#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Work Session | 5/5/22

001good evening everyone the durham public schools board of education work session 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 uh the interpreters for tonight martha romo aguiles and marty ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us next item on our agenda is a moment of silence um there was a leaked um uh supreme court decision uh which can have implications across the nation every single person um and so i asked your uh your thoughts towards um how that may impact us and how we

002may get together and form a way to uh move around that move past that or uh make changes to address that thank you the next item on our agenda is agenda review and approval approval i'm of approval of the agenda has been moved and properly seconded that we approve the agenda as presented um [Music] do we do we have anyone virtual today okay um [Music] any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign pass this unanimously the next item on our agenda is the board work session minutes from april 7th uh 2022 move approval of the minutes second has been moved and properly segmented that we approve the board work session minutes from april 7 2022 any further discussion all in favor say aye all opposed please use

003the same sign passes unanimously next on our agenda is general public comment better get the form okay while we are getting the form i would like to review the rules first please state your name if speaking for my organization please state your name and the name of the organization second speakers are asked to present their comments in a specified amount of time that is three minutes when the yellow light comes on you 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're very interested in hearing your concerns with regard to public education safety of students or the operation of the school system finally the

004board members will listen carefully and consider the comments but we do not engage in a discussion with speakers our first speaker is camille meek to be followed by rafi ahmad sir i got that right look at there all right is the green light on no on the microphone at the base of the my okay okay is it on there i think i heard it come on okay thank you all right thank you anyway i come tonight wearing two hats one as the family member of durham county public school students two as a former full-time substitute in durham county public schools in 2021 when i was in between other jobs i served at ekpo as a full-time substitute which i very much enjoyed i'm here tonight to address a very pressing matter for families of children

005who for really compelling reasons of their own choose to take a gender other than the one they were born with they're called transgender some children have extreme distress as a result of this dichotomy their experience one of the children in my family has had that experience she has been supported by her teachers at ek po however and i'm sure kovid probably enters into this she has been bullied over the past year um we are a biracial family we are an open-minded family we are a well-educated family i in december unfortunately she came to me and said she'd been called a negro on the playground i brought it to the principal's attention to her teacher's attention that's not the first kind of incident like that fortunately i was able to talk to the parent and there

006was an apology i'm i'm here tonight because i realize it's been such a journey for us as a family of southern baptists to embrace this experience i understand it would be very difficult for people who haven't had a personal experience like this but it's very distressing for the child um it's comparable to have a having a child who's safe has aspergers who is trying to make sense of a reality so i wanted to time is going fast as a substitute my experience was i didn't always know what gender the child was if it was a young child the way kids dress now sorry um so if i may just finish that thought having systematic ways that substitutes know what the gender of the child is what pronouns they prefer would be a very helpful thing

007as a substitute when you're walking into new class so thank you very much thank you rafiq ahmad hello my name is rafi ahmad pernsley i use heath pronouns as a former child of the durham public school system i recall all too well as the ways in which my differences were only apparent to my peers and my teachers administrators but often ignored when the realities of my life were too complicated or out of the normal scope of focus for the lived experiences of the people meant to guide instruct educate and protect me it is not lost on me the long history of american schools and how they have regards no regards into ignoring children or claiming to be safe havens for learning and supporting the charges they are paid and instructed to lead i can think

008of the many ways children have been silenced or not even allowed to attend schools because of who they are knowledge i possess thanks to dps so it should not be unimaginable or even a surprise that today's children and their needs or differences are written off as small political ideologies or even less or so child-like musings relegated to non-issues or even worse presented without the thoughtfulness and thoughtfulness any other child's needs would be given especially in a space that is meant to be there for their safe guidance for learning and playing to experience the potential of life that they themselves possess a school cannot create space and opportunity for one child and ignore another simply because the latter child does not fit within a system engineered for a white cis-male heteronormative experience the work that schools

009and educators throughout history has been to create curriculums programs and even classrooms by pulling away from white male cis standards looking forward knowing the ways i have actively i was actively overlooked or not supported and the possibilities that exist within schools that i was not afforded i ask you to invest and commit to the safety and protection of the intentional support of the younger generations by working with community groups by having them to connect with local groups to train staff and administrators and broaden the curriculum so that all can be knowledgeable and intentional on how we stand in solidarity with each other i think of our ancestors and our leaders here in durham like paulie murray a black woman queer gender non-conforming poet and writer who said when my brothers try to draw a circle

010to exclude me i shall draw a larger circle to include them where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group i shall shout for the rights of all mankind thank you for listening to me i hope you would understand that every child deserves a chance to be themselves and to be respected both for the love that they receive from their families but also for the life that they hope to have in their futures thank you thank you next we'll have alex pedra adrian hello i am alex adrian i use he and they pronouns the microphone a little closer better yes okay um i use he and they pronouns i am employed by the lgbtq center of durham however the words are my own tonight i am not representing the center there are gender

011diverse students and or staff in every dps school you the school board the central office staff and school level administration may never be able to discern who these individuals are however you can work towards a district-wide culture of inclusion where someone's lgbtq status does not have them questioning what's wrong with themselves frequently folks come out after they learn there's a word for what they have been feeling and knowing about themselves their entire lives and that there are other people who i feel similarly they are no longer broken they have an identity imagine the harm that could be averted if the adults in dps normalize language around identity if every leader said in our spaces everyone's full self is embraced in dps we incorporate a growth mindset the ability to pivot the desire to celebrate at

012every discovery dps employees model that life is a journey of discovery and every opportunity is given to accept even what is not understood my son when in eighth grade texted me in a store that he needed to share something with me that got some peers kicked out of their homes i said we'd talk that evening after a never-ending afternoon in the privacy and comfort of his room he shared that he thought he was a lesbian four months later he asked to see a gender therapist before and after sharing with me he worked through his identity at the charter school he attended i am grateful that he had a space with friends and a few supportive adults where he felt safe enough to do this many other families share this experience school is where their young

013gender diverse person tries out an identity students in schools where there is where this exploration can happen without oppression have more capacity to engage in learning currently families with gender diverse students making the difficult choice to leave dps because some schools make each request an escalated exception and others have been unresponsive for years in supporting students who simply want to belong without denying who they are i urge you to take this step this first step in building welcoming schools across the district by passing a district-wide gender and lbgtq support policy committing to conducting robust professional development thank you thank you um did we have anyone else for public comment that didn't get to sign up i'll come back to it about halfway through the meeting just in case people are needing to come in no

014more all right thank you all right the next item on our agenda is the consent items we have five is getting githun's middle school boiler replacement contract with comfort mechanical contractors lions farm school av contract with connect systems inc lions farm elementary intercom system contract with troy hutchins construction llc lions farm elementary school solar installation contract with southern energy management and district dashboard approval of the consensus it's been moved and properly seconded that we approve the consent agenda as presented any further discussion all right all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign passage unanimously next item on our agenda is the academic services ctcte local application for funding 2022 2023. thank you mr lee board members dr rabinga if i could also have doctors pack and pittman that i think

015are in the hallway if they could come in and if we could pull up the cte local application for funding update presentation we can go forward one slide please good evening tonight the administration will provide an update and overview of the career and technical education local application for funding for the 2022-23 academic year the plan addresses the findings of the comprehensive local needs assessment conducted by the cte department this year the performance data from 2020 21 celebrations accomplishments and the strategies to address our opportunities for improvement tonight board members this is before you for approval at this time it is my pleasure to introduce dr julie pack the executive director of career and technical education and magnet programs who will present the information in our presentation dr pat thank you dr hardy and good evening

016board members dr movinga thank you for this opportunity to present a review of the cte application local application for funding for your approval every two years the cte department must complete a comprehensive local needs assessment to determine the strengths of the program and any opportunities for improvement this year a needs assessment was conducted involving internal and external stakeholders tonight i would like to highlight some of the findings of the needs assessment and some of the strategies we will be implementing to address the opportunities for improvement next slide please first i'd like to highlight some of the positive celebrations that were demonstrated through the comprehensive local needs assessment as a reminder these findings are based on our 2020 2021 school year data that was just released to us in february of 2022. first i'd like to

017celebrate the 99 yep cte concentrator graduation rate we celebrate this because it provides strong evidence that students who complete a cte pathway are highly likely to graduate the cohort graduation rate is one of the eight performance indicators that we must track through the perkins five legislation in addition we celebrate that 97 percent of our cte concentrator graduates from 2019 are in a positive placement which means post-secondary education advanced training military or employment this is also one of the perkins 5 performance indicators and on both of these measures we are performing at above the state average other celebrations that we would like to lift up include alignment with the dps strategic plan and an increase in the number of industry aligned credentials that students are earning you will also see credentials as an area of improvement

018while we are celebrating that the strategies we put in place two years ago are moving us in the right direction we acknowledge we still have continued work to do in this area finally i would like to acknowledge and celebrate the many industry and community partners involved in cte programming including work based learning from hosting interns and students who are completing a job shadow experience to participating in our business advisory council which we have 47 industries represented on our partners provide leadership and support for our dps students and teachers on the next slide we will look at our opportunities for growth next slide please after a comprehensive review and analysis of our data we've identified areas of growth for the next year after reviewing these areas for growth i'll talk more about specific strategies later in

019the presentation one of our first opportunities for growth is our credential proficiency we have more than doubled our previous performance and we are committed to continuing to increase our credential proficiency with great strides and feel sure that we will see great gains over the next few years in addition to credential attainment the proficiency of students on cte post assessments is used by the perkins 5 legislation as a measure for program quality unfortunately in 2020 the first year of the new perkins 5 performance indicators we did not have any assessment data due to the pandemic the pro the proficiency level of 43 is our first official performance on this indicator and we know that the pandemic and remote learning had an impact on the performance of students on those cte post assessments however we are committed

020to continuing to increase our cte post-assessment proficiency another of the perkins 5 performance indicators looks at the percentage of non-traditional students in a non-traditional pathway non-traditional career pathways are designated if they are dominated by one gender for example engineering is non-traditional for females and nursing is non-traditional for males while we are making gains in the area particularly as it relates to females enrolling in non-traditional pathways we are below the state average finally the number of cte concentrators is an opportunity for growth aligned with the strategic plan we are working to continually grow the number of cte concentrators as we know there's a positive link between graduation rate and positive placement after high school next slide please before we talk about the strategies that we're going to use to impact those opportunities for growth i'd like

021to lift up a new initiative that was launched this year our first ever senior hiring fair was held on tuesday april 19th at the durham county maine library we had 19 companies a 10 that were seeking to fill entry-level full-time permanent position with benefits and over 90 graduating seniors have opportunity to interview our students completed pre-work that was supported by the career development coordinator which included mock interview sessions resume writing workshops and dress for success sessions this will be an annual event moving forward and we're really excited about on the next slide i will share our strategies for improvement that we've identified through the comprehensive local needs assessment next slide please in order to address our opportunities for improvement and continue to achieve our goal of becoming a top 10 cte program in north carolina

022the following strategies will be employed first we have a focus on high quality instruction in all cte classrooms high quality instruction instruction directly impacts our students proficiency on credentials and cte post assessments high quality instruction means utilizing standards aligned planning instruction and assessments as well as utilizing high-yield best practices like vocabulary development and using learning targets in order to continue to support cte teachers instructionally we have expanded our instructional support by adding curriculum and instruction management coordinators or cte lead teachers in all of the large high schools and will be continuing to grow the support over the next few years in addition we are trying to grow our student participation in career and technical student organizations or ctsos like ffa fbla other things other organizations like that hosa because these organizations are co-curricular meaning that

023they enhance the standards learned in the classroom through rigorous competition and engagement industry recognized credentials serve as the proof of learning in many cte courses and over the last few years we have been making a concerted effort to increase the number and type of credentials students have the opportunity to earn in order to do this we are directly working directly with our teachers to understand and earn the credit to which they are teaching working with students to promote the benefits of earning the industry aligned credential and helping to clarify what credentials can be earned in what classes for all stakeholders our disaggregated data demonstrates that we have work to do to close achievement and opportunity gaps between our subgroups in order to ensure success of all students the cte department is committed to eliminating barriers

024that contribute to and sustain disparities for students as you know we have the 321 future ready initiative that was created to ensure students graduate with career awareness exposure and experience we are expanding career awareness and exposure to grades three through five as well as strengthening career development in the middle schools career development is for all students and for all classes and we are partnering with our core teachers and leaders to take career development out of just cte and embed throughout the student educational experience we are making a concerted effort to help our families and students know about the great opportunities in the cte program through great marketing including earning industry credentials at no cost we've worked diligently and still working to improve our internal systems and processes to provide the most effective and efficient support

025to our cte teachers and finally we continue to collaborate with internal and external partners to increase career opportunities for our students next slide please thank you all for the support that you provide the cte program we are working to prepare all students to be future ready at this time i'll turn it back over to dr hardy thank you so much dr pack in addition to some of the celebrations that dr pax shared i know many of our board members were here when we first launched our skills trades academy at southern high school and wanted to also include some of the celebrations in regards to that program as of this june we will have had 39 students graduate from this program with certifications in osha 10 osha 30 and forklift operations also in collaboration with dps

026capital improvement and members of the waymakers specifically brightfield evoke salmon leches our students are working on building a mobile office with space which will be in the hub farm we're currently in the permitting stage and the teachers and students are eager to get started on this project i know many of you have been interested in that program at southern and wanted to make sure that we provided an update to you about our cte programs we are here for questions we also have dr pittman assistant superintendent for specialized services and again this is before the board this evening for action thank you discussion from board members or questions comments mr raven first i'll just say thank you um i think you already know how interested i i am in the cte programs the the one thing

027that i am curious of and i'm thinking back to my days when i was in middle school at neo and we had to apply when we're getting ready to go to high school um you know whether you're going to take college prep classes or anything else like that and when i look at the chart where we kind of have the breakdown between males and females that are entered into the program and i noticed that there's a gap between the two not not a large one but like maybe 55 45 ratio and i heard you mentioned that you know some of the programs usually are kind of geared toward towards one group or the other and i'm wondering if that actually resonates with the number of applications that we get like it like on par the

028number of applications that we get of interest to to go into these cte programs does is that kind of in alignment with the breakdown of the ratio for the males the females entering into that kind of overall program by and large for example a large number of the applicants for cma which is healthcare focused school are female so it does replicate and and it comes from the the ideas that we all have about careers and who should be in what career and that those conversations start early for students even as early as kindergarten and elementary school and so that's why we're pushing career development down as far into the elementary as we can to have those conversations early and open up all career opportunities for all students to align with your interests rather than your

029gender thank you and and this is another question this may go a little bit into our whole kind of growing together thing that i know we're going to be introducing a little bit down the line but i looked at one of the stats that actually touched on our our pro like our proficiency in math scene seems to be well enough but but science seemed to be one of those areas that that's a gap and i'm wondering if the the growing together campaign that we're focusing on placing stem in all the schools if we think that's going to directly impact increasing these proficiency rates i think so i know hope is not a strategy but i also hope so and i think that stem in and of itself is important because it helps integrate those ideas

030science technology engineering and math together and not operating in silos so learning math and isolation and by doing that increases students opportunity to comprehend and apply those skills later thank you and and and i always like to see if i could find one thing that's a little off uh there was just this one little thing that i noticed it um it had homeless individuals on one of the charts and i thought we tried to kind of just rephrase that a little bit to students that may be in transit or so but other than that it's perfect thank you thank you um and the that designation is actually the federal designation that we utilize but as we can control how we do that in the narrative so i'll make sure that we make sure we update

031that in the narrative thank you so much for this presentation um i'm really encouraged by stem focus um somebody who you know just loves science and um and i'm just encouraged by the entire endeavor i've been thinking a lot about our issues with transportation and the jobs any job that deals with the education of our children is a dignified is identified job the reality is that you know we want to set up our students for success we want them to also uh have a quality of life and and so as i'm thinking about cte for this iteration there's a whole lot of great things in here but i'm i'm hearing a lot um more more so now that um there's a focus on academies for operators um like in-house academies like imagine dps having our

032own academy by which we can certify um students you know who want to start with you know getting off from from from from high school and getting their their certifications getting cdls getting whatever they need um so that's just something that i um that i've been hearing about internal and like being able to bring the academy to the institutions that need them and having you know preparing um doing that educational component by which folks can actually like do all their credentialing uh and preparing that way so that's just something that um aspirational i think it's gonna become a thing you know um as i'm hearing other folks doing it but i'm very excited about all the it's quite a plethora of offerings and um and i also just want to commend you because i know

033that you've been at this and your team has been working at this and i know you know conversations you've made yourself available for questions and and meetings you know as far as i can remember and so just thank you so much for bringing this to us that's homstead thank you dr pack and your team i think we have some amazing cte programs in dps and it's great to visit i talked to the skilled trade skills trade academy teacher the other day and he was excited to share about what his kids are working on and i really hope we can continue to share that message i'm glad we're deepening it into the elementary school and i also think a lot about middle school and as those students those eighth graders seventh graders are thinking about what

034their high school options are how do we create pathways for those students to be successful so it leads into my question of you know we know we have some opportunity to help with the completing the whole career pathway what have you seen as the barriers for students to go through the whole completer program i think the main barrier is just the understanding and option understanding of all the options and so that's uh that's why we're focusing on the marketing piece because you cannot talk enough um and i will talk as much as possible about cte and how it connects um but it can't just be me talking about it so as we um lean into the marketing having um our classroom teachers our school counselors our principals all of the folks that work and and

035talk to kids about what is your next step helping them understand those options so we have a responsibility to make sure all of our internal stakeholders understand those options i think that's great i really think it's a way to help increase student interest i think for some of our students who may not be interested in some of the traditional courses but can get really excited about cte classes like how do we get them connected early so that students are staying connected to graduation i think that's something i think about often and in my work with students realize 7th and 8th grade a lot of students have an idea of what they're interested in we can go ahead and start connecting them with that they can be connected to a career after they leave um y'all

036all know this information so i'm preaching to the choir but i think it's just important to continue to highlight that um so thank you thank you any other comments i'll just say um thank you you know i'm a fan of cet you know that and a lot of times we get you know emails or tags on facebook and so forth saying you know there's other jobs out there it doesn't have to be college uh we need to do that sort of thing in school well this is it and we're doing very well at it you know those statistics about graduation and finishing and you know i know previously we talked about different certifications you know even um like the faa part 107 stuff and um we're doing it here in durham and uh you don't

037have to look any further than you know what this program your team is doing every day to find an example of how to do it right so i love pushing this up i appreciate the reports each time you come in i advertise it i share it out i talk about it all the time because when people say oh we people just don't do trades anymore in school we need to bring the trades back well we're already doing it and we're doing really well at it and so if that's what you if that's what you need that's what you believe send your kids during public schools we have a program for you all right so thank you so much for this i really appreciate it yeah okay all right this is before the board for action

038so that we can approve for the upcoming year we need a motion move that we approve the cte local application for funding for 2022-2023 second it's been moved and properly seconded that we approve the cte local application for funding 2022-2023 any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign pass this unanimously thank you all very much thank you all next time on our agenda operational services i believe the first item mr seller is going to lead us on board members the next item on the agenda is uh the naming of elementary school f uh we have uh previously brought you uh feedback from the community and public input on options for naming the school they have included naming the school after former durham city schools principal aretha massenberg

039after paulie murray and also after the geographical features of the location third fork elementary school and we present this for your discussion please yes sir better wait a minute my thoughts in order um so about two months ago and it's in the public record if anyone wants to request it i sent an email to this board um suggesting that i would support the naming of elementary f as paulie murray elementary because that individual has been vetted by thousands and thousands of people and scholars as someone who we heard tonight from one of our public speakers represents um her life of service and she's been researched i can support the naming of elementary f as paul or murray elementary however in the subsequent discussion i actually have more concern about naming it after anyone than i

040did originally and that is to fall back on policy our policy talks about prioritizing naming after geographic regions or geographic features and to be frank i am not a fan of how uh the name of an individual considered tonight came to the board came to the board from an advocate of a family member with all due respect to that individual as being one of durham's firsts in that same email i sent about paulie murray i mentioned that durham probably has many firsts that could be researched and my concern with naming it after someone that hasn't been vetted sufficiently is that we may find later that there are lots of firsts and i actually proposed having perhaps a place within that school where we we leave space to identify leaders and firsts in this community because

041i'm confident there are peers out there that are worthy of being acknowledged or recognized so my sense tonight whether we're taking action or not is to fall back on policy and preferably take a geographic or a name related to the the site itself i've been out there several times as opposed to [Music] not necessarily breaking policy but not following policy exactly and naming after an individual we did get an email today that mentioned a name of an individual and reference their personnel file i've only seen one piece of data that we've investigated the naming of an individual miss betty mastenberg and that was i believe a county records search but i i do wonder are is there a personnel file have we ensured that the person we're putting forward is going to represent the values

042of durham public schools i won't vote against naming it after a first person but i do have concerns and my preference would be for us if that is the will of the board to do more homework to see if we can actually put our hands on a personnel file and i don't think we've tasked the administration with taking a deep deep dive into this this name and that would be my preference before we make a decision on a name tonight for what it's worth yeah any other discussion okay um yes sir quick quick question for from our operations how much how much is elementary school f gonna cost is it is it roughly around 100 million dollars and i know that so the total project budget is 72 million right now okay so the re

043the reason i said that is i know we have policy and i know the reason because of the policy is because we live in a world where we have to look into our history um to to see where things were going wrong at one point in time and finally acknowledged that which is the reason so many names on on buildings are changing now historically um because in the context of those days maybe it was the right thing to do in the context of today with a different perspective we look at things differently i cannot fathom naming a school that costs 70 plus million dollars after a rock that's that's just me my thought is is that we have so many people in this community that have done great things we have so many people that

044have dedicated their lives to our work and to achievements and in multiple fields in multiple endeavors where we're always going to have a situation in which there's a there's a hesitancy to act right paralysis of analysis but at some point in time we have to be willing to accept the sometimes negative outcomes that come through decisions that were made based on good intentions at that time i have done my research on murray i've done my research on massenberg i would not object to either one of them we have a merrick moore i wouldn't object to a hypothe naming of one but i would object to wasting the opportunity for students to come into a school to understand the school's history and to understand their connection with who these people were what paths they they crossed

045what steps they took along their journey and and how we are revering them as we may one day revere them as well so for that reason i want to support naming this school after somebody after something that has no personal relationship to anybody it's a rock it's a geographical surface and that's that's just not something that i would support anyone else um miss louis mrs lewis thank you um the whole chair thank you for your comments um mr sears and mr raven i remain in support of betty massenburg um the school being named after betty massenburg as i have been since it was first presented to us in november and when that advocate came and spoke on her behalf i was happy to see that form of engagement and i know that your office has

046worked really hard mr sudderth to engage our community in all kinds of ways whether it's electronically going out to different fairs and events to make people aware that there's something going on they can make a decision around and i believe that during this time we were using the engage dps website and it's funny because different generations use different platforms and just to tell a quick story my we have chickens at our house and we got too many eggs so my son who's in middle school wants to sell eggs and i said well you can do this but how are we going to let people know are we going to print some flyers because that's my way of doing things back in the day he was like mommy i want a website and an app oh

047yeah we've moved on from printing materials and and putting on on doors and mailboxes so just to say that when the young woman came here and advocated for that name i thought that was important for dps to continue to engage in different ways which is why we had the public comment and since then we had a plethora of emails supporting the naming of the school to betty massenberg and i even spoke with my mentor manny fort brown who's held this seat for 16 years and had nothing but raven remarks to say about her and i did my own research as well to understand that she was the first black female principal at holloway elementary school holloway i'm sorry holloway elementary school and those children when that close ended up going to eastway um i also

048did research on polymory at this time and my children go to lakewood elementary school and there is an image of her on the building of lakewood elementary school you know we have a lakewood elementary and we have a lakewood middle montessori those names get confusing i even had a thought what if we change lakewood elementary to paulie murray you know what what does thinking out the box because these are two great names that we have to choose from and like mr raven said we should not miss this opportunity to do this in this moment um i stand in support of the name of the school after miss betty messenburg i would not be in opposition of combining the names either that would be the pleasure of this board and working towards that any others that

049sounds dead have something to add mr yeah i did have one more thing to add i want to say too i know that we've taken this time for research to be done i'm also aware of the email that we received today um so i want to appreciate our staff um of looking into it and haven't seen anything to have been founded of it so i don't know if um doctor was saying to it okay yes we did receive the email from ms lewis and uh that's listen can you please uh jump in and make a comment regarding what you've been able to research yes based on the timeline of um receipt of the inquiry i did review um the available personnel files and was not able to find anything negative um i would put a

050caveat that we're looking we're talking 1970s and so um given that the individual is deceased the file we could have a file in another location but everything that i've been able to search we maintain a list of anyone that has documentation um in their file and i could not find anything so did you didn't find anything on betty massenberg period and you didn't find anything negative or just you didn't find anything negative the actual file from the 1970s would not be at this location but we do maintain a list if there are any concerns and miss massenberg's name is not on that list okay thank you okay uh ms helmstead thank you administration and board i think we spent a lot of time thinking about this i think recognizing history is important i i am

051a little history buff so i love enjoying and reading about that and i think i recognize especially when it comes to black history that that often is not recorded and written in the same way so i think i just want to honor and recognize that so as we were you know doing some research we were able to find some things but maybe not be able to find as much as we would with a poly murray i think i did read the email today from that person who reached out and wanted to know you know if there was anything else there and it doesn't seem like we were able to substantiate more um but i think it highlights the reasons why naming schools after people can be tricky it can be a challenge and i think

052that's something that as a board it's why that policy was in place that we need to continue to wrestle with and consider um because our decisions have impact right in what ways do we want to honor and memorialize folks feels really important and and i think we have um a duty to consider what's the best way to do that i think i could support a murray matsenberg elementary school um as an option for elementary school f but i and i want us to still wrestle with those questions so what does it mean to honor what does it mean to to honor the history and the rich history of this durham community and what are the right and appropriate ways to do so yeah oh that's followed ours thank you um you know we have had

053conversations about this and um when i've talked to community members about it i say you know we have a process and the process has been mixed you know as uh my colleague uh vice chair giovanni lewis mentioned you know we are amenable to engagement and in the ways that it that it's taken place and we have the dps engage page which put out a poll effectively and i'd love to hear a little more from from our director of communications in terms of what is the the polling as if we know it from the last time i know that this is something that we continue to bring into this conversation it's so important just because that is the process we started with we also know that we've gotten engagement and emails um with family members and

054community members advocating for betty massenburg and you know um today we got that email that was um sent to us uh the person did not identify themselves um and we receive emails we receive comments in that way but i just want to say that we have had a lot of engagement in emails and also through the dps engaged process and i am also in support of history and support of betty massenburg in support of pauly murray if we go in a route of merging the names that's something i'll be willing to consider but i'd love to hear from uh communications in terms of what that polling looked like i don't have the exact numbers in my head but paulie murray's name was a popular response on the engage.dpsnc.net website miss massenberg's name came from a

055grassroots response following one person submitted miss massenberg's name on engage.dpsnc.net um so a popular popular reaction to miss murray's name or grassroots reaction to ms matsenberg's name two different kinds of engagement if i may continue you know that we we definitely welcome just that that synergy of engagement grassroots you know through our process of a poll on our website and we do recognize that there's different ways that folks let us know what their will is i am in support and i would be ready to make a motion for murray massenburg if that's a little work but we can also discuss further if there's any any other discussion was that a motion okay i make a motion that we support the naming of elementary school f murray massenburg elementary school second all right it's been properly

056moved and seconded uh discussion i did have a discussion point i just gave you an opportunity to make the motion because it was out there but we still have discussion um so i've been kind of going back and forth with this and um i was definitely in favor of the murray name because i i think we were when we were doing lions farms i think murray was the was a contender um maybe the top contender then we talked about the land itself um so i was a supporter of that and then when miss massenberg's family came i was actually a supporter of uh initially miss um mastenburg's name and uh i think murray was probably my top top pick here now over the last two months or so the the person we that sent the

057email today um i've spoken to a few times they reached out to me um i'm not one to seek dissent but you know i'll talk to anyone and i've spoken to this person um i know that uh i didn't know this person before but i kind of know them now we've spoken a few times and i just i compelled this person to email the board because i didn't feel comfortable talking about that from a third person talking about the information that uh that was put there's just a little more intel the email was very very brief today but um i think this says as uh chair homestead mentioned this does make us take a step back and think about you know why the policy was put into place i think we a couple years ago

058we changed the name at dsa for the middle school building because of some historical things there we've actually considered uh some others as well um i don't think miss masenberg's name would be associated with anything of that magnitude of the reasons why we changed the was it the car building i think it was the car building in any way shape or form my concern would be the vetting piece of um some of the i'll say accusations um of leadership and so forth withdraw those concerns and i have i have personal concerns as well so um as this is the board we're gonna do a vote i would prefer the name murray but i'll support the murray massenburg but i can't support massenberg standing alone okay so that's just that's kind of where i stand but

059i do think you know while we're in this period i think we still should try to find information be proactive and trying to find information on ms matsenberg's personal file personnel file because some of the things are just kind of i want to make sure that they don't come up years later different board and cause and cause an issue okay um mr sears thank you i i would you know echo the what mr lee said about you know some additional research i would like some additional research i'm not opposed to naming it for someone if we are confident that we're not going to have to rename it later on i do still have my concerns about their there are other firsts out there there are peers to betty massenberg that are equally as great and

060um how do we honor them as well how do we make space for them so that they don't have to wait for the building of a new school to be honored um second i'm not in favor of the massenburg name alone because to me that is a that is a group of people [Music] whether we just put betty massenburg on the building but name it murray massenburg elementary that that's that's like putting vadaras on a building um it it could represent lots of different people when we're trying to say we're representing this person because of the first thing that they did in this community so i do have concerns my preference would be to either name after one or the other as opposed to having a hyphenated name um there's a motion on the floor

061so we're gonna have to if there's a second we're gonna have to vote on that name um i don't know if there is a second yet uh on that name i would probably vote no that is not a vote against either person it is simply a vote against a hyphenated name and i'll say that again before we vote if we vote on this motion um the yes yes uh mrs lewis um the motion is there and it's been seconded so in this discussion i just want to lift the energy in here because we're voting on a naming of a school honoring the first black female principal we had like history month we had women's history month both times i was hoping we could have named it within those and honoring those months and i said

062comments at both of those meetings this woman was a pioneer in the durham community now i say i married into durham because my husband was born and raised in durham he brought me here but in the time that i've been here there's so much pride in the people who come from durham and to talk and engage community about who's been here and who's been pioneers just want to put this she's been a pioneer miss massenburg she believed in those children from low-income families and made them believe in themselves that's what touches me in this moment and yes we got an email from someone who had a concern but don't let that take this decision that we're making right now this woman is important to our community and i want to make sure we're lifting that

063up and that is not being brought down by doubt as our administration has had time to do an investigation and look into this name and to this person i've spoken with the community people who are from here who've been through this school who talks about the beliefs that she had in children and i just want to make sure this is being put on the record miss betty mastenberg deserves the name of a school in and of herself by herself i'm happy to still support both names together as that's the motions on the floor and that's how i'll be voting let's just remember the history and even one more thing merrick moore when we name a school after a person yes we have to be careful but what i've seen here in durham it was a

064black history bowl children were able to name all the schools after black pioneers in this school system and i told you before they were even able to tell you who they were in this city i got an education lesson merrick moore two names to people and what they did and what they stood for this is important for our children to see themselves to feel connected to honor the history in durham i just want to lift the energy around that note i don't i i don't believe that the energy is um necessarily around the individual i think it's just the gravity of the gravity of decision we have to make and what comes after right and it's just a concern there's there we have to be aware of the concerns of of the decision right i

065don't think it has taken anything away from either one of these individuals either one of these individuals or pioneers you know any any one of them so i don't think that i don't necessarily think that it is about the individual i think is about the gravity of the situation of the decision that we have to make especially if it's after someone instead of a sandy ridge or a northern southern you know uh that kind of that kind of decision right so i just think it as uh that's my personal belief yes sir yeah i would just add for for a bit of history um and and just to make put it in the public record um we had a vote i remember it was 2014 or 2015 about the witted school in the wooded project

066and i was in the majority on that boat because i think as duramites know the history there is work to be done to repair the damage done by projects like 147 that that plowed through haiti and so while it may have been a slightly bad deal for our board and for our our government um i voted for it and i support honoring the history of those that came before us honoring the legacy of these school systems so i want to be clear that that if i vote no on this hyphenated name it is not because i'm unaware of that history or don't support it i do and i've made votes in the past to that nature okay did you have anything else miss followed us i just um just um when it comes to dps

067and the engagement that we're doing again i'm going to go to process and i appreciate again our director of communications leading this work in terms of acknowledging that there's multiple ways that we get engagement and acknowledging the grassroots as well acknowledging they knew that we had you know a website our website by which uh folks could put their decision and i feel like based on that process based on the fact that there were votes for paulie murray on the dps engage but then we also got emails from community members uh calls from community members visits you know multiple visits over multiple board meetings when family members and community advocates were out there advocating for betty murray i mean betty mastenberg and so for me it's so important that when it comes to naming the school

068we invited the community to give us their feedback we put that invitation out and that was the intention and we said tell us and it would just i think as somebody who sits on this board with all of you um i feel like we we we set that in motion we said we want to hear from the community in the community let us hear what they had to say in different ways right through the dps uh engage process and and folks who were able to get on the website did that and also through emails you know personally folks came here family members came here community advocates came here and i got calls i know a lot of us got calls and so i do think that we we put the invitation out there for the

069community to help us make this this decision and i feel like that is where i stand and that is why i i feel like we should support or i will be supporting murray mastenburg because it's hard to tease which voices right do we count the emails do we count the polls you know community members both came and they were strong strong voices for both names and they're both black women and and they both represent a lot in terms of what they bring what they have done for education what they have done for rights for human rights what they have done for um in different ways and so i just wanted to name that that we put out the invitation our process was to include the community in this conversation and so i want to support

070um marine basement mr uh raven you know sometimes when we sit here and and we we talk about representation like when when i hear some of these names being thrown out i have a somewhat of a personal connection with it i always brag to people about how long my family's been here and it hasn't really been that long it's been you know less than 100 years but within that there's five generations my family they've been here my mom went with it when it was actually middle school and then her grandson was my son was able to go there as a preschool so there there are a lot of relationships i mean when we're talking about miss madison bird she taught at fayetteville street that was the very first elementary school that i went to which

071was spelled with street the thing is is that there are reasons to name schools after people there's there's pride in that i mean we talk about we have shepherd middle school right and right down the street we have one of the finest colleges in the state in the country by nccu and he was the founder of that james e shepherd you know every year during homecoming we have a founder's day um where we honor him and the members of his fraternity kappa assad they they they sing they sing a hymn in his honor as well so we have to understand that there are connections representation matters there's a reason why it is so important to be able to honor people when you can because it does resonate with people maybe not as much today as

072it does tomorrow but the next day it will resonate a little bit more and i would just hope that people that are viewing this now can actually take the time to google both of them right to actually google both of them sit down with your kids and let them actually hear about their history hear about the paths that they took so i i can proudly support both of these with with no hesitancy um nobody in life is going to be perfect right and sometimes when we're looking at things through uh through a lens of what life was like in the 70s mind you we're talking about the first african-american woman principal in durham right so i can only imagine how she was either seen as being too rough too tough or not nice enough so

073it's it's very difficult to critique work from half a century ago so i i wasn't gonna go there but i just i can greatly appreciate uh this board for what it seems like supporting this um even even though there may be some some cautious steps that we're taking while getting there i'm proud of that so thank you all all right so we have a motion to adopt the name murray massenburg for elementary school f has been seconded any further discussion all right we'll go ahead and vote all in favor say aye aye all opposed same sign are you ups are you abstaining or oh you voted passage unanimously okay so the new name for elementary school f murray massenburg i'm a feeling to be short in the murray mass but if i could ask a

074clarifying question i just want to make sure that it is hyphenated murray hyphen masenberg elementary school yes that's what i that's my expectation is that correct for just consensus uh chair mike lee can we get dr bunk to admins or or somebody in an administration just in terms of like hyphenated we've hyphenated when we did merrick more it's hyphenated so that would follow the same thing just just confirm if if yeah we'll put a hyphen in it yeah i'm just saying i just wanted to you know um i'm fine with with hyphenated is more hyphenated american yeah and it and we did hyphenate it i just want to make sure that we are congruent you know security okay i don't think i've ever seen it officially hyphenated so i wasn't sure so thank you for

075that's actually a very good observation uh alexandra i really appreciate you saying that because i i didn't even think about that would someone look at it as a one last name you know like somebody hyphenable do you do separate so if it's hyphenated it's hyphenated cool thank you that's a really good observation thank you all right continuing forward hopefully these are shorter good evening board members um i hope these will be short as well um but more than likely since they have to do with finance they don't usually end up short but uh i want to thank you for this opportunity we are in dire need to come to start coming to you on this topic in regards to 403 b the 403 b plans that have been funded through this or provided through the

076state through prudential will no longer at june 30th be serviced by the state because of the uh not enough money being earned by the state let's put it that way uh there is a 401k as well as where it was 457b that will continue to be provided through the state uh that is changing from potential as well to empower it already has they've already started the transition so the state's doing some things that are are changing the lives of people that have already invested in these companies 403b we have to by may 31st tell the state what our what our district plans to do from that standpoint so we will be coming back to you after this evening's meeting on the 19th to come with the recommendations for the purpose of making a decision on

077what you'll hear in the presentation this evening and the reasons why we're having to do this next week we're going to send out a survey to the employees that are being serviced by the 403 b plan and the grandfathered individuals that have plans that came in before prudential in the state started providing the 403 b and in doing that we will ask them what type of program they would like to have a current retail program which is more of an annuity program we're having a little more flexibility with uh choosing a different platform so tonight we're going to come to you to talk in regards to some of the work that we've done in that regard some of the results that have come about of our group work group as well as information we've received

078from some of the companies that are willing to take on the 403b plans tonight i want to introduce amy simonson who is with very asset management she has been with us in working with us in the school district i want to say since 1314 time frame they're working with us and we do educational programs for our our employees through the take 10 program financial fitness program to try to put people in a better place than understanding what they can do with their money and how they can build uh equity as they go along for retirement times they'll be in a better place and not worry about do i have enough money to pay the bills especially when we're having inflation going up so much but anyway i want to bring amy up here first and

079uh rob mclean will be working uh from afar to do the presentation so if we can bring up the presentation vdq presentation i'm gonna let amy make a few comments before we turn it over to rob thank you be able to advance his own slides or will that be done with the lady that will probably be done hopefully you just need to say next slide please wonderful wonderful wonderful um thank you all um really just by way of introduction i'd like to start by saying it truly is a privilege to work with durham public school administration on this area of supplemental benefits for teachers staff and administrators over the years dps has shown really significant leadership in its commitment to the financial future of the teachers and staff who work so tirelessly to build a

080brighter financial future for all of our youth and while i know we're here to talk specifically about the north carolina 403 b d conversion i would be remiss not to take the opportunity to at least briefly mention that last year in the heart of kovid dps was nominated for a national award through plan sponsor of the year for its commitment to financial education and outreach and it truly is an honor to work with an organization demonstrating such leadership so when the north carolina treasurer's office announced the deconversion or the decommission of the state-run 403 b program there was very strong infrastructure here in place at dps to reconvene a committee of individuals very engaged on the issues and try to make a determination of what should come next the treasurer's program i was very involved

081and familiar with from its outset it was an effort to offer an institutionally managed 403b option that moved away from the higher cost traditional retail options that were typically available for purchase within these programs it brought institutional oversight professionally managed accounts through the treasurer's office and a platform that had both fiduciary governance and a commitment to reasonable expenses so with that program deconverting it actually presents a wonderful opportunity to re-exert some local control over the 403 b options ways to expand this benefit offering for the benefit of teachers staff and administrators and frankly lays some groundwork for some new solutions to some of the most pressing problems that are facing the education profession in this moment in time namely it is strategies to recruit to retain and to reward the professionals that serve our youth

082and these supplemental 403 b programs when administered locally with an engaged planned sponsor looking at all of the benefits attributes and possibilities of these plans opens up the opportunity to incorporate these benefits more more centrally and more directly into the overall compensation package for in for teachers and staff so what we hope to do today is talk a little bit about the process of how we went about evaluating what the next steps should look like for durham public schools in replacing the north carolina-sponsored program it is requiring as paul mentioned for the school district at the district level to designate a replacement program while employees always have and always will retain the right to make certain individual decisions those who do not by the deadline which is september 30th will be automatically converted into the

083new option that the district designates so it is designating a default path that could end up being an automatic path forward for some participants who don't make their own alternative decision so it's important that we look at how that decision is made and there were a couple of key factors um that were of primary consideration one was to minimize disruption you don't want to set anybody off on the wrong path leave anyone behind or put anyone in a worse situation so we sought to minimize disruption we sought to create a comparable alternative to the state-run program and we sought to create a local option that could expand the options available not contract or reduce the options available and at the same time give us a local framework to be able to do more with this

084benefit should should the district elect to make it more part of the compensation program moving forward so we did a survey of some current providers i see that we have the slide deck that i haven't yet heard if we have rob on mike how do i test if rob is available remotely i took myself off mute i don't know if you can hear me wonderful well you you are a disembodied voice right now with plenty of monitors in the room um but it really is my pleasure to introduce rob he is going to lead uh lead you all through the process um sort of the discovery and the survey process that we went through uh to identify providers and some pros and cons rob is a veteran of the industry and legal counsel at former

085providers here in the industry and has a nationally recognized reputation of building sponsor and provider partnerships so i i believe i'll just turn it over rob to let you guide us through the due diligence questionnaire that was issued and how we retrieved and scored the responses sure thank you amy thank you paul uh good evening everyone and i'll just mention that you know i think the 403 b retirement plan as amy mentioned is is extremely important for employees financial wellness in financial education and local control of the 403 b plan is extremely important to provide the best benefit for retirement for your employees so i'll mention on this screen that the dps formed a committee and we had two two meetings from the first meeting the committee approved a due diligence questionnaire in that questionnaire

086centered around the five pillars of effective 403 b plan management we issued the due diligence questionnaire to the prevalent providers in the dps plan and prevalent providers throughout the country in the 403b industry we received responses i summarized those responses the committee scored the responses which i'll be going over and i'll be describing for discussion the options dps has to move forward with their local 403b plan so amy if you would move to the next slide please and here um is a dps deconversion timeline that i just want to communicate to everyone in the room uh april 8th was our first committee meeting we then issued the due diligence questionnaire april 19 was our deadline for uh responses from the investment providers uh we had our second committee meeting on april 22nd to review those

087answers and we are presenting um our work thus far for discussion to the board and for a potential board vote on may 19th shortly thereafter we must submit a form to the state and we have to submit that form no later than may 31st in that form we need to identify two important pieces of information one our solution going forward and then also we need to choose an asset transfer date sometime after uh june 30th as of june 30th we aim to implement the new solution and the reason we chose that date is because that is the day the state will no longer accept contributions going forward next slide please some dps plan statistics are here uh with the north carolina state program offered through prudential that has approximately 70 contributing employees and the assets

088are approximately two million dollars there are a number of deselected investment providers and by deselected i mean that the providers hold assets and accounts under the dps 403 b retirement plan they continue to receive contributions however no new accounts can be open at this time and as you can see those deselected providers hold the bulk of contributing participants and also certainly the bulk of assets next slide please so currently the dps403b plan offers 17 different investment providers the majority of which are grandfathered so with it offers the north carolina state program through prudential and then 16 grandfathered providers and the majority of accounts and assets are with the top four providers equitable reliastar really which is voya nlg and aig and those are very common providers throughout the country in 403 b and i'll be

089giving a little bit more information about these but the one of the the main considerations of a plan of this nature which is very common in the 403b industry throughout the country is that there are many employees contributing to these grandfathered providers there are many accounts with these grandfathered providers and the employer needs to make sure that these accounts accounts are serviced going forward next slide please we issued the due diligence questionnaire to the investment providers on this screen equitable aig nlg a company called ipx and voya and vanguard and the reasons why we issued the due diligence questionnaire to the providers on the screen one they are prevalent providers in your plan uh two uh vanguard there was an appetite for a low-cost provider and three ipx ipx as i will discuss is a

090platform uh in the 403b industry that is prevalent in the 403b industry and is designed to service not only accounts moving forward on an institutional basis but also provide services for accounts that our grandfather and since dps has a plan where the bulk of accounts are with grandfathered providers we thought it appropriate to issue the due diligence questionnaire to ipx and determine how they can fit into servicing going forward now not all of the providers to which the ddq was issued responded voya and vanguard chose not to respond and typically the reason for that is because the the assets with the state that will transfer over to the succeeding uh investment provider are small two million um in assets and boya and vanguard are big firms and so they chose not to respond uh to

091this this questionnaire which is fine and which is common however we do have a good selection of providers to review uh from the four responders and you can flip to the next slide if you will equitable aig and nlg they are very prevalent in the 403b industry they are primarily annuity providers uh annuity providers are prevalent in the 403b industry however the industry is changing a bit the industry is heading forwards offering uh access to mutual funds and multiple mutual funds um equitable aig and energy have adapted and they do now offer access to mutual funds but they do remain traditionally and primarily annuity providers ipx is a bit different ipx is an independent platform that offers access to thousands of different mutual funds and investment providers it has it is specially designed to service

092employees with grandfathered providers that dps has and it also is a platform that gives the employer the unique ability to control and contour its own plan in regards to investments and services and that's education uh for its employees so it's a bit different um but it it seems to be where the industry is heading from a national perspective so amy if you want to flip to the next slide please on this screen i i've listed the optimal features for a local 403b plan and i want to briefly touch base on how the respondents meet the demands of each feature one is retail financial education and engagement in the retail model and with a local plan there's a tremendous opportunity to provide employees with financial education not just about saving for retirement or social security or

093state pension retirement benefits but other more global aspects such as saving for a home paying off debt properly budgeting saving for a child's college education etc with a local 403 b plan and the finance financial education services of a retail locally engaged provider the employer really can provide its employees with a robust and broad financial education and engagement program and throughout the country where there is local engagement professional advice we see employees saving for retirement we see them saving more and and we see employees more engaged in their financial future now equitable aig nlg and ips all bring to the table the opportunity for the employer to provide financial education for their employees uh they're all a bit different i think ipx brings a bit more flexibility for the employer to not specifically design its

094financial education and engagement program the second optimal feature is institutional pricing and in the 403b industry throughout the country there has been criticism there has been criticism about high cost investment products and i think i think there's some truth to that and i think there's some misunderstanding traditionally uh annuities are offered in 403 b retirement plans and it's very difficult to compare the cost of an annuity to the cost of a mutual fund their apples and oranges however um the prices typically associated with investment product is on a retail basis meaning that if an employee went to invest on his or her own they would oftentimes incur a higher cost versus given the opportunity to invest invest in an employer-sponsored plan that may have special bulk pricing if you will or institutional pricing and certainly

095based on the responses ipx presented the best opportunity to offer institutional pricing to dps employees the third optimal feature open architecture for investment choice open architecture meaning which respondent gives the employer and the employees access to a menu of investments instead of merely one investment open architecture certainly is is the way the 403b industry is headed ipx presented the best opportunity to provide employees with open architecture investing and also gives the employer the opportunity to contour the menu for employees now equitable aig and energy also give some open architecture however that open architecture is a bit more limited than ipx and i think that limitation that that difference is fairly significant um so it's something certainly to consider moving forward the fourth optimal feature is data aggregation for administration and i will add to that

096data aggregation for servicing the grandfather account data aggregation is extremely important for the employer to meet its obligations under the irs code data aggregation is also extremely important to service the employees that have grandfathered accounts and that also have accounts with providers that are eligible for new accounts going forward and so when there's appropriate data aggregation employees whether they're with a grandfathered provider or a new provider can go to one portal access and view their account and perform transactions on their account certainly ips provided the best solution for that data aggregation feature others provided a solution as well um other the other responses were a bit more attenuated than ipx in their single solution so that's certainly something to consider going forward and lastly unified enrollment that's an extremely important feature in 403 v plans

097typically an employee that wants to enroll in the 403 b plan might have to go to a tpa and file a salary reduction agreement then that employee has to go to one of the investment providers make its selection and then complete a new account application so it's a two-step process and that process is cumbersome certainly when it comes to enrollment and so the best solution is a solution that presents a unified enrollment scenario where the employee can go to one portal find information on the investments that are offered and on that same portal on that same visit enroll not only file not only a salary reduction agreement but also complete any new account application that is needed ipx certainly presented a unified enrollment scenario others a bit more attenuated using their administrator so certainly these

098optimal features are crucial in developing a successful plan going forward um next screen please mr mr mclean this is this is frederick raven on the school board i have a few questions before we um change from this slide sure now would be a good idea to ask it now can you please define what tpa stands for tpa oh yes tpa is third party administrator and that's an organization that's common in the 403b industry and a third-party administrator is it it assists the employer in meeting its obligations under the 403b regulations and typically in a 403 there are multiple separate and distinct investment providers under one plan and because there are separate and distinct investment providers the employer needs to have information sharing among all of those providers in order to meet its irs obligations and

099so employers engage a third party administrator to exchange information from employer to the investment providers back from the investment providers to employer and so it's a it's uh typically a public school district will have a third party administrator uh in their 403b plan and on this screen uh ipx has a system where that that service that full service of a tpa is not needed as much as it's needed with separate and distinct investment providers and so the other respondents aig nlg ipx do have some data aggregation for administration they do have some unified enrollment aspects however in order to offer those they use their tpa organization within their firms nlg aig and equitable have that tpa service embedded within their firms does that answer the question it does it does and i definitely appreciated that

100answer and some of these questions that i'm asking is just real high level i just want to make sure i make sure not just me but the audience does have a full grasp on on some of the things that are being notated and one of the questions is because when i'm looking at this the optimal features slide i don't necessarily have anything to compare it to so you know part of me wants to have a better understanding and i'm not sure if you all were able to do an analysis on this on how are we currently utilizing you know any type of features like is this saying that this is optimizing some of the features that maybe we currently have but on a on a limited basis like regarding the data architecture for choice where

101you listed others more limited so that makes me think that currently with our current provider maybe we have maybe like three or four or even up to six index funds that we have the choice to invest in and is this saying that maybe these other ones may have this but ipx allows you even a little bit more granular investment models can you kind of explain that sure um you do have some um open architecture for investment choice currently with prudential the other respondents equitable aig energy offer access to various mutual funds however ipx provides the the greatest amount and greatest selection of mutual funds so that an employer can choose the investment menu that it makes available to its employees the other respondents equitable aig nlg their their investment menus employers weren't as broad as

102what is available from ipx and certainly the breadth of selection under the ipx platform is far greater than is what what now is offered under the state plan through credential all rob thank you um my follow-up comment would be that you've hit on really the crux of the difference between accepting a vendor response that is largely proprietary in nature and therefore a closed system versus a platform response which is primarily an open system the prudential offering was designed to mirror the 401k and 457 and the choices represented a very highly curated very limited menu by design when we're moving away from that we now have the opportunity to say do we want another vendor-based manufactured option a manufacturer or do we want a very open system that allows greater local control flexibility to design that

103investment menu um ipx for example was the only respondent in the choices that let us duplicate the state menu as it currently stands which allows for those employees who are going to default convert to actually remain intact all of those choices that they had and transfer them in kind to their existing holdings because we have the flexibility to design that and then add a full sleeve of fidelity funds a full sleeve of vanguard funds a curated menu in addition because we're not given any proprietary product constraints it's truly an open environment to design as we see fit so that really is one of the crux of the decisions and i think your your question went straight to that point that was exactly what i was going to ask because um [Music] we're we're trying to

104look look out for what's best for for staff right and i wanted to make sure that we weren't going with a selection maybe just because it was low cost or maybe it gave you so many options but that didn't necessarily steer you in a historical direction of a fund that normally gains profitable returns so what you're saying is they could still be able to invest in a fidelity pool a vanguard pool a lot of those pools would already be out there and accessible for them that's the proposal under the ipx option thank you yep right rob i think it's it's probably best um you know in the interest with this background now established to go to the the basic scoring system um we're going to flip to the next sliding and this is the last

105slide and um uh so this is a scoring review of the due diligence questionnaire responses in the left column we have the five pillars of effective 403 d plan management which include investment provider management management managing the selection under employers plans governance of which providers will support employer governance and management of the local 403 b plan plan design which providers offer the employer the best opportunity to design a robust retirement plan to attract retain and reward employees compliance questions in regards to compliance inquired as do providers ability to share information and aggregate data so that employers and employees can remain compliant under irs regulations and participant engagement which providers offer the best service in regards to engaging employees on a local basis to provide financial education each uh question under those categories were scored uh

106from one to five one being the poorest five being the best uh the answers in each section were totaled and totaled below for a total score and as you can see uh ipx is in the lead with 123 followed by nlg then aig and equitable and that's all i have for tonight and this is on for discussion so if there are any questions comments i'm happy to answer anything i can i just wanted to say that uh i thank amy and rob for being here they are the experts um they're guiding us through this process ensuring that we're doing the right thing for our employees as we um have to make it a selection by may 31st um again we're going to do a survey out to the individuals uh that are part of 403

107b plan to see what type of gauge they have and feel they have where they want to go do they want more options less options and we will come back to you on the 24th with those responses again we have to have something done by may 31st but i want to thank again amy and rob for taking the time tonight to walk us through this as well as pull the team together to be able to make the best possible choices for our employees moving forward so if there aren't any other questions questions board members any further questions the board members massage how will employees be notified of this switch so for starters uh the state has been saying has been sending out information regarding the 403 b plan deconversion and the choices being made we

108will be providing with the assistance of verity we will be providing the the clear documentation uh ended and words for people to understand so that they can make the the the change over correct me if i'm wrong amy um we have to make this change uh or we don't have to make this change but not making this change is comes with a lot of uh dirty laundry to uh for the individuals to be able to change over or to change their uh how they want these funds to be redistributed and it comes at a cost as well that's the problem we don't want people to lose money because of the fact of the state changing their plan that they've offered for a number of years now and so that's the real reasoning behind this is

109to ensure that these the individuals that have invested uh will remain invested and will be able to make choices down the road of the new funding that they put in not these funds because these funds will stay as is and will continue to grow but allow them to make more options changes as they go down the road with additional uh whether the platform or through the annuity plans okay any other discussions um mr raven my last question is just on what you just mentioned that um that they will will they have to opt in or will they have to opt out so as of june 30th the state will no longer accept contributions if the district designates a successor provider then those contributions come july 1 can continue and will be directed to the new

110designated successor so that's what prevents the interruption so in that sense it's a automatic default redirection but as always any participant can stop and start at any point in time that they want just having a successor provides a seamless redirection uh unless the participant likes to opt out perfect thank you all right and this was before us for information correct all right so no action is needed thank you so very much for the presentation very informative and very important for our employees thank you okay and you're staying with us i am that's why i plugged in right [Laughter] unless uh dr bunk wants to present this one [Laughter] so tonight we're coming to you for action in regards to us moving forward with the superintendent's final proposed budget of 12.8 million dollars i did uh

111get my m's and k's mixed up in the in the details below on the precis um i have that information technology support one to one initiative was five five hundred and fifteen million dollars it's a little high uh it should be five hundred fifteen thousand dollars okay next to that but um in this the request was from the superintendent 12.875 million dollars that was communicated to the county so that they could begin their work uh back in march because part of your mou is to provide them a number in march to start working with uh and subsequent to that changes can be made fixed costs we had 5.3 million dollars those are things that we're going to have to have for the already implemented salary increases that the state has as well as benefit increases

112etc teacher salary supplement you want to increase the salary supplement up to sixty five hundred dollars that's another four million dollars to make that starting supplement work we had some additional requests for lions farm 485 thousand dollars for custodial services for assistant principals to ensure that we have the administration in place at those schools as well as information technology k thousand dollars for the purpose of moving towards our one one-to-one initiative with the employees um that we have we're putting in place through esser right now but trying to get uh seven of those uh 13 positions that we want to get as we move off of the esser funds and also charter school requests that goes along with our ask because what we ask for the 10.3 million dollars is necessary for us to operate

113with next year charter schools get 20 percent off the top of that so we're adding that in to make sure that we have those dollars available and we're able to utilize the dollars uh for our operations in whole another 2.76 million dollars so we're asking you tonight to vote uh because by may 15th we have to submit to the county the final request and we want to make sure that we're in a good place moving into that and not calling another board meeting special board meeting just for that at this time so that's where we are today asking for a vote discussion on on anything that you have a question about all right discussion do we have any discussion um so yeah i'll keep it quick too um first of all this is my second

114budget process and uh it's coming along thank you for taking my call earlier this afternoon mr lasierre and um so when i look at the budget i'm just going back to a previous slide we had again the fixed cost is taking care of the salary increases certified staff i appreciate the diligence you all had in adding the increasing um starting the salary supplements of course has durham was left out of the state was it 100 million dollars and we were left out so again we're turning to our county who has supported us so far along the way we do have a good working relationship with them i'm glad there's conversations ahead for them to help to prepare their budget although this formal budget is not due until may 15th once we get this final stamp

115of approval um and what we would like to see in it as well so lions farm of course there's going to be more funds services or needs coming out of a new school opening up i.t of course we want to continue to close the digital divide and support our 101 initiatives and we'd have to deal with the charter school requirements as well so i don't have any questions about this budget because i've asked them in one of the three meetings that we've had about it and heard public comment have not heard of the concerns of things that people want to prioritize with this request so i just want to say thank you again for the presentation thank you for the call this afternoon and i'm looking forward to i look forward to supporting this budget

116okay i'll accept a motion then i move that we accept the superintendent's final budget proposal or physical year 2022-23 second it's been moving properly second that we approve the superintendent's final budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 any further discussion all right all in favor say hi all right all opposed please use the same sign passes unanimously thank you i will communicate to the county staff that the 12.8 is what we're asking for all right thank you now we come to dr monk thank you i don't know if this presentation will be as invigorating as the 403b but we'll give it our best shot i hear you okay okay if uh if we could uh go ahead and start the slide presentation please and then if we can go ahead and move to slide four thank

117you and tonight we're going to be doing a strategic plan update for ensuring fiscal and operational responsibility we can go to the green slide with all the team members on it one more yes thank you i'm joined by several of the team leads tonight that's going to be helping me provide the update in addition to those who are here with us as you can see on the uh very far right of the the screen column there's many more individuals that um participate in the strategic planning process as well as the updates um that we'll be giving tonight but i do want to lift up mr paul lessor and miss stephanie williams who are our team leads for 5a which is ensuring fiscal responsibility mr frederick davis and mr clifton williams who are our team leads

118for making sure that we have clean schools uh dr julie spencer and mr palmer not going to be able to be with us tonight uh but they leave our um our team that's ensuring that we have a hundred percent um adequate spaces for our elementary schools ms tina ingram and again mr fred davis are working on improving our physical environment and then mr joe harris and matthew palmer lead our transportation next slide please one more so what exactly is fiscal and operational responsibility well we see it as mainly these five things that we use for continuous improvement efficiency student assignment enrollment resources and facilities and we know that everything that we do has to be done in a manner that's going to support the education of our students just a couple of months ago dr

119hardy and the academic side of the house did some presentations but they're showing the growth that our students are are happening on academically and we have to be good stewards of these things to make sure that that can continue on and support that next slide please one more here are the um five goals that are part of the fiscal and operational responsibility the first one is to make sure that each and every year we are officials award for one of those financial awards and we're waiting the governmental finance officers award uh since we received the asbo award we do not expect not to get the gfoa they're just a little bit further behind in their them are they're looking at our our plans uh across the state and uh reporting out to us but we

120expect to hear in the next month or two about that but we don't expect anything different next slide i'm just going to touch on the first one as we try to maintain technology be efficient as well as be thoughtful about where we are in covid and coming out of covid we installed barcode readers in [Music] conjunction with the it staff which we want to thank for getting us the computers needed to support all 181 barcode readers that we have put out across the district there's at least two or three in each individual school to ensure that people can efficiency efficiently and effectively clock in and clock out to make sure that we are in compliance with the fair labor standards act we provided bar codes to all employees classified employees that have to clock in

121and out that are under the fair labor standard act we completed that task this this fall and i'm very proud of that uh technology that we put out there um although also we've reported to you a few times in regards to assert we're going to be coming to you with more detailed information on where we are on a quarterly basis to ensure that you're on top of what we're doing and what we have left to spend as we move forward we'll be coming back to you i believe in june to provide you that update for us to be able to give you a clear picture of where we are and where we're headed into the next fiscal year so those are the the items that we have that we want to talk about this evening

122and we're very pleased with our progress as we move forward thank you mr lassour next slide please and now i'm going to ask mr davis to come up and give us update on school cleanliness thank you dr monk good evening i want to present the update on goal 5b school clearance so you see the four strategies before you today on how we want to make sure by 2023 we have 100 of schools including our grounds at its highest level of cleanness we know that first impressions is the best impression so we want to make sure that we maintain a high level expectation to provide no barriers for students as they enter into our learning environments and so with that we have these strategies that we want to maintain to ensure those goals are met next

123slide please secure facilities we're currently working on instant tuning locking mechanisms to ensure that we have the right people and know who is on our campuses at all times next slide please so again we've done an audit through safety security as well as building services to ensure again that all of our campuses meet the requirement of safe and secure in progress now we are looking in the planning design phases of madison excuse me i'm sorry it's going to take me a minute i've been always saying elementary f um but murray mastenburg elementary as well as six additional uh elementary school renovations as well as a construction wrapping up of lions farm and in 2023 the opening of the new northern high school and with that uh as well as the next steps is ensuring that

124we all ambassadors for the 2022 bond in order to reach our goals and with that i'll turn it back over to dr mark thank you mr davis next slide please can i ask one quick question can you just kind of give us a definition of like the open campuses do you mean like they're not having a fence in the in the in the play areas can you kind of like define that yes so excuse me so uh high priority schools that have the open campuses similar to glenn and bethesda and one of the things we're also looking at is our educational suitability so we have a lot of schools that unfortunately the capacity has allowed students to travel to mobiles and so what we're doing in our first round of bond projects is ensuring that

125everybody's in the built environment and not in the mobiles and so with the inclusion of lions farm and uh murray mastenburg we'll be able to shift in that boundary study those schools that have mobile so that all the kids are now within the built environment thank you again mr davis um so uh don't need buildings if we can't get kids to school right and so transportation efficiency is really important for us next slide please um there were five strategies that were set out to um to achieve that transportation efficiency and that's both and so why transportation efficiency is important is the higher rating the more money we receive from the state right and then the less we've actually spent on gas and personnel and things like that so transportation efficiency is is um is critical

126um to being good fiscal stewards of our resources next slide please um each year we have hit those um transportation efficiency ratings it's important to note that dpi is holding districts harmless these past couple years because of covet 19 but that will likely change as we go into 2022 school year much like most other things next slide please and so right now our transportation staff are evaluating and auditing our bus routes making sure that we have the most efficient bus routes possible just recently they've installed a new gps system where they track one of our routes and it literally went all across the county the way that we're currently set up but we're hopeful that um with our new build schedules with this new transportation software and with what we're working with growing together that

127we'll be able to increase that transportation and efficiency um and then our next step is to make sure that we design routes that are achieving our goals next slide please so here are our quick wins dr mabanga likes quick wins um 5a we're going to continue to receive the award that we've uh been receiving since uh we've implemented the strategic plan um continue to invest in our capital equipment mr davis spoke to the training that we've been giving our custodial staff but with the additional funding that the board approved a couple of years ago we also was able to retrofit an area of our maintenance department into a commercial laundry and now we do a lot of our commercial laundering in-house as opposed to outsourcing that as well miss ingram and mr jeff back there

128they have secured us over 400 000 in working with mr giovanni and and her staff and writing a grant that we're now going to be able to put additional door locking systems in our high school area starting with those first and then um excuse me 300 000 grant for that the 400 million is is for the bond referendum and so again we we want everyone to support this bond referendum and then the last is again just phasing in the new technology and making sure that uh not only are routes efficient but this technology also has the ability um to make sure that we know where our students are and that we have good chain of custody from the time that we pick them up in the mornings to the time that we drop them off

129in the afternoons and with that we will open up for questions on priority five of the strategic plan from the board or further questions [Music] say thank you all for the presentation i think um operations y'all are five but we know that what you do makes everything else work within our school system right insurance we get people get paid on time make sure our children get to school on time um and all the other things that the buildings that they're in every day so i really appreciate that um i think there is a question around it's kind of related but the transportation efficiencies i've seen some news stories recently about electric school buses and want to know where we are are we thinking about trying to pilot i know the state is running a pilot

130program is that something we'd be interested in yeah so um for us we are look we actually did a um a a ride around on a on a electric bus they they brought it down and took a bunch of us on a um so we can see the look and feel of it um as you may recall we brought to the board a couple of months ago a um a budget transfer for i believe was three million dollars to go towards solar panels as well as doing an energy audit um for uh possibly having us a a charging station that we will be able to use once the electric buses become cost effective for us to to purchase for what the state is reimbursing for even with their pilot program but in addition to that

131uh we've been to programs with the city to look at long lawn mowers that are electric powered as well as vehicles that we're interested in purchasing um that use electric as opposed to gas so um there's many opportunities for us to use solar power yeah so um oh gosh no because it's going to mess me up but it's close to so right now basically if we get a bus um we're buying the ones that are cleaner burning fuel and it's basically free that we get from it um it would be close to three four hundred thousand dollars out of our pocket for the buses after the state gives their reimbursement for um for the electric school buses but um again as technology gets better those prices are to come down right and and we want

132to have the infrastructure in place uh when that happens and so that's why we're looking at doing the electric charging stations and starting with a white fleet which are the the vans the trucks and things like that that we use to do other services in the district thank you for that i think we have a solar panel system at lions farm that was on our consent agenda today so i appreciate us thinking creatively about what we could be doing um to decrease our impact on the environment so thank you anyone else let's follow doc valued ours thank you uh so much i am um very grateful for this presentation uh there's a couple of things uh based on engagement with community members um i have seen that you all do have presentations for the custodial

133our custodial staff um and uh that's been it's great because there's standards that there's you know um all manner of things in all of us i think most of us maybe it's still in transit but all of us receive packets i think from um engagement and advocacy i think one of the concerns is um about the time that the custodial staff is spending on on just cleaning and making sure that we are in with cleanliness but managing also um the expectations for professional development and sometimes having to spend those those hours but i did see on there you know the system that we have for a classified staff to clock in and clock out to make sure that and that that was part of our fiscal responsibility to make sure that you know over time

134and all those considerations for classified stuff it settled i'd love to see something with for salaried staff and just in that way because of course we want them to be to get the professional development we want them to have um as much support in the role that they have and also just watching again the responsibilities i do know that um we strive for excellence in everything that we do and so there's a couple of things that they have to work on um so anything related to how we are ensuring that our salary staff is also um able to navigate you know professional development uh all the tasks of cleaning and also capacity because there are some schools that take longer to clean there are some schools that are multiple floors and multiple bathrooms and and

135diverse needs you know and so um with the classrooms and so i'm really really excited about this work also um as you were mentioning with um uh just with transportation i'm super excited also about these initiatives and ways that we are thinking about again sustainability um ways that we can get support based on initiatives that happen um whether we can get reimbursed by the state and then that is uh helping us towards getting better buses um the third thing is that the 400 million 423 million um that is going to go for a bond i'm excited about that i think that is the most exciting thing and here's something that we all know that durham is changing quite a bit and the concern is that you know who is who's actually paying who's putting the

136bill for capital improvements and it's been durham community members who have been here and maybe are being pushed out and it's a sad reality of the contributions of so many people um and sometimes we're seeing that the you know that durham is changing so much so with bonds we know that um everybody who comes into durham is going to be adding to that because it's over a term and so i'm excited about distributing that responsibility and the burden of footing the bill towards even folks who are moving in they have to put they have to put their contributions toward this and so i'm excited about um putting as much of our capital improvement into these bonds and getting revenue over time ensuring that everybody pitches in thank you so much you're welcome and and i

137can't uh i can't resist the call for people to come and use our schools because of what you just said if you're a resident here you're participating whenever we have these bond referendums so why don't you come and send your kids to our schools and participate in the educational process so we're going to have plenty of room after that bond passes and we build these facilities anything further this is for information correct all right thank you very much to everyone involved great presentation i love the strategic plan i love the updates the next item on our agenda is the summary of follow-up items so i just have a couple from the cte item just looking at different ways that we can implement additional academies like we have at southern to focus on the demand and

138the workforce opportunities and to continue to connect students to career opportunities as early as possible okay is that it that's good all right that brings us to closed session i'll receive i'll accept the motion to go into closed session for the reasons stated on the agenda i'm moved that we go into closed sessions for the reasons stated on the agenda it's been moved and properly seconded that we go on a closed session for the reason study on the agenda all in favor say aye aye all opposed same signs passes unanimously we are now in closed session all right i hold true we are back in open session dr mabinga madam chair i'm here to seek for your approval for the personal report as discussed at the closed session remove approval of the personnel report dated

139may 5th 2022. the second the move by mr lee seconded by mrs valladares any other discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously and with that we are adjourned you