area to another and we know we have had busing issues we know that transportation has been you know a challenge based on limited capacity that we have um staffing the buses themselves and so much and so i know that this is definitely taking into account so many factors so i'm very grateful and i really appreciated just all the level of detail i i wanted

132to just say something regarding the process that as i mentioned i feel is very comprehensive and we're going to have to have areas where we're going to be okay and some areas are where their compromise is actually might lead to to some concerns and that is going to be a part of any process that we do we can't do 100 in all the levels and all the factors all the categorizations um but what i wanted to ask more in and it kind of goes back to a question that was asked before is on the demographic data i know that we're probably we use census data to figure out you know where um what the demographics the components look like but we know in a school system we have certain groups that take for example the

133community demographics look very different than what the school demographics look like and so for example in the community you might have you know our population of non-english speakers immigrant population um that represents a minority a very a minority that is in growth right um in our school system we have significant so a lot of these families like 33 of our families you know speak spanish or you know and or other languages as well but especially for the for the spanish-speaking families you realize that that was one of our strengths that a lot of our families are choosing public schools over charters over private schools and so i just wanted to give you all a little bit of time into talking about the difference between the community demographics which might say you know for the latino

134population 14.5 close to 15 but then in the school system you have 33 percent and it looks very different for um families that identify as white that might have a majority in in in the community demographics maybe close to 40 and yet in the school system 19 right and so i wanted to give you all a little bit of time to just talk about like that analysis as well okay how much time do we have this evening i will i will um open if you will just with a with a broad landscape very briefly i'm going to try to echo the advice that we've received from council with regards to when we're doing student assignment comprehensive plans like this what we can do with respect to protected class right we can look at census data

135at a neighborhood level or at a regional level we're not allowed to do is individually plan a school for a particular student what you've seen this evening does not reflect any information about a student's home address or any of their protected classes which would include race and ethnicity individual family income characteristics like that having said that so i just want to open with that what we are able to do is look at the resources that students have access to in their neighborhood now we've geo-located which is a fancy word for individually mapped 30 000 students and our charter students so we have a very keen sense of the profile of durham now we don't have access to private school data right because obviously we don't know now we do know the overall number of students

136in durham right and i think it's been shared this evening that we do not service every child that lives in durham right however we do support durham schools these are hubs where our children attend school these are hubs where they learn to be part of the 21st century workforce right so the census data that we referenced earlier the community data irrespective of a child does or doesn't attend is reflected to mr raven's question earlier in the regional profiles that we've talked about for individual schools and as we've been looking at boundary assignments we've been looking at our students and our student accounts and where they live and the resources that are available in those neighborhoods and then looking at those resources at a school level so we have a keen sense of what resources do

137individual students have access to and if they were to attend to school what would that look like right now again we're not able to share that data publicly or in this form but i want to go through the step of saying at a regional level to the table earlier yes that is 2019 american community survey data that will be updated when the new 2020 census data is released for our boundaries we've gone a much deeper level this is not just you know playing chess board with pieces this is really looking at every child looking at the resources they have access to and then looking at the assignment to schools in coordination with the choices they've historically made so we're very keenly mindful of that these boundaries don't just reflect durham county these boundaries reflect our

138students and the families that are choosing durham public schools thank you so much dr palmer and then just my follow-up question um we we have talked about expansion of dual language and it's been referenced you know that we we've started with that process um and i think that with with uh with the coming years we might see a need to increase you know to add more sizable classrooms add more of that and so this is this is a step in that direction in terms of offerings that might change just over time just as program offerings become more popular more families uh sign up or or there's a way you know just um what is the mechanism by which families express that they're excited about a program they didn't make it you know because there's a

139cut off capacity and all the considerations but what is the mechanism that we will have especially as we i know for lottery there's a waiting list but for priority zones can you tell us a little bit more about how we gauge popularity or or interest yeah that's a great question and um i won't take us back to the slide deck that i will point out in the infographic in your mind think back to the the image director marshall shared the 14 000 applications of which we can support three thousand so we've been carefully going through those and understanding that universally across durham there is expressed interest in programs right certain particular programs and i think those are reflected in the recommendations we have for the academic programs as well as student achievement in some of

140our programs again our international baccalaureate program at burton is a national model that is worthy of supporting and hopefully learning from and replicating at ekpo we will continue to be in a position to certainly through operations support the vision and leadership in the academic program i think our annual lottery is a good bellwether indicator of where is there additional demand where we can't fill it um but realistically right now and i'll share this candidly we're in many instances in our application programs only able to support not even 10 less than 10 percent of the applications that come in so i think you're seeing that in the recommendations that we're bringing forth and hopefully this will address some of that access but also in addition it will give us the ability to continue to come back

141and learn from as durham grows right and as our academic program fills out fully our hope tonight is that this conversation is less about the application schools and more about a robust strong fundamental high quality education at every school all schools in durham are great schools i have the unique privilege of going to every campus and it is incredible and inspiring to go and see every one of our dps elementary schools and say that's a school i would go to that's the school i would send my children to and i encourage certainly our board i know many of all of you have been to our schools but our parents as well right our parents as well we're able to offer global language at every school i don't think dr mcbenga there's many school districts in

142north carolina that are able to offer that to their community and their children right in durham north carolina you can take a direct flight to paris right you can be part of not only the 21st century economy but the 21st century global economy from here kids can go anywhere and the global language is just one artifact of that i know i'm going into my operational lane but i'm very excited to support that vision i'll just quickly say i'm an ib uh student of hillside graduated with the ib program and i know that you know this is uh this is how i learn my french and can sing now so i just have to throw that out dps is you know believe in this product if i may add very briefly to that besides the fact

143that apparently i need to hand my chief communications officer badge over to mr palmer um the thing that excites me the most about this uh proposal is that it enables us to simultaneously improve equity in our schools equity of access equity of programs and the strength of our programs while attracting families back to durham public schools the the lack of choice programs in eastern durham county addressing that and making those available to families who for whatever reason transportation access to resources whatever now they have more choices available to them um we've been talking uh we've been talking a lot about how before the pandemic we were on the growth on the growing uh track again growing our enrollment reducing the number of schools that have been labeled low performing this helps us get back there

144can i ask one quick follow-up question on the application programs and i feel bad because i know chair olmstead is still here so i i haven't heard her try to jump in yet but we know you're there um the the question that i had it that actually dealt with the application programs and i know i've asked you all this personally before and you were able to tell me but uh families that are living in the central the northern um and i believe the is it the south west they will have access to to the montessori programs because they actually have the schools based in their territories but if you're home and you're looking at this map and you realize that i believe you're in the south east or the east while you may not have

145a montessori program in your territory um you all have kind of stated to me that proportionally um that proportional amount of the population or that makeup will have the inroads to have a certain allocation of seats available at that montessori program can you explain just kind of how that works i can start the this the what we're calling the district-wide access really is an amalgam of multiple regions so we'll for instance when uh you mentioned montessori is that the right example so we'll have three montessori elementaries and they will be assigned regionally to be able to apply to one of those three so we have five regions we'll have to we'll have partner regions accessing one of those three district wise so it'll go outside of your specific region of five but we'll have three

146regions uh three schools in which families can access and then in like order for the mon the ib program will have two ibs so the districts will be assigned such that the equity of access is comparable across for all families to one of those two schools so if so if i live in the eastern region and there's a montessori school little river uh maybe maybe our populations are comparable to each to each other i'm just trying to throw out random numbers maybe our populations are comparable so maybe 50 of that montessori um areas allocated for northern the northern territory and then 50 is allocated for applications that are coming from eastern so there's a there's a proportional share that is available right that's exactly that's a great example thank you that's right thank you i

147am going to turn to chair umstead to get her questions in uh thank you you were right mr raven i am here with questions uh thank you all for again letting me join virtually i had a work conflict today and so i had to be out of town um thank you staff for an incredible presentation i think this is the work of saying that we hired some city planners and transportation planners and school planners in our school system in order to do some really really important work and to be thinking about how we assign students differently to think about programs to support our students and gain access across the district i agree with mr lee list apply for some awards let's go to some conferences but thank you all for their innovative and creative thinking

148i think i um i don't want to go too much in the weeds but i know a lot of families have so many questions about the weeds so i hope that we can keep this presentation at the forefront on our website or put up the link to this presentation with the starting point of this because i know that people are going to have so many questions and we'll continue to have questions i know the webinar is listed on our website but i want to make sure that people can see this as well i think i also have questions around community engagement with this project and how do we make sure i know we're going to have a hearing on may 31st that we really do hear from all communities i'm wondering if that hearing should

149be a dps or should we take that into eastern northeast eastern durham who is one of those regions that doesn't have a program now and hear from those families directly or take it somewhere else so that we can make sure we can have access to those families um and i think especially folks who are not super digital friendly who might not be as engaged with this work and then i hope we can make sir we're also working with our community partners who have some of these conversations with families as well sharing this information with them and they can be passing it on to families who may not you know be in the virtual world as much um i also think there's a question that we haven't talked about explicitly but i know families are going

150to ask what happens at my school with my current program so i love if we can just make sure we address that question at some point um if i am at an are in harris what happens here and it sounds like with the programs that we're going to be offering at all elementary schools there'll be some overlap so some families might not see as much difference in some of the current magnet programs as we add that layers on but i would love for us to just answer that question too of what will happen with current programs we'll stop there i might have some more then so the implementation planning team will be rallying very quickly after these boundaries are approved so that we can indeed start to address some of those hot and very upfront

151questions that our families are engaging in we in turn have been beginning to do some preliminary planning along that end knowing that there are some key questions that families will have and we want to be working directly with our schools and our school communities each elementary school in turn because of the the newness of some of the things coming in and those that are more directly impacted with transitioning programs that will be transitioning out and those that are transitioning up we envision project teams for each of those schools so there's much work to be done around that all of which will be addressing the the burning questions that ms umstead has has ushered forth we could absolutely come to you with ideas about what to do for a fourth grader whose boundary has just changed

152we want that to be a part of the community conversation and that is what we will do with that core group did you have anything else yeah i just um also wanted to thank y'all for the answer to that question and actually i think that's it i just i really appreciate all the work that's been done to get to this point and know that this is just the first step in many more steps as we talk about implementation and we go to middle into high school so i think you all have laid a groundwork in a framework that's gonna um help us build as we go along so thank you and i just want to say it looks so good to see you it feels so good to see you not just hear your voice

153i appreciate technology and you being able to stream in ms buyer has another question sorry i'm trying not to have all my questions um i'm over here trying to figure out i'm using the online map which i think mr palmer is probably the best one to answer because he lives in this world so it does let you get a lot of detail what is the pie chart mean on the top left corner that keeps changing around what it what is that telling me um or others that maybe understand it and i don't yeah so what that's telling you it's a gonna try to not be technical okay it's a scalar function so as you zoom in it's telling you the percentage of seats and the lens of the window that you're looking at right so

154when you see durham public schools as a district you'll have the allocation of seats across and as you zoom in tighter and tighter and tighter it's going to show you the percentage of seats for the application programs and neighborhood programs accordingly it's a feature quite candidly that we could hide and i don't think it would have much implication if it creates confusion certainly we don't want to generate that i believe that was our colleagues at nc state trying to give us as much widget dashboard information is possible so as you scale in and out it's showing you your probation of seats by the lens that you're looking at i hope that's answering the question yeah that's that's super helpful is it true though when i zoom out at the district level that i'm we're our

155overall plan is about 50 neighborhood schools and that's modeling that way is that kind of the widget yeah i wouldn't no i would encourage us to we don't want okay we'll just not okay i'm not quite sure what you're seeing so i would just encourage us to say at this time that it's an effort to bring about a sense of with where i live what are the allocation of seats around me and the like i've had some great questions like apparently we have dance at four elementary schools in durham right they are they're asking if those will remain we don't know is the answer that i have at this point right um the ec level of stuff we're already doing a lot of this in a regional way like ec's kind of been ahead in

156some ways like the au program at little river been there rooted so long i think i know it's next on y'all's list but i almost would be curious to see how far along some of that regionalization of ec already is because it affects transportation it affects pre-k it affects kind of the multi-level of planning that y'all are doing it's always my dream for students to be able to come for pre-k and stay in that same school as much as possible so i'm hoping in your planner's planning that that's part of the dream of this as well but i look forward to engaging with the community in ways that y'all can figure out ways we can hear from folks um thank you i'm going to ask a few questions and make a few comments as well

157one appreciation thank you for these years of work and just the different layers that have to take place i truly appreciate hearing the voices at the beginning of this presentation knowing that community engagement is important and to hear that loud and clear it's beautiful well done um and i'm just i'm just glad to be a part of this leadership at this time with these changes happening with this comprehensive plan over 30 years um when my when my husband was still a part of the schools before um the city county joint um oh i want to also say and highlight arts music world language and stem having this in all of our schools i think we're answering the call to show that we're going to have high rigor in every school i appreciate you saying that

158i just want to echo that again we know there's a county survey that's been done and number one citizens concern is about education and wanting that rigor this right here gets us to set our children up for that type of success in every school so again i appreciate just the thoughtfulness you have taken in this plan i want to address the growing together community ambassadors i've heard about that before i'm going to mention it again that is a diverse group of citizens who are involved who are going to be at the planning table with the implementation of rules that is so important to consider i would like you to consider i saw a list of places you're looking at in gate and see a list of places it was mentioned in different places to engage

159different people different organizations i would love to see us have an event at the high center and specifically i didn't see that on the list so just consider that as a location option also um there's a coalition called protecting our dignity that has deep reach into the community if you can engage that that group as well to help with some of this outreach for what we consider to be hard to reach communities but it's really not they're our next door neighbors and um when you talk about an equity-based lottery assigns weight to a student's application to keep the balance reflective of the durham community first of all i think that though that 49 percent if correct me if i'm wrong it's the prioritization of that 49 percent the priority zone at 49 percent allows for

160the district to do the waiting to keep it reflective otherwise it could unbalance pretty quickly without that 49 percent is that my accurate understanding i'm seeing a nods yes that's right yes when i do my one concern is i've seen this balancing happen and then become out of balance 30 years later right that so there was a balance at one point when our magnet schools came i would like and i think this is what ms valued was mentioning as well a part of our planning and implementation community to consider what the re-review is what is a metric that considers the unintended consequences of reflective of the durham community because there's a lot of good deep thinking that we should flush out here where we can right and clarify um 4150 does a couple of things

161that are unique that we didn't have before december of 2021 right and one of those things is that it used to say i'll use air quotes here we would adjust boundaries at the superintendent and board's discretion sort of on an ad-hoc basis when needed right that had no framework to it no nor revisitation every set interval of time 41.50 gave us the ability to adjust as necessary based on our annual our annual enrollment projections as well as our 10-year forecast looking at around the corners anticipating what's coming for those at home asking what is planning that's what we do right we try to use knowledge to inform action right um but even more than that every five years now when this is in the first clause of 4150 coming back and looking back in a

162comprehensive level what is that vision for the academic program how are we doing with it instructionally and how are we doing with respect to our facilities and student assignment right enrollment so i want to take us into the history of durham for just a quick moment post-merger the demographics of watts were over 80 students of color right today that is not the reality of that school nor that neighborhood durham isn't a moment of change and has been in a moment of change for a long time through the balancing out of neighborhoods and lotteries together in conjunction we can look at the again going back to the resources of our students and making sure that in each of our schools they're reflective of the durham community rather than skewing in a particular way because that's how

163our applicant pool uh participated right and you see that in a school like pearson time which as we discussed earlier currently is 100 lottery without any equity driven waiting it is 26 frame reduced lunch because that's reflective of the applicant pool right this affords us a new opportunity to again look at the base areas for each of those application schools in conjunction with the lottery and to bring in lottery seats so that the overall profile of the school is more reflective of the durham community now to your question what's that metric what are we targeting you know again we would focus on the district level profile i think at this phase but there again the implementation rules working group would be a great avenue an opportunity to define what those measures are but at this

164point at this phase we don't want to lead with an arbitrary number as an administration we think that's an important conversation so that's our intention yeah and i appreciate the 10 years the the future in looking that's what planning does and i just want to also note in kudos to the parents from watts back in the day who did come with a suggestion about the weighted now it might have been a little disproportionate we're not planners we didn't know so you all bought this plan that can make it work and stay within our legal rights as well so thank you for that um last comment i'm going to make when we get to the implementation rules because this is the critical point and i heard dr pittman say we need to get to the decision

165from the board about the regions and the the programs within those regions when that passes then we can immediately get to those implementation and rules committees coming together that community engagement this is going to be really important i remember seeing a day in the life i want that to come back and a cycle in the life of a rolled out plan going back to what it looks like for a school and for students i'm particularly thinking about lakewood elementary school they began their dual language immersion program two years ago so their babies in that program right now they're in second grade and in 24 25 they'll be in fifth grade so again what does in that regional access is leaving lakewood elementary and it's where it's staying at southwest but it's going to lion's farm

166so again what does that day in a life in a cycle life of a cycle for the students and their opportunities that may will make it easy to understand as chair um still was talking about by um my school so people know what's going to happen for their now second graders who will be fifth graders when this rolls out but thank you for the later approaches it um we have one more quick question as we still have full agenda super quick um east durham have y'all looked at like the capacity going forward five ten years we need another elementary out there there is so much growth is that something that we can put in our discussion with the county in the near future like um any projections y'all have on that there is so much

167it's your neighborhood mr raymond i mean it's out yeah it's just so much growth and and um as y'all help us keep an eye on that i don't think we have capacity to absorb that long-term five years out but yeah so miss pirates the sixth year that we're concerned about so i i say that jokingly but i say like durham is growing right we are providing additional utilities in eastern durham let's continue to come back to that i just want to thank our staff for this wonderful work that we've been able to to put in place for the past three years i had a privilege today to have a conversation with uh county commissioners i was in a hot seat uh with all the funding that we've been asking and uh their concern was more

168about enrollment durham is growing i think with this a wonderful plan that we're putting in place it's going to attract a lot of those families that's uh never considered durham public school as a choice uh there was an article about a month or two months ago from it nc we are the only district in the state uh it's a durham as well as onslaught that has school-age students lower than 60 percent coming to us so it's really critical for us to do this work really well so we can attract more than 40 percent of school age that's not coming to us dorm is growing but dps is not growing uh our county commissioners they're having also our time to be able to fund us while our enrollment is really declining that was really a high

169topic today so we are hopeful and we are very hopeful that uh this plan is to attract and offer all these opportunities that our family has been asking with that we will be going back to ask for additional schools when we're growing so let's work together and uh i see relations of urgency how to implement these uh programs that our families been asking for uh thank you board and we're gonna continue with all your feedback to be able to engage our families uh in a more robust way uh so that they will have a good understanding of the plan at the same time they're gonna be families that will be really concerned about the transition uh like uh miss lewis just brought it up the kids will be in fifth grade then what are you

170gonna abandon this i think those are the conversations we're going to engage our families then my last point as we're bringing all these robust plans it's going to be costly to have all these programs in our schools that's where we're going to have opportunity maybe with transportation now transporting kids all over the place to be able to absorb some of those costs and be able to revisit some of the programs as well that have not worked in our schools and look in those fines as well how we can absorb within our own means so both we're going to do our best on may 31st and continue engaging those families i think the quicker you will be able to vote on this plan that's going to give us time to be able to move to the

171next step of our conversation with our community thank you for your support thank you thank you again for your presentation this was on the agenda for discussion and our next item on the agenda operations 9b is central carolina teaching initiative wake durham dr monk and dr lissane dr lesan is coming to the podium thank you oh i thought it was still on sorry i thank you for this opportunity to be able to bring information to you regarding a partnership with ccti this mou highlights our efforts transitioning an existing relationship that we have with central carolina teaching initiative via our resa partnership however at the end of this school year the 2021-22 school year the resa will no longer serve as the home for ccti this partnership has served our entire region it's an accelerated alternative

172teacher licensing program that offers recent college grads as well as like mid career professionals that are looking to change their profession to teaching it offers them a pathway to seek north carolina licensure durham public and wake county public school systems have been the greatest contributors um to this um having candidates in ccti in our region and so we would be the districts to suffer the greatest loss at the end of this school year so what we have been working on for the past few months is a way that we could partner as school districts to highlight our recruitment and retention efforts for our districts together to maintain ccti as an entity that could support our teachers additionally in this partnership one of the things that we called for ccti to do is add programming if

173we're going to be able to sustain it we need you to add an elementary arm as well as an ec arm so that we can get a pathway for those candidates and they were glad to oblige and so with this partnership dharm public schools would have 42 seats on an annual basis um for candidates that we can get on the pathway to being fully licensed in north carolina i would add that the total cost for each participant that has that goes through ccti is four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in our existing partnership that will end this year um durham public schools already contributed con contributes 2 000 for each of our teachers that go through this program and so we are looking to just add on to what we are already doing that

174reduces the cost to 27.50 for our participants to be able to get fully licensed for 27.50 in north carolina is a wonderful benefit to our employees part of what you will see in this agreement is their commitment to remain with us in this partnership with wake county you don't get to go to wake county public schools and maintain the tenants of the partnership okay it is only while you're a teacher in durham and the same for wake county public schools participants looking to come to durham and so that is kind of how we maintain our positioning in this partnership with the neighboring district approval of this mou with the addition of ec and elementary services would allow our 42 candidates to accelerate their completion of north carolina teacher licensure there's a quicker pathway through ccti

175and they also have the benefit of multiple mediums you can do all online for some programs you can do a hybrid you can do in person and so there are a lot of options for our candidates to be able to select what works best with them the mou has been reviewed by the necessary legal and fiduciary channels wake county public schools board of education actually approved this on tuesday and so we are seeking your approval tonight and i'm available to answer your questions thank you dr hassan this is up for action open up for questions ms fayaderas thank you for all the ways that we are um just addressing the need we we have a need for more educators and we have gotten a lot of emails and questions especially concerned concerns from educators who

176are looking at their school community and realizing wow we have unfilled vacancies and how you know what is the plan for that and um concerns from from families um so i i just i i want us to do a little bit of a recap this program is a program that accelerates licensing and um provides that that opportunity how are we targeting this this opportunity for instructional assistants for uh ta is there any way that we're at helping build that pipeline can you tell us absolutely and so when you're talking about ccti remember the individuals have to come with the bachelor's so when someone is applying to be a teacher and we're looking at their credentials our licensure specialists are key in identifying the candidates that would be best for this program and so they work

177directly with ccti we provide them all of the information ccti was at our job fair and so as candidates as non-traditional candidates came through they were able to visit their table and be able to get more information about the program so i do want to highlight the work of our licensure specialist and their role in helping funnel our candidates principals will even if they're looking at applicants they will even say okay this person doesn't have a teaching degree how can we get them a teaching degree so we are able to get that information to candidates up front i'd be willing to make a motion if there are no other questions or discussion i just had a question about the cost um is is there anything else that's included in this financial implications outside of the

178license cost there's the license cost and then of course there are two staff members and so that is where you see in the memorandum let me see if i can get back to that you will see the cost plus the two thousand dollars that we pay for each participant thank you move approval of the central carolina teaching initiative wake durham memorandum of understanding vacuum it's been moved and properly it's been moved by miss spy and property second by mr raven in any discussion all right all in favor will do by voice vote mr lee aspire aye mr raven aye ms valedis aye mr sears aye chair umstead my name is bettina umstead and i vote aye i also vote i this motion passes thank you next item agenda is 9c 43b determination for state ending

179403b program mr lazier good evening terry lewis um board members dr muvenga if i could have amy simonson come up she has all the answers uh that you may want to to discuss tonight but tonight we're bringing back to you um as a from the last work session that you had um the final time frame we have to make the determination of the 403 b plan that is being uh ended by the state on june 30th due to lack of participation we are we have a committee established as as was said before at the work session uh that will guide us through this uh along with uh amy simonson verdi asset management rob mclean gave you a uh overview of some of the ddq as they call it um responses from vendors that wanted to

180participate we had four that wanted to participate from that standpoint but by may 31st we have to respond back to the state and that's really the key we don't want to leave our our our staff members employees uh hanging uh having to do things on their own uh we are intending to do some things uh with the the committee uh to be able to provide guidance work sessions to be able to help them move through this change that's going on we have two options that are before us in regards to moving this plan forward on behalf of our our employees one is option one which is an individual uh independent platform that people can select we can as a committee request uh different vendors of of of these 403 b plans to participate allowing our

181individuals to be able to select from multiple vendors develop their plans for their future giving them more autonomy to do those types of things option two which we had three companies come come to us and say they would do it equitable aig and ll nlg these companies have their own portfolios to select from from that standpoint limiting individuals to be able to do things uh only within their portfolios that they they allow to to be utilized in the process um again we have to make a decision tonight um rob mclean was going to be here as well tonight but he's actually over in chapel hill presenting to them as as we speak so um ms simonson came uh as she did last last board meeting to come and answer any questions you had we did

182say we were going to do a survey to the 58 individuals that are actually still participating in the plan we sent those we sent the survey out we received uh 15 responses we had eight for the independent platform allowing the ability to choose from multiple companies that would be part of that it also provides the ability to have one-stop shopping with their plans from that standpoint and it as well through their whole portfolio because they could put money in multiple companies if they chose to uh option two which we had seven respondents for uh is that direct provider which would be we would have to select one of the three companies to move forward with uh if that was what the board chose to move with um from that standpoint so tonight the board has

183to make a decision um i didn't put a recommendation on here for you [Laughter] because i wanted you to have some more discussion if you chose to but administration would push move forward the independent platform that would provide the ability to mold their plans as they choose to and is also another thing that can happen is we have 16 plans that were grandfathered when the state took over and prudential became uh part of this 403b plan and and those people would also be able to take those existing funds in those 403 b plans and move them to the platform and have more diversity in their choosings so we do as a administration recommend um the independent platform option one mr raven i'll just say i thought i believe his name was rod mclean right i

184thought he did a great job of i know he gave a lot of information and it was in detail but um from everything that i was able to gather from his presentation and also just looking at what the ipx fund offers i know um the ip ipx vanguard fund is ranked as one of the best low cost trading options that actually is available and that was part of the reasons why i asked the question during the meeting was you don't want to necessarily give people so many choices that they're actually overwhelmed and they don't know which one to go with but the ipx does actually make recommendations like pool funds that you can invest in and from what i've been able to research there they're they're pretty stellar um i know that aig and nlg

185a lot of these companies are great you know they came up on the insurance side as opposed to the platform side just focused on low cost low transaction trades so for me i would definitely support that if the board so chooses as well anyone else if not i'll make a recommendation um yeah i'll make a i'll make a motion that um that we accept the recommendation from the administration to let's say to go with option one the independent platform that's offered by ipx second and moved by mr raven and second by miss valliadeires any other discussion i guess my discussion would be sorry we're asking um does that put us at not having any role in advising folks they are totally on their own or is ipx offered support to them as they're making this

186so ipx will give them support in that regard but we'll also as a committee being able to help guide them as well but it will be they it's it's individual choice but they will have representation from those companies if i'm not mistaken that's helpful thank you we'll do a voice vote all in favor mr lee aye ms meyer aye mr raven aye ms valderrez aye mr sears aye ms ms patent share bettina trumpstead uh this is bettina umstead i vote this is javon lewis i also vote i uh so the motion passes thank you i will i will fill out the paperwork um and and remit that to the state on behalf of this this board thank you our next agenda item is 10a academic services dps academically and gifted education plan dr pittman thank

187you so much vice chair lewis and cheer umstead if we can pull up our presentation please you'll go forward one slide please perfect thank you so much this evening the administration is pleased to present the three-year local academically and intellectually gifted plan 2022-2025 for your approval the north carolina department of public instruction requires that all local education agencies develop a three-year aig plan with specific components and approved by their board of education over the past three years while implementing our current aig plan the office of advanced academics has continued to reflect on the current state of aig programming its effectiveness and has been increasing measures to ensure equity and access for each and every student as we transition out of the pandemic the district remains committed to increasing equitable opportunities for students to access advanced

188learning and develop plans for accelerating learning for all students the aig plan is aligned to our current strategic plan and the addendum strategies that this board has approved in addition the aig plan connects directly to the dps racial and educational equity policy with an emphasis on pillar one to disrupt and dismantle systemic inequities which lead towards eliminating the opportunity gap there is a lot of information in tonight's presentation and i want you to know we want to make sure that our board is committed and engaged to our presentation this evening however we will not speak to each and every slide this evening but rather we will highlight the information in all of the slides we have prepared for our board this evening of course we are open and look forward to questions and discussion at

189the end of our presentation tonight i would like to acknowledge our advanced academics team that's here this evening dr debbie pittman assistant superintendent for specialized services miss laura parrott and i think this is probably her second time because we did do celebrations but her first time in our official role as director of advanced academics while we're back in since we're back in person and miss yamel anderson ruff coordinator of advanced academics next slide please tonight we will review the legislation and policies for our aig plan highlight the key accomplishments from the current plan describe the process and development for our new plan which is before you this evening for approval and then present specifically the highlights in our new plan and of course we will close with discussion and questions this time i'll turn it

190over to dr pittman microphone thank you good evening next slide please as we begin sharing about the aig plan we first want to recognize those that participated in the development of this plan our aig advisory board we want to extend our extreme gratitude to the members who served they are listed alphabetically on this slide and the next slide our advisory board as you can see consisted of 27 members of diverse representation from many departments as represented on the slide i would like to take a point of special recognition to board member javonia lewis and on the next slide please alexandra valadares for their time and commitment serving on the advisory board and their ongoing commitment to this work next slide please giftedness knows no boundaries these poignant images on the slide in front of you

191are from the national association for gifted children they inspired the work of our advanced academics department and set the course for the development of the dps local aig plan it is our mission to ensure that every child who has advanced learning needs is seen is taught is understood and is challenged with appropriate access to advanced learning next slide please as dr hardy referenced this work is affiliated with our strategic plan we wanted to raise that up in front of our board acknowledging those priority areas and of course on the next slide our addendum work there is an advanced academics addendum priority that is targeted specifically to advanced academics and on the next slide and the next slide i want to take a minute just to share some of the foundational work that is connected to

192the development of the plan the lea aig plan is built upon north carolina legislation state board policy the department of public construction recently issued a call to action and as dr hardy mentioned our policy also integrates and is built upon our racial and educational equity policy next slide please so briefly let's review the north carolina law for almost 40 years there has been a law that the legislation mandates the identification of academically or intellectually gifted to children and services to them article 9b allows and helps us with a state definition of what it means to be academically or intellectually gifted and the inclusive definition focuses not only students who have performed at high levels of accomplishment but also those who have the potential to perform when compared to others their age experiences or environment next

193slide please on this slide the list the six north carolina aig program standards all of which are represented in our plan they're listed on the slide and integrated in various sections throughout our plan on the next slide please there is our the north carolina department of public instruction's call to action of equity and excellence this the division of advanced learning issued a call to action for equity and excellence to help ensure that the needs of aig students are met and the potential of aij students are optimally are optimized and finally on the last next slide for me the last indeed is to highlight the guidance that has shaped our aig plan under the leadership of miss parrot that has included the integration of the five pillars of our dps equity policy and at this time

194i would like to turn it over to miss parrot who will lead us through the accomplishment of our plan our 19th 2019-22 plan and lead us into the development of the overview of our 22-25 plan thank you dr pittman good evening chair umstead members of the board and dr mabinda before we transition to the planned development we would like to share some highlights with you from the work over the past three years next slide please and the next slide please while there have been a long list of accomplishments we want to lift up just a few tonight as they align with the dps racial and educational equity policy our work continues to focus on three large areas equitable identification practices academic talent development and advocacy work at all levels using portfolios as part of the

195identification process has continued to recognize students academic strengths which do not always show on standardized tests this has been helpful as we continue to identify students from our underrepresented populations from last year until may 1st of this year portfolio usage has already increased 65 percent for student identification in addition we have increased by almost 250 percent the number of students nurtured in grades k through 5 over the past three years the number reflected for this year indicates the number of students nurtured by aig specialists in small group settings while continuing to nurture the 7 000 k2 students served during whole group investigation sessions next slide please the second pillar in our district's equity policy is to honor and strengthen the connections between home and school some of our work has included our district and community

196information sessions as well as the creation of our advanced academics website to be more transparent with our identification process and also it houses all of our forms in both english and spanish next slide please aligning with the dps equity pillar of ensuring access and representation in academic programming our office has collaborated with other district leaders to create two important resources the equitable student recruitment planning guide for our high schools and the family guide to equitable course placement i would like to highlight some of the advanced course enrollment data for high schools which reflects our work towards equitable access the first graphic shows the total dps enrollment in grades 9 through 12 which is approximately 10 700 students the second graphic represents the breakdown of the approximately 7 000 high school students enrolled in advanced courses

197for this year 65 of all of our high school students are enrolled in at least one advanced course such as honors ap ib and college course enrollment our third graphic takes the advanced course enrollment a step further to highlight the approximately 780 students who are taking college courses next slide please two pillars from the equity policy build staff capacity for equity center practices and address social and emotional well-being of students and staff have guided the work of our office to develop the 30-hour micro-credentialing course which we call tap teachers advancing potential tap was opened this year to all educators k through 12. additional work for building staff capacity and addressing the social and emotional well-being for students was done through intentional professional learning opportunities next slide please in the next section we will highlight the

198process for the development of the aig plan as well as three key priorities next slide please as indicated in tonight's deep introduction the dps advisory board has 27 members representing both internal and external stakeholders as well as cross-departmental representation to ensure that multiple perspectives were there as we discussed identification service delivery and programming and again we want to express our extreme gratitude to javonia lewis and alexandra valadares for their dedication to their work and service on our board our work began with a plan analysis by all aig specialists to really look at our strengths and those areas which need improvement input was gathered from focus group individual conversations with principals administrators parents teachers and students and of course our aig advisory board finally the work was aligned to our foundational guidance next slide please building

199on the work from the past three years the comprehensive dps aig plan for 2022-2025 was developed next we will highlight three of the key priorities for our new plan next slide please key priority 1 increase access and opportunities grades k through 12. we know that we must provide opportunities for every student to show us their strengths and talents and to mitigate systemic barriers to access advanced educational services by improving identification practices we focus on recognizing demonstrated advanced learning needs so that no student's potential is untapped and no student is overlooked to ensure our identification process allows for multiple opportunities we are replacing criteria categories with an expanded list of identification criteria with any two criteria serving as qualifiers this move allows more student opportunities as the list includes multiple sweep screens or universal screeners such

200as i ready beginning and end of year assessments and cognitive abilities tests furthermore the use of non-verbal assessment sub-scores has further increased identification of underrepresented students another change is aligning the percentile from nationally normed assessments from 90 to 89 as it marks the beginning of stay 9-8 by merely aligning the qualification score to stay 9-8 our data shows an additional 200 black and brown students will qualify for aig identification furthermore aig specialists will continue and increase their collaboration with english as a second language and exceptional children's teachers to ensure english language learners and twice exceptional students are supported through the identification process next slide please we must cultivate potential in students whose strengths are not yet tapped or readily observable in the typical classroom environments over the past three years we have focused on learning

201environments and our primary grades that foster talent development and assist classroom teachers to observe students strengths and recognize potential this intentional work helps change mindsets raise expectations and begin the pathway toward equity and excellence the dps aig plan shifts the k2 nurturing program from investigations to investigations in stem and provides a framework for quarterly whole group and small group instruction we have seen the positive results when all k2 students are part of the nurturing program as more students from underrepresented populations are recognized and both ability and achievement scores have increased aig students need education programs that will challenge them in regular classroom settings as well as additional services by an aig specialist that provides acceleration enrichment and extensions for our k-5 students who have been identified as aig we must protect the educational environment to

202support their demonstrated educational needs therefore the aig plan outlines minimum weekly direct services for all aig students to ensure their academic needs are met and continual growth occurs next slide please to truly ensure all students receive equitable access and opportunities this mindset and commitment must be shared among all staff members equity and advanced academics committees at each school are led by the aig specialists and involve counselors equity champions administrators teachers and other school personnel these committees advocate for the integration of equity and excellence with actionable steps and encourage all stakeholders to assume responsibility for the collaborative work next slide please our second key priority is to provide high quality professional learning we know that all teachers need to be empowered with knowledge of the characteristics and needs of advanced learners by providing focused professional development

203we remove systemic barriers improve instructional services for differentiation share ownership in the continual growth of advanced students and move closer to equity and excellence in gifted education next slide please and our third key priority is program accountability to align district data with intentional actions toward equity and excellence we must seek out and be responsive to meaningful data this data will assess program success and inform program improvement this year the advanced academics office partnered with research and accountability for the creation of advanced course enrollment data summaries at the secondary level with disaggregated data by demographic subgroups and five-year trend data this enrollment data was shared with school equity and advanced academics committees as a focus for increasing recruitment efforts the advanced course enrollment data will be a continued part of program accountability next slide please again

204thank you for the opportunity to share with you the focus work that our department has done toward creating equitable access and opportunities for all students as well as presenting to you the dps academically or intellectually gifted plan 2022-2025 at this time i will turn the presentation back to dr hardy for next steps thank you miss parra and dr pittman for our community i would also like to note that the entire aig plan that is before the board this evening is part of the materials that are posted online for our community to view tonight we are seeking approval of the dps academically and intellectually gifted plan upon approval the department of advanced academics will ensure communication with our principals our faculty and staff internal dps departments as well as communication with our parents our students and

205our community furthermore we will submit this academically and intellectually gifted plan for 2022-25 to the north carolina department of public instruction by their deadline which is july 15th and look forward to their review and approval at this time we are open for questions and discussion vice chair lewis thank you i saw 119 slides i thought we're going to keep going mr lee mr lee you have a question hey i wanted to just really quickly thank you all for this this update was uh really powerful and really great over the last eight years i've been on the board we've been trying to advocate for identification more identification of uh aig throughout our district and these numbers that was on this slide the key accomplishments is proof of that it's just another data point that i talk

206about all the time saying that if you look at back then and now every aspect of dps has has improved right every measurable or every metric has improved and i didn't even realize it increased like this so this is quite impressive i really the number i really like and not because it's the highest the the the nurtured that's something we didn't i don't know that we did a lot of initially and for those who don't know nurturing is those who aren't identified right as aig but maybe test out of a particular module and they go do some of the aig stuff or some push-ins and stuff like that that um that's a really big deal right and just that that motion that that model of doing that um really has changed what durham public schools

207is and will continue to be so i just want to i wanted to point that out i was just kind of blown away by the increases that we've seen and that's what the community was asking for that's for that's what actually i think miss lewis was asking for the aig increases early on as well and so like those sorts of things um just shows that progress that many people don't necessarily see so these reports are really important so this uh i just want to show appreciation for that because that's something we've been looking for for a long time aspire thank you thank you mr lee i echo those um concerns that that we're pushing forward with this equity lens and starting to see the numbers move in the right direction i do think there's been

208a tremendous amount of work done i want to celebrate that i want to thank um miss lewis and and miss valedares for representing us in these spaces this is an equity-focused plan but i look forward to in another time y'all sharing the data with us break down by school like show it bring it bring it public so that we can be transparent about where we're doing well and where we want to do better so diversity of our teaching staff our aig facilitators we want those folks to look like our students our ap teachers same kind of data um you know where are we offering what ap classes and what level of enrollment is that the same at all of our comprehensive high schools i'm guessing not we've got work to do right so we want

209to be just as much as we need to approve this plan for the state we want to be transparent about where we need to do better and and keep keep pushing and i think shining a light on that is important did you all have specific conversation about the notion and the practice of push in versus pull out and and how some schools do that and how it to me push in is a more equity focused solution and i don't know if y'all had conversation around that and are leading an equity focus on that modeling we did thank you so much so some of the push in that we've talked about is when we're really working with all of our students to move all of our students but at those times that our students who are

210our highest achievers who may be working two grade levels above the others we do recommend a pull-out so that their needs can be addressed those pull-outs are not for long that they're not for a whole class period just you know it may be part of a small group i've just had some really interesting conversations recently with folks about how that built a peer group that was less than equitable with with students and i just want us to make sure that we're looking at practices that um that's that build the strength of diversity um going forward so i know y'all are sensitive to that but i look forward to seeing more detail at future presentations i think but i'm so excited about the work y'all have done all right i'm gonna go to miss amstead and

211then mr sears yes thank you all so much for the presentation thank you rashia lewis and um dares for serving on this committee i remember joining the board and us having these conversations about nurturing and supporting students so it's good to see the progress that we are making um so i just wanted to say thank you and echo some of ms buyer's comments around would love to see how we break it down by school and that can be a future presentation and what kind of specific strategies different schools might be using to help make sure that we are nurturing more and more students as much as possible so thank you all for the intentional work to increase equity in our plans and i love this aligned to our racial equity policy i hope we continue

212to do that as we create new plans for the school year as well thank you so would you remind me are we doing universal assessment at a certain grade level i know that was in there but i yes we are second grade in the spring the cognitive abilities test right okay great so i i've got a little bit of work experience in this field and generally the portfolio model is something that i worry about in this field because of the bias that educators have but i want to laud you all because the focus you all have on using it for good as opposed to traditionally is yielding the results um that we saw here and whether you want to put the slide back up or not i've heard the word equity a hundred times in

213this presentation and i i do think we need to use the word equality sometimes because a a fundamental belief that a lot of people share is that giftedness is distributed evenly across populations that it's it's not granted to one subsection or another at higher rates and so what was wonderful to see in the data slide is that we're close to mirroring our district's demographics right we we're at a minimum reaching that quality level and we're using equity to get there so i'm thankful and i want us to remember that other e-word um and using the the equity to get to the um at a minimum equality and uh it's nice to see some data that matches what what our goals are thank you all miss valladores thank you so much i really appreciate um just

214the presentation and the discussions i think you know i give my gratitude to every participant i mean the conversations were really engaging i just remember so many conversations about stem and steam you know conversations about the admissible tests and you know just just going over all that and the portfolio and also like the flexibility with the portions like you know the the actual delivery so to ensure that every child is getting it and acknowledging that schools have different bell schedules you know different periods and and trying to work to make sure that the quantity is the same even if it's you know spread out in a different way by school i think so many discussions um including twice exceptional children uh and including the voices of parents voices of educators um including english language learners

215um i i know that there was definitely like just looking at the participants and i was like wow it's pretty um representative of many stakeholders uh educators and and and parents and and advocates for that have been looking at this for a while so very very humbling to hear the conversations um i will say that uh particularly the piece about students when they need more instructional time and the conversation around punition and making sure that there's never any semblance that you know this is about removing somebody from from this kind of programming to address their needs that was a conversation that i felt was very robust and i really think every participant i mean they get the credit like you know we're here on the board and one of the things is that we we

216get to speak our minds here but it was so wonderful and humbling to hear everyone's share uh from their perspectives and that the equity piece was very vibrant in the ways that um very present in the ways that we acknowledge barriers you know that sometimes don't lead to that identification you know um if a test if somebody comes from another state and we don't have you know that assortment of tests that we that we allow that could we we wouldn't have that student and so um i'm very very grateful for all that and also for your facilitation in this process um thank you so much for encouraging rich discussion so uh passionate discussion yes yes i remember i was on team steam you know so i really appreciate all that thank you so much mr

217raven yeah i just wanted to say i i'm really appreciative of the focus on the el and the ec ms vallider has mentioned it already they're twice exceptional uh actually being able to witness that during the pandemic and being able to see see your child being able to you know be in that that kind of pull-out session and really especially for for a lot of our children did are in the ec program being able to have that small class setting in that in aig it really allows them to get the best of both worlds um so i'm i'm very appreciative and i love that aspect of it so thank you and i'll just add appreciation for the work that's been done the gains that we have made and the passionate conversations and the challenges from

218the 27 member committee to work on his plan and the way you allowed yourself to be challenged in that thank you for that work um on the slide where there's increased use of portfolio in the portfolio um that is definitely important that we're getting more ways of access i would like to have seen also the disaggregated data of who's having getting that information to get a portfolio started and going as well and that subgroup and then i want to echo mr sears on the equality data reflection again what we're seeing in aig or not in honors ap because it was 9th through 12th grade and that data set i think is also the work that you all have been doing on the ground i've seen and heard about dr bullock having students challenge each other

219to take honors classes to come and come into this ap course with me we can do this so again that's being reflected in the data and seeing our kids really show up and perform and the nurturing when you set high standards our kids will jump to reach those standards and that's what the message has to go continue to go throughout our district um leaving no child behind i do want to see more transparency similar to what miss buyer shared the k5 we know there are imbalances in identification in different schools across our district we didn't see that same type of equality reflection in the data so again getting that breakdown of the schools and i i see you're using the um the data dashboard to help with that i saw i appreciate that that will

220be coming forth and also the um our our new plan for growing together so how our regions are going to be help be able to reflect you know again get this baseline of where the key these children are and these aig courses now before we do these regional changes and see and so we can subtract that that increase we're going to see thank you for the presentation this is for action this is for action oh mr lee spoke yeah dear louis if i may respond very quickly to to ms buyer your comments about differences and decisions between push in and pull out services for exceptional children i just want to point out i'm sure everyone is aware of this but both of those options are things that are required to be available at our schools

221um and are made on an individual basis but i i just want to point that out that those aren't decisions made in how administration feels is the best way to serve students those are individual decisions and and we're required to offer the spectrum thank you thank you that's helpful like i i guess i was referring more to the practice of some schools favoring a young aig pull out your special little snowflake come here and we you know i understand the the that clarification but yeah i appreciate it that's helpful can i make a motion i move approval of this um aig both dps academically or gifted education plan 2022 to 2025. okay it's been moved by ms valderrez and second by ms is buyer any other discussion we'll do roll call all in favor mr

222lee aye mr c miss fire hi hi mr raven all right that's why you did this aye mr sioux for the record aye ms umstead hi hi my name is bettina um sorry novo aye i also bought i it passes unanimously thank you good job and the next item on the agenda the last item we have a resolution before us i believe can we put up on the screen miss smith did you get it up yes while ms smith pulls this up miss buyer do you want to introduce this resolution you know i i appreciate the community bringing this forward june is pride month and we talked about it being such a late time to bring it and late hour this evening but um i appreciate y'all giving it consideration so that we have it

223in place well before we get to pride month um and i appreciate the parents that uh drafted it for us and have been very patient here with us as we get to it as the last thing on our agenda um it's exciting and i know we would all acknowledge that we have heard and continue to hear public comment there are meetings going on both and we look forward to ways that we can continue to improve to support all students and this is just one tiny step yeah so we'll um go down the line we'll start with you mr lee go straight down then we'll come in with um miss umstead all right um durham public schools board of education proclamation recognized in june as lbgl plus pride month in durham public schools whereas durham public

224schools board of educations governing principles state an excellent school system the expert school system provides an environment that is culturally responsive free from bias and discrimination and commits to ensuring that all stakeholders uphold educational equity as an essential principle of our school system that is integrated into all policies practices operations and processes in order to yield equitable education outcomes for all students and whereas durham public schools district in durham county have a diverse lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and or questioning lgbtq plus community and whereas many residents students family members and school personnel are part of the lgbtq plus community and they contribute greatly to the enrichment of our schools and community and whereas although advancements have been made with respect to equitable treatment of lgbt lgbtq plus persons lgbtq plus adults youth children and

225families still face discrimination simply for being who they are thus making it important for all districts in all communities to stand up and show support for lgbtq plus students staff and families and whereas many cities and school districts across the united states recognize and celebrate june as lgbtq plus pride month and whereas lgbtq plus pride month is typically recognized in june by many cities and school districts across the united states to commemorate the stonewall riots a series of demonstrations led by black and brown members of the lgbtq plus community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of june 28 1969 at the stonewall inn in greenwich village neighborhood of lower manhattan in new york city and we're at defining moments in lgbtq plus history that sparked activism and progress

226towards equity were only made possible by black and brown lgbtq plus activists fighting for their liberation as black and brown people their marginalization was furthered by their sexual orientation causing violence discrimination and oppression toward them with respect to income employment housing education political representation access to health care and other services and whereas june has become a symbolic month in america in which lgbtq plus persons and allies come together in various celebrations of pride and in protest to support the community's right to live their lives lives out loud be who they are and love who they love and whereas more than 300 anti-lgbtq plus bills have been proposed in 2022 throughout the united states including bills that would limit representation of gender diverse and lgbtq plus people in curriculum in schools access to medical care and

227participate participation in sports and whereas the trevor project founded 85 percent of transgender non-binary use say that recent debates around anti-trans bills have negatively impacted their mental health and whereas durham public schools durham public school foundation and duke university have launched a whole wellness healing opportunity learning equity schools campaign to focus on urgent mental health needs of public school communities by creating new ways for the school environment to be holistic trauma-informed and culturally responsive supportive system for everyone now therefore the durham public schools board of education does hereby declare the month of june as lgbtq plus pride month in our schools and invites all schools to implement developmentally appropriate inclusive and representative lessons and special activities with all students on lgbtq plus families gender diversity and lgbtq plus history and furthermore durham public schools board

228of education commits to working with lgbtq plus students families and community members to build safe and equitable schools where all students and families are valued for who they are and where diversity race orientation gender culture and ability is celebrated and we would further resolve that the dps board of education encourages administrators to support educators across grade levels and content areas to acknowledge disability awareness month and lgbtq plus pride month through the end of the school year and be it further resolved that the dps board of education calls on all students educators and community members to observe lg btq plus pride month and advance efforts to support and advocate for lgbtq plus youth families educators and community members signed this day 19th day let's sign this 19th day of may so board i mean i i'll

229i move approval of the the resolution but i do want to note that we're encouraging activities and lessons in this resolution and we we've received feedback from our community on readiness for this and non-readiness for this and i i don't think i'm stepping on a limb when i say we're we're probably a little behind in our training for readiness to project in all 54 schools the the type of inclusion that we're projecting in this resolution so i just i'm in support but i want to point that out um and say that we're explicitly saying activities and celebrations that's the encouragement right encouragement is to account for the lack of training that we have but if we are able you know when like we want we want it to happen but we have to be aware

230of that i think this is something that should we should prepare for you know especially like for next year but this is a year to start start what we can i believe that's the way i see it i agree so outside of a couple of oxford commas and there's a double and in there and i think we're good i just celebrate i celebrate you i celebrate you all i know there are parents here in this room parents who have come and have advocated and have said you know see our children see our children for who they are as a district we do not make the determination for who children are we do not determine status we don't determine identity we don't have that power our families have the power to access education every child who

231comes to our district has a right to an education they tell us who they are we don't make that determination and so this is this is one uh powerful way that families have advocated in saying see our children for who they are um respect you know the diversity of families and i must say that there's a lot of intersectionality with marginalization a lot of our families we've seen the data about sense of belonging we know that in middle school sense of belonging drops and and it's it's so important to continue to support our students support mental health support their development and we are here to be nurturing we we have that word we use that word in the last presentation but this is definitely fostering an inclusive environment for all our students so every student

232built every student and their families feel seen respected and feel that have they have an access to the education they deserve thank you so much for uh rainbow collective for change for bringing this to us any other comments i would move approval if that's an order second i moved i moved to purville earlier it's okay they have fallen asleep a while ago um then did we second did we second it before i would second it it's been moved by mr sears ii by ms beyer all in fact well we have do roll call for a favor um if you're in favor say aye mr lee all right miss byer hi mr raven aye ms valedires aye yours aye true amsterdam hi my name is bettina i also vote i it passes unanimously that is the

233end of our agenda we will go into closed session a move we go into closed session for the reasons stating on the agenda a second discussion all in favor say aye mr lee aye ms buyer aye mr raven aye ms faye davis aye mr sears chair umstead my name is bettina umstead and i vote i also i will go on the closed session all right we are back in open session dr mabenga madame vice chair i'm here to seek for your approval for the personal report as discussed at a closed session move approval of the personnel report dated may 19 2022. a second it's been moved by miss buyer second by mr lee any discussion all in favor say aye all right all right patina latino are you on yeah yes bettina [Music] unanimously we

234are now you