Durham Public Schools Board of Education and Durham Board of County Commissioners Joint Meeting

001e e e right good morning everyone welcome to the Joint meeting of the board of County Commissioners and Board of Education today is November 17th 20120 this meeting is now called to order we're going to start with the agenda review any questions or concerns changes that we need to make to our agenda all right sounds good all right so we'll continue to move forward um do we need to vote I you know we just met not that long ago but I don't remember did we vote on our agendas because I think we're non- voting body is that correct all right I see some head nods so approval of our minutes move for approval second mve properly second I'll call you all as I see you on my screen so commissioner Howton president uh commissioner Jacobs

002yes commissioner Carter yes and then do we have commissioner Hill on as well all right so we'll go to our school board members Mr Raven yes Miss buer yes Miss Lewis yes I vote Yes as well I think that wraps our school board members still getting everyone situated on my screen here to see where everyone is all right our next item is the budget followup I'm gonna pass that over to uh Keith Lane and Miss haker want to make sure everyone can see my screen hopefully and they see the presentation clearly thank you Natalie thumbs up that's I can clearly see that much appreciated um Claud if there's any intro you want to give you welcome to or I can start I am I gotta be honest with you I'm not real clear on what

003the expectation of this particular presentation is but we took a a we took a chance to assume we just wanted a basic update of what was approved by the board of uh County Commissioners and where our budget is right now and then we can go with whatever the discussion needs to be or whatever Direction it wants to go after that just a quick review uh the county supported as part of its approved FY 2021 budget partial funding of the DPS $115 hourly wage request uh $1.9 million was added to the current expense funding as additional dollars to pay for a partial increase um that partial increase of $1.9 million equals approximately a $14 minimum hour hourly wage in 2021 and that was the this was going to be the first year of a two-year phase

004in to the $15 per hour hopefully getting there in next fiscal year FY 2122 the total cost of the move was presented as about 3.85 million or 3.8 something million I'll show you on the next slide and this basically cut it in half and this is a table of information we received from Duran Public Schools showing the distribution of the dollar amount and the impacted FTE and and those areas where the FTE would be impacted uh from that first distribution of $1,970 remember I told you about the total amount this table was also provided by DPS and shows the total to move to a full $15 an hour uh hourly wage for approximately 1,400 DPS employees that would cost $3.85 million there was a note that DPS added uh about potentially if the state uh

005were to add its um additional funding to pay all classified school district Personnel $15 an hour then we could potentially see accounting reduction of need of 750,000 to a million dollar DPS was uh nice enough to point out that in recent history the general assembly has never fully funded salary benefit cost I don't think we can hold our breath and wait for that to be so where are we at right now DPS is as far as I can tell would need an additional $1,970 to fully Implement a $15 hourly wage and that additional funding I assume would be requested from Durham County where is the Durham County budget right now for the current fiscal year it is in a state of flux it is largely unknown from Revenue standpoint I know it feels like we're

006five and a half months into the fiscal year but from a revenue collection standpoint the county is still very much in the dark and this is not abnormal we only have two months of sales tax uh Revenue collected the first month of sales tax revenue collected was fantastic the second month was terrible I am not yet able to glean or sus out what the future holds for the rest of this fiscal year with that level of variability for the first two months property tax collection by far our biggest Revenue Source will not be collected in any real sense until December and January so it's usually in January that the county is going to have some inkling some idea of the trending of current year Revenue sources I don't say that to imply anything other than

007to say right now I just don't know where the Count's going to end up on overall Revenue collection again remember property tax is by far the biggest Revenue Source we have and then sales tax is the second biggest uh Revenue Source we have sales tax is uniquely um correlated to local economic activity there are three different sales taxes I won't get into them but one of them the biggest portion of our sales tax is a local sales tax on things bought in Durham County and those purchases have been affected by the local economy and and Co effects to our local economy expenditure spending our currently our general fund is under some uh expenditure pressure related to many and varied covid needs uh we have had a significant number of covid related requests for extra spending

008in the first several months of the fiscal year and I don't know that our board will see that evading anytime soon especially with covid cases on the rise the way they are in resp response to the current year budget management made as an effort uh the concept of freezing a number of vacant positions in fact almost all of our Frozen uh all of our vacant County positions were frozen back in March of last year and are expected to stay frozen throughout this fiscal year except for those that are absolutely needed in public safety areas and covid related areas so that was one of the ways the county is trying to protect itself uh in terms of saving dollars to then turn around and have available for unknown covid related costs as I said the last

009bullet point here said covid related costs may increase in the near future based on recent case increases so where does this leave us it leaves us in a dimly lit room revenu wise with not a clear picture of where we're going to end up on the revenue side of things and it leaves us with growing concern about continued extra cost to count are going to have to incur related to co I I can leave it there we can delve into deeper issues if you would like but I think that's a a pretty uh clear summation so our Revenue collection we will know something generally we collect 75% of our property tax around January by January we'll have three or four months of sales tax collection and we'll have six month of other revenues at that

010point I think we can have a better estimate on where we're going to end up in the current fiscal year what are the ramifications of Revenue collections less than budget amounts we would need to use our fund balance fund balance is a equivalent to our savings account we would have to dig into our savings account if we get less Revenue than expected to pay for either current expenditures or even increased CID related expenditures the only other choice we would have if we get less Revenue than expected in the current fiscal year is to make expenditure cuts to budgets other ramification of Revenue collections for the current fiscal year is that they will affect my projections our office's projections the County's projections for the upcoming FY 2122 budget and that budget depending on Revenue collections honestly

011depending on what Co does or doesn't do and some other things may need expenditure budget reductions from departments to reflect uh those Revenue reductions and Co related cost increases so I we are I don't even know if we're cautiously optimistic I would say we're just very cautious at the moment in a somewhat unknown environment that is unfolding daily in front of us and that is all I have for a summary as it relates to the $15 an hour issue if there's some other direction you all would like to go please let me know or let our man staff now thank you thank you for that presentation I think that was helpful in the planning process for the agenda we kind of wanted to want say thank you for the work that you all given the

012money that you've given us and the work that's been done to get us to where we are I know our staff are really uh thankful for that um getting closer to the $15 an hour but we also wanted to have a sense of where we would be going into January um because I know that that was something that our boards talked about before kind of a down payment and then the followup in the spring so that was really helpful any questions from board members Commissioners uh Miss berer so I'm really appreciative of this um presentation and the facts of seeing where we are I know that um this has been troubling to our board for a long time that the school district district has not been able to keep up with this minimum bar of

013$15 an hour for every employee and um you know we appreciate the steps that you all made last year um it it's important to remind folks I think that especially folks that are new to this conversation that the state employees across the state of North Carolina all start at $15 an hour except for School Employees so out of I think really hostility from the general assembly our employees have been excluded um I think Paul might be able to share kind of how we've gone into fund balance deeply this year because of Co because of of things that we have to do so we have you know pressures from covid as well I'd be interested in knowing kind of whether you all think that um there's any room to go ahead and make this right this

014year I'd be interested in having that discussion with Commissioners and and board members this morning um we have employ out there hundreds of them that are working for $14 an hour during a pandemic um and it's troubling to us so I just wanted to open up that discussion a little bit if anyone's available to discuss that uh well Natalie uh I appreciate that comment and I know uh I I agree it is troubling and I know you know that um several of our board members did support initially going to the $15 per hour wage for for this very reason um and um and I I and our board members actually made a commitment that it would be that that that people would would do it in January uh and that was the number one priority

015for our board um so um I guess the question is I I guess my question for Keith is um in terms of funding it even now um we would need to look at our fund balance and I know Claudia you said uh at our last meeting our last board meeting that we do have uh a lot of extra money now in our fund balance um from I guess the last year that came in yeah yeah so our fund balance did grow I a lot of extra are probably words that budget folk will always refrain from but our our reserves did grow which is a positive thing um and one of the sort of next steps that we would also suggest is having some conversations with um the the dorham public school staff to see where

016they're projected to end their year-end fund balance as well um if we were to uh look at making recommendations we would recommend those conversations happening closer to January so we can get a a bit a a clearer picture but you know it is clearly the board's decision um but those are the sort of two clarifying points gauging where DPS will end up just like with us with year end 2020 with fund reserves from the cafer average is still going to be close to the $9 million in growth um and then contextualizing that with the current fiscal year so as Keith mentioned um some of our revenues are coming in lower than we expected um but some of it we are not surprised we knew we knew property taxes would come in slower this year because

017we build our residents later we build them in September because of the Deferred um payment plan um or tax deferment program that we implemented which had a somewhat of a ripple effect plus collections were are a little bit slower uh because of covid and the the manner in which we're posting um some of those um bills for social distancing so we know in by January we'll have a much clearer picture of where we are with property taxes our ability to do it now that is truly a board decision we do have um some capacity but but based on what we've typically done I would also recommend we gauge where GPS is and also um so it's a shared conversation is there any other discussion uh commissioner Carter yes thank you um you know I I

018would be ready to approve this at any moment I was very willing to uh take the full bite of the apple back in June when we approved our budget um to me let's just imagine we were doing zerob based budgeting I would have built this in right away as a fundamental expense um because I think that every hardworking employee in Durham especially the ones that are caring for our children in the school district need to make the minimum to survive and frankly I'm not even sure $15 an hour is there anymore H so you know I'm not sure about protocol and even Robert's Rules of Order you know do I guess I guess we would need someone who voted for the budget and this would have to happen at one of our regular meetings to

019then you know ask for this issue to be reconsidered um and you know I I agree with Claudia that the school district you know could look into their reserves as well I hear the school system when they're saying they also have pressures on their fund balance I know for a fact we do have twin pressures of potentially lower revenues and every meeting we have what we think are emergencies that we need to make um you know extra expenditures on related to covid but this is also one of those um you know anyone that's making less than $15 an hour is having trouble even more so now during covid and so I think it would behoove us to maybe reconsider this I we haven't talked about it among ourselves the five Commissioners and honestly it's probably

020not fair to you know in this meeting now expect a commissioner to make a commitment however I do think that our board should seriously consider taking this on at one of our regular meetings before January that that would be my that that would be my recommendation my hope that we could take a look at that before January so I guess you're waiting on me to say something so um I I appreciate what my colleagues have said um I I I have a little bit of an angs going on around you know one of the things that our board has had conversations about is just making quick making decisions now I absolutely support uh people making more than $15 an hour so let me put that out there first because this should have been done a

021long time ago for us to be here in 20 2020 and people our classified not making $15 an hour is careless and uncaring of people so I have been fighting for $15 an hour and if you go back for a long time for people to to earn that so I don't have a problem with that at all what I do have concern with is and we've had this conversation as a board from the county is how we're making decisions how we make decisions on the spot without forecasting and looking at our at our dollars um I have a I have some concern with that we've been doing that a lot in the last year and we've had a conversation that it really doesn't work for us to do those kind of things on the spot

022now I'm committed to the $15 an hour I just have some concerns with us just jumping up doing it at at a moment's notice without the planning and the forecasting that we should be doing to maintain our budgets and that's where I'm I'm talking about the school and I'm talking for the county without coming together and looking at our budgets and really forecasting what is feasible I I I I just have some concern about that and you just heard Keith and now we're saying okay let's do it right now as um my granddaughter used to say to me at uh eight years old she'd say Grandma Brenda is it in the budget have you at eight years old she started to say is it in the budget have you calculated the budget that's an eight-year

023old so I believe we're going to do this but how we do it matters thank you datina I just want to follow up I think though that we have to be consistent and right now we're we're saying that we can find our Hazard page out of our our general fund balance and so we we have to be consistent um with that um because that's also that's an expense that wasn't budgeted uh it wasn't forecast and it affects people's wages and we've got um we've gots I'm sorry that's okay we've got DPS employees bus drivers and J monitors and um nutrition workers that are directly interfacing with people in the community during this time of covid and they're not getting Hazard pay uh and they're not even getting $15 per hour and that's a problem uh

024so we also have to be consistent in what we're doing across um our agencies so um we're not going to figure this out here obviously this is something that has to be brought back to our board and if there are a majority of board members that do want to take this up um you know sooner rather than later then we will be able to move forward with that um but thank you um Keith for your presentation I just think it's important that we're consistent about what we say we can and cannot do commissioner Jacobs um if as far as our next step I would recommend that we um connect with Paul and have some conversations um so we can plan um for either followup to the boards in December or January um also just as

025a point of clarification the hazard pay did come through the existing budget fund balance wasn't used for that expense so I want to thank you all I've heard support from each of you all Commissioners for the $15 an hour um I do know that and but I know that's something that you all will need to decide as a body I know you also have some new members that are coming on board soon I think for DPS we are excited about having our employees all get to that $15 an hour Dr MinGa I don't know if you have anything to share just about I know we kind of I think there's some planning that we have done with the idea that funding additional funding might come through um I don't want to spend a lot of

026time on this item because I do know that that's something that Commissioners you all will need to decide in your next meeting but just want to share maybe a little bit from the DPS perspective of how we forecasted our budget and and um for this year all Madame chair my two cent is going to be um I understand what Claudia said um getting with our DPS staff and looking at our budget uh we just got to keep in mind that whatever decision that U is going to come out of that uh this is going to be not one time uh funds that we're going to use is going to be reoccurring uh we have been really transparent across the board our fund balance was about $8.3 million uh if you want to know the true

027fund balance about DPS as moving along we we are really glad to be able to share that with you but regarding $15 an hour that's a a decision that the country is going to have to to make um I don't see DPS really putting any down payment on something that is going to be real occurring in these ons thank you and I know that our staff have been in conversations before around this topic so I hope that we can still continue to be in conversations and our next joint meeting is in February so we can revisit that if we need to at that time is there any other discussion Miss buer sorry I do I don't want to put our financial folks on the spot but I do want to have if they're able to

028share with you all the scope of our fund balance as it and and y'all can compare it to the scope of yours and they have they also know and can share with you how much we have already dug into fund balance this year because we have you know pressing needs um so I don't want there to be a false narrative that we have a piggy bank to tap into um I don't know Paul are you comfortable sharing kind of how we have Miss SP I think that's an excellent question but it's going to come up a little bit more in our DPS budget presentation so if we could hold that and make sure we get there because I know there's a full presentation that shares kind of where our budget risk are our fund balance

029and all of that so I think we can Circle back around to that perfect perfect and then then we can look at the scope of the county fund balance maybe in that conversation as well thank you all right thank you all for that discussion and the presentation um the next item on our agenda is the covid learning update and we're going to turn it over to Dr Hardy good morning um chair Umstead and chair Jacobs our County Commissioners and Board of Education members and Dr MinGa um today we are going to share um an update regarding our recommendation that will be before our board um later this week and I I think I do have permission to share my screen so [Music] so today I um am going to go through our plan B recommendation

030and then Dr Spencer is also going to provide an update regarding the data dashboards um that we will be um launching later this fall our rationale as we have been um working collaboratively with staff with our teachers our community is um to really make sure that our person learning plan um looks at our earliest Learners our most vulnerable students and teaches those most fundamental skills so that our students um have the opportunity to matriculate through our educational process and be successful Beyond After High School and Beyond some of the planning limitations um as we have been working on this plan include all of our students will attend their assigned schools um if you remember in some of our initial planning we um we're going to have some of our elementary students attend our middle schools

031we will be um in this plan all of our students will attend their assigned schools all of our elementary schools will follow the same cohort schedule which I'm going to share um a little bit later our elementary principles have been working very closely with Dr Monk and Mr Palmer um to complete their building utilization plan and our teachers will be responsible for their uh cohort of children that they will get to serve um in person and then we will have teachers that will also be assigned to ignite online academ which will be for our students and families that have made the choice on to remain virtual um for the remainder of the Academic Year so these next couple of slides um take us through um visually what a day in the life will look like

032for our our teachers and our students so this first slide is about Maria and we really want folks to start to reimagine what school needs to look like we since we have been in our closure period and um as a community and and individually dealing with the pandemic we have had to reimagine a lot of things that were in our normal daily life style and that's going to be the same for um for as we return back um to in person Maria would begin her day um at home and um she would prior to getting on the bus we would want her family to go through that screening process um to make sure that Maria is feeling well prior to getting on the bus she is also going to go through that screening process and

033then she will uh ride the bus to school and then we will make sure that she is appropriately screened when she gets to school we want to make sure that our children are well and safe and healthy um as they'll be participating once she's at school she's going to go to her classroom and have a daily check-in morning meeting um with her teacher and um this will be an opportunity for also the students that are virtually so the cohort students that are at home will also um have that opportunity next um Maria would enjoy her activities engaging activities with her students throughout the day and her teachers she would have the opportunity to engage with the learning management system she would eat lunch in her classroom in the afternoon she would participate in her activities

034with her teacher and then at the end of the day Maria would make the choice to either um go home and ride the bus or she could participate in our after Care Program um at the end of the day once she gets home she would have the opportunity to to do any other assignments and prepare for the next day of inperson learning this is an example of a day in the life of a teacher so just as we have to reimagine what happens with our youngsters we also have to reimagine what happens with our teachers um so um prior to um as she arrives on campus Miss Gomez would go through the screening process to make make sure that she is healthy and ready to prepare for her day she will develop lots of online

035activities as well as activities to provide for her students that are in person she'll start her day by reviewing the plans and making sure that she starts with the morning meeting that will engage all of her students her students that are face to face as well as her students that are virtually so that they know the plan for the day this will will provide that immediate insight and um set the launch for learning for the rest of the academic day Miss goz will use her learning management system so one of the things that we'll be doing is reducing the amount of paper and materials that will be distributed in the classroom to make sure our children um and our staff stay um safe and healthy um her face-to-face students will receive reinforced learning and activities

036she will have the opportunity to make sure that if there any misconceptions that they are are corrected so students have the opportunity to master the content for that particular day excuse me after her students leave then she will have office hours in the afternoon to connect with her students that were virtual to make sure that they had the opportunity to get all that they needed for the instructional day and and these next two slides are really just a visual day-by-day comparison of the cohort model so what you will see is that our children in grades prek through five will be divided into two cohorts cohort a and cohort B cohort a will attend class in person on Monday and Tuesday you can just see on this slide kind of what will occur for that particular

037day after going through the screening process they'll have their morning meeting they'll be in classroom six feet appropriately distance and they will be engaging with their teacher cohort B will connect with the teacher virtually in the morning set the morning meeting and then they will be completing their assignments in an asynchronous format and they will be virtual on Wednesday all of our students will continue at the elementary level to participate in Wellness Wednesday and then this just basically flop flipflops what would occur so on Thursday and Friday cohort a is going to be meeting virtually they will connect with their teacher first thing in the morning to get their morning meeting and activities for the day and cohort B is going to be the group that is going to be in front of our our

038teachers in person um before I turn it over to um Dr Spencer I just want to go back because I think I skipped through this slide I don't usually click myself and I just want to make sure that I provide uh just a little bit more detail regarding um our recommendation so prek to 5 students would attend face Toof face two days a week and you saw the visualization of that cohort so there will be a cohort a that will attend Monday and Tuesday and then cohort B will attend on Thursday and Friday our self-contained students and our um de and heart of hearing and Visually Impaired students they will be attending four days a week um we know that that is a group of youngsters that is more vulnerable and we want to make

039sure that we are providing as much inperson support as possible since we will be providing inperson instruction according to this recommendation for our prek through five children then um those families will have the option for ignite which means you have the option to remain 100% virtual um so our families would have a choice um and then um for our prek students we will continue our prek sliding scale because our waiver because our prek children will be attending only um with their cohort they will be cohorted um two days a week and um that's how they will be attending in this inperson recommendation at this time I'm going to turn it over to Dr Spencer um to take us through the dashboard and then we'll have comments by Dr mbinga and any questions that you may

040have Dr Spencer uh Dr Dr Spencer I think you're still on mute thank you so much as we look at the covid-19 dashboards our district we have created two different Dash boards um for the purpose of informing our community um of of the status of both the health as well as the Readiness of our schools so when we look at the um purpose um we're going to have on our website available to our community a health dashboard which will include the actual number of cases um for students and staff and that will be by site um and I'll show you an example of that in just a second and then we will also have a Readiness dashboard that will include current status around the community rate around specific sites and our monitoring of our sites

041as well as operations and specific School Readiness um the School Readiness dashboard will include green yellow red status um for each of the items let's look at some examples of what these will look like next slide please so this is an example of the health dashboard so as you can see It'll have student numbers staff numbers um it will also have links to the health department as well as DHHS dashboard and on the left hand bottom left hand you can see click here for full dashboard by School site um and cumulative data in just a second I'll show you what that looks like um but this will be updated on a weekly basis and will be available on our website um on Mondays um obviously we are working very closely with the germ Health Department

042um to provide accurate information for this next slide please so when you click the school dashboard component of the health dashboard you get this is just the top portion so you would scroll down and you can see that all of our sites are listed um just to the right of the sites is the cumulative number since July July one of cases and then it goes month by month um so for example right beside the cumulative you see November that is cumulative so as we go through the month of November that is updated so that you can see a holistic picture of cases um that are our students and staff um through since July one next slide please so this is our School Readiness dashboard this is a sample um this shows you the larger context

043um which specifically give the ranges of green yellow red um on the first page it's around the public health metric which is the test positivity percentage it also then goes into District level case monitoring with the sites um with at least one positive case and then it gives a range of green yellow red next slide please then it goes right into the number of sites with quarantined with at least 25 quarantined individuals below that it looks at school level case monitoring so how many schools um the number of individuals the maximum number of individuals at any site as well as site clusters as well as the maximum number of individuals quarantined at any given site um we then take it we look at the operations of Staffing for Child Nutrition transportation next slide please we

044look at the custodians we look at nurses as well as just the Total Staffing obviously that's a very important piece of the um Readiness is to make sure we have our staff available and then the last section is just around School Readiness um looking at whether or not we have instructional staff to meet the needs or our facilities um the safety standards in place um the hbac ventilation as well as infection control PPE and our training of Staff a couple key points to this is that at any given time any given um indicator could have heavier weight um we envision that this is not a formula it's not like oh if you have X number of Reds then this is what's going to happen because it's a holistic picture um comprehensive picture of Readiness um

045so at any given time one specific indicator may be so heavy that it becomes um a priority let's look at what um so that's I wanted you to be able to see the green yellow red so here is a random week in December and um this is obviously random data but I wanted you to see what a completed version would look like um so you can see one might be yellow one might be green next slide please your data may be in different places for different indicators next slide please and and once again you can see that some items may be red some may be yellow green some may stay in one place and that and fluctuate of course we um are continuing to look at ways to We Will We this will be continuous

046Improvement we are still in collaboration with ABC collaborative as well as um some conversations with the city county open data program I think is um the the group and looking for ways are to make sure that we are um meeting the needs of of leaders who are making these decisions but the purpose of this is to inform our community as well as to be a vehicle um to inform decision making for our leaders and I believe that's the last slide and I will turn it over to Dr mainga thank you Dr Spencer um Commissioners just want to make a brief remarks here um this particular item is not really a joint item for discussion because we have not had a discussion with our board so we really wanted just to present it to you out

047of courtesy uh so that you will know what's going on at DPS um my two comments regarding this particular the plan number one we have been out of school for eight months and there are some families that really want different options because their babies are not learning that's why we comeing with this particular plan um number two uh academic year 1920 21 2021 has have been impacted with covid most likely 2122 will be impacted as well so the learning loss is really a concern to a lot of school districts that's why you see schools are really trying to open as safely as possible someone will argue why can't you just keep them online the entire year yes University folks they can do that we can do that in middle school and high school as well

048but those early Learners is really a struggle to some other families so that's where we are and I don't want to give all my comments here what I'm I'll be presenting to the board so we just really wanted to present to you out of courtesy but now we are ready to take any of your questions because we are Partners whatever learning loss that we have to deal with we're going to need your support along the way to make sure that we get those kids where they need to be thank you Dr MinGa and team for that presentation um you all did get a sneak peek so the presentation is public it's on our website but the Schoolboard will be discussing this on Thursday and so I don't want to go into a lot of discussion

049um we don't need to make a decision here but I think it was important for us to present to you all like Dr mainga said because the presentation is public um and is out so please encourage folks to go look at that and we'll have a discussion on Thursday but are there any quick questions or comments uh well batina I just wanted to say to first of all Julie uh I I was really blown away with what what you just presented um the data dashboard and um just that I just know how much work that took to put that together and that you've collaborated with a lot of folks I know you've been working with Rod Jenkins and Dr aimoo um at Duke University um and other health experts on on that and um uh

050and just just seeing how complicated it is and all the factors but the fact that you're trying to make it transparent um and so anyway I really appreciate that and I appreciate you all sharing um Dr Hardy uh trying to give us an overview of of everything knowing that this has not been publicly discussed yet but again thank you all so much we know that this is very very difficult situation trying to to meet all the complex needs that we have in our community thank you thank you uh commissioner Carter I would second that wholeheartedly um I think this is probably one of the most important decisions that needs to be made in our community by our community leaders and one of the hardest I'm really glad it's on school board's plate and not on

051the commissioner's plate um you know the social costs of not opening are so real for for our children who are at home and um struggling to keep up and and and many children we need to be accelerating their learning you know and so we don't want any more backsliding so um it's clear you all are thinking through all the important factors and I just um look forward to hearing what you decide and how we can support that decision whatever it may end up being thank you we will definitely need support in whatever we decide moving forward all right I'm going to move us to the next agenda item thank you all we have uh updates on some capital projects with DPS I think despite school being virtual we have been moving forward with a lot

052of capital projects thanks to Dr Monk and his team so happy to get an update right now we had some exciting updates in our last couple school board meetings so glad that y'all going to hear it Dr M thank you um chair women Umstead and Jacobs thank you for having us and giving us opportunity to give you an update on our CIP uh before I begin I do want to thank um the county Representatives um I don't see Miss uh T's ey on but Susan tza Keith Lane um David AIDS um hopefully I didn't forget anybody um all you good folks of the county that's been helping us work through and get um a good uh Financial stream going for these projects um this is something that the durm community as a whole has been

053looking forward to uh because we know that with education it's not only um what's happening while the teacher is teaching it's also the experience that the students have being able to come to a campus that looks beautiful being able to sit in rooms that are comfortable um all of that is important to education so we appreciate the partnership we meet regularly with the county staff I believe that is the wish of both boards they have expressed that on many occasions and uh we have all taken that very seriously so um thank you for your partnership um Miss Smith if you could slip uh skip to uh slide three please on the presentation thank you all right so here you will see um the projects that are from the CIP that we're currently uh working on

054remembering and recalling that this is part of the um the strategy for funding the half a billion dollars that the county has committed to that we would do a stretch um between now and 2023 where we will be doing um design and construction on a limited number of projects uh then come back re-evaluate where we are financially and move forward with the balance of the projects um so Northern High School that's been out there for a while uh but we're making good progress on that in the summer our board approved the uh Construction uh documents um design plan for the project and we've already moved into doing pre-bid meetings um in anticipation for uh beginning to bid the project in the spring and then start um Construction in the summer of 2021 um Elementary School

055C uh that funding has been uh moved from 2016 into that uh project our board voted to approve the contract a couple of months ago and um we're starting to move forward with the um with the construction work on that project we're excited about it um and we're looking forward to an opening in 2020 um3 on that project 2022 excuse me um Elementary School F uh that was a part of the lob funding that was approved by the County Commissioners last month um we did design selections um and had a review by a committee we presented that to our board at its last um board meeting and got approval to move forward with negotiating the contract uh The Firm that we're working with on negotiating that contract is a minority firm from durm so we're

056um we're very excited about um the possibilities that's going to um come out of that project and we're looking forward to Bringing uh that contract to our board in December there are six Elementary renovation projects uh that are part of that first wave um of uh limited obligation Bond funding uh we received designed rfqs for those we're going to go through the same process that we did with Elementary School F and doing a selection of those designers taking it to our board for approval to negotiate contracts and then moving forward with those designed contracts as well all of these Elementary School Renovations are scheduled to be complete by um opening a school of 2023 um and then we have the high school theator lightning project project um both boards have approved initially that was a

057part of um what we had planned with the CIP at the bottom of the um of the list of priorities um however utilizing 2016 uh bond funds we have moved that up and got approval for both boards to um to fund that project out of that um we are currently under bid review for um for that project and so that concludes um an update for for where we are with the CIP and I have Mr Palmer Mr Davis here um if you have any uh questions about any of these projects and so I'll turn it back over to chair lady Umstead thank you all any questions discussion uh commissioner Howton uh you still on mute thank you uh question about the high school theater lighting um do you have a date a projected date when

058that will start or when that when you any kind of dating around that at all uh Mr Davis you want to share what the schedule is for that uh yes can you hear me now hear you so we're currently in the bidding phase of that work we hope to have bids uh early for part of 2021 um the work is slated for about a 6 to 8 week process so ideally uh towards the uh beginning of the summer that that work will be done for that project okay thank you and the the others that you don't have dates on are just contingent on uh when you get bids back for for them because a couple of them the other project that Dr Mon mentioned were uh in design review and so with staff we are

059looking to finalize short list of candidates uh to have a selection committee to uh recommend to the board on who will be selected for doing the design work for those six elementary schools so your projected time would be 202 21 23 what any projected de dates yes within line of opening in [Music] uh okay you faded out two months to have those um so we hope to have those selections within the next two months um because we want to get them uh recommended under contract by the beginning of 2021 so that we can meet our goal of2 okay thank you I'm Miss Spire thank you Dr Monk for this um presentation and thank you Commissioners for the creative ways that we've been able to find um financing for a lot of big projects that are

060well overdue I I feel like the old lady on this board so I would just dig into my history of 10 years on this board and say that you know we last had a bond in 2016 and that was with the promise as y'all whittel it down to $90 million and we begged for 110 that we were going to have a bond in 2018 that didn't happen then we begged you again for in 20 uh 20 and you know November just passed and I know that would have passed with the voters here and I'm not I've let that go but we have a massive backlog of new projects that are kind of going forward we'd like to to look towards the replacement of Jordan High School we'd like to look towards a lot of Maintenance

061that has been deferred across our district hbhc systems I mean roofs if y'all in the coming looking at your budget and and looking at historic low interest rates have some Vision with us any funding that you can get our way our team team can keep moving on this backlog of projects so I don't want to tell you that that's not important our teachers are so so concerned about ventilation right now and we are spending and digging into fund balance to pay for improved HEPA filtration and air purification we're looking at Outdoor Learning spaces and how we can enhance those for the future so as y'all tackle the needs that you guys have that are so profound please keep in mind that anything that you can come up with shortterm and long-term a a 2022 bond

062has to be in this conversation for these two boards um because we've gota we've got to make these schools right you know quickly and um so I hope you'll join us in that creative um thoughtful work um and then we can put work locally right here in Durham on these projects thank you thank you Natalie I just want to respond um first of all um Dr Monk thank you it's always great to get the capital reports to see how much work you all are getting done and how you're moving so much of this work forward really appreciate it it's very exciting um and as we know long long overdue on a lot of the a lot of them um I just want to confirm with Keith uh that it is in our CIP uh that

063we are going to do a bond in 2022 and just getting to hear from you Keith uh when do we need to start really um taking actions to prepare for that uh what what the timeline is because I know I'm 100% committed to our adopted joint CIP that that's a big priority for me um and as as you just said um Natalie the issues around ventilation are very real uh especially with this pandemic um so Keith could you just respond related to what the plan is for the 2022 Bond and what what do we be keeping keeping in mind the um management can speak to the timing of when when it's announced a 22 Bond referendum and how much it will be and what it will go for it is and I see Claudia just

064jumped on it's still a little bit in flux about how much would be on a go Bond versus how much the county is willing to do with um c um lobs funding with is which is a different type of uh long-term funding support that doesn't need uh voter approval as noted interest rates are are so low right now the difference between using lobs and using go bonds is close to in significant it's not exactly the same but they're both interest rates are so low that we can move back and forth between the two Dr Monk has a very uh aggressive schedule and request uh for school updates new schools and many of the issues that Miss berer spoke of and the county is trying to meet that aggressive schedule through the use of lobs funding

065and Geo bonds I would like to iterate that we have worked very closely with DPS and we have worked with our financial advisor to meet all the requests that Dr Monk has presented in front of us at least for the next three to five years after that we'll have to review again and add on things but we have tried to meet a schedule of well over 500 plus million dollars over the next 10 years with a large portion of that waited to the next two or three years including the new schools you spoke of so I can't tell you right now exactly how much is going to be on a geobond referendum for 2022 but I would like for everyone to hear at least from my vantage point and Susan can speak in Comm or

066Claudia Kim that as of this point the county is dedicated to supporting all the requests that DPS has on the table right now in terms of what they've shown us so far Dr Monk and others and that we will support that either through lobs Andor Geo Bond referendum so hope Inspire that that alleviates some of your concern because there's a lot of there's a lot of projects that Dr Monk has pointed out to us and I'll be impressed if he can get through he's going to need some support in his area to get those things done but as it relates to a geobond referendum I would think six to eight months before the referendum it's going to have to be a crank up time between and this is where it gets more political between boards

067and groups that are created to promote the obviously the county can't promote it we can provide technical information which we will I believe in the last one there was a group run I forget the name of the African-American man Claud you can remember he was the head of a group that sort of went around and and promoted the bond referendum he he and some other folks did that and then I remember some D DPS folks and some County folks would go around supporting to say this is what it might cost for a property tax rate increase if that's what we were going to use and explain the tech technicalities but I believe it's six to eight months in advance for that if that's what anyone particular was questioning so Keith gave a great overview of

068sort of where we are I mean y'all gave us a clear charge to meet DPSS needs um and we've worked closely with our financial advisor um to make sure that the timing of cash that's needed is matched with the available dollars um right now we're using lobs as we get closer to planning for 2022 we can determine um what a package would look like but it is on the plan for um uh a referendum in 2022 but as ke shared we'll just have to um evaluate where we are what we've already financed by lobs um and also um look at needs beyond that that point so um I mean that is the plan and we've tried to um as Mr as Dr Monk shared um partner with them to move things along and I know

069they've had quite a few discussions lives do take a little bit more steps but um it still it still achieves the end desire of of getting the projects done and what we can do um at the next conversation is to have a um outline that would show what a um schedule looks like and we just aren't prepared to give those specific timelines but as Keith shared it's at least eight months if not longer um for planning with getting the the community awareness campaign going and getting Partners to help us Champion it but we can at least share that framework at the next meeting I saw commissioner Carter thank you it also looks like Alexandra might want us say something if I'd be happy to wait and let her go thank you so much uh commissioner

070Heidi Carter um I I just you know uh was thinking about oh when Natalie was mentioning HBS and we think about air pollution we think about like their air quality of our of our children it is for me a social justice um topic and so just you know we can we can definitely wait for the bond in 2022 but one of the things I was wondering is I know that the city and the county passed a um a resolution that is pretty much around like climate change energy and sustainability like we want to be able to be by 2030 right we have some goals and by 2050 we want to be 100% renewable and uh r r renewable energy and so I'm wondering is there any um can we get any funds from you know

071do these action plans have any budget um allotments that we can use for towards you know being able to improve the quality um these small little um improvements that that are so needed you know and are about well-being and health and meeting you know Meeting those goals that we have that's a that's a great comment I'll speak to it um when the targets were established um part of the challenge and opportunity is um identifying the resources to support those goals um much of that has happened uh within departmental budgets that are existing um and when planning through Capital dollars uh for renovation or new constructions with the goal in mind of those targets so as Renovations occur or new buildings Come Aboard it would help but to your point there are lots of areas that

072um may not necessarily need a new major construction project but could be achieved through dollars and and I believe um some of those areas would be addressed with current projects that you have underway or planned but again I I that's something that we can either talk about later or um Miss Dr Monk or others could weigh in on how your current budget addresses some of that or if it's something that's been addressed in a in a major way yeah so um and thank you Miss ha too I I didn't see you on the screen before but uh we also work really closely with Claudia too so thank you for for your work um so as our board knows we just hired a um energy project manager um to address um our sustainability uh position that

073we're in now um we have a firm that's looking at our energy usage um over the past um couple of years uh to see if they are places that we can um Institute savings not only through capital investment so I think Miss Hager exactly right because it's not all what you do with capital some of it is behavioral which means that we have to have an educational program um to go along with energy and sustainability so those are all of the things that um we're going to continue to work on um m heer is also right that um the capital Improvement uh budgets that were set be even before I came um were based off of um just basically replacing out equipment without the sustainability piece or maybe even the um um solar panels and

074things like that that I know our board um has expressed interest in and so as our energy manager uh looks at our projects and especially as we go through the design we may have to come back and adjust some of those budgets to incorporate those items um but we would look to um incorporate sustainability into those new projects going forward thank you I go to commissioner Carter and then Mr Raven thank you chair Umstead um I also just want to say thanks so much to Dr Monk and the DPS staff and the Durham County staff it's a really Joyful Noise to hear that we're working so hard on collaborating and I um just am really appreciative of that and think it's really important and thank you for doing that I know it's it's hard to

075collaborate across systems and I really appreciate it um and I also want to say that I agree with board member verez about the environmental impact of some of these Capital decisions and meant to say when we were talking about the health dashboards how important I think the hbac filters are that I think Natalie also mentioned that I think you're um metric there was less than 100% And I think it should be 100% And you know whatever we have to do to get it there before schools open to me it's the same as a carbon monoxide detector you know it's that it's that it's at that level of a of a health risk with covid and so I hope that we make that happen as Community um and then the only other thing I wanted to

076say was I sat through a presentation by our staff yesterday regarding the construction uction of the um wrapped parking decks at 3500 Main Street and part of uh the whole program there includes a Workforce Development element which was very exciting to hear about so you know some of the contractors we've hired have committed to really working with durm tech and durm public schools to hire you know local uh students um who might be coming out of Southern High School and your your fabulous construction program there um even having apprenticeship so anyway just I got very excited about that and thought that anytime any of us are embarking on aggressive uh Capital programs wouldn't it be wonderful if we could consider something like that and you know hope that those we work with would um be

077with us on on that I think that could be really meaningful for Workforce Development in our community uh thank you and I I really would like to just point out that I know I'm personally appreciative of the relationship that the county and the district I'm always seem to have like I have no doubt that we're going to be able to take care of everything that we're talking about the question is just how soon and I would kind of like to hearken back to something that I believe I heard um commissioner recal um speak about previously about being able to utilize um when there is a sometimes a downturn in in the economy to actually be able to utilize the low interest rates that sometimes are available towards us because when we're looking at the sustainability

078costs of of running a district there's actually a two-way benefit that it provides both the district and the county because if we can actually capitalize some of this deferred maintenance and and focus on the long-term sustainability of some of the new buildings that are coming online that's also going to allow us to reduce some of our operating costs which is a lot of times the recurring cost that we're asking from you so if we're able to actually reduce our cost that it takes for us to run the operations and the facilities that lends us to be able to allocate more or or additional funds to our personnel and and academic services so I again I say I have no doubt that we're going to be able to do this the question is are we going

079to be able to take ourselves up on the opportunity that's presented itself to be able to lock in some of these low interest rates because I don't know if we're going to probably see it again in the next 20 30 years so thank you Mr R I think the collaboration that we seen so far hopes gives me some faith that we're going to be able to figure out how to make that work so I'm excited about the projects that we have and in place and and moving forward to figure out how we can um do good work for our students so they have I think and that's in our strategic plan for DPS right making sure that the buildings and facilities are not just up to code but are like Stellar for our students right

080Tina can I just make one quick comment in response to Alexander's comment um and uh that Alexander that's been a huge priority for me our um climate change resolution uh that we passed back in 2018 and we have I just want to share the exciting news that we we just um approved the contract with um folks who are going to help us um actually develop a plan so we're working on the plan right now of how Durham County is going to meet the 2030 goals and the 2050 goals um and um so hopefully there'll be information in there that will will be helpful for durm public schools as well but absolutely um you know students being in a classroom that is safe and healthy uh is is very fundamental and we know we've had issues

081with that uh in many of our schools and that that has been really the urgency around so much of the work uh that your that DPS staff is doing uh with the renovations and I think that's what's exciting what we saw with the plans for um the um the Northern High School at our last meeting uh and how that's going to be uh environmentally done in an envir Mally sustainable way um and also be a healthier environment so so thank you for raising that issue I appreciate it right thank you all we're g to keep moving uh to our DPS budget ofj I'll turn it over to Paul lur and Alex mestu good morning County Commissioners um Durham County staff board members and DPS staff um today we're going to if you can bring up

082the slides please or do you want me to share my screen I'm taking care of it for you Paul okay thank you um as we get started today there's been a lot of changes that have occurred since uh we last talked uh in that regard um from the standpoint of the general assembly uh finalizing their bill um not giving any salary increases providing us with with uh hold harmless for the purpose of uh our uh projected enrollment that they gave us for this year uh it was reduced by charter schools and then uh we were able to retain the remaining portion of that uh our enrollment uh going back to the spring we projected that we were going to have 33,3 to students because we had a turnaround in last fiscal year and we're showing

083an increase uh in enrollment on the 20th day of 33024 we then um the general assembly was lobbied uh by superintendents by uh School Board Association by association of school administrators uh in regards to trying to come up with a way that school districts would not be hampered uh so significantly uh with less funding because of the best one of two that we get funded on each year um after this second month they look at our highest enrollment counts and uh they provide us funding based on that so if you're decreasing which we did uh going down to uh 3,603 um from that standpoint because we had uh kindergarteners that didn't come in as expected and in other grades uh parents may have sent them to Charter Schools or to private schools or homeschooling um

084that would have been a significant impact to during Public Schools uh as we start this uh year uh we were hoping for that kind of relief from the general assembly and it came to be um so as we stand today uh we were fortunate to be funded at a level of 33,3 68 students is where we ended up uh being uh funded for this year at this point in time as you all know if we go back to years ago when we had the uh crisis of 891 um we had a lot more funding from the standpoint from the from the federal government to support programs as we went through the trial and errors uh of trying to rebuild and get out of the recession that we were in um we don't have as much

085funding going in this year a lot of it is not for personnel uh use a lot of it is directed on how we're going to use these funds and for that purpose um as we go through these Co related Appropriations a lot of them will be very restrictive to what we can use it for um there's not much not many of these categories are are available for personnel hiring your personnel um because a lot of these funds are shorttime fundings uh as we'll go through and you'll see as we go into the actual uh document I just wanted to preface that because we're doing everything we can to maintain the level of uh support for our schools and it becomes even more difficult when you've had to change platforms uh and get uh people and

086students and parents uh working through um a day-to-day schedule of online learning um we would love for the kids to get back in school as you've heard uh we're putting forth that effort uh in the second semester uh but you know it's it's very difficult thing for everybody and so we're learning as we go we're adjusting as we can uh the hold harmless for the State uh ADM uh will help us get through this year my concerns are not getting through this year so much uh as getting through the next two to three years because this will have a lingering effect uh on on States and and counties uh in that regard and and ultimately in schools um so as we go through these uh I'm going to touch base on them real quick uh

087try to give you kind of an idea of of the funding that we've received to date um and where we are uh with the use of these funds uh the cares act funds uh the first one on the screen PRC 163 was the K12 emergency relief funds that we received at the very end of last year school year um this is primarily being used uh as you can see for student devices uh for internet connections uh we could not pay for connectivity out of any other pot that we have at this point in time uh the connectivity and and the the monthly fee for the hotspots is really a very expensive thing the hotspots themselves were only 99 cent a piece from that standpoint um also we have to have uh set aside money for

088private schools right now in this budget we have a million dollar set aside for private schools we have to do what's a proportionate share uh providing services to these uh private schools uh we're in the process of finding out what these private schools needs will be this year so we right now have a million dollar set aside we're thinking based on someon litigation that we're going to be able to reduce this amount a little bit uh from the million um I'm hoping for a reduction of 400,000 uh that will be needed for our PPE as we move forward uh going through we set some aside for academic services to ensure that we have the instructional uh support that we need for um whatever materials we have to prepare operational Services that's for contracted services for

089cleaning of schol schools uh PPE cleaning supplies and materials and then we have right now $141,000 that we set aside for it support uh we didn't have to use that it support on the front end so what we'll do is we'll roll that back into operational services to help with our PPE and cleaning costs um these next two that we talk about uh Governor's emergency education relief funds uh these are recently received funds for the purpose of us um supporting uh physical and mental health services is PRC 169 uh These funds can only be used for the purpose of of uh Mental Health Services uh psychologists uh other types of support for students such as nurses social workers that's all that these funds can be used for These funds can uh be used to pay

090for personnel at this point in time um but again uh the nice thing about these funds is that they'll carry over into next fiscal year so we'll be able to hold these back uh plan for the use of these operations and uh move forward as we come back into school when we'll need to to set up uh positions to provide the services for these students uh PRC 170 supplemental instructional services and these for these are to support academic needs of atrisk students uh student poverty uh and with disabilities and from that standpoint um a lot of these funds um are being planned to be used to provide additional support in the classrooms and remedial Services as we come back into the school setting um there'll be additional supplies of materials that we can purchase with

091this other than some Personnel for remedial services and extended day programs to support students as we move forward um and bringing kids back to the level of of learning that they're expected to have and expect of of us to be able to support summer earning funds these monies were given to us uh late asked for a plan quickly um as we get into this blue section I'd like to say that these funds end December 30th 2020 so anything that we have in this area is really for the purpose of this current fiscal year only through December the expenses have to be incurred um and the services rent Ed by December 30th to utilize These funds the summer learning funds PRC 121 was for k for uh summer learning literacy funds uh we usually get these

092from the state for summer programs uh the problem we had with these uh funds this year is that half of these dollars had to be spent on summer uh learning for those K4 uh students what we ended up uh running into is because it had to be online instead of bringing kids in we really didn't get the support uh and and push from the parents for these kids to uh take on the services on online learning um we had to use some of this money we were able to use some of this money to support our our uh textbook adoption process for K K4 learn earning um so at this point in time we may this may be a pot of money that we cannot fully expend uh leaving about $500,000 uh that we won't

093be able to spend because again of the restrictions that were around the summer program um many of the districts are having a lot of trouble utilizing These funds in the blue across the state just because of the restrictiveness of these of these uh support programs PRC 122 is for instructional support um this is for health support for personnel physical mental health support services counselors nurses psychologists and social workers like the money that's above in the uh tan boxes problem with these dollars is they could only be used for contracted Services of some sort they could not be used for paying of individuals um and and that puts a a hard restriction on it especially when you're not in person working with students on a daily basis but we're doing everything we can to spend that

094$29,000 on uh applicable expenditures that will be able to be uh we have we have to ensure that all these expenditures can withhold a test of an audit and that's really the key here in the blue is all these test of audit being in durm um if the federal government comes down to Raleigh they will come to durm um that's what they do excuse me that's what they do that's what they did um with the recovery funds that we received in uh the early uh teens of 2000s um 123 the non-digital resources this is to with support for us to uh support connectivity uh of students with students through platforms that we implemented uh to ensure that everybody could access it from home um those will be going those will be speced uh there shouldn't

095be a problem with those herey 124 student computer devices These funds were expended on Chromebooks as part of the larger P purchase we received them in August and they were deployed to the students so that we could have online learning at home school nutrition uh These funds PRC 125 Worth their salary and benefits and other costs for the Emergency feeding program that went on uh we spent some of these last uh fiscal year and uh we just used up the remaining funds uh because our revenues are were down over the summer in the summer feeding program so we were able to uh allocate cost back to this program and free up uh those uh larger expenditures for personnel in the Child Nutrition budget taking us closer to being out of a deficit but we are

096still in a deficit in Child Nutrition uh this fiscal year also piy 126 computer devices uh these were are being uh these dollars are being used to purchase Chromebooks or laptops for Teacher assistance to ensure that they'll be able to take one home uh if they're not in the classroom this year uh we're in the process of working through this purchase as we go through the next uh board meeting uh Wi-Fi for mobile buses we're looking into um getting a few buses situated uh with the Gateway routers uh to ensure that we can have internet services maybe on activity buses or other buses as students are coming to school PRC 128 These funds uh were for devices and then when I said um we had uh purchased 95 100 devices for the Wi-Fi uh that

097we're paying for the services subscription Services out of the car act funds at the top we could only spend $9,500 of these funds because it could only be used for the purpose of um of the purchase of the device it could not be used towards anything else uh for the purpose of uh the services learning management system um These funds are were provided to us for canvas licenses these are licenses that teachers uh have and students have throughout the district um we were provided additional money to ensure that everybody had what they needed for this fiscal year since the Extended Learning is at home services for exceptional children uh PRC 132 these are dollars that we received uh for the exceptional children's services for extended year for this year um during the summer and other

098services that we could provide to our students for uh a better enhanced learning uh with the with our online learning for all students of with children with disabilities 135 cyber security uh this money is for that purpose and that purpose only uh for monitoring and support uh of our cyber infrastructure uh PRC 137 PPE funds to procure Personnel equipment and custodial supplies this is a pot of money that we just received um that we'll be using to purchase the additional supplies needed to ensure safety when we get back into school and cleaning of the facilities and PRC 138 is a gagle Safety Management program uh funds that are to procure safety management software online learning um we're in the process of getting those uh dollar set up it can only be used for that purpose

099uh and we are working with uh companies to to get this Gaggle Safety Management product in place like I said um these up here will carry over into next fiscal year and have Tidings Amendment tied to them which gives us an additional year to spend these funds uh and these down here in the blue as I said have to be spent by December 30th of 2020 uh or else they will revert back to the state with that said the state will probably take these dollars back as part of their overall pot of money and reallocate them back out to the school districts and in targeted manners for moving forward uh uh through this Corona virus time next slide please we knew that uh we would have budget risks as we started this fiscal year um

100knowing and not knowing uh what was ahead of us and how long we would be out um the large part of the funds are for online learning and a lot of the cost yet to come will be reg in regards to plan B and ensuring safety of all uh students and Personnel in the schools for this we're going to be hiring another additional 175 part-time custodian positions uh for a total of $732,000 that was approved by the board at their last meeting uh that is uh we will use these funds we we're appropriating These funds for the purpose of use um if we get the all clear to go back in this in uh January as the second semester starts as part of Plan B if that's the approved uh platform for us to move

101in um we also have the DPS Learning Centers um right now we're looking at a $1.5 million C because most of these students it's a tiered cost uh per student and with this um most of the students that are in the program are free so we don't have additional resources for these uh centers other than uh some of the funds uh that we have in the community ed program uh some of their fund balance and uh very other limited resources for this program uh to make this work we will be operating at 1 point5 million loss for the first semester uh and if it goes into the second semester you can we can see uh that the cost is only going to increase from there daily breakfast meals and lunches uh Child Nutrition Services um

102in August and September our numbers weren't quite where we wanted them to be uh we need to have um 7,000 or more and since the middle of September um we've been hitting those targets uh our Child Nutrition program has been hitting uh 7200 uh meals a day uh over 7200 meals a day for the last six weeks we we're looking for that to continue as as students are in need of of food um and we're able to provide that to them again we want to thank all those that worked with us over the several months to get those meals out to uh the children and and parents across the county uh that was a partnership that that it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have worked without everybody chipping in to make sure that this that

103children were fed over the summer uh so in regards to this next item which is the family's first Corona virus Relief act we have DPS Personnel that are taking leave under this uh that leave ends uh well it's ended um at this point in time it ended in November mid November for most people these were for individuals that were staying home with their children uh for the purpose of online learning or if they had uh severe uh needs for the purpose of staying out of uh any operations many of these people were our custodians or uh some of our Child Nutrition workers bus drivers uh from that standpoint uh that we had to pick up the cost of these uh of these additional expenses for their salaries which is 66% of their salary uh through

104the the fall of this year this program was set up for businesses that um would get tax credits at the end of the year there was nothing in there about education other than they wanted us to provide it to our employees which we did in in regards to the Child Nutrition program that is a reason why we were able to charge some of those expenses back to PRC 125 is because we had these elevated expenses that we were receiving no money for um at the end of the day so um from that standpoint we're um that relief has for the most part ended um not knowing if any additional uh passage of of bills will uh re resurrect uh this um but this is where we are today we have to take care of our

105people as you in Durham County uh do we want to make sure that everybody is taken care of uh as long as we can but there could come a time where we don't have that opportunity to continue Personnel uh being out uh and not working for pay so and of course uh we have a pandemic Relief office that we have to report to every month and every quarter uh they tied to the coron virus relief funds that we've gone through um we don't know in a lot of instances there's a lot of not misinformation but lack of information that's coming out of that office on the use of these funds um we work with the Department of Public Instruction and we get responses back um and again it goes back to those targeting of funds

106and and trying to expand the use of those funds to meet the school the school district needs it wasn't a whole lot of discussion when uh those funds were being uh costed and provided to us on how we thought we needed to use them uh from that standpoint if that was the case we would have been able to utilize all the funds that they provided to us instead of having to try to use all the funds that they provided to us um so from that standpoint it puts us at a at a lack of uh certainty in in our expenditures because again uh they will be doing Audits and as I said we're providing them information on a monthly and quarterly basis uh on our expenditures for these programs the other big budget risk that

107we have is the anticipated local revenues um fines and forfeitures we cut them in half because we weren't really really certain on how those were going to turn out this year um usually with fines and forfeitures and late filing fees we budget about $1.5 million we took it down to $850,000 this year because of that uncertainty uh if those those dollars come in above our projection uh we'll be in a better place to uh support all of our programs that we have in place and the expenditures that that are still yet to come uh so at this point we have uh one of the questions that was asked previously uh was in regards to our fund balance we use $3.8 million of our fund balance um from that we uh could have put into fund

108balance but uh we had to use 3.8 million to start the fiscal year this the school year uh because of the Appropriations uh and needs for additional expenditures above and beyond as well as some of the state adjustments that were made for providing teacher salary increases a step increase uh but not providing any additional uh increases for other employees of the district classified employees of the district but we had to use that to offset some of our cost which was about $800,000 that we didn't plan to use uh because we didn't think they provide any increases to our district Personnel um so many of those things are uh on the table we had to put 3.8 to support uh the offset of some of the Learning Centers because we knew there would be an additional

109cost there some of the uh findes and forfeitures to replace those dollars um in that regard um we just had to cover everything and anything we could think of as we move forward uh as Dr mingam mentioned earlier we plan to have $8.3 million in fund balance again I am talking about the future um from that standpoint uh we came to you with an initial budget request of $18 million at the beginning uh not knowing what the Corona virus was really going to do to us uh we reduced it down to 6 uh $2 million the purpose of you was $6.2 Million for the purpose of giving you what our real needs were knowing that we were going to have fines and forfeitures reduced knowing that our revenues weren't going to come in for Community

110Ed knowing that our Child Nutrition program needed to continue to be supported through the summer with all those things we came back to you for a request of $6.2 million which you gave us $3.2 million for us to move forward with we appreciate that because many districts may not have received any funding increase but we were able to support a lot of things but we did have to go into fund balance uh for the purpose of us ensuring that we were going to be able to sustain this year and as I told the board when we did our budget resolution at the last meeting that don't be surprised if we come back to you uh with additional requests to use utilize fund balance again we're only projecting of what we think our costs are going

111to be for this year when we come back into school that cost could explode on us we haven't been in that position yet we know we've done a lot of cleaning deep cleaning uh but there's going to be that continuous need to uh purchase additional supplies of materials PPE uh for staff uh and some of the expenses uh could get large as we uh get back into school so um that's all I have I open the floor to Alex to see if he wants to add anything to that or Dr mainga in that regard Paul you covered really well so I'm going to pass it back to uh chairperson Amstead to continue with our conversations thank you all um board members Commissioners we have questions discussion uh Cher I'm said I have a few I

112have a few questions um thank you Paul really appreciate your really thorough uh explanation and and and just walking us through step by step uh all of the different um funding sources and explaining all the issues around each of them very very thorough um uh related to the GPS Learning Centers the one the addition of 1.5 million you're projecting is that in addition to what you took out for the from the fund balance um because you said that you guys had used um 3.8 million to start off the fiscal year is that on top of what was taken out for that we'll be supporting the Learning Centers um with uh some of the fund balance as well as utilization of any savings that we uh occur um from uh utilities uh from vacant positions anything

113will be targeted to offset those uh overages that we're anticipating at this point in time it's going to be tight um and one of the things I forgot to mention with that in the blue section of of the Corona virus funds is we can't replace expenditures that we already had in our budget uh for the purpose of um if it was for mental health services or for any other expenditures that we already had planned in our budget um we couldn't use any of those these were expenses above and beyond because of the severity of the the timing and uh the needs of of going online across the the state so um that's another thing that's going to be looked at that we can't supplant in their minds uh those types of expenditures so um but

114yeah we took into account some of that I'm not saying we're going to have enough for all of it it all depends on uh when we open up and what our costs are going to really be as we move down the road okay and the point that you made about you know making sure that we stay up above 7,000 uh for the uh food and nutrition for the nutrition program I think that's really important that we all work together on that um I know that's people's jobs that are at stake um that really concerns me plus we know that the need for food is there in the community and this is just a really really important resource um and um because correct me I think it's been that we've said that anyone anybody under the

115age of 18 now is eligible for breakfast and lunch is that correct can you just clarify that Paul um I'll turn that one to Dr Mon I don't know about the anyone under that's correct that's correct okay that's what I thought has been to our community and um so I I know we've got our food our food Security Group um that's working together on this and um and a lot you know a lot of County staff but but um let's all keep this on our radar because also the volunteer Center the um the triangle nonprofit and volunteer Center has been getting really helping getting lots I mean thousands of Volunteers in the community who have signed up to help with um food distribution so um please you know let us know if if you need

116help this this absolutely should be something that we all um work together on um and um and then the part-time custodians that you mentioned um could you tell us a little bit more about that um and how is that being funded and are those people being paid $15 an hour um you know just how how are those how is it work for how is that piece working I'm going to turn that one over to Dr Monk um he has a great handle on um what he's planning to do in the operational Services area um but I believe they're they're looking to bring those in people in uh at the $15 near the $15 an hour uh range so yes they'll be PID $15 an hour um these are temporary part-time positions so um when we

117get to the point where um some of the disinfection requirements um for I see are no longer necessary then those positions would go away um but they are result of the increased um amount of disinfection um that we have to do a part of um reducing the transmission of co9 okay well glad to hear that they are going to be paid $15 an hour but I can imagine that that would create um some tension with the existing janitorial staff who are not not being paid that um I think I saw your hand earlier uh Alex mest did you have a comment that you wanted to add uh yeah just one thing I guess to reiterate uh from from Paul's points of just how how tight we are with um you know our uh we're estimating

118that our unassigned fund balance will be at 8.3 million uh that's you know pending finalization of the 2020 Capper um but that whether it's the MV 13 filters uh the additional 175 custodians uh the uh you know pending still uncertainty with our Child Nutrition uh program the fact that we have 500 plus children in the Learning Centers uh and virtually uh almost all of them are tuition free uh when uh under normal circumstances are before and after school care program is entirely funded by tuition that families pay um so just all all of these things layering and compounding on top of each other um Ju Just make this a very tight year that we've allocated $ 3.83 million in in fund balance to try to to cover it as much as we can and and

119we're being very very careful and diligent with the with the budgets that our departments currently have is more of even if it's in your budget right now if it's not Mission critical you know we're we're trying to preserve and withhold as much funds as we can but that um all these things layer on top of each other and and it's making it very uh very tight for us to take on any any additional expenditures Beyond uh what's kind of mission critical for for covid right now commissioner howon could you clarify Paula can you clarify something for me if you'll go back you said the county gave uh last year 3 point uh was it 3.2 million and I remember it being 5.2 million um do I is that am I off on my figures that

120I could be no ma'am uh you aren't off on figures the 3.2 6.2 uh million is what we needed for operating costs um going in you gave us the 3.2 million and then you gave us the 1.9 that was to bring up the uh the the minimum wage to closer to uh $15 so yes it did come out to be the 5 point okay just I I just remember the 5.2 and I just wanted to be accurate on that number thank you y uh Miss SP so I appreciate um Paul and Alex giving such a detailed report on um where we are in these tough times that we're in um I think it's actually kind of anxiety producing for our board and I just want us to be really transparent about that um we have

121a whole lot of unknowns we have a lot of unknowns with metrics in this area we may come back to you and and really ask you as overseers of the health department you know to to um dedicate contact tracers to our school district um see if you have extra nurses that could help with this reopening plan as we contemplate it on Thursday night for the first time and then take some time to hear from our community what they really think would be necessary to to reopen safely um one thing that I think that that Paul and Alex didn't point out that causes me grief and Nightmares is the connectivity issues that are causing us almost T $2 million do I think I you know a year on Hotspots for our students they're so so critical

122they are so so important that we couldn't be doing online schooling without it but I've never thought of that as as a school responsibility I think of it as a community responsibility so I look forward to ways that City and the county are continuing to aggressively explore and lead in connectivity CommunityWide um we we really really need ways to continue Partnerships on on a lot of these issues um we a lot of us had hopes and I know you all did too for the general assembly to be more kind to public schools to some some changes in the general assembly and you know the superintendent of public schools that didn't happen this time so uh I I personally fear that that there will be really tough budgets coming out of this general assembly in the

123in the um Coming session so Alex I think I saw your hand y' y'all know more than I do oh no that's a very good point and I guess it's worth uh uh reiterating that of of the 11.9 million in in federal cares act funding that we received we spent about $7 million again and this was in our more detailed budget presentation uh at our last board meeting but we spent about $7 million for that purchase of about 20,000 Chrome a onetime purchase 20,000 uh uh yeah about 20,000 Chromebooks uh for a one toone initiative and then we have about $2.6 million in costs uh budgeted for uh internet connectivity service for for this year but that um Corona virus or the car act money 11.9 million is not recurring um so we'll have uh

124expended most of it if if not all potentially uh with all the reopening costs um by by July of this year we're not anticipating having much left certainly not another $2.6 million for the connectivity costs and then in addition to that previously we were a 3 to1 District because of the annual refresh it costs even just to be a three to1 District now if we're uh if we're s having to sustain one to one for covid or for other reasons uh that in and of itself brings uh it's around a two two2 and a half million dollar annual it refresh cost just for student devices uh so the what we were able to and we wouldn't have been able to do the oneto one were it not for the car act money the $1.9 million

125but that that was a onetime influx that allowed us to get where where we are but you know it's not going to sustain the internet connectivity or the it refresh cost for student devices uh Paul I just wanted to have uh one other thing that I wanted to mention um earlier um Miss Hagar um said that maybe we could split the cost of the getting this of $15 an hour um as you've heard the board members say that that's really a uh if it's being pushed by the county and city that that's really needs to be an appropriation the second piece to that is um it was also said to us three years ago when we jump started um our strategic plan the county manager uh mention that we shouldn't be using unbalanced for recurring

126costs because of where we need to be in this day and age uh anything that we come to you is because we're going to show it as a need uh but mostly we're going to be showing you what the need is to continue from year to year and we will ask you for any expansion items we want but from the standpoint of uh being clear to the point that it's been told to us not to use our fund balance for recurring costs in the past thanks Paul for that reminder I think you know one of the things I'm hearing from all of our conversations and the budget conversation that we had um earlier is that the cost of doing school is just going up every time you know in the past it was going up

127because there was additional cost for step increases on salaries for um health care and different things that the district was taking on that were been shifted to us from the state and now we're also seeing with covid similar to you all that we're having additional experiences so continue the internet connectivity for our students making sure they have devices we spent um appropriated $800,000 for some HEPA filters that are Dr Mon can tell us that increase the Merv rating and we know that we're going to need to replace those because from what we've seen so far you know even we have promising vaccines Co will not be gone next year it will be a while before we fully eradicate um this virus from our from our community and from our country so I think you know

128as we're preparing for 2021 2022 school year as we come and prepared that budget please hear us when we say the cost of school is going up we're concerned about what a budget might look like from a general assembly um and so this we're going to have more and more conversations about how our needs are going to um go up and I hope that we can still continue in this collaborative spirit that we have so far to be thinking about how we best support our students uh Mr Raven I ju I just had one question and I think I was fortunate enough to be able to have seen this um this great budget presentation one time before but when I'm looking at the corona relief funds and I'm looking at 126 and 127 it just

129kind of dawned on me I I know we always kind of focus on point that it says it's to buy Wi-Fi equipment and it can't be used for Internet service but I do know that we are working on a um working on a city county fiber um solution to help uh some areas but I'm wondering are we allowed to use that roughly looks like almost $237,000 could we use those that those funds to actually purchase um maybe like Wi-Fi extenders because even in the areas maybe maybe one place has a a Wi-Fi Center and a community center but you know we're limited roughly on how many people we should actually have within that building but if we could actually have extenders that could extend that that Wi-Fi outside the facilities and allow for H better

130usage and just using the outdoor airs I'm wondering if we can use those funds in that way because that that's something that maybe we could kind of forecast where the the bulk of our our students are in certain areas and just be able to provide some outdoor for because it does say Home and Community um additional Wi-Fi services that's just going to use the event event eventual Wi-Fi service that will come to them at some point in time so I just hopefully that's another Avenue that may be available to us thank you for that um we'll certainly look into that um quickly because we don't have many more days with these funds so uh thank you for bringing that up thank you Mr Reverend also for that suggestions uh what I would advise our staff

131to do get in touch with city as well as we're working with um public housing uh there is some cost associated with what they were trying to do I think we don't really want to return these funds to the state if anything creative we can do I think that's a conversation that we need to have thank you uh commissioner Jacobs yeah I also just wanted to let um school board members and staff know that um we uh we also are in the process of another study on uh digital access in um the northern part of the county and um this is something that I've really championed um and I'm really glad we we got it into our budget this year um because we do have parts of the county especially in the Northern parts of

132the county where people do not have uh broadband and um our our RT director has told us that doing this study is the first step for us to tap into some of the now State funding for Broadband um so you have to do the study first and then you can apply for the funds so just to let you know big picture wise uh this is something that that we are working on and prioritizing this is not a short-term thing though uh obviously it's a long-term thing um and uh I agree with what you said um Natalie that you know today digital access it's a basic necessity just like housing and water and electricity um you cannot function into today Society uh equitably without having access to broadband for you know education for work for health

133care for social you know religious life I mean it is a basic necessity and we all need to work together on that um and um I I think two things one is I think this conversation just really hits home that our board when we're looking at the ways the money that we are spending right now related to covid and um things you know funding that is happening expenses that are happening we have to keep in mind uh the school's expenses and this priority of getting our kids back to school as much as possible um you know it's we understand the concerns that um there are about about um people's health and wellness and then the concerns about uh learning loss especially our special needs kids um our ESL kids um and and just weigh weighing

134all those factors that that are happening right now and doing whatever we can to support whatever decision that you all make um as a school board the decision that you all will make uh we need to be able to be in a position to support that uh for our entire community and our parents um one one question I have I guess is for maybe Dr mea is do we do you have any projection um at this point um how many parents I know some parents are going to choose to continue the virtual learning um but then there are parents who they you know with work and their own situations at home it's just not working well for them uh virtual learning and their children having special needs just wondering if you have an idea about

135how many parents may choose uh want to do a plan B um and then I guess for our staff I'd like to know um it's probably not a quick answer but whether we can be looking at ways that we can support the schools based on the resources that we have I know Natalie you mentioned contact tracers but for our staff to think about resources that we have um you know already um that that might be helpful and whether our staff can work together on assessing that based on whatever decision that you all come up with um I think that would be that would be really a next step after the decision that you all make so those are those are my two questions all right uh commissioner Jacobs let me go ahead on the first

136one roughly around 6500 of our students sign up for online um out of 33 or 31,000 now that we have uh that number is not very accurate at this point because once we present our plan to our board we are going to give our families another option for them to be able to sign up for online to remain online for the remaining of the year so we should be able to have approximately the number somewhere um somewhere around the first week of December so if I can just look for elementary so far we have roughly between 20 to 30 I mean to 25% of our families sign up for ignite and that's not really a true picture of some of the feedback that we've been receiving from our families for that reason we're going to

137open up another options after November 19th depending on how our board is going to vote then we're going to give those families another option I think that was uh the first question um I don't know if the second one was a question or was a concern that you trying to make uh to bring um I did not really capture the second part of your question well I guess I just wanted to hear from staff about um you know depending on what you all decide but just um and you know just a followup of our staff everyone working together for you all to share what your needs are and whether the county can even support some of the those with the existing resources that we have things like contract tracers or you know there may be

138other things that we definitely can even help with because we have those resources and what that would look like for you all to to move forward on that th this is cladia I I will defer to my colleagues as well but as you know we're always um willing and able to assist as needed I know our Public Health um such a wide range of areas that they've been helping and and others in in the county have as well so um we will continue that effort and again some of my other colleagues will weigh in and I know we're in similar um situations with with looking at what happens once the car's funding leaves uh I know that's a a big side that's happening across the country for local governments as well as um um public

139school systems and it will take all of us partnering together to to make sure we um get to those next phases of making sure the community re remains intact as we work through things were there any other comments from County staff on that I see your hand Miss leis well good morning Joanne Pierce uh general manager for uh health and wellbeing with the county uh yes look forward to um hearing from the uh dur public schools to hear how we can um partner and support um thank you Miss Lewis thank you Miss Hager and Miss Pierce um partnering is really important um especially this time I'm so happy to hear all the ways that we are partnering with each other um during these times commissioner Jacobs um as you shared it is important for us

140to consider um safely returning back to schools so as we look at a robust mitigation plan to get back to schools um this type of collaboration is needed um contact tracers connectivity issues as this is a hybrid model there will be Middle School and High School uh students who will um still be online and teachers and connectivity is a um is still an issue on the ground um for our families having enough Broadband to either have their microphone on and video on at the same time or one or the other and still not being able to receive quality education um that's needed so um looking at that again a robust mitigation plan to get back to school is going to be important and um realizing too there will still be some families at home you

141had mentioned the connectivity uh and or even before the connectivity there are Middle School high school students who are using our Learning Centers in the community so just something to keep on your radar that that may still be a need um even if we return back to school for our Community Partners and then going back to the digital access study that you has talked about and things take time to develop but I was wanting to know um if you have an idea of what the time frame looks like is this something that we can anticipate having the study results back by the before the end of the school year or and even getting State funding I know you said it'll take a while but ideally is that six months a year or two if you

142have any idea thank you I I really have no idea so I don't know if um Claudia if you have any idea when this when the study will be completed um and what the steps are for that I don't know great question I don't see Miss Claudia Claudia is a parent who is dealing with school herself she may easily be helping her son with school right now well I thank you so much I my technology um was disconnected and um human era didn't plug in my charger to the wall so I missed about a minute and a half my apology but if you had said CLA I was busy helping my son with school that would have been adequate as well too absolutely because he always finds the perfect time to pause and ask questions

143but I'm sorry if there was um a question that was asked of me I apologize I'm not sure what that may have been yeah the question was around the timeline for the study in rodban um stud completed how does it work moving forward is there a timeline that we can look forward to that yes that work um will be completed by the spring um and we can uh or that's the initial um time frame that we're looking at and we can also give more updates on that because of covid as you can imagine some things are moving slower than planned um but the intent is to have that finished um in 20 early 21 and after that step present a plan to the board um for um dollars that are needed for certain components that

144we would sell fund but also a strategy on how we will seek external funding whether it's from the state or the federal government um so we're excited the um about this and I know many of our community members in the northern part of the county are are equally excited thank you I think as much as we can collaborate and also be creative around this we see how a lot of our funds are kind of restricted so if you know DPS provides a hot spot but the county can help with the cost of the service because we can't use funds to do that like I'm wondering how many different ways that we can be collaborative um in that fashion as we're moving forward because that it's going to take that level of collaboration I believe to

145move forward so I'm going to I'm going to move us forward on our agenda because we have a really important presentation um on the Early Childhood action plan and I want to make sure that that group has who's been waiting patiently has some time to the full time that they need for their presentation um and so for that I'm going to turn it over uh to Dr Linda sh hi glad to be here actually I'm going to turn it ever uh to start us off with to um Katie elander the early childood coordinator for Durham County as well as David ree from Duram children's initiative to talk about the Early Childhood action plan collaborative work and then once they're done I will update you on our dur prek initiative and I know we will we

146will try to be brief since the meeting has run over Lind I can go ahead and start but I'm wondering if um if Kate can there we go y this it's coming up on the screen good morning everyone um thank you so much for having us uh today is uh an opportunity for us to provide an update on the Early Childhood action plan the planning that uh the Durham children's initiative is man managing with the support and the collaboration of many partners across Durham let me give you some context about a year and a half ago we invited Governor Cooper to come spend some time back in Durham um hear some of the work that was happening back within the DCI ecosystem as well as broader Durham um uh Early Childhood sort of sphere of

147work as you can imagine he was impressed um he he says he always loves to come come to durm he's impressed with the work that we continue to do um and so uh he said this is one of his uh his uh best meetings that he had had that week um what he talked about in particular was his early childhood action plan and as you know the government has created a Early Childhood action plan um for throughout uh the state of North Carolina Durham has this opportunity to be the first County and this is the goal for us to be the first County to actually create a comprehensive Early Childhood action plan as we think about supporting young children from birth through age eight today we're going to highlight some key updates um welcome any

148questions at the end um given the time we can maybe have follow up sometime after the meeting next slide please um here you see a uh just an overall framework of the of the process so this is a collaborative Collective impact um effort uh that again is modeled after the Early Childhood action plan from the state um you know we have uh created our model and our framework to focus on four areas healthy basic needs safe and nurtured as well as learning ready to succeed um there's a goal to have a tremendous level of of involvement from the broader Community um uh in addition to that there we're simultaneously working on building a braided funding strategy to weave public and uh fil and private philanthropic resources to support the implementation as we began this process

149this was uh LED and supported by the county and by the County Commissioners and so Commissioners thank you so much for your continued support and guidance and Leadership uh CCI also made a financial investment here and we wanted to create that the the sort of the standard um in the planning process because as we hopefully move into an implementation process this is where there's the opportunity to bring in our private and public philanthropic Partners to support the implementation of this early childhood action plan um next slide please ah this is my favorite slide right here what you see now are uh you see the the the plan itself but then I want you to really take it take a look at all of the different participants that are working in the the four uh work

150group areas uh this is um I think Durham at its best um there's representation from pretty much all throughout Durham uh commissioner rackow is participating board member Lewis have also been engaged and we're really grateful for your leadership here you know we also have some Community surveys as we think about engag the broader Community um there are uh about 1,300 surveys which are out um and the last date last uh checking I got there were almost 600 of those surveys returned and so as we think about engaging the entire Community back in this process I think we're well on our way uh go ahead next slide please hey everyone can you hear me yep can I just get a thumbs up yes okay sorry earlier I wasn't um I was on mute on my phone

151and not on the computer anyway I figured it out um thanks again everyone for taking the time today to hear this update and thanks David for um for giving that overview we just want to give you just a few more details about um how it's going David talked about all of the stakeholders that have been involved we are so grateful to both the county and to Durham Public School for the level of Staff involvement um and Leadership involvement that have been um participating both on the governance committee but also um within the work groups and also providing a lot of data and a lot of background context to all of us y all have a ton of knowledge that you've been sharing and we really appreciate it um David also mentioned a few of the

152different ways um that we've been bringing Community perspectives into the work um we have funding for um Community participants on the work groups and also funding for um Community leaders to lead focus groups once we have done some analysis of the results um we actually have updated numbers there are almost 750 surveys have been returned um so we look forward to sharing some more of that data with you all some of you will hear it directly on the workg groups but we're also happy to follow up um but we just have been um impressed with the level of Engagement both from nonprofit agencies institutions and uh community members and parents um doing a strategic planning process during a pandemic um is not an easy feat but I know you all know uh that nothing is

153an easy feat in a pandemic so um thanks again to everyone who's been engaged if you could share the next slide please um so just wanted to share with you a few things um that have happened so far uh we the ecap team has put together needs and assets assessments that um compile as much existing data as possible including population level data and some program level data that's relevant to each of the work groups we really want to make sure that the work groups are grounded in a lot of different types of knowledge and one of those types of knowledge is this existing data um we also have using a jam board tool and some other online tools to gather perspectives um throughout all of the workg group meetings so we've been able to pull

154in kind of community perceptions of community strengths and needs into the process as well um the work groups are reviewing those have reviewed those needs and assets assessments the parent survey data and um they are also going to be reviewing recommendations um that already come in from a bunch of both local state and National reports that are relevant to the Early Childhood action plan goals um so again we also want to make sure that uh we're not Reinventing the wheel certainly I think we could all agree that there probably some gaps um that have not been addressed so we are going to be incorporating lived experience and expertise into the process as well but we also want to bring existing recommendations from really strong planning processes that have already happened in our community and at

155the state level into this process um if you could share the next slide please this is an example from the learning and ready to succeed workg group who um many of uh the um both school board and School staff um have been engaged on this particular work group these are the types of reports um and planning processes that we're gleaning recommendations from in addition to recommendations from the community and from parents um so I'll just say um that in this process something that feels very important to me um as Durham's Early Childhood coordinator many of the stakeholders are lifting up some root cause issues um both poverty and lack of family Economic Security and also systemic racism and I think we it can be um hard to consider how to address those within the scope

156of an early childhood related planning process but I think I'm excited that people are considering those things as well because if we continue to just try to work around them I don't think we're going to see the type of progress we want to see in our community as so the last couple things I'll say are just that um the work groups will be delivering some highlevel recommendations to the board of County Commissioners in February or March and then a final plan um across the four work groups and action plan that is detailed about what strategies and when and how we might fund it um will um come to the community in June so that is where we are and um I think we we might have two options we could take a couple questions now

157but I also would love for Linda Chappelle to be able to share a Durham prek update so I'm not sure on time we're happy to answer questions after the meeting or a few now based on um chair Jacobs and chair onstead your thoughts on time um we can take a maybe a few questions if folks have some I want to thank you all for this detailed work that you're doing and like you said managing uh this project in the midst of dealing with the pandemic and so I think it's so important as we deal with the immediate needs that we also continue to still think about the long-term and future um because we know how important prek is for our community do we have any questions take any quick questions from commissioner or school board

158members I don't see any hands I just see Smiles on my screen I don't know if y'all can see them so people seems like are pleased with the work uh Miss valadares I see one yeah just I'm really excited about this work I think um you know it's it's been uh just remembering the conversations going back a couple of years about these initiatives and you know also the setup and um framework with have you are back on mute Miss RAR sorry um thinking about like uh you know the collaborations between like the the city um DPS Head Start you know all these different entities um and conversations um back in the day were were about how to um get get the feedback that that this work group is doing that this action plan is going

159to is going to get us right how to how to make sure that everybody has access to Universal prek um and how to address uh um some of the social um uh situations so one one of the things is I appreciate um uh board member javanna Lewis being on this on this uh task force and you know knowing that you guys are uh having representation um I did submit some names uh of parents and and you know they're super excited to be a part of this um I do know that we have DPS staff uh folks who have been working with families about like recruiting and I just wanted to I know that this is you know there going to be more updates down the line but I just wanted to hear from you all

160how uh in terms of representation what is it looking like because one I think is the intention to invite as many members but in terms of like how folks are showing up if there's a need to uh even add more folks to that I just wanted to check to just do a little check because I know I recommended people and you know they were really excited about it I just want to be sure that you know I do my part to support this because it matters to me um a lot and and just hearing from you all how representation and uh engagement is going thank you so much missar we um a few of the folks you've recommended are engaged on the work groups and I'll actually turn it over to Bonnie Delon who is

161the uh rockar um manager of the Early Childhood action planning process for DCI she may be able to speak a little bit more specifically um about how it's going with regard to representation on work groups right now thanks thanks Kate and thanks for the question sparas and for your recommendations of folks and just your enthusiasm for this as well um yes we have community members including the folks you recommended participating on work groups at this time um and also figuring out interpretation and translation and just making sure we have everything accessible for folks um and right now as well we are so we are gathering all these parent surveys um that are coming in and identifying where there are gaps as well it is still open so we are doing targeted pushes to make sure

162we get as much parent feedback as possible however recognizing that we want um culturally appropriate authentic methods of community engagement and surveys also have their limitations so we are moving into focus groups as well and trying to have um to meet parents where they're at and to have trusted Community leaders um leading in that kind of research and in those spaces so we have a couple planning meetings actually coming up this week um and community members who are participating in work groups will be helping advise um as we move into next steps but it's a continual process and would love your your thought partnership in that as well one thing I'll just add to is that um there's sort of two phases to this process the phase right now is generating um working toward generating

163some high level recommendations and then in the action planning phase I think we're envisioning that we'll be bringing together smaller more targeted groups of people um to work on the action plan around the specific recommendations that have been lifted up from this part of the process and that will be another opportunity to pull in parents and Community Representatives who have energy around specific pieces of this process as well commissioner Jacobs Well I didn't want to leave this topic before we gave a proper introduction to Kate elander I'm not sure if you all have met her yet but she is um our our Rockstar new early childhood coordinator so I just want to take a moment to make sure that everybody knows who she is and at our next meeting we will introduce also our also

164wonderful new um Asus and resilience coordinator Jess busette um these hires have been huge priorities of our board I I'm really really proud of the work that our board has done over the last four years to invest in systemic approach approaches integrated systemic approaches uh to issues like racial equity and economic uh disparities and so that's why we have invested in um in in Kate and in Jeff because um we we've got to look at um what we're doing across the board in our community and uh so um I guess one one question I have is I don't know if the school board has seen the Early Childhood action plan that came out of the state um Kate if I could ask you as a followup if you could send um email to the school

165board the the Statewide Early Childhood action plan that we are basing our plan on and then there was also an assessment done uh county by county about where each County was related to the plan um and that's I just think it's important for you all to have that because Durham we are trying to be the first county in the state to have a um have a state level Early Childhood action plan that that is our goal um so and this work will help during public schools because you know when children can start school you know ready to learn socially emotionally healthwise you know literacy wise it is going to make the job of Duram Public School teachers a whole lot easier um so that's that's our goal to support all of you um so I

166just wanted to share that as a followup we can provide that to you all thanks thank you and I really see that as we're investing in the lives of our children and our community right in this work so thank you all so much for the presentation um we are both of our boards have committed to pre and so if there any ways that we can be a support please do not hesitate to reach out um because it's so important that this work continues to move forward um every time we talk about new construction for our elementary schools I ask you know is there going to be prek classrooms in this school and they will be in elementary school C and Elementary School F so thank You' all for this commitment um and I would say

167a commissioner reow is not here with us this morning but I want to thank her too for her commitment the work that she's done to move this forward so I'm going to go ahead we're going to start to wrap up thank you all for that presentation um the last I'm so sorry to interrupt you um I just wanted to um speaking of prek if there is time I would love to give Linda Chappelle an opportunity to share a quick update about the current state of Durham prek um we've kind of took a break in the middle for questions on ecap but there are a couple slides um that are in that same deck that was just shared uh if there is Time Dr Chappelle take us away I'll be I'll be super brief if if

168you can pull up the slide that would be great but while that's happening I'll let you know I'll remind you that our overall goal and Durham is to improve quality and access for children you can go to the next slide um two public four yearold services and just to let you know I'll remind you that um in Durham we have a high quality program with low teacher child ratios enriched resources and a learning environment that provides teachers with the opportunity to collaborate and plan I want to share with you that the of course the pandemic has impacted the program however the program is serving children both in person as well as at private sites um the private sites are both virtual and in person and the public schools are all virtual as well as Head

169Start so as you move into your new Services obviously um you're if that's approved by the board that will change a little bit but our we do have preschool children attending classes in our private classrooms um the teachers and early other early educators are to be commended for their commitment and their adaptability and resilience during the pandemic um we are prioritizing the quality improvement aspect of the program even though everything is shifted to Virtual Services um we provide regular coaching and professional development with an emphasis on instructional strategies that promote cultural competence and social emotional learning and obviously right now during the Pandemic those things are critical um as as certainly they always are um but these services are continuing and during Public Schools preschool programs are participating in some parts of those Services you

170can go to the next slide uh just to up dat you on where we are this year um remember that dur prek is a a collaborative program and what I'm reporting to you today is just the part that our local dollars are paying for we have a braided service model that that completely integrates and embeds services across our local dollars for dur prek our NC prek dollars from the state our smartart dollars excuse me our smartart dollars for NC prek as well as Title One and head start so we have a fully integrated program with braided funding however we're reporting right now on our local dollars because numbers will be available a little bit later in the year for the full prek picture but in our private programs these funds that are shown here are

171do not include those dollars that go directly to the Duram public school budget Duram prek pays the school district some funding but the majority of dollars come into the DAR public school budget directly um but just to let you know right now a key component of the program is braiding those Resources with the state Inc pre funds and we do hope even though the uh election was um went more in a conservative way than we had hoped in terms of preschool Services um there with the Leandra ruling there is some hope that there will be additional funding coming through State dollars for prek services and that will only enhance our program you can go to the next slide um so just to obviously I'm being really quick and if you have any specific questions you

172can feel free to contact me afterwards but our local dollars this year are are supporting 441 seats and our um of those seats 136 are fully funded by local dollars which represents an investment of $1,250 per month per child um our student enrollment as of October 10th was that 60% of the children we are serving um are African-American 22% identifies as Latin X and the other um race and ethnicities represent 18% of our enrollment um you know truly a critical component of this really ambitious local initiative is the implementation of preschool classrooms across diverse settings and right now that's particularly important because some of our smaller settings in private Child Care are able to serve children in person and maintain the health and safety standards although the costs have certainly gone up um there's so

173many competing financial needs due to the pandemic we were not able to expand our service this year as we had originally planned but we were able to um maintain the majority of activities you can move to the next slide um and just lastly I wanted to show you uh right now you know we we are serving children across the income Spectrum if you'll remember many of the funded programs other than our local dollars have Financial restrictions that have income caps durm prek is a universal initiative and our goal is to serve all children um we do Implement a sliding scale fee at 400% of federal poverty however those parent fees are waved right now during the pandemic just as you at dur public schools have waved your fees we know that those children that are

174living in lower inome households are often Left Behind further inequality and really setting the stage for the achievement Gap that persists through high school we really want to continue to address um meeting the broad needs of the community and we focus very closely on leveraging dollars to bring in as many out of local dollar resources as possible we really believe strongly that the access to high quality prek is a major Equity issue and we are working hard to build a system in Durham to provide the high quality preschool education on a really large scale so much of our work is system building and collaboration and as you've talked about throughout this meeting that collaboration is critical um and takes a lot of work to build systems and a framework for it and we appreciate Duran

175public school's commitment to expanding preschool over time and we continue to work with your teams to to help support that initiative so thanks for the time today if you have additional questions you know I'm happy to answer them um offline or you know we can follow up in a in a future meeting Miss sper uh still on mute took a minute there sorry I had a weird pop up I just want to thank Dr Chappelle and and miss erlander and just be so excited excited that it took so long to get here and we're on the The Grow path for growth and I hope that perhaps we could dream of some Federal grant money coming for local initiatives like this and that Durham could be Poise with our County and and um DPS grant writers

176to be ready to jump on that if that happens with the B Administration quickly and and just exponentially grow these programs in this community because we're ready for that we just need the funding um thank you all so much thank you all for that presentation prek has been a consistent agenda item for us so we'll look forward to a update in February about these initiatives I see hand claps and lots of celebrations on the screen so for anyone watching so you can see all of that celebration that's going on this is such important work so the next item on our agenda is to look at our Board of Education and county commissioner meeting schedule for next year for 2021 will'll be here very soon um we have four meetings that are quarterly throughout the year

177does any um hesitations to this or objections to this schedule hearing no objections I'd love if there could be a motion so we can approve this and and get those meetings set up um I will say all the locations will be pending as you can see on this um schedule the health and safety region so I would move approval of the schedule as presented second second been moved in properly second I'm just G to call you all in the order I see on my screen so Miss Lewis hi Miss buer hi Mr Ray hi Miss Vadar hi Miss Jacobs commissioner Jacobs yes commissioner Howton yes and commissioner Carter I right so that is approved so we'll go ahead and get those meetings um up on our calendar I had one specific kind of followup ask

178that I wanted we had a lot of great presentations today if we can get those incl Ed in the packet so they can all be updated online that would be great because I know that other people will want to follow up on this meeting um but that is all I have we had public comment but I don't think any public comment was submitted this on I don't believe so but okay so we didn't have any public comment at submitting so with that um our meeting is adjourned I saw Miss Jacob's hand sorry batina oh I'm sorry I missed it yes Miss Jacobs I did want to raise one issue about the calendar that we just approved which is that just thinking about the budget adoption process um you know we're going to have a meeting

179in February and then we won't have one again in May um so just thinking that through I just want everyone to be aware that we may have to have a way to deal with um I I don't know if you guys are going to have your budget already in February and then obviously in May we're pretty late into our we're already doing our budget um hearings are the budget work sessions are in May um you know the managers adopt a a recommended budget will already have been presented to us so I I just wanted to get that on everybody's radar that this schedule may not be able to deal with some of the you know we may have to have a different way to deal with some of the budget issues that may come about

180think we can work together if we need to call a meeting to make sure that we have this continued collaboration because we know things will be changing quickly and especially um with new federal Administration and our new state Administration settling in so I definitely am open to calling that meeting um moving forward all right see thumbs up any other discussion Miss viad Daris yeah I just wanted to um thank you all for all the presentations so many topics that we can talk uh endlessly about um I guess like my my um my uh gratitude and also my my my petition or request you know as you all as the county um as you all have uh contracts initiatives um you know especially when it came to the uh environmental one like you guys have an

181environmental contract I'd love for you guys to include EPS to you know um for that to be a part of that um as you think about your buildings as you think about any initiatives that you have that you include us in that thank you thank you all right and with that we are adjourned thank you all for