Durham Public Schools Board of Education Monthly Work Session November 5, 2020 5:00 PM

001um good evening everyone the durham public schools board of education work session is now in session at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining us this evening the purpose of this meeting is to inform our parents staff and constituents about the work aligned with our mission to embrace educate and empower every student to innovate serve and tonight lead administration will be presenting information to keep you up to date on our strategic plan the interpreters this evening are martha ramon and marty ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us tonight we'll start this evening by observing a moment of silence this has been a stressful week this has been a stressful season this has been a stressful year and i hope that as we take a moment

002of silence we can reflect on the things that touch our hearts bring us to education as a field where we know that communities are built where children are loved and respected even during a pandemic even during a stressful election season please join me in observing a moment of silence thank you very much that brings us to item three on our agenda agenda review and approval are there any changes that need to be made to our agenda this evening yes madam chair i would like to add two agenda items to our meeting one will go under the operational services would be uh for approval of purchase of some air filters i think there's an official title that the operations team has for that one as well as a memo of understanding with our abc science collaborative

003okay those would be items eight e and f if that's not acceptable yeah okay any other changes or additions that are needed to this agenda tonight if not i would welcome emotion remove approval of the agenda as amended i'll second second it's been moved by mr lee and seconded by miss umstead that we approve this agenda as amended i'll do a roll call vote mr raven hi let's see miss vaniers hi miss um i miss louis hi mr lee hi mr sears hi and i bet i as well it passes unanimously that brings us to item four the board work session minutes from the october 8th meeting you all have had a chance to review those i'll move approval of the minute of uh the minutes from october 8th i second that it's been moved

004by mr lee and seconded by mr raven that we approved the minutes from october 8th any further discussion if not mr raven i messiah dyers hi his amstead i miss lewis hi mr lee hi mr sears hi and i vote i as well the minutes have passed unanimously that brings us to item five general public comment i know we have received those ahead of time let me read this statement about public comment submitted public comments have been reviewed by the board and posted on the durham public schools website some will be read aloud during the public comment period this evening good evening board members and cabinet and guests this is a brief public comment period uh compared to some that we've had in the past and we should be well within each of them should

005be well within the traditional three-minute timing that we've had and we will start with a number of brief messages from uh student athletes i believe first is dequan thornton of south elm street who simply says ready jayvon green of chapel hill road says we want to play we are aware of the risks i play basketball and football and i take risks every time i get on that field in that court we are ready to play i am going to mispronounce his name and i apologize chokwozium [Music] i apologize again of gable ridge drive when are we starting jordan football workout because we are tired of waiting dave aguayo as a student athlete of dps i believe that with proper procedures we could have a healthy season with no infections valerie angie imari bada of eagle

006ridge court says we want sports back now in capital letters joshua donald of capstone drive it should be the choice of the players not the board michael davis jr of bryn mawr lane let us play christian josie of woodhill court i want football to start again moses hulse of kerahane drive our masks going to be worn only after games daylight marquis johnson of ash street so what are the updates for sports and isaac mcravey of chapel hill road blank yeah online school it's lame asl and bring back sports and let us go back to school our next comment is from mercedes montoya of dartmouth drive and it has been translated from spanish i would appreciate that dps be more inclusive allowing for programs like dr marx and cure america's to also be in our community

007since a lot of our parents have felt empowered as quick response agents during this covid pandemic with a holistic service and not just using our families like lab rats for studies and acquisition of data dps can work with the two programs and participating in any study be voluntary really our families have found ourselves included by dr mark and cure americas from the beginning of the pandemic in march always being present showing up different from this group of doctors who have not been present in difficult times with services for the community as opposed to dr mark who has done it so i recommend that dps works for inclusion and that as parents we find ourselves taken into account and that our information be respected the next comment is from robin furman of norton street i'm writing

008to again advocate for data driven decision making about providing in-person education please follow the guidance of the abc science collaborative and include mental and emotional well-being of students when discussing issues of safety based on the science available and the mental health of our children our family is strongly ready to return to some form of in-person instruction the next comment is simply from durham mom of district one i'm writing to urge you to begin the process of returning students to dps schools as we complete the first quarter we have seen private schools in our community return a portion of their students to the classroom we have seen young children wear masks successfully teachers staying safe and families behaving responsibly to limit their exposure to covet 19. the virus will be with us for years rather than

009weeks or months while we must have an option for high-risk groups of teachers and students to stay online we must not waste the opportunity to return small groups of teachers students and staff to our schools the sooner we can begin the pro the sooner we can develop the safest practices in cleaning transportation and classroom processes to eventually allow more students to return safely continuing to delay return nine weeks at a time is not getting us anywhere despite teachers best efforts online education is not ideal for many students especially the youngest as a community we must not say that high quality in-person education is only for those who can't afford it thank you for your consideration the next comment is also from dps parent all the all over the country schools are reopening districts are providing

010options and enacting measures to manage building capacity and safety and families are allowed to make a choice about what works best for their students dps continues to sit on the sidelines kicking the can down the road a month or quarter at a time with no published criteria about what will allow for schools to be reopened reopening will undoubtedly result in positive cases but by enacting strict masking distancing and sanitation measures this can still be a safe and immensely beneficial environment this virus isn't going away and nothing in life is 100 risk-free if the criteria is zero positive cases then the district leadership should stop wasting time and commit to keeping buildings closed for the entirety of the 2021 school year so that fed up families can make alternative plans and then the final comment is

011from maria luisa solis of maroon drive and it has been translated from spanish i would like that you gave us more details about the application you are going to be using in schools i do not agree that we have to share our information with research studies without my consent and madam chair that is the last public comment of the afternoon thank you so much mr soderith and thank you to our uh constituents and stakeholders who especially students i know we all love hearing from you and here i want you to know that while we don't um discuss um back we are listening and we are having ongoing conversations about many of the topics that you guys have brought to our attention this evening it is on our hearts and that brings us to the item

012six the consent agenda there are two items here tonight item a renaming and renumbering of existing policies three thousand three thousand two hundred and twenty seven and 4303 and renumbering the existing policy 3020 and item b trauma informed leadership teams contract 2020. remove approval of the consent agenda second it's been moved by ms umstead and seconded by ms lewis that we approve the items on the consent agenda any further discussion if not oh yes consumption i just want to highlight i know it's in the consent agenda but we are working on a contract with the center for child and family health that will have trauma-informed staff in every single one of our elementary schools and i just feel like that's something that we should highlight even though it's in our consent agenda that that training

013will be happening 185 staff members i believe who will now be trained in those practices thank you madam chair that is exceptional news and that is exactly what we believe our children need going forward during these difficult stressful times thank you for highlighting that any other discussion before we take the vote if not mr raven i voted how do you vote hi thank you miss simpson and i vote i as well it passes unanimously thank you all to staff that worked on these important items that brings us to item seven from chief of staff miss giovanni you have two items tonight yes thank you miss smith if you can please pull up the powerpoint the first item is policy 5110 for third reading this is the policy regarding uh the relationship with the county commissioners

014um we've had several discussions over the past few work sessions and board meetings next slide please and the red language is the in language that i crafted in response to mrs byers comments at the last meeting i would like to recognize dr spencer for her assistance in crafting this language she provided me with some history and that was very helpful in crafting this language to address the concerns of the board at the last meeting so i want to say thank you dr spencer and at this time if there's any feedback for the additional language on policy 5110 relationship with county commissioners i'm happy to answer any questions thank you so much miss giovanni and thank you dr spencer there's so much history on a lot of things in durham so i know that that was

015super helpful is trying to navigate this forward anyone have any um questions concerns discussion on this item i can see half of you so otherwise just feel free to chime in otherwise i would welcome a motion i'll move that we approve um policy 51 510 with those changes second thank you it's been moved by miss umstead and secretary of office lewis that we approve policy 5110 has amended any other discussion on this item if not let's see i think you all shuffled in different order now mr raven hi mr umstead hi mr lee miss lewis hi miss valenaires hi mr sears hi and i vote i as well it passes unanimously that brings us giovanni to clean up policies yes thank you miss smith if you please pull up the powerpoint so while she's doing

016that the policy committee met and went over several cleanup policies these policies were policies that weren't ready um with the initial batch when we went through them so it goes back through several different sections of the policy manual so after we had vigorous discussion and feedback from the policy working committee which consisted of chair umstead mr raven and ms vaidaras these are the policies that they requested be brought before the full board via powerpoint the first policy 3100 curriculum development the red language is language that i was asked to draft in response to feedback from the policy committee regarding culturally responsive curriculum and just trying to express the board's goals and values around culturally responsive curriculum as it pertains to curriculum development so i'm happy to make any edits or receive any feedback from any

017board members on the red language for 3100 okay i'm hearing none next slide please policy 4304 permissible use of seclusion and restraint in schools this is only a this red language here is what i was asked to craft after the policy committee the policy is much longer than this and lays out a lot of details regarding the use of seclusion and restraint the policy working committee asked expressly for crisis prevention and resolution and dealing with um positive behavior management training for our staff and had several other comments and so this is um language that i felt made the i wanted to present to the board to address its potentially address the board's position regarding seclusion and restraint so the red language is new and the policy working committee did not see it but it was

018crafted in response to their feedback and comments so i'm happy to receive any feedback or answer any questions and i do want to clarify actually um this policy was initially a regulation to another policy and it merely set forth um directed staff to do certain things based on the feedback from the policy working committee i crafted it into an actual policy where it sets forth the beliefs and values of this board and so it is now a full board policy and not simply a regulation thank you mr giovanni i appreciate y'all your attention to that and i appreciate the three board members that worked on these important policies i'm not seeing anyone with questions but did that okay let's see i believe that concludes the policies that the working committee um advised me to bring

019forth before the board via powerpoint and the other policies have been provided to the board and i'm happy to answer any questions regarding those as well but those were all reviewed and commented on by the policy working committee these are here for first reading yes they are preferred i had a question about one of them but i want to wait and see what other folks have because this is a whole lot of policies that are here surely somebody saw something that was adventurous watching my screen anybody okay i'll go to my question and since nobody's got any questions crowd funding what was in here and i know that that's really popular with a lot of our teachers and that's kickstarters and gofundmes and things tell can y'all talk about how you thought of that we

020don't have a policy this is totally new right yes it is i'm trying to actually find it and it's 7360 slash 865. did this come from ncsba tonya yes it did okay and it essentially says that teachers everyone has to get permission from a principal for any crowd funding that is for school business is that that is correct um some of the um what precipitated this policy for ncsba was issues around the country with staff um in school systems submitting these gofundmes or crowdfunding and it wasn't clear to whom the property ultimately belonged and so there were some issues with if a teacher or staff member got received a thousand dollars and purchased you know some type of device with that and then left the district and took that district with them it there was

021some confusion and we want to make sure that when people were providing funding where durham public schools name was attached that they understood that it would be the property of the district and so you really also want your principles to mean your supervisors to manage this so that it can track the actual needs of the system and the dollar amounts you all set they're highlighted in yellow what what was your thinking on them the the principal from approves up to 5 000 and then it comes to the superintendent at the 25 000 level and those those numbers can be adjusted those those were my suggested numbers and i discussed those with the policy working committee and what we want is we don't want to be overly burdensome on anyone with these amounts so i mean

022i saw some districts that had it at like 500 and so that could you know really tie up a principal's hands and especially a district a more sophisticated district such as ours we really don't want that to happen but we do want the principals to be monitoring it and so it would only come to the superintendent over that um over that amount up to 25 000 so or the superintendent or designee and then after 25 000 we would want the board to be looking at that so it's just really those numbers can be um edited but based on what i saw in my review of what other districts are doing it was my recommendation to have those numbers where they are so i appreciate it i um would only hope that we could get some

023feedback from our teachers since um this will impact them a lot and make sure they feel like those numbers are set at the right levels um they're able to do what they need to do without coming up to the superintendent too much um but i appreciate it putting a policy in place because we haven't had that and i think that'll be helpful any other thoughts and questions there's a lot of policy here colleagues anything you saw you just loved it all or some of you have spent way too much time with it already i guess okay that makes sense it's not yeah so i would like um dr hardy to weigh in i know that we pulled a couple policies from this group so this is a big group but we did pull a few

024of them um so that uh she could convene some working groups with teachers and principals and other stakeholders around some other policies would it be um the board's pleasure to perhaps proceed with this policy and then um so we would actually have it adopted and then when she gets those working groups convened when we're able to do that then i can present it to them and revisit these numbers if there's an issue or do you want it this is the fourth pleasure to not adopt the policy until we are able to convene those teachers which i anticipate based on my feedback from dr hardy maybe a few months i've gotten up text from a teacher just now that wants very much to have feedback so i'm hoping that y'all might be able to pull that

025one and have i don't think anybody's necessarily doing crowdfunding during this pandemic anyway or do you all feel like it's not urgent i've not got i don't feel it it is i think you're probably right that they're not doing that but i'm not sure is this on your head yeah i mean we had discussion about dollar amounts and you know definitely welcoming the feedback from teachers i think i think that's that's a great approach because as you were thinking about small projects five thousand dollars uh prevalent principle and then 25 by the superintendent i mean um what i'll just say about this is uh it's i don't think anybody i haven't heard of any crowd funding happening right now um it could take a couple of months so and uh this is a first read

026for for this policy so i mean we could do a second read i mean yeah mr raymond oh i'm sorry all right now then you're fine i saw mr raven's hand sorry yeah i was just to say i think we're at a good spot right now i think with the 5 000 and 25 000 limits i don't see that you know going going that far or overboard anytime soon and i think we could actually approve this almost as is and then as time goes by we could get feedback and we could actually see it in action to see how many actual crowdfunding events that we have that actually kind of exceed or even meet that level um because i think reaching 25 000 that that's that's gonna be that's gonna be pretty hard for that

027to happen but even looking at over five thousand a lot of times when i've seen that happen it's generally it's actually the the ptas that are sometimes able to just get sponsorships in order to get dollar amounts that size not necessarily on a crowd funding side so i know that's a little bit of a gray area but i think a little bit of data would also be good because it's something that we could always um come back and adjust and adapt but feedback is always welcome thank you so much mr raven other thoughts and comments i i guess my concern is i this has durham teachers do crowdfunding a lot not during the pandemic but this is a big change to have them have to go and ask permission of a principal i've seen them

028popping them up on their own um and and this policy would say even if it's a hundred dollar thing to get a new sheet music for something that your music teacher denied you'd have to go to your principal and have that conversation um and i'd just rather i'd just still rather hear from chief let teachers have their voice in this and make sure that we've thought of everything with that um i am one voice miss lewis oh thank you um yes i'm looking at it and i'm reviewing the policy as well i was just thinking that it really does create um a sense of equity and accountability it also gives us eyes into like mr raven was saying um what is the trend and finding out how much our teachers are happy to do their

029kind of outreach on their own where we should you know be finding ways to step in and provide for those needs as well so i do like um this policy in a way that is crafted i do think we could move forward as mr raven was saying um and miss fayette as this being the first reading though we'll have a second reading and keep moving through with our policies as they are but definitely open the feedback and getting feedback along the way and making adjustments as needed i do think this creates um a sense of accountability and equity um in in finding out where do we really stand what are some of those needs that have not been covered um by the local state and federal thank you i appreciate that ms lewis it certainly

030does make us feel like we uh we need to highlight what the state and the feds should step up and help rather than teachers having to do crowdfunding we should have a world where crowdfunding isn't needed ever any other thoughts on these policies and where we are with them i would welcome emotion if you all are so inclined i i moved to accept the policies as crafted and move them to the second second review okay the move by mr raven and seconded by miss lewis that we accept these policies for first reading any other discussion if not ms umstead hi mr raven hi mr lee aye ms lewis aye ms valaris hi mr sears and i vote no so it passes 6-1 thank you all for working so hard and on these important policies and

031we look forward to bringing them back and considering them more that brings us to item eight operation services the design consultant recommendation for what elementary school f this is exciting good evening madam chair you stole my thunder that's not fair that's okay um that's exactly what we're going to talk about today i know it's it's been a long time in the making um we've actually put out the rfq um last year around this time i'm happy to say that the county commissioners have approved funding for it they did that on october 12th of this year i'm going to turn it over to mr davis now to walk you through the selection process and at the end we will make our uh recommendation so miss smith if you could start the powerpoint and mr davis it's

032all yours thank you dr mark good evening board members uh leadership dr bubinga uh as the slides are being poured up uh this is uh let me know our process based on our board policy 9110 the use and selection of architects engineers surveyors and construction managers at risk because of the estimated dollar about of over 90 000 for architectural services for elementary f we have to go through an evaluation process and the superintendent or desert me in this case operation services leadership uh have put together a criteria in which to evaluate those candidates as dr monk mentioned an rfq was sent out soliciting uh various designers across the state region and local so next slide please so before we get into our process i just want to re-acquaint you if you not already know where

033the approximate location of elementary schools f will be uh it's approximately 33 uh processor acre located in in the neighborhood adjacent to hope valley farms uh to the north is a major commercial thoroughfare of martin luther king boulevard i mean so we're excited about the opportunity uh to be efficient in uh building on this site while taking advantage of the natural topographies and so um some of the presentations that we had in our rfq process for the shortlisted designers talked about that next slide please so real quickly i want to go through our selection process again it is outlined in detail uh with war policy 9110 but just want to reiterate we fulfill those obligations so again uh rfq was sent out on october 27th we had approximately we did have 18 proposals received from

034that our office review those based on selection criterias of experience and similar work and then as dr monk said a part of our 10-year plan is elementary f which is priority number four of the 21 approved projects the total project budget for elementary f including construction design and soft costs will be about 49 million dollars and so we narrowed down our short list firms on october excuse me august the 10th uh to six firms we then had a presentation of interviews on september 2nd our selection committee consisted of operations and academic staff those are listed here next slide please so basically in that interview process we sent out letters to the six candidates and wanted them to talk about what unique strategies we will find on site design particularly to elementary f how they would

035engage the community in their design strategy and their philosophy project team experience how they done k-12 design and any other architectural designs to date and any innovative learning environments and strategies that would be unique that durham public schools can take advantage of so all of these these four criterias were part of the evaluation that the select committee used next slide please and so in ranking order these were the three uh shortlisted candidates evoke little and mostly again based on the criteria we felt that these three possess the most strengths and opportunities to design elementary f next slide please so after further review our recommendation from the selection committee is to enter into contract negotiations with evoke architecture studio a durham-based full design services firm based here in north carolina with over 40 years of experience

036[Music] in that time that concludes our presentation of our selection and evaluation process thank you thank you so much mr davis board members what are you thinking any questions for dr monk and mr davis they have brought us some exciting news this valued honest i've always been encouraged uh as we're doing these contracts when um you know they find ways to support education in whatever ways that means i've seen some contractors talk about cte pathways i just want to know if that's something that as we you know are engaging companies community members to do bits is there any specific way that we are incentivizing the kind of supports that that i've seen i just wonder if that's even something that we appreciate and maybe don't always get but is there is there any language around

037asking our contractors to uh to also be champions champions for education in whatever ways with cte and etc um so in short yes um i've been working with um dr pack uh miss jamilia green with cte um for just that to expand what they're doing in the schools to what we do in capital and construction we have with this 500 million dollars tremendous resources and access to architects engineers and contractors that our students can not only one day frequent the buildings that they design and build but also participate and watch those things happen so you're exactly right those are things that we are doing we should be doing um and we're going to expand that more as we move into some of the the larger projects um especially those when we utilize construction management at

038risk there will definitely be a opportunity as a part of the actual um selection and solicitation of the contractor to include what types of um opportunities they will provide and what they've done in the past um so we're looking forward to it mr raven first i'm i'm excited i'm always excited about a new school coming into the area i just a little family family history my sister was one of the first kids that was able to attend the new oak grove at the time and when i started at southern durham high school i was actually in the first class that attended southern durham high school from the beginning you know from freshman year all the way through senior year um so i'm always excited to see new buildings and schools go up one of my

039questions is going to be it's kind of based upon what we talked about previously about the policies about looking for are looking for green energy and just kind of thinking a bit more broadly on that i'm also wondering about maybe some of the infrastructure that we may um kind of press the designer a little bit more for um when this building is going up so that we make sure that we future proof it from the beginning so this isn't necessarily a question that i actually need to have answered now but i just would hope that we're definitely going to make sure we have like the category 6e cabling through the building so it's completely future proof for any type of iot that we want to add to it um so that if we do look

040at using uh different types of sustainable energy in the building years ahead uh we can already have our sensors built into it when we're looking at the green energy and renewable energy so i'm just excited about that just hopefully we can go ahead and make sure we have that listed absolutely we actually had our um mr dan schnitzer he began work on this tuesday we mentioned him to you all before he is our new project manager for energy and sustainability uh and he and mr davis will be working together um to make sure that our buildings are both high performing um and environmentally free uh friendly uh and so they're gonna be reviewing our design guidelines uh for the just those things mr reagan so i appreciate you lifting that up thank you for that

041other comments some questions mr sampster this is exciting we have talked about three new schools in probably six to eight months uh in the last six to eight months so elementary school c northern high school and now elementary school f um i'm excited that we have a local black owned firm we'll be doing this design work i took a look at their website and so i'm excited for that design of what they'll look like for elementary schools i did just want to ask and i think i'll ask this every time we talk about new elementary school building will there be pre-k classrooms as a part of this design you want to speak to that fred uh yes as a part of our strategic goal to make sure that we have pre-k in every one of

042our schools elementary f will be uh fitted with pre-k uh classrooms thank you i keep love how we keep bringing that back to our strategic plan so thank you mr reed hey um thank you all for this yeah we have been talking about these for a long time it's really good to see it moving uh what what's the um the projected size uh student-wise school projected is 800 students okay that's pretty decent size there yeah okay thank you let's find ours it's on your hand yes thank you um i am super uh excited about uh um our school f and um and and you guys are working with i noticed a sustainable design and so i just wonder like if you could just give us some more information about the sustainability aspects of the building

043so we don't know yet because we haven't negotiated the contract with the designer but um we will be bringing the design once it reaches the design development phase to the board um and we'll uh walk through some of the um design elements as well as the program size and all that kind of good stuff so um let's hold on just a little bit longer you can just feel our excitement about this it's all it's just coming through the doom anybody else have any questions or thoughts about this project i don't want to miss anything it is exciting to yes ms lewis i just i can't contain it i i'm excited and to hear these plans and then every question that the board presents dr monkey and mr davis um connected to the strategic plan having

044sustainability efforts um again just you you all have done a thorough amazing job and bring this forward i'm glad to be on the board and i just i everyone's already said these things i'm just excited for it and the work that you've done and wanted to just appreciate you and your team thank you thank you all mr davis was here with us before when we had this land and wanted a school what 10 12 years ago we've owned this land a long long time the sun done fell down like it fell down because it's been standing there so long and so it will be exciting to see get the design going get the community involved in the design and see what durham with durham architects can dream up for our children and for our future

045and we're so excited to have you all leading that any other discussion on this mr davis you if you came off mute or you're just staying off me because you're ready you're just ready it's ready i'm fine no comment madam chair let me just make a quick comment i just want to share some excitement uh it's been a really long overdue with these three projects but what i would like for us to know and also to all our listeners as we're going to look for funding for these three particular projects so they're going to be about probably 2022 uh to make sure that we get all the funding to make sure that all these projects are completed so we're gonna need community support to come along to make sure that uh all these projects are

046funded that is so so important you know we last had a bond in 2016 and we were promised that we'd get extra money in 2018. that didn't happen then we were promised the money in 2020 and that didn't happen so our next chance will be 2022 so we look forward to the community coming to help us rally that the other thing that we never want to forget when we're getting excited about three new schools is the maintenance and repairs on our existing schools which are have tremendous needs um over 700 million or so last time we counted in in maintenance needs and i know that you guys have lots of projects dr monk going on right now while students are out of the buildings actually there are many many many projects going on but we

047need funding for that in the future as well so any um other comments if not i would welcome a motion i move that we approve the recommendation to work with evoke studio architects second it's been moved by miss umstead and seconded by ms valenares that we uh move forward with the vote okay uh and rod i mean you can jump in here but we we would like approval to negotiate in the order that is listed just in case we can't reach a an agreement with um with the first two you know what i'm saying so authority to negotiate with all three yeah that would be correct and then dr mark i'm assuming you would then bring back the selected one and the proposed contract amount that's right okay getting ahead of myself can i amend

048that is that correct all right so i'm going to read it from the proceeds i move that the administration recommends the board authorized staff to negotiate a design and construction administration contract in rank order as indicated above for elementary school f nice second okay well it has been properly moved and properly seconded any further discussion on this item if not ms i'm stan aye mr raven aye mr lee hi ms lewis hi mr spears hi and i vote i as well it passes unanimously thank you all for your work on this important item that brings us to item 8b the plan b custodial cost projections yes and of this item i'm joined by uh dr travis anderson um he has a short presentation he's going to walk you through the enhanced uh disinfection needs that

049are associated with covert 19 and what we're projecting we are needing for additional staff as well as the costs associated with that um so with that um miss smith if you could pull up those slides and then uh dr anderson you can take it away thank you good evening so we're going to talk briefly about the needs that we have for enhanced disinfecting in order to meet the best practices recommended by the cdc as well as osha and according to our executive orders for durham county we have to participate next slide please enhanced disinfectant for dps when we bring our students back into the building will be outlined those things that are scheduled times we will ski and do disinfecting at our entry points as well as do a meal service throughout the building and

050then throughout the day we will maintain high touch areas and restrooms and a level that we don't currently do pre-covered so post cover in order to reduce the spread of cover 19 we will increase those disinfection time periods shutting areas off throughout the day and disinfecting them in between class rotations and usage of those spaces and then at the end of the day will disinfect the entire building as well as the areas that are used for special activities and offices in any occupied space throughout the day and again this is above and beyond what we typically do and this is to reduce the spread of cover 19. next slide please we are projecting the increase in man hours in order to accomplish this in the academic day and there's a range that you will see

051that is based upon what happens in the school so whether it is uh one day that we have students in some buildings are the days that we have students in all of our buildings and so those are based upon the different options that are available in plan b and then what would happen when we have our after-school activities which includes sports and theater arts and those types of things and the man hours that we project for that and how much that will cost us is on the next slide please you'll see that we have two options we can either attempt to address this with contractor services and if we use contractor services it'll cost us a little over three million dollars however if we increase our in-house custodial team which is our recommended strategy it

052will cost us a little over seven hundred thousand dollars this will include an additional staff structure that will support the needs of the day next slide please we anticipate hiring at 15 an hour an additional 175 part-time staff members which will be 10 month employees for a total of hundred thirty one thousand eight hundred and five dollars or this 2021 school year that is what we are 2020 2021 school year as we're projecting for wages only in order to meet the enhanced disinfecting and at this time i will take your questions next slide please thank you so much miss valderas your hand yes hi um uh really um grateful that we are getting additional staff uh to help us towards the goals of uh disinfecting our schools um you know i have uh just been

053aware that a lot of custodians are working hard to disinfect our buildings currently and i'm wondering if there's a baseline of how our our schools are being worked on you know right now before everybody comes in and what is that completion i guess in terms of like our buildings uh that are currently being disinfected with the staff that we have before we get the additional help is there like a percentage or in terms of buildings that are like ready ready to go as it relates to disinfecting our buildings are disinfected each day however we currently only have a very small number of staff members coming to the building each day and we are able to accommodate those staff members with our current existing custodial team so each building is disinfected every day once we add

054students into the mix we'll have to increase our disinfectant and we'll need more man-hours to do that other questions from board members this is i mean my most obvious is where is this money coming from or where did you say that i did not so i will yield to doctor monk or to mr mitsulosaure if they will want to chime in there yeah i think mr lasso would would address that um so we're gonna be as we go through the budget resolution uh this evening we'll be talking about many different things um and and that money will be coming from savings that we have in other areas from the per from the standpoint of not using as much electricity at this point in time and other savings that we might have to get through this

055whole process and it says that this is 731 000 but it's just wages does that mean we're keeping people below a level where they qualify for any benefits is that our plan just for these to really be part-time part-time positions these would hire at temporary 10-month part-time positions so they would not be eligible for benefits unless they were to pay for them themselves any other thoughts questions team yes mr raven i do have a question about that about the benefits portion of it um what i'm trying to figure out is are they working full-time hours let me start there no our part-timers work approximately 20 hours per week okay all right thank you and dr anderson you would anticipate this hiring to go forward if this were approved quickly in anticipation of of a plan

056b reopening that is correct holiday sorry that is correct working closely with human resources and they feel confident that we'll be able to fill these positions and we'll have hiring fares and different strategies employed to make sure that we're able to get the positions filled that's fine yeah um the last question i did hear from community members about um the uh the trailers uh there's also like the pest control that you all do and i guess in terms of like you know um the level of operations that you guys handle i mean between like the mobile units the school buildings and whatnot um are any of these positions uh in terms of disinfecting how does that play into some of the other things that you guys do with pest control and um in the keeping

057of of all the other things are any of these folks just they're just strictly gonna do the disinfecting or are some of them going to also help with the other efforts in terms of so pest control is handled by the maintenance team and you have to be licensed in order to do pest control we currently do not have a pest control department within our department of maintenance and so we have to contract out and so these staff members would be solely for clean and disinfecting purposes thank you so much and is there additional supply budget and also ppe that will be coming in that presentation later i mean am i right that the 731 000 is just wages in this presentation this is just for wages supplies and ppe are covered under another expense and

058so we are able to secure those great so you all are seeking approval of this tonight ms umstead did you have a question i know that this is in anticipation that we could potentially go in person if we don't are these staff members kind of being told that as they're being hired and okay when we hire them they're specifically for plan b purposes when we have students in the building and they'll be hired with the understanding that it is a temporary position that will end once they're no longer students in the building or it may not start if we don't have students return so that is something that is communicated upfront thank you any further questions if not i think this is here for action yes it is i can make a motion that the

059board approved funding for 175 additional temporary part-time to custodial positions to support enhanced disinfecting while operating under plan b's communicated school level occupancies a second it's been moved by miss lewis and seconded him by miss vayodarz any further discussion on this item if not we'll take a vote miss umstead hi mr raven hi mr lee hi it's louis hi isaiah hi mr sears hi and i vote i as well thank you all and especially dr anderson for your attention to all these details and this important item it brings us to the property exchange and their local agreement with the city of durham for snow hill road park and lucas middle school is that you dr monk it is i'm gonna partner with mr giovanni um this is an interesting item it's um it's been in

060the works for about as long as elementary school f it's been about 10 years um for all intents and purposes um this agreement is already in effect both parties are doing these things um we are mowing the lawn at different places at lucas they are irrigating the fields we're all using the fields what this does is solidifies that in writing two key items uh to pay attention to is your ability to do this um the first is uh general statute 168 that's 274 and it lists out what's in that and that's in the appraises and then the general statute 168-461 which is your ability to enter into these types of interlocal agreements within the board package you will see the boundary area of both lucas and what we're working on with the parks and rec

061and the color-coded picture shows you the pieces going to them the pieces that are going to us and then the interlocal agreement is also included in your um board packet and so we are recommending that you approve this property exchange in accordance with both general statutes um as well as the uh interlocal agreement and i won't answer any of the legal questions i will leave that to miss giovanni but if you have any of the operational questions i'll be happy to answer those um yes i do no you're fine go ahead and smile thank you um dr monk so you know with when it comes to use of shared space and especially for what involves parks and all that can you clarify a little bit more about that usage um community use versus dps use

062and you know some of the things that we um talk about in terms of in terms of use of uh use of space and hours or any any considerations that are community members sure so in this case we're actually using their field um and they basically give us first rights to it you know we can use it during the day during our games and things like that and then on the weekends on the evenings whenever parks and rec needs to use it they use it because it's um their property and that's that's basically the extent of it we have several into local agreements um in the district where you know uh parks and rec or another entity uh would do it that's different from any of our facility rental type agreements this is actually between

063two governmental agencies so but this is a this has turned out to be a very good um deal for durham public schools and in the the broader community as a whole um as i said we've been doing this for the past 10 years we just hadn't had anything in writing thank you dr monk other um questions for the discussion point dr monk i thought i was hoping that this meant that the city was willing to come and do more of the park stuff that i felt like they were going to do is there a plan for them to add on to the site walking trails more playground equipment something for younger kids up there on that site my memory from 10 years ago which is way long ago was that they were supposed to actually

064have a grander vision for this park and there's a lot of acreage up there does this interlocal agreement mean that they're getting ready to do that or planning towards that in the future so they do have a master plan for that area we did not discuss any additional usage for especially for dps as a part of their master plan um but as that develops and it gets becomes more materialized we'll obviously um have those types of conversations especially if they're um providing access for us i just remember that there was a master plan and then we did our part for the schools and did the fields together but there was a grander vision and i think the north durham community would be interested in and could you know work with the city if they were

065interested in and seeing that and seeing that vision come to life i'm not sure why it's been on the shelf for 10 years or what its priority is but um i think there's there's some there and then there could be more completed any other thoughts and questions on this topic mr lee um so you know with a child at lucas i've been up there a lot but i can't get acclimated to these schematics and what we're actually gaining what part are we gaining and what part is the city gaining i'm just not sure kind of maybe that's something we just do one-on-one but um the pieces that the city is getting this is kind of kind of separate and we're kind of in there in the middle and i was curious you know do we

066know what the city is going to be using this for you know you know or you know i i would expect that it would be mundane because it's around the school it's clear or or whatnot but um i'm just trying to understand what pieces what like where is the school on this the site i can't get acclimated uh based on what i'm seeing here yeah then we can definitely talk one-on-one the gist of it is it just cleans up the the parcel um it okay fills out the shapes it gives them access um to different parts of um of shared parcel but uh as it relates to the deed that you see here it just cleans up the parcel makes it look neater um the interlocal agreement um is where you get more into the

067things that we have been working via handshake basically the irrigation who knows what that kind of thing okay okay thank you yeah that's on page 129 of this packet if people are looking for that schematic i think at home um it's the plat but the right mic it doesn't have the facility on it it's just the land um and that is a big big gorgeous piece of land up there other thoughts questions if not i would welcome a motion on this item that is here for action tonight i'm i'd like to make a motion that uh the board approved the property exchange um that has just been uh described between dps and the city of durham a second book it's been booed by miss vaidaris and seconded by mr raven that we've improved the property

068exchange and interlocal agreement with the city of durham for snow hill road park and lucas middle school any further discussion i look forward to when we can vote all at once again um okay miss umstead hi mr raven hi mr lee hi miss lewis hi miss valued ours hi mr sears i vote i and i forgot we could actually vote all the same time it's been so long yeah and i vote i as well it passes unanimously i don't think we all have been in the room together ever so yeah we should do that budget resolution you save the fun stuff towards the end of your mr is that you uh yes good evening board members dr mabenga um before i pass it off to alex modesto to present to you the this year's budget

069and and how we're starting off um just want to let you know that this has to come before you uh prior part of general statutes 115 c 425 we have to have an annual balanced budget resolution we bring this to you tonight for action uh and in this uh there are a lot of different parts um in that regard and a lot of different pieces that will have to be uh will will come to fruition as we move down the road um as you already spoke tonight in regards to another seven hundred thousand dollars for custodial services we're trying to maximize every dollar we can we have some savings uh in like i said in utilities we'll have some savings we'll have some savings in other areas uh and all that is going to be

070played into this budget to get us through this year we're going to try to keep it as concise as possible we're only going to spend what we need to but we know when we go into plan b we're going to have more expenditures so the focus of this budget starts off as being balanced but we're going to be utilizing these funds in many different ways to make this this year's budget uh happen um we may be coming back to you later on this year i hope not in regards to use of additional fund balance um but we think we can get through this year uh without going back into fund balance to to ask you for more money unless something critical comes up as we move forward during the school year again things come in

071fall into place just recently which alex will be hitting on as he goes through this budget so i'll turn it over to mr podesta to bring you through the budget resolution all right good evening board members and dr mubanga uh miss smith we could pull up the slides for the butcher resolution please thank you so much if we could uh jump to the second slide awesome thank you so just to start off as a recap of the 14.3 million dollars that were requested for annual operating fund increases uh in the durham county budget ordinance uh 5.2 million dollars was allocated in additional funds for durham public schools and based on the dps and 20th day charter numbers approximately 3.19 million of that money will be going to dps for additional annual operating appropriations and about

0722.02 million dollars will be going to charter schools so 39 of the additional funds allocated by durham county will be going to charter schools uh this year and we'll get into enrollment in just a second uh for capital outlays we requested 4.63 million in additional funds to get up to 6 million for our annual capital outlays of that request 2 million was approved bringing the new total to 3.37 million dollars plus 10 million dollars in one-time limited obligation bond funds that can be expended this year and and next year we do have six and a half million dollars included in this year's budget resolution of those one-time limited obligation bond funds could jump to the next slide please so enrollment as always is absolutely critical in determining the overall budget fortunately this year we have

073a state hold harmless allotment based on their projections for our 20 20 21 enrollment um however our enrollment did decrease by 1 421 students to 36 000 or sorry 31 300 603 students um at the same time that we uh decreased by over 1400 students we saw an increase in charter school enrollment by 346 students so that was the the key driver of the additional local funding to the charter schools uh as opposed to dps because although we have a state hall armors provision based on their enrollment projections um based on state statute local funding is split um on a per-pupil basis um based on the each year's um enrollment of the of the leas and the charter schools next slide please so we have a lot of uh things going on this year as

074it pertains to to coven we want to make sure uh that you all in the community are aware of exactly uh what's happening with all the funds that we've received and there's really three main pots of money uh to to break out the first one is our cares act funds these are federal funds for k-12 emergency relief uh they have the greatest flexibility uh it was 11.9 million dollars and they go through september of 2021. of that money the vast majority was has already been spent on devices for our one-to-one initiative for the student chromebooks and uh about another two and a half million dollars set aside for internet connectivity um for our students in terms of our hot spots right now we had to set aside one million dollars for private school pass through

075um we're working with dr danner to finalize uh what that ultimate number is going to be and that only leaves about one and a quarter million dollars remaining for all of our additional emergency response funds across academic services operational services and i t and technology support uh so we'll be sort of finalizing the remaining 1.25 million dollars in in cares axe funds as uh planning for january through the end of the academic year is more clear but the the vast majority of that money uh has already been uh spent or or budgeted uh for the internet connectivity services for the one to one for our chromebooks that our students now have so an additional pot of money which we are including um for your approval is the governor's emergency education relief funds these have not

076yet been allocated to us in our state alignment revisions but we have received the allotment planning from the state for 766 000 in student health support funds that we can use for additional contracted services for things like social work guidance counselors uh and other mental health support services uh we also have five hundred and twenty thousand two hundred ninety dollars uh a lot in planning to us for supplemental instructional support services these can be for at risk as well as students with disabilities so that totals 1.286 million dollars in government governors emergency education relief funds that we expect to be included in an upcoming uh state allotment revision in the coming weeks or a month and those will also uh flow through through september of 2021. and then the third category of funds that is

077uh probably causing a bit of heartburn for for some departments because they've been coming in pretty late and i'm actually going to add two more that you don't even see on here because we received them after board materials were due these third category are coronavirus relief funds which the ultimate funding source is federal but they're channeled through the state uh and they there are several different um um pots of money so the largest was the prc 121 for summer learning and k4 literacy um and that really has been spent it has been uh expended on the summer learning camps we were able to provide this summer as well as uh k for literacy curricular materials and other support for k-4 literacy throughout the school year we also have 209 000 in prc 122 instructional support

078for additional contract and mental health support services through doctor maddox perry and her team we have 63 000 in non-digital resources those are for additional print materials for students who have limited internet connectivity we have 780 000 dollars in funds that have already been expended on uh student devices that was able to lower our requirement of using as much of the cares act money on the chromebook devices the first 780 000 was already applied against uh the coronavirus release funds for uh student devices we have eight hundred and nine thousand almost eight hundred ten thousand in funds for school nutrition and that has helped support our child nutrition program in maintaining all of our uh uh outstanding child nutrition personnel in july august september october when our uh uh monthly revenues were far below our

079monthly expenditure so all 800 and 9 000 of those dollars have been spent uh to offset operating loss in the first three months of the academic year uh we have 104 000 for personnel computers and devices those uh we are working with it right now we're expecting in the next few weeks to finalize that but these will be additional devices for staff we have mobile wi-fi for school buses um that can only be used for router devices not for any internet connectivity and that hasn't really been a viable option for a lot of school districts um so we're still uh working with the city and the county to see if there's anything that can be done from their regard to enhance internet connectivity through buses but that um across many districts that hasn't really been

080a viable path the home and community wi-fi is a larger pod 194 thousand dollars but that also can only be used for that physical hotspot device which are very uh inexpensive so uh we have not received the flexibility to actually pay for the the thing that costs money which is the the monthly uh internet subscription service that you all approved a few board meetings ago so that uh whether or not we'll be able to fully expend that or whether it will revert back and then reallocate it to the state there are two districts in another allotment that remains to be determined we have money for learning management system canvas 115 000 that has already been expended uh to pay for part of the canvas licenses that we have needed this year for all of our

081students we have 477 000 in services are for exceptional children these are extraordinary services of trying to provide that we're trying to provide remotely and dr uh bell and her team are working judiciously to expend those funds on the december 30th timeline in manners that will best benefit the students we have uh 84 000 for cyber security uh and uh mr brown is working with the state um office of information technology on specific uh state approved vendors for that and we have two additional pots of money that were actually just approved this week not in time to be included in um the board uh presentation and that is our personal protective equipment from the state that's prc 137 that's and 296 seven dollars um that has been uh released to uh mr anderson's uh team

082uh to help prepare us for reopening and uh obtaining additional personal protective equipment and custodial cleaning supplies uh that's again two hundred ninety six thousand one hundred fifty seven dollars and then uh an additional uh coronavirus relief uh fund prc 138 um is uh for gaggle safety management uh which is a it software for for student safety um and and monitoring uh in the online platforms and that was an allotment of a hundred and forty five thousand dollars a hundred forty five thousand nine hundred and two dollars uh and gaggle was the state determined uh vendor for providing the online uh safety uh management i'm sure uh mr brown or dr monk could speak more to that but those those were two additional funds that were released just this week not in time for the

083board materials um and so uh the the main thing about the coronavirus relief funds is that they have to be expended uh no later than december 30th those funds revert on december 30th and all of these are included in as well as the uh 137 296 000 for ppe and 138 145 000 for the gaggles student safety management software are included in the budget all right if we'll uh i guess we can maybe ask questions at the end so i'll uh jump to the next slide uh so some unfunded budget requirements uh that have uh come up uh since uh this summer uh we received a 380 or sorry a 681 thousand dollar reduction in our state at-risk funding prc069 because we've had lower overall child child poverty in durham county we haven't experienced a

084dramatic reduction in our child poverty rates for durham public schools but the allotment is based on child poverty rates within the county overall not within the children's within the county who attend traditional public schools so we're having to absorb that through our state whole harmless allotment for enrollment that will be allow us to offset that 681 thousand dollar reduction in adverse funding that we weren't expecting but uh that the the census data does bear out um we also have uh funding for uh state mandated salary increases for our uh teachers and other certified personnel who have their local who have their step increases these are for locally paid folks we didn't receive money from the county for that but because the state approved the salary step increases for our teachers and other certified employees we

085have to of course provide that to them uh estimated costs for those locally funded teachers and other certified staff is around six hundred thousand dollars and the whole harmless uh provision from the state uh for based on their enrollment projections will allow us to support that as well and then in april we had the 500 000 in additional k5 literacy costs for the american reading company curriculum and uh unfortunately the additional coronavirus relief funds in prc121 on the previous slide should allow us to offset at least for this year the additional annual cost uh for those high quality literacy uh curricular materials and then uh with the charter school enrollment growth and our significant 1421 student enrollment decline uh funding that we were um uh that is needed for health insurance and retirement uh cost

086increases approximately 700 000 of that is actually having to go instead uh in the charter school pass-through is 28.2 million in total and we'll get into that in a second um but we are looking at uh cost savings anticipated cost savings that uh that we're having um in these first months you know mr mentioned uh slightly lower utility costs we have uh less substitute costs we have a little bit less supply material costs there there are some cost savings that we're trying to do to offset um the additional charter school pass-through funds and if we could uh jump to the next slide please so fund balance and honest uh appropriation and unassigned fund balance uh budget resolution includes and we're asking for uh explicitly for your approval to allocate 3.84 million dollars uh in a

087signed fund balance um so uh breaking that out we need about 1.38 million dollars to cover costs for exceptional children's services that cannot be supported by state or federal funds uh this was uh the requested funds were in our 2020-21 superintendent's proposed budget but we didn't receive the full funding uh for those cost requirements also we have nine hundred and twelve thousand for uh loss of indirect cost revenue from child nutrition uh with the pandemic we um and the uh revenue losses there we're not in a uh um there won't be uh the indirect cost charge so we have to account for that in the reduced revenue we also have eight hundred thousand dollars appropriated for uh sustaining locally funded classified salary increases from december of 2019. uh you'll recall it's two years now in

088a row where the legislature has not passed any salary increases for classified personnel uh dps implemented in 2019 uh classified increases for half of the year using all of the available local funds and no state funds for that uh sustaining that as approximately additional eight hundred thousand dollars and then uh as we're seeing our other uh miscellaneous revenues come in month by month we're anticipating about seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in reduced local fines and forfeitures and a few other pots of miscellaneous revenue um and so in order to to maintain uh the balanced budget we're having to appropriate uh fund balance to fill that uh hole hopefully temporarily one time this year but that will leave us based on the cost savings we were able to realize uh in the prior academic and fiscal

089year uh appropriating 3.84 million dollars should leave us with an estimated uh unassigned local fund balance of about 8.3 million dollars as of the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year and that figure will be finalized when the auditors are finished and we bring forward to you the uh the comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2020. all right and next slide please miss smith so we'll just kind of go over a high level highlights of of the budget uh and then we have the full budget at a glance uh is at the front of the budget book and we do have all i think it's like about 160 pages of very uh entertaining reading um for those who really want to get into the details but we're going to provide kind

090of a high level overview uh for you here uh so our state uh our total budget stands at 512 million 195 thousand dollars that excludes the 28.2 million dollars in local revenues passed through the charter schools that serve an estimated 7467 students in the 2020-21 academic year state funds are uh 49 of total revenue is almost 40 uh or sorry 44.9 of total revenue is 230 million 131.6 in local revenues at uh just under 26 of total uh capital outlays this year as we are allotting most of the 2016 geo bond funds to move forward with elementary school c we also have funding for elementary school f moving forward with some planning for northern as well as uh several ongoing maintenance projects that are in the tenure capital improvement plan so we have really a

091lot going on in our capital funds this year comprising 14.2 percent of total revenues um federal funds are just under uh 10 of federal revenues and we have 3.4 it's from child nutrition and 1.8 percent is in our grant funds and grant funds are primarily our smart start for pre-k as well as the uh county funding that we receive for our our pre-k programs and then uh before and after school care programs as well if we can jump to the next slide please in terms of who works in durham public schools almost half of our 5184 full-time equivalent employees are teachers and we have the next largest category is our instructional support personnel that really captures everything from your guidance counselors media coordinators instructional assistants all of the school-based instructional support staff operational support staff

092is also absolutely critical you can't have school without bus drivers cafeteria workers custodians maintenance workers etc and that's you know really where the vast majority of our positions in durham public schools lies if you break it out in terms of where the funding for our personnel come from we have 64 percent of our staff are funded from state funds or 3 33 positions about 23 percent are locally funded one thousand seven hundred one thousand one hundred and seventy five positions uh and then uh smaller proportions funded from child nutrition grant funds and federal funds we can jump to the next slide please so in terms of our expense by purpose we have over 77 percent of our non-capital funds are on school-based instructional services our our our core services the the reason that we're all

093here about 12 percent of our non-capital funds are are for operational support services which again you can't have schools without maintenance without without these uh core operational supports um administrative and instructional support services represent six percent of our uh non-capital funds budget and 189 positions and then also uh critical to our ancillary uh services child nutrition before and after school care that's about five percent of our non-capital funds in 302 positions uh and again as all with all these slides the the funding and the breakouts exclude our 28.2 million dollar pass through to the charter schools we can jump to the next slide please um so another uh breakout is uh what types of um things that we're buying or we're talking about salaries and benefits or we're talking about other things and uh for

094salaries and benefits that's 82 of our non-capital funds are in paying the cost of uh salary and benefits for all all of our personnel that make durham public schools work uh 14.3 percent is in uh capital investments we have 8.7 percent is in supplies and materials which is a little bit higher than uh typical years and mainly because we have the seven point three million dollars that is um uh in the budget this year that was used to purchase uh the more than twenty thousand chromebook devices uh purchase services are six and a half percent of our budget the largest uh being utility natural gas electric services along with our contracts we have our toshiba uh print copy there um a lot of uh things required to uh make the largest instructional program the largest

095transportation services the largest child nutrition services uh in the county and all there's just a whole lot going on when you delve into the uh the depths of the of the budget we have a very small amount for transfers to the state public school fund for non-reimbursable use of our uh yellow buses um we could jump to the next slide please so some key budget risks that that we're looking at um throughout the year so the largest one is our reopening cost for plan b that are beyond those available and cares act and other coronavirus relief funds so as we just talked about we have about 1.25 million dollars in pairs act money of the 11.9 million dollars in cares act money we only have 1.25 million available for all of the requirements for the

096rest of the year for the ppe that we got in the prc 137 that's only 296 157 dollars so our requirements could easily out outstrip that and if uh i had a slightly higher um estimate for uh cleaning for for the entire year but that's that's a key uh budget risk that hopefully we can offset uh with savings that we're able to realize throughout the year but as mr laser mentioned we may have to come back uh and ask for additional fund balance allotted to maintain a balanced budget as we've discussed several times in the past few months the learning centers throw on pace to operate at a one and a half million dollar loss for the first semester and the funding source to cover that loss has not um fully been determined whether uh

097dps is looking uh within our own budget or fund balance to absorb that or if we're going to receive additional uh support from the county to cover the cost of providing those services for a little over 300 uh children um fortunately uh um uh mr keaton uh mr barnes and the entire team have uh done an absolutely f uh fantastic job uh in in reaching out to our communities and child nutrition workers and providing uh healthy nutritious meals to our children every day and now that we're at more than 7 000 uh meals served per day we're at a place where our our revenue is at least matching our monthly expenditures so we're we're really looking good there right now it was um a lot of work to get from one thousand to more than

098seven thousand you'll serve per day uh but so long as that uh stays the course we're we're at healthy and we're in a good place there uh but that's just a key portion of the budget that we don't receive any other funding other than what the the program revenues uh generate so we are just carefully monitoring that um in terms of some other federal uh uh changes with the family's first corona virus relief act that provides 12 weeks of of paid federal leave at two thirds pay there's no mechanism for school districts to be reimbursed for the cost of providing that leave which is often critical in rules where if somebody is out that you have to hire an additional person to fill that role in which case you're paying one and two thirds cost

099of of of a person while once out and an additional person is hired uh so that just that remains a financial risk to all school districts um not having any reimbursement mechanism for that leave and then we've also had some uncertainty uh in terms of state guidance from dpi and from the north carolina pandemic relief office in terms of how exactly all of the coronavirus relief funds that were mentioned a few slides ago um what the specific parameters are and what will and will not be allowed for all of those and you know we've been assured that there will be multiple audits you know of all of these and so as as we're kind of rushing to make sure that uh we're expending these by the december 30th deadline and you know some of the

100funds are only being released uh in the past month or so we still have to make sure that uh we have complete understanding of the specific parameters from the state on those so that's it just adds some more uncertainty in here and then uh certainly our our anticipated local revenues such as fines and forfeitures we've reduced those significantly but uh with with lower commercial activity even the reductions that we made might might not be enough uh to reflect the actual final revenues that we'll receive so we're evaluating all of these things uh on a really a a weekly basis to see where we are but uh we're hoping uh that we're gonna be able to stay within the 3.84 million dollars of uh uh fund balance that we are asking to assign for this year's

101budget we're hoping that um uh that we'll be able to stay within those um pending some of these risks and i have um there's a few more slides and it has an appendix uh for funding broke uh break out of our local funding but uh i think that that's uh can that's more for information purposes so at this point i'll really open up the floor uh hand it back to mr lasser for questions and comments that you all may have i want to start off by saying thank you to alex for putting all this information together and getting this budget together this year he's put a lot of time and effort into it we've been scrutinizing the numbers trying to make them all work i think this is where we are today we're in a

102good position we feel based on the state hole harmless and we just received our the charter's first month adjustments to our budget and we feel that there's about an additional 200 more students than we anticipated that will stay funding wise in the durham public school budget unless the state comes back and makes other adjustments i have to caution you um this is a start i mean and i think we're in a good position to to get through the year but again uh not knowing what the state revenue picture is uh with the general assembly not changing in any way shape or form uh we don't know what january is going to bring when they come back into session but uh this budget uh is was thoughtful uh and been putting it together trying to make

103sure that we have the revenues to uh offset uh all the costs that may be coming through based on the savings the other piece to this uh that we're really as alex went through and told you about the coronavirus funds that expire december 30th of this year what isn't spent we'll go back to the state and then we're hoping that it will come back in allocations to the districts for whether it's for ppe and other supplies or giving us a little more free reign on how we use the dollars when they come back out because the state does not want to give any of these funds back to the federal government and we're going to use them and maximize them to their their fullest thank you all that's that's a sobering sobering report but it

104is the most excellent school budget resolution in the state of north carolina and probably in the nation as far as its detail it is over 150 pages long if folks want to really dig into it [Music] ah let me see what questions and concerns and discussion folks have missed lewis thank you um for this comprehensive report and where things are budget-wise i did have a couple of questions um about the budget with some of the line items where one in particular what is the private school pass through something on the first slide yes for the uh cares act prc or uh yeah prc 163 um per the federal guidance we had to uh set aside uh proportionate share uh pass through for for our private schools and i don't know if uh dr danner he

105manages the federal funds if he's on uh here but we're still awaiting final final federal uh guidance for the cares act for what that precise number of federal proportionate share passed through uh for the private schools based on uh their title one eligibility at those private schools or the the equivalent based on the household income eligibility for students who are at private schools but we have to set that aside for the federal guidelines okay so to add to what alex just mentioned um with our title one funds uh that we receive from the federal government each year we have to have money set aside to provide services to private school students and basically when the coronavirus funds came out they said we had to do the exact same thing with these dollars to provide them

106additional funding for their services for their their private school children okay and then um mr modesto i heard you talking about the funding for internet connectivity and access and i know that we're still having children that are having challenges with connectivity and i'm wondering what solutions do we have as a district or coming from city or county that can help us with this um you mentioned the funding there's funding for non-digital resources is that what that is to help support more direct lines into homes again some students are not able to hear or they can hear but they can't see and it's still broken up so are we addressing some of those connectivity issues with any of this funding um so the non-digital resources are actually uh print materials um that we can have that

107either parents can come and pick up um from the school uh or or the packets that can be sent to students so those are our um uh those funds that i believe prc 122 are are not for uh trying to troubleshoot internet connectivity issues that that families can be having those are only for sort of print and other analog resources um the uh my the wi-fi connectivity um fundings that we have from the the state through the coronavirus refunds are cannot be used for any subscription services so we're really hamstrung in those which is why the only pot of money that we could draw to to provide the hot spots and other connectivity services was the coronav or the cares act money the two and a half million dollars that we have budgeted and with

108uh we might have to uh allocate slightly higher now that we're up to about 9 000 hotspot devices uh so we're other than that uh aside from any efforts that the city or the county uh may be doing uh that would enhance connectivity for for families across the city and county um the cares act money is is really our uh the only primary source we have um miss lewis i want to ask mr brown to speak to some of the work that he's been working with the chief of staff of the county on to try to get more internet connectivity out into the accounting if you think he's on yeah i'm i'm one can you hear me i can't go ahead thank you well there are a couple of things thank you alex thank you

109dr monk uh thank you board members um we are working with the city for the fiber that we're running with the uh the housing authority also we started to receive hot spots from the state for my student uh to connect the incentive by the governor what we asked for were verizon hot spots because we currently have a t we think the issue is coverage so we started to receive those we will start to issue those out we just needed to get those in an inventory we received some even this week want to make sure we get a good count and we're supposed to report back got an email early today back to the state so our remedy right now um is going to be to try to use another vendor which will be verizon which

110is being paid for by the state um we're gonna start working on that um that should address the issue i think the issue is more so coverage maybe uh there's some dead spots in some areas so that that's how we will cover that as for the other funding that we have as alex stated the equipment for buses it's only for equipment it's not for service so we cannot use those those funds for service if we could we would we would try to use another uh you know use those funds for that but they can only be used for equipment so you are reaching out with some people uh also like again like i said with the housing authority they may be able to use those but they would have to pay for the service um

111we could only pay for the uh the equipment via these funds and i would say this different than the hot spots the outside uh hot spots that are hung from you know light poles but they're a little more expensive but the service is where you and cure you know you occur most of the costs um so that's what how we'll remember those right now and ben can you speak a little bit to what um you've been working with mr cummings on with the county to get it out to the county as well yeah so me myself and mr drew cummings are working right now to map how our hot spots are distributed among students within the county we're working with our planning department and they're working with the city to map where those hot spots

112are um after we get that data we're going to turn that over to mr cummings as far as just how many we have out in the county they're going to work on a grant to try to help us receive more service via the federal government but first we have to map where those hot spots are within the city and county and then give them that data because it would be the grant would be applied for via via the city that's some good information um so i have a couple of follow-ups regarding that do we currently have an assessment of how many students are having connectivity connectivity needs right now what is the turnaround for the new provider um that's going to be being used so we we only get those via the help desk if

113they call the help desk or their tech champion that's how that's reported i have not heard of any widespread issues with students in hot spots now note these hot spots have been out since july starting at the end of july we started sending out hot spots so we have not received any you know widespread outages we have received some here and there but they come via via the help desk as far as the new vendor those will be activated as of next week but we will have to identify the students that are having those issues we can't fix what we don't know about so i would advise you any parents who have any issues please call the help desk or your tech champion yeah and i just i don't know what other problem we can

114have with that some families don't necessarily um reach out the way we hope they would and younger kids are just suffering through right now so i'm still concerned that maybe our hot spots would not be enough but i definitely hear you mr brown um that you're working with um some different different agencies as far as getting some mapping done and getting some grant funding to improve the services that we have i just want you i'm still concerned and hope that we're continuing to look at issues and other ways to reach families who may not be sharing that they're having connectivity issues may not even be aware that their child is having connectivity issues and challenges suffering through so um thank you for for that that's all i have for the question right now thank you

115miss lewis miss vayneras yes um and thank you yeah thank you for a detailed uh budget that you're sharing with us i did have a question about additional laptops and devices for dps staff uh the concern that we have uh been hearing about instructional assistance and you know whether that provision right there is ensuring that it's 140 104 um thousand dollars from what i see is that is that going towards dps staff indiscriminately or is there like a priority schedule of who's who's getting those devices yeah it's my understanding that those are going to instructional assistants thank you um and then the other question that i had is you know as we're looking at this um budget that is is not ideal um you know we are you know having to go into our fund

116balance for four things including you know our children who need um who are not being covered by the state uh with special needs uh so so many needs i'm looking at you know where we are getting funds in and i'm curious because i see on there that mentions fines and fees forfeitures um and so with that sense i you know just wondering what are what are some of those local monies that are coming in um about i i i'm thinking that maybe it's you know local government like dpd maybe traffic stops or whatever do you have any sense of what kind of fines and fees are are contributing to our you know to our funds yeah so these sorry these flow through the county uh to us uh in that regard um therefore like you

117said their fines uh traffic uh violations for for anything that uh a person is fine for or misuse of of [Music] things court fees so on and so forth that people are being fined for those are the types of dollars that come to us that are required to come to us for educational purposes the forfeitures are if there's a seize something that's seized based on the sales of narcotics and the money is seized uh those those are the forfeitures that would come to us in that regard uh for the purpose of us uh per general statute that we get those funds directly directly provided to us to support we used to get about 800 000 dollars to 900 000 annually the other things are the forfeitures i mean late filing fees from the county uh

118for for property taxes that are part of that number when we talk about the 800 000 that we we think we're going to lose uh again that was part of 1.5 million dollars of fines and forfeitures and late filing fees that we would receive annually um we know that we're not going to get all those this year that's for certain so we reduced those to make the budget work other questions other discussion on this very important topic mr raven i definitely want to first thank mr lesora and mr modesto on putting this budget together i i know it takes a lot of a lot of hard work i work with them on the um budget from proposed advisory committee before and i know you know the type of time that it takes to go into

119this so i just have a few a few questions because i don't want to have any kind of false assumptions in my own mind when i'm looking at some of this stuff so um and some of it is small one of the things i noticed is that it looks like on the daily enrollment slides and i think that was slide 127 it looks like it shows a reduction of students for 1421 students and it shows charter schools actually increased 318 students so it's essentially it's either 1100 students now within durham that are either homeschooling or possibly they've went to a parochial school or some other private school but i i just want to kind of put just kind of put that out there that sometimes we don't even account for the students it may actually

120just be lost um and that's something that i think a lot of school districts have talked about around the nation about kids you can't place them you don't you don't know where they are and that's um i know that's one thing that some proponents of um of being in school usually advocate for so i just wanted to go ahead and make sure that i had that noted but on slide i think it's slide 177 it actually shows that our enrollment dropped to 1529 so when i when i saw those two differences i was assuming it was because we were talking about two reporting times so maybe the one with the durham county enrollment trends maybe that was an average but the one with the 1529 is that what we actually reported was to reduction to

121the state i'm assuming and that was on page 177 of our um in the board yeah so our project we we initially projected um when we started out um last spring our budget was based on 33 132. from that standpoint uh and we we ended up at the 31 603 that loss has is critical um but fortunately um the sustaining of the hold harmless provision helps us out in that regard okay thank you another another question i had and and i and i've heard about this i think it was on slot 128 where it was where it's focusing on the covet funds and the cares act funds one thing i would like to have an idea of because i knew i know that the um the cares act funds looks like that is the one

122that expires september 21st so that that's something that you know i know you all have a handle on and maybe that's something we can kind of see back at the end of the school year to kind of have an idea of how much is left but the corona relief funds that's the one that i know is essentially is going to go back to the state at the um at the end of the calendar year and and some of the things that i read on there uh for instance we could purchase the actual hardware for the device but you can't pay for internet service and and i i want to i want to just make sure that there was some clarity on that just just so um i read this right sometimes when you are buying

123it objects you are able to pay for something that may have a recurring cost but you can capitalize that cost on when when you're buying that asset at the same time and i know that we can't pay monthly for any type of internet service costs but is there any possibility that there is a provider that can provide us with hardware where we can actually capitalize a consistent level of coverage and maybe have that included in that purchase price and have like a year or two years added to that purchase and because in that sense we're not necessarily paying for internet service on a month-to-month basis for x amount of months maybe you can buy the hardware with the actual um connectivity included on that for a year at a time and i didn't know if

124that's even an option can i answer that doctor sure so mr raven it is my understanding from the state that service cannot be purchased via this but i will check with the dpi to just confirm that but it's in my understanding in no way can service be be paid for um it is just for the equipment um several people have asked to i'm on state meetings all the time but i will verify thank you thank you for that one of the keys to that is they're going to monitor us they're going to audit us they know that the devices the purchase for are basically hotspots and that we're not going to be able to maximize um [Music] providing services and paying for services that are paid by that they're going to be actually looking at

125reasonableness of the actual devices we purchase in that regard thank you and then that brings me to my last question and this this one i'm not diving diving too deeply in i would just kind of like a surface question because when it dealt with the cyber security and this is the reason i this is the reason i actually asked the question about the um about the modify and internet service on the cyber security it notes that we're able to pay for um cyber security which could be you know the inclusion of appliances but the notes that we could pay for monitoring and support on that so in that sense it seemed like they were okay with paying some type of possibly recurring costs but on the internet connectivity with the purchase of the hardware in

126that sense they weren't so that's why we're just wondering just for clarification on on where was kind of like that the delineation between the two so thank you all and uh mr raven uh one other point on that is uh there's not i don't necessarily 100 consistency on on the stipulations and all of the parameters from one pot of funds to the next probably the largest area where we're going to revert funds is on the prc 121 jump start because it was hard for school districts they they were requiring that 50 of those monies be spent before august 17th on summer camps and with cobit and all the uncertainty in the summer um uh and speaking with other lease very few lease are able to have the same kind of robust summer camps that they

127are able to have in a normal academic year so based on the the very specific parameters within each of those pots of monies uh and then not necessarily being consistent such as we can pay for this uh software costs and the cyber security but we can't pay for any internet uh connectivity services on for the mobile or home and community wi-fi uh those parameters are really ultimately what determines uh any amount of funds that that are going to be reverted to the state and just one other uh comment on on the previous uh note that you made about the enrollment um so yeah in addition to having more students going to charter schools and very likely home and private schools were missing almost 450 kindergarteners uh which could uh and those families could be red-shirted

128meaning that they in uh in lieu of having their students uh enroll as soon as they're uh eligible from an age standpoint that they are holding them back a year potentially and may want them to start kindergarten with us next year or or to um enroll in first grade if their literacy and numeracies um you know merits that so that's just a very kind of complicated wrinkle that we're having uh as we're looking at our enrollment projections for for the next uh academic year but uh of those quote unquote missing students the biggest uh chunk is in kindergarten are missing kindergartners who are we're affectionately calling them red shirters thank you because i i definitely did notice that because it looked like the kindergarten that accounted for almost of that difference but it seemed like

129in high school i think it was only like 160 students lost out of the entire high school 9-12 so that was definitely a good sign that the parents were willing to stick it out with us once they were already to that grade and thank you for that answer also about just the consistency i guess when i read that i assume that they uh that they kind of included some type of parameters of consistency so you're saying that it's not there in each of these individual cases that makes a lot of sense so thank you again thank you i saw miss unstead and then miss wyatt um thank you to our finance team for this uh budget resolution i always appreciate the clarity is which that you all provide this budget to us um and that's

130natalie kind of start us off this is it's heavy we have a lot of risk that is also in this budget that that gives me pause i think you've all done an excellent job around figuring out how we can accommodate for those funds for this year but i'm my mind is thinking about the future and the 2021 2022 budget we didn't have a flip in our general assembly as we'd like and we know that so much of our funding we need to be getting from the state because our local dollars can only stretch but so far and so i'm wondering board if y'all are interested if we can start working on a legislative agenda that we can present to our durham delegation it can go in collaboration i know our north carolina school boards association

131normally also puts out an agenda but we really need to be advocating for some things for next year the just cost of doing school even if we do nothing different is going to go up next year and we know that if we're not held harmless like there's going to be even more um risk that's associated with this so i'm i'm thankful for the work that we're doing right now i'm so appreciative of how we're being smart with our funds but i also want us to start looking ahead to that next school year board what can we be doing to advocate on behalf of our students and families to have what they need because i want to make sure that we can keep as much as we can keep as many staff members as we can

132employed and do the work that we need to do to make sure our students are learning and growing so i don't have a question just general comments thank you miss umstead that that's so so profound and touching because we are all feeling the same way um we have never had to dig into fund balance in a school year the way we have this year and that is with significant federal money already here and we we are hopeful for we we have to remain hopeful for a second infusion of federal support because schools across the country need this viadaras i saw your hand yes um and thank you again for for the details i just want to make sure um you know as as a community members hold us accountable and fiscally responsible for for all

133these funds um just to be really clear about coronavirus relief funds um right now we we have a fund balance but the chronovirus relief funds we have already been using for all the things that have been laid out um what is that what is that um what is that status right now and we we don't know whether next year we're gonna get the same amount and i know that there's a lot of uncertainty so um for folks that uh have reached out and have asked about you know uh what kind of monies we have and wiggle room with the coronavirus funds we've pretty much i just want to be really get a recap um about the money that we actually have uh that we're gonna have to spend before september i think how much money

134we we have and the other thing is there were some conversations about fema money and that i know we have not received fema money but i just i just wanted to make sure i put that out there because you know we want to make sure that we you know any any questions about the monies that we do get or don't get when it comes to the relief what what do we have what didn't we get and then also our fund balance at 8 million that we we need to be fiscally uh responsible because we don't know what what next year looks like so um can you tell us a little bit about like what are our levels right now just to recap so um the majority of the money especially with the cares act funds

135mr modesto said there's about 1.2 million after we look at all the things that we're taking into consideration there's only about 900 000 dollars left because there are a few other things that need to be put on the books in that regard but you know those are the dollars that we have to work with to to move us forward whether we're going to have to use them for additional ppe and cleaning supplies when we go back with the abs with the b schedule you know we don't know yet um that will really be a telltale time on on how we're going to have to uh those funds um dr monk and dr hardy and i are going to be start meeting on these dollars make sure we maximize them uh as efficiently as we can

136understanding all the different needs that we have going forward we know that we were keeping the eight million dollars in fund balance because we know that that's going to have to bridge us hopefully we'll get some more coronavirus or karezak money down the road because all schools are struggling all communities are struggling and it's just um it's a different animal that we're dealing with compared to 2008-2009 and back then we received a significant amount of dollars for staffing um that that was able to last us three years three to four years and this really isn't lasting us but the one full year that we're in right now i hope that answered your questions yeah and and just to put out there we we didn't get any fema money um so just i know we did

137i just want to make sure because that was a question that came out so we did apply uh for some fema dollars and they came back to us and said that that those were they saw those as regular supply monies uh for supplies and materials for um cleaning and and i don't understand why the fema has put that out there as a program if they weren't gonna reimburse us for the dollars that we actually purchased uh supplies for cleaning and disinfecting um that were for the because of the coronavirus otherwise we wouldn't have purchased them yeah and one thing i'll just add is more of instead of thinking about what what else can these uh funds provide for us like just really uh cataloging all of the things that we would not have been able

138to do were it not for those funds so without the the cares act there was no way we would have been able to have devices for all 33 000 students and that's where the vast majority of those monies is going in is supporting the 9 000 uh hotspots we didn't the agreed to achieve money was pulled this year so if it weren't for that money that we received it wouldn't have had any uh summer literacy programs or any support uh during the school year for k-4 literacy uh without the money for the technology again we wouldn't have been able to provide that the child nutrition that eight hundred and nine thousand dollars was absolutely critical to maintain full employment of our all of our child nutrition people in july august september october uh the learning

139management system we would have been in the hole another 115 thousand dollars for the additional canvas licenses were it not for that money that we received uh the ec dr bell's team is able to provide some of these additional supplies and materials that are required for providing the ec uh services outlined in the ieps remotely so there's there's all of these changes and requirements even just for you know overnight basically switching from 100 in person to 100 remote that we you know we if we didn't have those funds we we would have long burned through the 8 million fund balance that we have so that that's that's really allowed us to be in the position that we are now but it's more of looking forward it is where uh we're seeing some deficits but we're

140we're greatly appreciative of these funds that have allowed us to at least get to this point i really appreciate that alex and i appreciate all your work on this and how well you and uh paul know this budget inside and out and are managing us so so responsibly and conservatively during these very strange and stressful times i liked chair umstead's idea about working towards a legislative agenda and so i i think several of us would be willing to kind of work on that and you know it would include nurses right it would include air filters like we're just about to talk about in a minute it would include things that we didn't know we were even dealing with a year ago um this time um i also think it's going to be important for us

141to continue to have some really transparent conversations with the county as we go forward because you know we asked for 14.3 million we needed all of that we justified all of that and we got five we asked to get our people up we've been asking for years to get our people to 15 an hour at least so that we could catch up with where the city and the county have been already for years and we haven't made it there yet they committed to a two-year plan but they also committed to i hope revisiting that mid-cycle because if if we have employees that aren't yet making 15 an hour but trying to take care of their families during a pandemic i would love us to be able to support them and support that mid-budget cycle going

142forward and working with the county towards that goal um i'd like in the future to have perhaps some list of what that charter school impact is broken out by school because i think these schools have very little state oversight and are growing rapidly in our community adding grade levels and don't even need to come before the state board for that so i think it would be important for our community to see how those are growing um and um i think we should discuss that in in future meetings with our county commissioners as well can you guys clarify one last thing for me before we go on to the next item or see if others have questions there's been a lot of talk about hazard pay have our employees gotten hazard pay are they getting hazard

143pay now are we paying hazard pay to school employees the answer to that is no we're not paying any hazard pay to individuals there was a point in time when we got when we first started uh that we provided some additional resources to um so for delivering the meals that were in the thick of it but it wasn't for an extended period of time it was just trying to get people to come back and as you remember in the spring uh we had it we had we were serving meals for a short period of time uh and then we were um we went to the food insight group to provide uh the meal funding for the meals for the community and the students thank you so much that's that's really helpful i i also remember

144we uh we had volunteers out doing that hazardous duty of uh getting meals to our community members that was a really encouraging time for the community to come together you guys have other questions about this budget resolution any other comments just natalie um the i just want to make sure um i heard it correctly the amount that's going to charter schools this year is 31.9 percent of our budget is that what it is or the 31.9 percent of the um extra money coming in here it was it was something like that correct oh it's 39 of the additional local funding that we receive from county okay okay thank you all right i just wanted to clarify that because i yeah i thought that was like 39 of our budget and and so that was that

145would have been concerned so thank you for clarifying it yeah it is 28 million of our yeah but local funds that are going to charters right and um that increase is part of the reason of that right it's the increase of students um there is um there's talk of another charter school coming and you know the city council recently rejected a part of what they need you know much of it was because of the destruction that charter schools calls for our students and this is for anyone to look and see what what the effect of charter schools usurping our children to their programs does to our budget and does to the financing of funding for durham public schools so if there is a question if there's ever a question of why we fight so hard

146to keep our children in durham public schools and i personally i can't speak for the board oppose charter schools is because of the money that is taken away from the much needed resources that we need in durham public schools so thank you for answering that paul i appreciate that mr raven i just wanted to add to mr lee's point um and and i know this was this was already implied but we also lose the families we also lose the parents that you know used to be on the ptas and the ones that are actually able to reach out to the to our teachers and give them that extra assist in the classroom so that that's that other extra that that we do lose any time that a charter school opens up and and we just

147also have to acknowledge sometimes and this isn't for all charter schools but it's definitely been for a lot of them especially the ones that are for-profit you know we we'd like to make sure that we have equity included in everything that we do at public schools we like to make sure that we're providing on public transportation free lunches we'd like to make sure that we're able to provide them with the ec services that they need and we also are able to give local governance and local oversight over that whereas sometimes with charter schools you find out that they're governed by people not within your your community and you really don't have any way to kind of to kind of make your voice heard and expect for change to happen whereas we always like to make

148sure that that's available to all of our families and every community partner within the area so it's just key that we point that out thank you mr raven you and mr lee summed up a lot of my concerns over the years that i've tried to express but you expressed it better than i ever do so thank you both for those profound words any other thoughts or questions on the 20 21 budget resolution that is here for action tonight if not i would welcome a motion so i've moved that we accept the 20 20 21 budget resolution as presented a second it's been moved by mr raven and seconded by miss valladares that we approve the 20 20 21 budget resolution any other discussion hearing none mr lee hi miss hempstead hi miss vallados hi mr

149raven hi miss lewis hi mr sears and i vote i as well it passes unanimously it brings us to an item that we added to the agenda the purchase of air filters mr dr monk hey thank you um yes this item is for the purchase of air purifiers um these will be placed in our ec classrooms healthcare support rooms nurses office and pre-k classrooms based off of our the work that um mr palmer has done in conjunction with dr anderson we anticipate that we need about 373 of these air purifiers i want to give a shout out to our maintenance supply folks because they did a really good job in in locating a vendor that has that many available that can get it to us within the next month that vendor is home depot we

150also included the other vendors that we contacted as well as the rubric that was used to select this vendor just as important as the cost was up also could you get the quantity and could you get it here um within the next month or so we just received a quote on yesterday which is shown there on your screen um we do would like to apologize normally we would um take it i would give it to miss buyer miss validares and we will discuss it beforehand so we apologize but this is fresh off the presses everyone is trying to get these things um and so we did not want to delay um and miss our opportunity and so um our recommendation is that that you all approve the purchase of the 373 air purifiers an amount

151of 228 154.78 um and we will make that purchase from home depot um we will utilize karazhak and local funding um are both available to uh to make that purchase and mr laser and mr modesto have already shared some of the the ways that we could do that earlier so we can open up for questions thank you dr monk looking to see if anyone has questions or discussion on this important topic [Music] i'm just glad you were able to find some miss understanding that's a lot of yeah i just i have heard you dr monk talk about why these filters were important for those spaces can you just tell us a little bit more about i think it's like the merv writing and what they do and why it's important to have these in these

152spaces absolutely thank you so these are uh helper filter systems um they're units that that we will put in um these spaces in particular for our ec classroom the feedback that we received from ec teachers is the concern about students being able to wear masks the whole time excuse me and we all know the importance of masking and so we are doing an additive measure there also the healthcare isolation areas are um for people who may be as evidence symptoms where they can wait until the parent can come pick them up and so we want to make sure um in that area because there's going to be a staff member that's going to be with them there that we're providing additional measures in those spaces same thing with the nurse classrooms and then for our

153littlest ones our little pre-k folks whenever they lay down for their little naps and they take off their mask to do that we want to make sure that they're taking care of their spaces as well i love that you planned it so much that you need 373 of them precisely i think that's that indicates we've got a planner on the team any other questions or discussion about this item if not i would welcome a motion i want to go ahead and make a motion so they can order as fast as possible so i'll make a motion to approve the purchase of the air purifiers as per presented i second that and move by mr lee and seconded by mr raven that we approve this purchase any further discussion if not mr lee i didn't hear

154that anyone else sorry hi thank you mrs umstead hi i'm miss lewis hi miss fayadahs hi mr raven hi mr sears hi and i put i as well it passes unanimously thank you that brings us to item f the mou with abc science collaborative i'm not sure whose topic this is i can start us off and dr venga ask you to join in on july 30th the abc scientific collaborative came to us and shared a little bit about the work that they were willing to do with our district since then they've provided a lot of resources and support to our staff as they've been thinking and planning about for our learning centers as well as thinking about what would it mean to return to in-person instruction and then they've also hosted a series of webinars

155for our teachers and they've talked to many of the different groups here parents and community groups in durham to help us plan as we're navigating this public health pandemic and so the next part of this work um is to sign this mou so we can continue to work and collaborate with them for the planning purposes of moving back in person so dr mabinga did anything you want to add on that part the madame chair you summarized here with a while we've been having this relationship with abc collaborative doctors um we received a lot of training from them and they were able to train our teachers as well at this point as uh we are planning for potentially being able to open our schools um they're going to help us with app and try to be

156able to track our data things of that nature so i have uh dr spencer he is available as we're working with our carrington smith uh attorneys with uh this particular piece and uh they told us he's ready um everything is for legal is concerned i think everything is in place and are we just ready to be able to take your questions and when it comes to technical pieces uh dr espresso will be able to answer any questions thank you so much i saw in the chat from mr raven asking if we could nicole if we could get that mou on the screen do you have that are you able to share that well give me one moment thank you i think sometimes we forget how blessed we are to have amazing uh collaborators in in

157our community both in science and health fields but in just every area of caring for our students and our families so [Music] i always forget how tiny the font is on zoom but um as we're getting started i think that's helpful for the public to see and i don't think it's on our website yet is it in this agenda packet [Music] i don't believe so yeah but we can get it updated yeah i think that would be great in the future let's see who's got questions and thoughts as we approach this topic tonight looking at screen for hands inspired ours [Music] yeah this um this mou is is not available on our website and it's not on our agenda packet um it's uh you know it is a an emergent action item uh that was

158added on today agenda item and so um there is uh just a little bit of uh just the consideration for community input on an app that is going to affect pretty much all our students and um and our families and including pretty much every every dps stakeholder um some of those questions pretty much with this mou are like having time to review it like i i actually did not have enough time since um i just got this mou very recently uh like yesterday and would like more time to be able to review it to read through it to also check with community because anything that is a benefit to our families needs to be discussed with community um i don't think that you know uh that we are at least i don't feel ready um

159in terms of passing an mou that i have not had time to read and i know that the abc collaborative has been in conversations with i will say with some parents because not every parent has had an access to hear from them um the webinars have not been open to everybody the webinars have not been in spanish open to everybody there are a lot of community members who are asking questions and anytime you have an app um any time that there's data collection anytime that there's a research study there we have to own the history of the historical context of research institutions and how they have engaged and built trust with communities so i would i'm definitely somebody that has done research does research right now and i understand the benefit of research but this

160is a pandemic that we're you know going through right now with a lot of loss of lives and just the importance of ensuring that we are communicating in advance with community members about anything that is going to be about data collection or um anything with monitoring that is being done through a research study um so i i do have a couple of questions and some of my questions are about the app itself i understand there's there's two aspects so you know the um what happens if if a family if families do not sign up to use the app what happens if a family declines the use of the app um i can answer this but i would also um i know dr monk might have some ideas as well as um dr hardy but um

161we have to collect this information so when students or staff visitors are coming into our buildings um the symptom checker that we've all become familiar with when we go into various um appointments or buildings around our temperature and symptoms um those those attestation um questions are going to be captured so if a parent um our goal is that parents are able to capture this information for us before the student gets there in hopes of keeping the transition process in our buildings going quickly we also want to but at the end of the day we have to capture the information so the school staff would capture that um data for all of our students um every day that they're in a building so so we're saying that i mean we i understand monitoring is important we

162need to have monitoring however this is an app that is provided by a research study and so it gives proximity as a duke patient um duke has many studies and i feel like sometimes i get messages through my chart asking me whether i want to participate in a study but i have the option of saying i want to opt out and and i do get that option um and not everybody uses my chart i have a lot of family members who go to duke and get their services from duke but do not use the app do not use the right platform although there are benefits from using it so i understand that there's there's benefits from any tools that are being provided but the fact that this is a research initiative this is an app

163that is tied directly to research um you know i just i just wonder what options are we giving families that may not feel comfortable with that um you're exactly right that's that is the option so um whenever they download the app families do have the option to either participate in the research or to just utilize the app to report their symptoms it's really just that simple if uh families don't download the app whenever the student comes and um gets screened teachers will input the or the screening person will input the information into the application for the student and then they will go on in the building no data for research to be transmitted so the only data that's going to be used for research are from families who say i want to participate in the

164research the app is it's just a tool to collect information like dr spencer was saying i have a follow-up to that because the tool has been designed by this research study by a research study so they have access to the data um how what are some of the ways that we are ensuring that the data is not coming to researchers and families um may not feel comfortable with that so i understand that in order to opt into the research aspects of it the continuing studies um ongoing studies but then there's data that they're going to have access because this is their app it's not our app right we're not the ones designing this app they are the ones designing it and so they have the data um they have access to it and so i

165am wondering what options do we have where families like you know it's it's for example um just going into into uh folks that may not want to deal with amazon they're folks who don't want to deal with duke's research there there's there's a historical context for research and how research has been harmful to communities of color and say for example that there's an app that is designed by amazon um amazon for example i'll give you an example uh helps out with uh some of some of the the detention facilities of the private detention facilities where a lot of families get separated and are held in detention facilities um for immigration you know there's there's a lot many many people are like i don't want anything to do with amazon because amazon has been a participant

166in harm and has been helping with you know these these other efforts with private detention facilities and so if there is a family who feels like you know i'm not a duke patient i'm not really interested in my dps data being connected to a research study um you know i want to be able to have more of an autonomy and i want to be able to trust you know that education in my kids is one thing but research is another thing that i should be able to opt in what options are available to that family if they decide that they do not want to download that app what our options are available um so i would i would say that the family absolutely does not have to download the app so um the school still

167has to collect the information the information is a larger part of the data collection but um it is important to and our mou speaks to this which is um there is a specific question asking parents do they want to participate in further studies and so if they answer yes then even then our mou suggests in in black and white it says there also would be an additional parental consent so using the app in no way is a consent to participate and be a part of research the researchers that the mou also speaks to that that the researchers do not have access to the data um that is collected unless the parent says the consent so as dr mike said it is a platform first to collect the data only the people that are part of

168the platform and the technology side have access to that and then if parents want to participate in research further research they can um and of course i think it would be very important for everyone to know we treat all of our students data very seriously and have oversight over the process over the mou over the partnership to ensure that our students data is um collected um only as written into an mou and allowed by um council and i would also um miss giovanni has also been a piece of the legal making sure that we are doing everything legally i think um she may also want to chime in from a lead i'm happy too at this point so ms radars thank you for your question um the dua the data use agreement that we have

169entered into with them is clear that they are serving as a school official type so we have to gather this data and so we're they're assisting us with this app it is not related to research at all it's solely so that durham public schools can utilize it to make sure that our kids are being screened our children and staff are being screened appropriately so i probably asked that question i know probably at least 30 times i mean you can see dr spencer shaking her head um so it was very clear it was been very clear from the very start of this conversation with the abc collaborative that this was not going to be um a free-for-all with durham public schools data so they have that if families want to participate they have to check that

170box duke cannot do anything with this data unless dr spencer um asked them to do it and and she would only do that when asked most likely by dr mubanga for some additional educationally related purpose so we worked um we worked really hard on this but your concerns are certainly taken very seriously by dr spencer if you recall a few weeks ago drafted that very strict um research policy so she's um very very uh on top of this so i hope that answers your question but it is not a reason it's not related to research at all it's it's it's not uh it's not like they're automatically being enrolled in research however it is something that has been designed by a research team for research purposes if the parent opts in which puts it really

171direct you know in terms of recruitment and any population studies i think that this would be a goldmine for any researcher to immediately have access to 30 000 plus families 5 000 plus families of staff members and all they have to do is devise a tool by which people have to use this tool everybody has to use it and then they can opt into the research it just makes the recruitment a one step thing with the one click and i see what the benefit is for the research team my concern is that as a durham you know resident somebody who talks to different families anytime you have something that is mandatory like an app you know i wonder what other options um were on the table whether they are on the table now or not

172but is there was there an option for an independent app that could serve the purposes of what we need from our side as you know folks that are looking at education we're not we're not duke duke do candles research right do candles multi-million dollar you know research one institution and that's what they do best but we are the ones that are looking at our families and ensuring that we do what we do best which is ensuring that every child gets a sound basic education and that we are making sure we're not putting them in a predicament that um that they wouldn't they wouldn't want many families don't even go to duke because they don't want to deal with um research and they've talked about that that it is it is a trigger for for some

173families so owning that history i wonder if there is an option for an independent app and i know that there are because i know that people have reached out so if there's an option for an app that is independent that could be connected to this research study would be great that way families have the sovereignty to decide if they want to opt in and they want to have any any any ties to a research study because at this point the app is tied to the research study even if it's not research actively until the consent but the app belongs and has been designed by a research team versus something that is independent where families can opt in if they choose to so i and i would welcome anyone else from our team to jump in

174but um as we've been exploring this and i've been asking this question as well and did ask this question around the country that is where the majority these apps are basically coming from two places is the research university so if you're in boston it's boston university or if you're in nashville you know it's rice university or um whatever the large university is um it's just attempting to help with the covet tracking that all school systems are having to do the other apps to my understanding again um is are coming from like private places and i believe you shared miss vadar as maybe some years maybe some months back um kind of how data can be exploited and how you have people that sometimes can get this data and do certain things with it and so

175based on our relationship with duke and the strict vua that we have we are most confident that this is the best way to obtain the information to screen our students and staff while also protecting their data from these potentially for-profit groups that may um seek that information out now i'm not saying that there's you know not other there's always other options right but based on all of the research that we've done and the work that we've done we do feel that this is the best way for um general public schools to accomplish its goal of screening staff and students and we have been very clear with them you know regarding the opt-in box uh regarding research so unless they click that box um that's it's not going to be they're not going to be contacted

176and their data will not be used for any research purposes i have been in conversations uh even before the abc collaborative was something that we even knew about here i knew about some of the members of the abc collaborative um uh working with the folks who have already done apps like i said i work at duke so there's already apps that are have been tested and tried for months that are not tied to you know not tied to research there's there's apps that are tied to research and apps that are not and the um so there's pandemic response network is is a study it's a research study they have an app and they're doing that but then there's also apps and i know that the city and the county has been working with green light

177and it is not tied to research so there's in terms of like being able to modify being able to cater to the comfort levels of our families when you're not tied to research you don't have to worry about the fidelity of you know how you're collecting all this data and the other thing is but you do have to provide services and it's the service component is oriented towards the benefit of families um if there's a service that is not doing its job you can modify it you can do different things so there is an app and i know that this group has asked to present to this board and has asked to come and share and it's called green light edie and i know that they also have been in communication with the abc collaborative

178have you know they've had conversations at one point they were collaborating um and uh they're no longer collaborating so that removes a choice you know i would like to have a choice to use an app that is a service oriented app versus an app that is tied to research i would like to have that choice um and so in that sense i i just want to put out you know that my request is is there a possibility for collaboration you know i think that the pandemic that we have going on right now does bring forth whose interests are we serving and i want to serve the interests of families that want that choice that want an app that is service oriented versus an app that is tightly tied to a research project um so i

179i just want to put that out in that way um i think that that is also it's going to need community input i have been meeting since march with a lot of folks a lot of researchers i know that there are private schools that have their own ap like their own versions of who's guiding their principles and i know that you know that their apps out there that they're using i've heard of uh you know duke school using a certain app so there's apps galore there's researchers that are providing guidance um not all of them are doing research actively some of them are actually finding that this is a time to provide a service and um and i would just like to to have a little more time to figure out like ways that we

180can do this and something else i'm not saying this is great let's do this but let's provide choice i would really this it's my plea if we can provide a choice where families can choose if they want to use this app that is tied to the research by all means you know any family who is comfortable with research it helps us but there are families who are not comfortable with anything to do with research and can we provide an option that the app is just strictly for the purposes of monitoring and necessary connecting more resources but if we can have something independent of a research study thank you i saw mr lee and then mr raven uh thank you um so i'm going uh i got this uh as well yesterday and i i kind

181of looked through it and i reached out to um my uh i have a circle you guys all know that i don't circle people to reach out to get some feedback especially from like my my doctor friends and uh mostly parents but i agree with this mou and um i hear what miss valedares is saying i i um i see the need i i see where she's coming from however when even if this application is this is my opinion even if this is the application is tied to a research uh group or created by a research group and green lighted or green light is created as well data is present regardless of um how you use the tool the the data just doesn't go away it's saved uh me personally i would prefer to be

182to use a tool by a known entity that i know for a fact because of my research they adhere to the belmont report they have if they decide to use the research use data you know from our permission if that happens to be the the research review board at duke university is extremely strict on who and what data you can use and you have to prove that each person uh opted in that they that the data you're using um i've spoken to many researchers i'm not in re i'm not in duke's research like ms via dyers but i uh over the years i've worked with them i understand their practices i understand their approvals before they can move forward with any type of data collection and data usage so as a known entity i think

183this is a really good application i like the you as far as i know i hadn't used it or anything like that but the mou i think it's pretty solid about confidentiality and accident address it addresses data usage as well um and um with ms giovanni on staff and uh dr spencer you know who are at the at the utmost uh the ones to protect data for our students they would not allow anything to happen without our permission i'm ready to move forward with this mou especially in preparation of moving towards the the procedures and the policies we need to do if we start to move into a open in our schools so um i do agree with the mou i do i have reviewed it i've kind of scrutinized it kind of broken it

184apart and as i do with all of them i'll use and i i would actually agree with and i'd vote yes for this tonight thank you mr raven the the one thing i wanted to say is i i think that we do have to at least acknowledge um when it comes to research and and how the medical field in some ways has been used against um against communities of color in north carolina more specifically african-american women indigenous women who had eugenics going on even as early as 1980 when i was born i i think it is something um i think it is something that we all do need to keep that in mind so my question is actually going to be around our policy and ms giovanni maybe you can answer this is this um

185is this information going to be governed by the policy that deals with i think i think what i heard was data usage policy or because when i read the when i read the mou it dealt with identify identifiable informal information that there may be some identifiable information so if that is the case would that fall under i think maybe our last meeting we had a meeting that dealt with the general statutes governing of student records information so i'm just wondering if that would be something that the district is there any information that the district would have to retain or would this all be just flow through us and just be data information that only uh the research company or abc would have to store that's my only question no that's an excellent question thank you

186yes it is durham public schools data and it remains as such for eternity basically perpetuity in the event that you know hopefully um we are no longer in need of having to use the app for screening we've developed whatever may happen to deal with this pandemic they they have to immediately document for us the destruction of the information and or return to us all of our data so it's kind of maybe the flip side i would say if you know what you're saying like they're a tool that we're using because of their capacity and their bandwidth to assist us with doing what we need to do so and dr spencer please clarify or jump in if you would um exactly so in terms of the symptom checker i think i like what miss giovanni said

187earlier it's it is outsourcing there they have the bandwidth to collect it they also have the capacity to provide us at our request various reports that would be helpful for you as a board you want summary data of what's going on this is a great way a service that they are providing us to be able to do that but as far as the student level data the researchers i will repeat it they do not have access to the data unless we ask them to do something with it that i want you to think of like if we have an online math program where students name is in there their grades or might even be in there and they are hosting that um so there is a hosting of the symptom checker um with that information

188but that doesn't mean they can then go use it that that that's why we have an agreement that would provide that clarity um for us thank you both that that was helpful mr sears i think i saw your hand yeah i just want to confirm it's related to the last question dr monk you mentioned earlier so a family does not download the app but instead you know presents at the school however the school does it whether they're standing there with an ipad or a computer or whatever they're not and i forgive the noise in the background they're not um entering information into the same database on behalf of the family they're simply making sure that all of the covet boxes are properly checked is that correct that's right they're not saying matt sears these things

189they're checking those and that goes to the same data because they're going to be analyzing that right you all want metrics to to um to determine when we should close and things like that that means we got to know who's presenting these symptoms and all um so it goes there so they can do the anal anal and it's like that you know the word i'm saying but they're not going to contact you and say now do some more research for so this the school will say you know matt sears children did show up and were non-symptomatic and that does go into the duke database that's correct but can i just um i want us to think about it as our durham public schools database so it is our symptom checker data it is our principals

190have that so that they can see right immediately that they have a student who's come on campus with symptoms and so that they can respond quickly and appropriately and so um i think that that's an important piece is that um to miss giovanni's point it is the dps data so it is our data um being hosted in a platform so so the only opting into research is if you download install the app and you guys may not know this but is there you know one of the things like when you accept the app it says i'm looking at you dr monk um you know i i agree that i will participate and i am therefore subject to research by duke yes well and so actually it's a um it's almost like a two thing is

191for you yeah if you want to participate in research then you would click yes to that if you say no you can still use the app and set up that way it is a separate question it is not one of those where if i agree for the app then i'm agreeing to work to research it is not that it has a specific question that someone would have to answer yes to all right that was a major thing for me and as i thought more about it you know i even wondered if it was legal that you know we we likely cannot turn over we can't say sorry 33 000 families you must do this and therefore we agree to subject you to research so that hurdle for me the next hurdle is we have choices

192in this game like we want that data and so you know there is a quid pro quo with duke we will get some advice and we've already gotten some benefit with teacher workshops and things from agreeing to partner with them but the the quid pro quo with other services including green light where i've done just minimal research is built into the app is a here's connections to services and while we can hope for that for duke i don't i don't think the app is built yet and so you know i i understand that as we sit here today there there may be some de facto obligation to do because we've had an ongoing conversation dr mabega you and i discussed it i said sounds good um and yet it's our job to learn as much

193as we can as we make these decisions and i've had subsequent conversations so as i sit here tonight you know additional time to consider the options is my preference um i would vote to abstain tonight and that's absolutely no disrespect to the work that's gone on by the district dr mumbenka um the abc collaborative it i i hope it doesn't feel disrespective uh disrespectful um it's just simply that we're in these incredibly dynamic times and wanting to do the best for our our community um many of whom need to be connected to to services so um i'm i'm still on the fence tonight and and would prefer we take more time but we'll see we'll see where we are as important um if i can make a few comments and then i see your hand

194miss white rs ms lewis and um i may go to miss lewis since she hasn't spoken yet and then we'll keep seeing where we are with this um i so much appreciate the concerns about confidentiality about the history of where research has come from i also had a great conversation and have had multiple conversations with dr sendak at duke who's developed pandemic response network which i've been in personally since april because i jump into all these apps trying to solve cobit right that's what i can do for my quarantine um i haven't solved it yet but but uh hopefully we'll get there um but you know when in my conversation with him today he he you know offered to to work with the abc collaborative to kind of do best practices starting here in durham

195and i thought that's the conversation that needs to be had is how can we make sure that these teams that are brilliant brilliant minds in durham are coming together they have resources from federal money to to pay for this and to actually um hopefully design something that's even as secure as we can make it so that people will trust it we'll use it and then won't be passing paper that teachers have to pass um so i know there's probably been some conversations in the past between those groups and and dr sendak's app is actually being tested now at student use learning center and it's also being used at a charter school here in durham and we probably should be quickly kind of using one at our learning center so we're using less paper and passing

196it around so i'm hoping that we might kind of table this and see when y'all can bring it back with that after that conversations going on um to really assure us that that we are doing the best that we can um with this going forward let me see i said that thomas lewis and let me see who else had thoughts and see who else needs to all right miss bike can i make some comments here sure all right if we all recall i was able to bring the two groups in this platform um we had a conversation with the abc collaborative and we also had a conversation with a dr sander with his group uh dr zendek was the one that's ideally came with for the app i think rights happened when he taught us

197that it's gonna cost dps uh additional fonts in order to make that app happen so for that reason abc collaborative start working on the app that's where we are today so my recommendation tonight is we're bringing it to you because we've been working with abc collaborative and then they also came up with this app that they really wanted to help us that's only on dps as well they're working with wake orange as well as chopper hill they're going to present the same mou to the other district as well i did not have anything against uh dr sanders it was just additional cost that we were not ready uh to be able to have that conversation with them so again it's your pleasure tonight we bring it to you because we really want to get to

198the point where we're feeling comfortable we're checking our list we're putting everything in place so that when we come for a plan b we're gonna have all this uh system in place so i'm gonna wait for your recommendation tonight uh if abc 11 i mean abc collaborative is not gonna work for you and you want us to go back in the drawing table with another group again i'm just gonna leave it up to you um to me it's just a matter of time uh we've been putting a lot of these things in place we've been working with these groups uh if you want me just to stop this collaboration with this group to go with another group i'm gonna follow your pleasure tonight miss lewis um so the first thing i was thinking about was

199the confidentiality um that was seen in the mou but again what i see is that is in the school system is destroyed within five years unless there's written consent from the school system to maintain it so when i look at confidentiality to me that resolves that piece of the information what i'm what one of my questions is is the app ready [Music] today when do we need it by so we will we would like to start um as miss uh buyers suggested we actually like to start using in our um learning centers um and including beginning um parent training staff training on the app next week this is one of the things that we talked about in the beginning when we're talking about being able to have a hybrid and bringing families back into plans

200b as a part of uh robust mitigation to make sure we're doing the things to make sure families are safe make sure students are safe temperature checks and then this step is being able to log it and do symptom check is that accurate that's correct as well as to feed into a dashboard that's right and then what i'm hearing is with the other group that um i guess it's two groups one independent and one that's associated with duke and i guess the question i'm hearing from the board members is i think that's what i heard earlier even if we were to execute this mou could there be something to bring these two groups together to collaborate is that when i'm here or am i hearing to do something separately either one or the other one

201do does it which one is that i think alexandra and natalie might have mentioned it let me go ahead and answer that particular question i work with book group my um ideal uh hope was pretty much for these two groups as they all duke doctors to be able to work together um it did not happen so they had their own internal conflicts which i didn't want to get into it okay so um for me and you know oh one last question did our attorneys look at this mou also barrington and smith yeah yes so and and the reason why it came to you this week was because we had they had darrington swift worked on some of the draft language and then we passed it through one more time to make sure that everything was

202good um before we send it out to the board so they have reviewed that okay i am um i would say just where i am at this point i am confident um with the fact that it's been vetted this is an organization that we have been working with since the beginning and the multiple times they've been coming to our organization our school system and talking with the different stakeholders that the app has developed i know that from the beginning i've been hearing we need this app we need robust mitigation this seems like a step towards that so i will be supporting this mou with also the understanding that we're still keeping the door open for additional collaborations to happen with the independent group thank you um ms vaidaris ms homstead then we'll see where we

203go um i i wanted to uh thank you all because i think that this is uh this is a board um i have a lot of respect for everybody and um what i do see with this is that you know it's true they're all duke researchers but there's a difference in terms of approach i have been spending an exorbitant amount of time of my time volunteering i don't make one cent from advocating for community health workers what i have seen is a network i've seen an approach that is very different i have yet to take part in the abc collaborative webinar i have not gotten uh the sense that all our families have been welcomed into those webinars they've been a couple of pta families the cabinet it's been very small like small groups get

204to meet with these collab abc collaborative that's not the case um with the way our communities have asked you know for information to be publicly available and for webinars to be open to everybody streamed online the way we do the dps way um with with uh since march i have spent time with the latinx um latin 19 group i've spent time with the immigrant refugee roundtable i've spent time in the cdc the cdc actually asked mark to present about building trust in communities and the reason why is because their research that they have done with pandemic response network is one thing that helped inform the app but then they moved away from research because they realized that there's a need to build trust with community members so what they started doing is meeting with folks

205meeting with uh grassroots organizers like la samia meeting with the centrist panel to date they have like eight different collaborations including together for resilient youth with dr wanda boone what what they have with that program is is community health workers there are community health workers as a part of the work that mark has been doing there's also uh response relief like access to food and being able to use you know interface and network all the different efforts we have dps parents who are empowered now as community health workers and uh my thing is that when we were talking about the data and and the mou what troubled me is that we're making the assertion that the the research team who devised this app you know is not uh effectively doing research with our with our

206with our family's data but here's the thing in that mou it says that they will analyze so they have statisticians that will do research with the data they're the ones crunching the numbers for us so they have access to our family's data and they have yet to show their face to our families in a way that is intentional that builds trust that lets them know what they're about and that they can hear the concerns from the moms that i hear all the time talking about we don't want to be lab rats we don't want you to do data without first doing the necessary outreach with us it's a very it's very different so i i mentioned there's like eight different groups that are uh working with communities community health workers there's the you know as

207natalie was mentioning there's services including testing one of the things that that community members have asked duke and they've asked it point blank is will you get us closer to testing universal testing and that is something that i know that mark's group has been working with um you know with insuring and and making those phone calls and making those connections um i see their faces in the latin 19 meeting i see their faces you know meeting with la semia i see their faces meeting with century spano uh which you know these are these are institutions that are serving marginalized community members right and so that takes that to me matters a lot for researchers to be accountable to community and in that sense providing an app that is that that has already been tested that

208is already it's active right now it's already being used um in the community and it's based on the fact that they started with a research project and the research project the pandemic response network is a research but they moved away from that understanding that there's a need to build trust with communities so um i i am really really grateful um i would say we need to be careful in terms of saying that the app is not going to give these researchers won't have access to it because they're going to be doing the crunching of the data they're the ones that are doing um you know the statisticians it's it's this research group statisticians that are going to be crunching our numbers so they do have access to our data um the consent will only be

209for additional research so we need to be really clear and intentional about how we are portraying an app that that that is based and tied to a research study um i welcome both things i say this is a time for both and you know i i think that this is uh there's a way that families who are very comfortable with uh having their their you know going through an app that is tied to research for them to do so but there should be choice we give choices for sports we give choices for everything else i think anything that holds our data our health data there should be a choice and i really appreciate just the consideration to have these groups come together and figure out something that will make our families feel comfortable if they

210choose to sign up for this research that's awesome i think that's the best way to do it when families really want to do it versus us you know setting it up in a way that is already leading in one direction thank you so much mr simpson yeah i want to thank you ms vaidaris for bringing those concerns and i think it is you know as a black woman who grew up here in north carolina i completely understand the the the um hesitation around research i think i want to re-emphasize some of the points that dr spencer and ms giovanni i appreciate like you all doing some of this work of this is a is a hosting site for our it is dps data it is not duke's data and and we are this is a

211whole site the app will be a host site and similar that and the other one would be for that data and that there is an extensive process that we need first if families want to insert the research study they have to click so families have to opt in it's not one of those opt out we opt you all in and if i'm understanding correctly that anytime they want to use it they need to come through us if and if they're we may ask them to say you know can you break down where the most symptomatic children were in this zip code but dps is making that ask and then they will send us that information but they will not be able to use it for their own research purposes unless a family has opted in

212is that correct dr spencer and i'm seeing a thumbs up exactly correct yes exactly and so i want to say that i'm ready to move that we approve the mou and it's based on those those pieces like i want to be cognizant of of that it feels important to me i think i also hear lots of opportunities that we can ask the abc collaborative to do more you know they are streaming their webinars on youtube can we figure out how they can make sure those webinars are actually in spanish also for some of our families to have access to it um i know that there's a lot of the webinars so far have been geared toward parent i mean so are not parents to our school staff and so wondering like when we're going to

213start moving into some of those webinars for parents how do we make sure that's accessible to to lots of folks so i i want to move that we go ahead and approve this and i want to thank you all for this robust conversation before sharing those concerns i hear them i'm like how do we make sure that we can do that and also continue some of this collaborative work with this team i'll second okay we have a motion on the floor i'm miss unstead and seconded by mr lee um let's see i don't see mr sears so i'm just looking to see if anyone has any further discussion or thoughts on this dr moving i don't know i heard your your feelings about not wanting to be put in the middle between these brilliant teams

214i what i'm good you're good okay um i i still do have some optimism that um duke people can come together to do something brilliant for durham and with durham um no matter how this vote goes and i think our voices have been heard on on those concerns everybody have any other discussion are you ready to vote i have another discussion because when it was uh mike lee's point about who designed the app you know who's designing for mark's group is the top infectious disease person becky smith so i just wanted to make sure that that that it wasn't paired as though we're we're dealing you know comparing uh as you mentioned now these are brilliant people but we have like a top infectious uh disease person so just wanted to make sure that i

215named that um you know who's designing the the other app and that there is a possibility to do both so um the way that mu is right now it's not opening anything for collaboration okay any further comments hearing none we will vote the motion on the floor mr lee aye um ms sumster aye running through my screen miss lewis hi um miss valley darus no mr raven hi mr sears no i vote no as well the motion passes four to three and that brings us to our academic and student support services item on school improvement plans everyone's favorite is that dr hardy good evening board member and dr mabinga miss smith if you could please pull up the presentation for school improvement plans and if you'll go forward one more slide please thank you so

216much tonight we are bringing for discussion and approval before the school board our durham public schools school improvement plan each of our 53 schools have had the opportunity to work with ms jamie stroud director of school innovation and our assistant superintendents who supervise all of our schools dr stacie stewart dr darlene ryan dr danielle jones and dr dan davis in addition to working with our assistant superintendents we've also worked very closely with our school improvement teams to develop thoughtful plans that are aligned to the legislative requirements but most importantly are reflective of the needs of our individual schools here in durham next slide please general statute 115c 105.27 outlines the specific requirements associated with the creation and approval of our school improvement plans these requirements also include the makeup of school improvement teams which you

217can see on the slide in front of you our principals a representative of our assistant principals instructional personnel instructional support teacher assistants parents consist of our school improvement team to ensure that we have collaboration in all voices to develop a comprehensive school improvement plan at this time i'm going to turn it over to miss jamie stroud to take us through the additional requirements ms stroud thank you dr hardy additional requirements include a school vote on the school improvement plan and school board approval of plans every two years the plans housed in nc star a statewide tool will reflect change over time as they are transparent and up-to-date reflections of each school's improvement efforts families and community members can log in with guest login access available on our district website to view components of school plans

218including their focus goals and team members next slide please and one more one after that please thank you [Music] the use of nc star as a school improvement management tool began in north carolina in 2011 since then the majority of districts use it for school improvement planning teams have been trained extensively in the use of the tool and individuals new to ncd star receive one-on-one training next slide please anyone can access a durham public school's school improvement plan by visiting our gps website as noted here to obtain the guest login to be entered on indostar.org next slide please school leaders and teams receive assistance and support from the assistant superintendents the district superview team and the office of school innovation which provides frequent individualized guidance to teams process managers and school leadership mid and end-of-year

219check-ins with each school include collaboration with leaders from curriculum instruction school innovation equity affairs federal programs and professional learning at this time i am going to turn it back over to dr hardy next slide please thank you miss stroud at this time this is before the board for discussion and approval the board will also as noted on the agenda as part of the public record in closed session the board will also review as part of our legislative requirements our school safety plans which has to be reviewed in closed session we are open for any questions that you may have and we also have our assistant superintendents that put that may be able to assist if there are specific questions for each for specific schools aspire thank you so much dr hardy and mrao i'm looking

220to see who might have questions for you this is always a an exciting time of year and i think it's probably a strange time of year to review coveted plans first for school improvement but knowing that our folks have worked really hard on these miss lewis i saw your hand yes i remember observing the board meetings when these plans were approved two years ago and the fun behind that but um to your point ms buyer um it's very interesting to see the plans now especially among covet and to see some schools really shift well with those plans i reviewed a lot of those plans and there's a lot of variations within them one of the things i do appreciate is the full team approach that a lot of the schools use where there's multiple school

221personnel involved there's really good delegation of the task there's diversity on the team including parent input but that varied from a lot of the different plans um and even some of them had student names listed i thought that was pretty powerful as well that there are students involved in the school improvement plan so i feel confident about um approving these plans i do have a couple of questions um because you know this is a blanket approval of the plans but not everything is you know perfected within each plant as you can expect within the different school communities so i do definitely see this as a living document and with these plants they are a compass for the schools one of the things that we talked about in the work session um is about equity affairs

222department being included in the plans can you elaborate more about how that department has been in the past a part of this process and what it will look like going forward we have a very collaborative approach in ensuring the voice of equity not just the involvement of dr bullock in our equity office but from the direction of our board and from our strategic plan to ensure that that lens is always prevalent and we hear that at every work session and every board meeting dr bullock collaborates regularly with members in academic services and members of the chief of staff's team to ensure that we are overlapping and being very thoughtful about the implementation of the work goals specifically aligned in terms of how we look and review and analyze data such as our academic data disaggregated

223by ethnicity as well as race as well as students who are impacted by poverty from dr spencer's office is often not only is dr bullock at the table but dr bullock dr maddox perry our assistant superintendents and other members of the academic service team working with our principals to ensure that there is a critical lens or ensuring each and every student has the opportunity to rise to their own academic potential as we continue our we have finished our initial review our initial review included representatives from academic services as well as our assistant superintendents with a thoughtful and reflective eye on what occurred last year knowing that we ended the year very differently be due to covet and really needed to be thoughtful as we thought about goals for the upcoming year and being mindful of

224our children and their social and emotional well-being we will be scheduling our mid-year reviews and our mid-year reviews are also a collaborative effort um and dr bullock and mr porter along with some of the team members that ms straus mentioned such as curriculum and instruction and our assistant superintendents will be part of that team and then other team members specific to goals and tasks that are part of that school so um if there are schools that are working in a particular area whether it's the arts advanced academics we'll make sure that those team members are part of that mid-year plan review plan to provide support to our schools i appreciate that um that i also pulled some reports i'm sorry just on there when you were asking about equity affairs i would like to point

225out that dr bullock is also working with um miss ingram's uh team um as well as others in operation so equity as dr hardy indicated um we definitely have a fully collaborative situation in durham public schools so that everyone works together across all departments thank you that integral integrated part is definitely integral part is very important for the work to be successful with the different layers that happen within for our students within the schools i appreciate um also that you're looking at the disaggregated data the racial demographics and closing the opportunity gap i did pull some of the um some of the eog data the beginning of the year data that was shared previously in comparison to some of the school school improvement plans and there was correlation again those that were more robust is

226the ones that you saw with the most growth what are we looking at now knowing that cobot has struck um we did not have eogs at the end of last year what metrics are being used showing academic growth with our students right now um some of them i saw some plans i didn't see some other ones so i don't want to dive too far off to the left but that's kind of where we at in creating academic measures at this point without having the testing you have um very graciously foreshadowed what will be forthcoming in our december work session with an update on priority one from our strategic plan um just briefly to share we do have a universal screener that is used in our schools and so there's some beginning of the year data

227from the universal screener that also has provided some information around the social and emotional needs of our students we also have beginning of the year which is a formative assessment that we use at the beginning of the year to help our teachers identify the the skills that our students have learned and mastered but also to identify any of those skills that they may not have mastered so our teachers can really use that as a diagnostic tool to help provide learning to our students in those particular areas our students our principals excuse me really have used those tools almost as a needs assessment to help develop the goals that they have and to make sure that even in the virtual space we're providing as much targeted and personalized instruction as possible and as much to the

228extent that we can while we remain on plan c i'll look to miss stroud and all of the great other doctors that are dr davis dr ryan dr stewart and dr jones if they have anything to add as they've been working very carefully with our schools on that beginning of the year data to ensure that they're really using that to provide support to our children i just simply like to say as it relates to the school improvement process that it is a continuous cycle and we are really working on with our principles to move from compliance to commitment with conviction as it relates to the school improvement process and then i just want to make one other comment thank you for that um dr stewart um i hear that about the integral work that's happening

229in equity affairs office i do want to just put out there how is it possible that a department of two that is focused on equity policy they also do kohlsbach and we are kings in some schools how are they able to uplift this programming equity policy committee that's happening they also have race equity champions in the schools professional development and the school improvement plans because this work is important and it has to be integral um this is the foundation of the work how is it that two are able to do this that's more of a rhetorical question i do hope that um in the future we can have conversation particularly as we consider budget needs for 2020 for 2122 to expand this important department and important work that's happening thank you miss lewis i definitely

230don't want to address the staffing but i i do want to note that part of dr bullock's previous work is has been to really work with district staff to ensure that our district staff are having that equity lens by no means does that replace the department or staff and the board has had such a commitment and focus on equity and so it is embedded you saw it within the policies that came out so it is really our job to try to make sure that as a school system we are interdependent on each other and really moving forward the initiatives that we believe and um his work and his training that he has provided to staff to make sure that that voice is carried through um has been extraordinarily helpful um in all of the work

231that occurs not just school improvement plans um and lifting up the voice of equity in addition to that um miss louis we are working on a strategic plan it's what equity is concerned with that we're going to have some targeted goals and outcomes as well with that if there's any questions regarding staffing i think once we have our strategies in place then we'll be able to address that this miss louis was that your last question no yeah that was it that was just one to um again i think the school improvement plans are well done again it's a blanket approach some need different work a lot of variations but very good across the board i love the team approach that's happening the integral work with our equity affairs department um you know as far as

232staffing questions are concerned my point is that there's a lot of work that's happening around equity within our strategic plan and just to be mindful um as it as it is it's a heavy lift and especially right now i know we're looking at the social emotional needs have approved funding for the tilt to support that work as well um just an overall big picture this is important thank you miss lewis i saw miss wyadar's hand yeah just showing just seconding um just a love for the equity department and the work that you're doing i'm particularly grateful for the professional development um and also opportunities um you know opportunities to continue that work um that continues continues to inform sid teams and you know having our staff be equity-minded and have a critical race theory um

233and just awareness of culture right awareness of cultural competence is super important to our district so just showing a lot of love and thank you dr bullock um even for exploring opportunities i know that there is an opportunity from uh you know about professional development with other institutions and just that sense of collaboration with uh other institutions and uh looking at equity i mean it's it's it's great work and i'm really proud proud to see you at dps foundation meetings i don't know he's everywhere so lots of love to the equity department thank you for all you do and you know the entire team thank you thank you all um i'm looking to find y'all in this crowd to see if anyone's got any other questions this is um our agenda for action this evening

234the approval of the school improvement plan approval second it's been moved by mr sears and second by ms umstead any further discussion before the vote if not i will start with mr lee hi miss homestead hi miss lewis hi miss valladares hi mr raven hi mr sears and i but i as well mike you look like you didn't hear him did you not hear him i didn't think i heard him either matt do you mind voting that again hi brilliant thank you it passes unanimously the school improvement plans are approved and this item 10 the summary of follow-up items i'm not sure if that's a doctor monk or a dr hardy it's me lucky yeah okay so lots of stuff tonight but all good elementary school f and future um construction projects going to make

235sure that they have the capability for sustainable features in the future we're going to check with the city on their plan for the snow hill road park um continue to address the connectivity issues that our students are experiencing including partnering with the city and county uh there was request to break down the charter impact and break it down by the school so that um we can display the community um how those different schools are growing um and then the board to work on a legislative agenda to send to the durham delegation for school funding i'm going to ask the abc collaborative to begin streaming their webinars so that parents can have access to it as well as in spanish and then reviewing the staffing associated with the office of equity fairs possibly before next year's

236but thank you so much for capturing all of that that is super important and um and i know it's ongoing work for you all and we appreciate that we ask a lot of our team in durham and that you um join us in this glorious work without focus towards equity with everything that you all do and we're all starving so i would welcome a motion to go into closed sessions for the reason stated on the agenda second second it's been moved by mr lee and seconded by several people including ms umstead and miss lewis that we go into closed session me oh are people leaving nope they're just moving on my screen okay um mr lee hi mr raven hi i'm sumstead hi mr sears hi miss lewis hi oh miss vadar hi can i

237vote i as well we are in closed session thank you [Music] go ahead thank you we are now back in open session dr mubinga thank you madam chair uh i've got two motions to make the first one i'm here to seek your approval for the personnel report as discussed in the closed session and the second one all right yeah let's do them i'm so moved again so move by miss buyer seconded by miss lewis uh we'll do another voice vote ms barr hi miss valliodarus hi miss lewis hi mr sears hi mr raven hi and mr lee hi i vote i as well passes unanimously dr mubinga madam chair the second motion for our safety plan as discussed at the closed session unmoved second removed by ms lewis second involvement inspire any discussion all right

238let's fire him it's validaris hi miss lewis hi mr sears hi mr raven hi mr lee hi and how about i as well that being said we are now adjourned thank you all so much have a good evening or good night good night everybody