Durham Public Schools Board of Education Monthly Meeting October 18, 2018 6:30 PM

001there we are let's see get that out of the way all right good evening everyone the Durham public schools Board of Education is now convened in its regular monthly meeting we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has come join us this evening for this meeting of the school board as well as our television viewers the purpose of this meeting is to inform our parents staff and constituents about what we're doing within the school system the administration will present information that will keep you up to date and ensure that our vision of success for every child is realized the board invites general public comments at the beginning of the board meeting and also comments before each agenda item the board members will listen carefully and consider the comments but do not engage in

002discussion with the speakers thank you for taking time to join us tonight mark Martha James Murr Ramirez will be our interpreter for tonight's meeting mr. Ramirez is an ESL teacher at Jordan High School and Durham School of the Arts she is available today to provide interpreting and Spanish to anyone who needs it Marta Ramirez estoy aqui para interpreter lay en espanol Kokichi persona que lo necesita que tenemos lo sorry phone aside for an opossum grass the second item on our agenda is a moment of silence and I will just say very simply in our moment of silence let's send the vibes for people to go vote early voting started yesterday and pleased if you've already voted go take someone to go vote and if you've already taken someone take someone else to go vote join

003me in a moment of silence thank you and go vote third item on our agenda is celebrations chip board members I'd to invite you down to join us at the red carpet we are going to be recognizing a lot of people tonight and I mean a lot of people this is the time of the evening when we recognize and thank outstanding staff students and partners who help make Durham public schools become even better the next day than it was the day before and our first celebration is the Durham public schools student of the month the student of the month program spotlight students who distinguished themselves with character and integrity who are active in their schools and community and who maintain excellent academic standards I'd like to ask Tanya Williams principal of Riverside High School to

004come up and introduce our next student of the month at my notes okay I am pleased to announce that Raymond Palmer come over here ray it's Riverside student of the month I want to make sure he's on the video so there is a reason Ray Palmer pulled off the feat of receiving he'll SOT Riverside High School's endorsement for both the prestigious Park and Morehead Kane scholarships this month and it's not some sort of the facto pick based on being ranked first in his class between the two of them these scholarships value five qualities leadership it's more than titles held you get things done scholarship thrives in an academically rigorous environment yet able to contribute to the community in other ways character maturity courage self-awareness and empathy service fines public service rewarding and participates regularly and

005physically bigger sportsmanship discipline and persistent and yes ray is all of these it's not easy to be a varsity baseball captain while taking 22 a peel 'evil courses and making a's in all of them [Applause] while in the PLTW program which is one of the most rigorous courses of study in North Carolina it's not easy to openly embrace republican party values in a democratic stronghold it's not easy to be a junior student who coordinates a debate between mayoral candidates at one's high school ray never takes the easy path and all too often we overlook what his kind of achievements demand how many high school students seek out their teachers for reading lists how many will take engineering classes even though they're interested in a career in government how many earnestly seek the input company and

006opinions of people with whom they don't see an eye-to-eye ray reconciles what appears to be a paradoxical elements with ease and remains open-mindedly convinced that we will find solutions to our most complex problems his persona integrates personal ambition with an appetite to understand this is one reflective and courageous young man in a world where it's easy to be critical cynical and despairing he is none of those he strives to be analytical and objective to lead through active listening and to seek consensus did I mention that Ray is a leader Ray's the student leader and organizer of the Young Republicans Club at Riverside and through that work has partnered with the Black Student Union in order to make a difference at our school in addition to his involvement at Riverside Ray is also engaged in the

007community at large he is a member of the Durham Youth Commission chairman of the North Carolina teenage Republicans organization he was selected by Durham City Council to serve as a youth representative on the newly created Durham city partners participatory budgeting steering committee appointed by Governor Cooper's administration to serve as a youth representatives on the Youth Council he pays for governor Cooper last year he pays for senator Woodard and the NC Senate this year and he works with kids voting Durham as a youth moderator for municipal forms and as a precinct leader for KVD mock elections Rae does a lot and still has the highest GPA he's first in his class so Rae is committed to making a difference in the public school that he chose to be a part of and in the state where

008he grew up to me he exemplifies all the best of what not just DPS but Durham itself is diverse tolerant and optimistic about the future so please join me in congratulating Ray Palmer as Riverside chosen student of the month everyone um my name is Ray Palmer thank you so much for being here tonight Miss Williams thank you so much for the kind words I just like to say thank you to Durham public schools uh Board of Education members superintendent Lubanga and everyone else here um Durham public schools is truly it's truly amazing I'm it it's offered me all the opportunities I'm that anyone could ever hope for um I can tell that miss Williams and Board of Education as well as everyone in the Durham public school system truly cares about all the students in

009Durham and wants what's best for them not just now but in the future so I just like to say I've been very blessed to be in Durham and go through the Durham Public Schools system for the past four years and thank you so much ray is your where's your family come on come on up please [Applause] Durham public schools student of the month we have to co instructional assistants of the year in Durham public schools and one of whom you met last month mr. Larry Barnes from Durham School of the Arts I would now I'd like to ask Miss Karen Kellett principal at Glenn Elementary to come up and introduce our remaining instructional assistant of the month excuse me of the year good evening school board members CPS staff and community members this evening is

010definitely a cause for celebration for one of our staff members Danielle gray I need to tell you a little bit about Danielle gray in our very first meeting because tonight is not just one celebration miss grey is the Durham public schools CO instructional assistant of the year we have a little bit more to celebrate along with that so I need to share this story the first time I met miss gray was as I was transitioning over to become the principal of Glenn Elementary I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with every single staff member and at that time Miss gray was an instructional assistant it was really evident even in a 15-minute conversation that she knows our students that she knows what it means to use data to drive instruction that she was

011authentically engaged with our students and our families and our community and I continue to think of her even after she left the room that kind of personalities sort of sticks with you so tonight we celebrate all those wonderful attributes that's why she was instructional assistant of the year right but I would be really really roomy if I didn't take this opportunity to share with you we've pushed her out of the nest a little bit that's one great thing about restart she's a teacher at Glenn now and she is incredible so I have to say to you please meet Daniel gray she is the instructional assistant of the year and she is an awesome teacher at Glen now thank you [Applause] tonight that the be our guests to dinner about which more later we talked a

012lot about sustaining our partnerships and our relationships and taking advantage of the resources in our community to ignite the limitless potential of our children and for a number of years we have had a sustained valuable partner in fidelity investments and I would like to invite Mary Griffith our director of marketing and community engagement to come and introduce representatives from fidelity and to talk about how they expanded their relationship with us this year thank you thank you Board of Ed dr. ma bengta it's both my pleasure and honor to recognize our faithful DPS partner fidelity investments the September transformation days at Lowe's growth marked nine years that fidelity has remained committed to enhancing the school's needs and the outdoor spaces at the school and this year they expanded this and continued this collaboration @wg Pearson Elementary

013School which is a magnet feeder to Lowe's Grove middle school and I have to say that over the 15 years in education I've never in my life witnessed such commitment by volunteers the spirit of kindness and of giving was moving to anyone who was able to attend and I see the board members nodding I know that Natalie and Mike and Xavier and Steve all witnessed this work and at Lowe's Grove this work was in the rain but down for that the volunteers stayed out there committed to to putting forth the work to transform collaborate that and work on that campus so I want to recognize the leadership at both of those schools for having the vision to articulate their needs and work collaboratively with fidelity dr. Mitchell coach we're miss Davis they're all in the

014back and they're not going to make a lot of noise but they made amazing connections and they're phenomenal leaders who have connected both the curriculum to the needs of all students at their school and when I say all students I mean all students so they deserve a round of applause so please include them before we leave : she's not here but I also want to recognize Miss Boykin the principle of WG Pearson who expanded this partnership along with her fifth grade science teacher mr. with Mitch Wilson and Erika Lee the fifth grade math teacher who spearheaded the plans for the outdoor space @wg person we are grateful for their insight in their vision on this effort so again this initiative was a huge undertaking organized by mazing team has spent many months prior to the

015actual transformation days so please allow me to thank and introduce miss Kristin Kristin Cavallari and Kristin Thompson who are here on behalf of fidelity and who worked tirelessly and very hard both days at both schools and thank you for inviting us to your meeting today at fidelity community service and giving back to the communities in which we live and work is ingrained in our culture and as Mary had mentioned this is something that our volunteers are extremely passionate about so to have this partnership with Lowe's growth for the last nine years has been incredible we've been able to see them grow and change the most significant growth I think is seen their test scores especially their science scores go up being able to also see the change in culture and their students attitudes towards learning

016and as icing on the cake we got to work with WG Pearson this year for transformation Day which is very exciting so thank you for your continued support and we hope to continue to influence this great district for all these students [Applause] and to conclude our celebrations for the evening our board is going to recognize our guests at our be our guests program this evening good evening one of the great pleasures for the the board is monthly we're able to meet with parents and representatives from the community to discuss their experience with the school system it just happens to be a coincidence that we also get to eat an amazing meal prepared by the northern high school culinary program so this evening oh we we met we discussed what it takes the the resources that

017it will take in this community to meet the the mission of the school system to ignite limitless potential oh it's for the for the board members it's a great opportunity to hear from the community from parents about their thoughts on what this can mean so if you would tonight join me and in thanking the parents and community representatives what I'm gonna do is call first the the parents from the schools to come up in and walk the red carpet and then I'll like to name the organization's as well and ask you to come up something that I can actually read them so first if the parents from from giftings and Creekside could come on up [Applause] and then we had representatives from a number of social services organizations that work with us in the serving

018the the youth of Durham and so if you would come on up from though from organizations the Alliance Behavioral Health Care Durham County social services Durham's partnership for children the movement of youth mentor North Carolina the East our own children's initiatives the beautiful project the Armstrong Center for Hope communities and schools of darlin range Family Center village of wisdom United Way of the greater Triangle [Applause] family's moving forward rebound and the Center for Child and Family Health [Applause] thanks to all of you and that concludes the celebrations portion of our evening thank you we're settling back down I did want to say really quickly about for the fidelity partnership I had a great time out there at Lowe's Grove and WG Pearson it's unbelievable the things that they've been doing out there for the last

019nine years and I've said it a couple times and I'd say it I'll say it again today I've told a few people that you know when you're looking at transforming a school when you're making changes to the school there are a lot of paths and how to do that a lot of paths well fidelity is doing is more like a highway what they've done they've been able to solidify this process and making improvements in our schools in Lowe's Grove and now they're starting to do it at WG Pearson and we are proud to be a part of their initiative and their excitement in doing that so if you have an opportunity to go by Lowe's grow or WG Pearson and see what they did and then go back to your company and tell them you

020want to do that for a school in Durham we'd appreciate that so all right let's see what we got here the next item on our agenda is a superintendent update I'll turn it over to dr. my Banga good evening mr. chairman and members of the board it has been a good month for their own public schools and I wanted to share a few celebrations with you I want to give you a preview of something we will be able to announce soon a major funder will be providing us with a grant to create a skill trade academy within one of our schools as you know we expect academic excellence for all our students whether they plan to are well in college and least in military service or go straight to into employment after graduation we want

021to prepare every student for success no matter their chosen path we excited to be able to announce the details very soon as you know we could manage attention of excellence teachers and staff is one of our priorities in our strategic plan we excited about the initial responses to one of one of those objectives our tier 2 teacher programs we have selected the first code of instructional system for our partnership with North Carolina Central University and we are looking forward to seeing them grow professionally in service to our students in recognition that we are expecting high traffic at our 2021 schools which function as polling sites in the midterm elections we will be opening on a two-hour delay on Election Day November 6 we hope this adjustment in our schedules will help our students as well

022as well as our register 18 year old student participate in this civic duty fun lane mr. chairman Board of Education I want to share that we will be presenting our changes to our inclement weather procedures at your next work session in November we had the opportunity to put some of these changes into practice Ellen with the arrival of our can Michael I'm pleased with our timely responses but I'm disappointed that we have had so many inclement weather days already the school year but we adjusting our calendars and our schools are ensuring that our student maintain their curriculum of momentum thank you and we look forward to a great academic year as we're wrapping up our first quarter Thank You mr. chairman thank you doctor my Banga all right next item on our agenda is agenda

023review and approval have any updates for the agenda mr. chair um many and I have talked and would like to go ahead and remove item 13b until further discussion with our attorney all right gang 13b the resolution okay are there any other updates to the to the agenda hearing none I'll accept a motion to approve I moved moved to approve the agenda with a min amendments second been moved and properly seconded that we approve the agenda the amended agenda any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please she's the same sign passes unanimously in this set next item on the agenda is general public comment for general public comment we have 12 people signed up still three minutes think they'll three minutes all right so will ya have three minutes but you

024can be shorter if you like yeah we won't we won't be upset about that all right the the first speaker first and second speaker the first one is a pastor to value Sylvester Williams and then Elijah King I am pensive Esther Williams when my daughters in high school she brought him a textbook in the section the textbook on evolution there was a caption that said this was the first African woman and above the capture what the above the caption was a picture of a monkey the same students that were in the class was my daughter are now teaching students the racist teaching of evolution negatively affected black children then and contains to negatively affect affect black children now dr. Isaac V Manley now deceased have retired from medical and surgical practice from UNC Chapel Hill

025and haven't earned his MD from Harvard Medical School told me that all the drones on evolution are cartoons that evolution is not science and offered a book called God made dr. Jinga Harrison a psychiatrist to graduate from Duke University in an article published in The Herald Sun stated that evolution is the backbone of racism dr. Anita Hawkins Durham school psychologists are gave me this quote on this theory that men neglect to remember is unproven suggests that we are descendants of monkeys apes by way of Lucy as modern man becomes more upright his skin color and ethnic features have evolved to resemble more Caucasian well on the surface such images may not seem problematic however implicit bias and stereotypes are often internalized through such repeated exposures as they relate to students of color have any negative

026self perception and Caucasian students developing beliefs and engaging in actions that lead to the maintenance of a systemic racism that continues to marginalize into Maine students of color and thus perpetuating the cycle research has suggested that the effects of Dillman systemic racism has an impact on student's ability to learn their behavior and result in consequences of discipline and likely contributes to the academic achievement gap in various ways why should a novel norwich be made to feel inferior simply because a racist face that he cannot help the way the child was born our children deserve better we must not just start with an insert or removing a few textbooks we must stop the teaching of racism which is what evolution is racism is systemic and unless we eliminate one of the roots root causes which is

027evolution we will continue to foster a climate of racial polarization and hatred and also penalize minority students from being the best they can be thank you and I hope you really pay attention to what I will say any thank you thank you Pastor Williams Elijah King and then oh yeah oh yeah I'm great how are you guys that thing scared me how are you guys I'm so tonight I want to talk about a restorative justice but first I want to start off with the meaning of the school the school is supposed to be a place where kids like me and the people in the front row can forget or use the experiences they have outside inside to share with others and learn from others and you know let others learn from them you know when

028I look around this room I see a great group of people parents and students alike and they are what gives you the power you have therefore they should be treated with the best education or as they would say in the insurance industry the premium plan and I look around this room I see amazing parents especially minority ones who should not have to worry about if my child will be mistreated by his teacher today or if my child will be treated lesser than or even will my child just receive the basic education I also see kids who love school like myself and Ray Palmer he just honored and are the future of our city our country our nation and our world and Durham is growing and we are it's a perfect contributor for these our first

029priority shouldn't be just implementing different things and you know saying we're gonna do things but not doing it our first priority should be our kids like myself the question is are you treating them sorry you dream them like first priority are you treating them like they have the premium plan of education instead of punishing students for small things with big punishment like suspensions at a school or even in school in which by the way ruins them psychologically we have to implement restorative justice programs and I'm telling you we just got one at Riverside High School and I have heard some amazing stories about kids that go through it and I'm telling you it works you know even though I'm considered one of good kids by the teachers and they're considered by kids by the teachers

030I can't put my foot in their shoe but that's because I can't put my foot in their shear because it doesn't fit I can put my toe in their I've heard their stories and it kind of angers me being one of their fellow students you know one of their friends because I know I can do something about it teachers say I'm the good kid so the teachers can listen to me and I know much of you on this board right here and I know you guys are great and moral people and I know that you guys would love to see more things like this on because insolence suspensions and aesculus suspensions just teaches our kids that no one really cares you know as long as we just push them to the side their problem is

031solved and so if we keep pushing them to the side they're just gonna think oh there's no one's there for us you know and like I said schools are a place where you can put those things aside what society thinks of you assign what police officers think of you assign what the government thinks of you aside and they can come and you know no matter their race their gender their sexuality or the religion they can come and get a premium education and learn so thank you for your help you thank you so much [Applause] jacquelina Urbano is going to be after Misha booth good evening Amaya shabu and I am the consulting manager for village of wisdom so we are a fairly new not local nonprofit here in Durham and the work that we do

032is at the end of the day is to close the achievement gap for all students with particular attention to our black and latina families so we do that really in three ways so one of the things that we do is we really leverage the cultural assets of our black families and our families of color we also do consulting work and tool development so I was invited to dinner this evening I was part of be your guest or be our guest thank you Oh for that and at that dinner we've got an opportunity to talk about the strategic plan for Durham public schools so that's what I really want to address because we've developed village of wisdom in conjunction with some of our local nonprofit partners like we are which is working to extend anti-racist education

033and also some national partners we have partnerships with CDFI from all over the country as well as digital data visualization partners right that's obviously not me but we're all working together to be able to create a tool and so one of the tools that we've created we've created lots of tools already tools that parents can access now tools that schools and teachers and school leaders can access now but one of the tools that we've recently developed is a racial equity matrix and so first and foremost it's an assessment tool this tool is designed to generate a school's racial equity scorecard or report card so we're all really focused around academic achievement but we know that the academic achievement gap is related in large part to racial inequities until we begin to address that we're not

034really gonna see a closure and the academic achievement gap so we've created this matrix that takes looks at you know ten of the broadest categories and you all have outlined some of those in your priorities so academic achievement like those your priority number one our priority number one is to stop doing harm to children of color but they do align very well with the other priorities so when you talk about academic achievement we talk about culturally relevant pedagogy culturally responsive pedagogy so these students black and Latino X families begin to see themselves in the curriculum that's being taught but it's also being reflected by the staff that you all are hiring right so we we need to have more staff of color and I know that's another one of your priorities not just staff of

035color though but we want staff of color who have or racial equity lens it's not just enough to have staff of color so that sounds like that was my time but I would love for you all to check out the work that we do and inquire about this racial equity tool like I said we are working across the nation with this tool and it's an opportunity not only for schools to be reflective of their racial equity policies across accountability and accountability and support and incentives but also it will begin to move schools to actually adopt a more racially just policy curriculum parent engagement so anyway I appreciate your time thank you chairman Lee I know we don't normally respond but I do want to let I know that dr. Nakia Hardy is meeting with dr.

036William Jackson regarding the tools that you just spoke of so we are on Oh yomo comunidade color venimos happy era causa de los padres kaki presenters e na mesquita always early when a star this yes de Aquila signora delle Tora Vienna compartir la experiencia persona my name is Jacqueline or pano and from the community of color we come to support the cause of parents who are here and mrs. della Torre wants to explain wants to share a personal experience of hers when established numerous de la junta direct Eva mean hombres and revelatory yo tengo tres hijo tennis escuelas públicas a durham m prime area en la seconde r en la prepa mio Carrillo algo con mijos la seconde area que quiero compartir con todos ustedes este año el few acceptable nez con la magnae el

037esta muy contento llegar La Casa Felice NECA Mendte como el f y como ella fue tiene SI tiene diaz planos idea regulares como todos yo al que todos yo estoy muy Contenta con la escuela so i pv zk l de Velde estar en una clase regular as he threesome - mega mera naam una reunión perez flick are me came alone I'm here our tres Cuellar case des koala magnin no puede probar los servicios que necesita poor kid or middle school middle school did I want to share with you so this year he was accepted in a magnet school he's very happy he comes home happy telling me how he went how it went he has good days and regular days just like anybody else and I'm very happy that he's in that school his IEP

038says that he is supposed to be in a regular class three weeks ago they called me to a meeting to explain to me that they're going to send him to a different school that that magnet school cannot provide the services that he needs porque estoy aqui por que quiero que si si quieren que las escuelas magnet is splittin and los padres and Nina's consider this a specialist que no todas tienen personal para para estos Nino's de semana de no poder de salmonela nope Andre Moses nominees en los or tails es muy difícil receivers este tipo de noticias de un momento al otro y no saber que hacer para apoyar a mijo gracias why am I here I'm here to ask that you make sure that the magnet schools explain to parents with of children with

039special needs that not all of them have the staff to support all of those children and if that's the case then we won't put their names in the lottery for the schools because it's very difficult to receive these kinds of news just from you know one minute to the next and not know what to do is support my child thank you we need to okay they're gonna follow up yeah Jessica uber and then we'll have Rita Beecher okay good evening it's my see all of you guys again and I'll be talking about providing a safer school environment for each student so having better racial representation that kind of matches the demographic of students and also the teachers would be so beneficial because often students can go to their teachers because for example a white teacher

040won't understand the struggles or can't relate to what a black child is going through which often creates a divide and disconnect between the teacher incident okay so next all teachers should be required to take implicit bias test as most teachers aren't aware of the biases that they have towards different racial groups and this will make help them make better judgement calls when it comes to students of different racism which helps reduce the suspension rate is often disproportionately black students and hopefully help end the school-to-prison pipeline okay so also it's so frustrating when you guys all come into my school and the principal is usually like leading the tour because I have so many concerns and so many students have concerns but usually the principals like the last person to express the concerns that the student

041needs so there should be a platform that allows students to voice their concerns as the again the principal would be the last person to express what problems the school is going to okay so last coming from an A+ rating school there are a lot of things that my school doesn't really suffice when it comes to this rating as many students in my school struggle to make it through their second year of college and this is simply because my school doesn't really focus on it as much because it doesn't contribute to the A+ rating that you're trying to contribute that is trying to achieve them so they often don't really focus on the college-ready aspect of the students our leader which often allows students to go into college unprepared and again creating a higher dropout rate

042so thank you again so much for listening I hope that you take what I said into consideration as many as well as other people as well because often adults have a way of making decisions for the youth or for like children without really making decisions on our behalf of students without knowing what we want and what we need and I hope that again you guys take into consideration our experience ISM and while we see that our school needs and I hope each of you have a good night thank you good evening my name is Rita Camacho and I'm a student I'm a senior at City of Medicine Academy and I'm also dual enrolled at Durham Technical Community College so I've been a part of DPS all of my educational life so far and when I

043was asked what would make DPS better for a student three things came to mind and one is the mental aspects of students the second is having a public hearing and the third or other students concerns from a student's point of view I have seen and experienced the increase of stress within my school and other schools and having a mental health day or even a conversation built into the classrooms with how to deal with stress and who to go to and who to turn to and I just having the teachers really understand giving thirty minutes of homework for one class and having five other classes starts to add up and still being able to be in sports and other activities that you find as fun and also with family concerns that other people have outside of

044school it's really hard for a student to balance all of those and the second thing is I am in the process of creating a public hearing for students in DPS where they will have a better connection to City Council the county commissioner and you guys the Board of Education and it basically will be where the students can have a voice and basically explain their concerns with the things that they see around their school and how they can fix that and an opportunity for the students to talk about it in a safe environment where they don't have to feel worried about being ridiculed by their teachers or the principal or other people and with that public hearing there will also be a website where undocumented students and people who find it hard to have scholarships can

045go on there to find scholarships and other resources here in Durham it's a way to connect the youth with the city because I feel like there's a really big disconnect especially with the Board of Education a lot of people can't come to these board meetings due to family reasons transportation and other things and that's one of the big things that I'm in the process of doing and my last thing is other students concerns there are its being hard with maintaining the relationship when a new teacher comes in with the students who are already there it hinders their ability to be in a good learning environment because the teacher will tend to and the principal of certain schools will tend to be on the same page and not really listen to the students concerns or when

046a student has a problem with the teacher and I think a good solution to that is having some time to get to know the teacher maybe having like a little lunch sit-down or maybe your breakfast moment where they can just really talk to the teacher and get to know the teacher and the teacher can get to know the students I would like to thank the board and for everyone else who's here today for letting me speak thank you the next speaker is Maddie Lory and then Javon you Lewis good evening ladies and gentlemen and fellow board members I'm Madeleine Lory with the and I'm serving us a youth representative of the youth steering committee which is an organization that aims to involve public school students and the conversation regarding education and policy and today I

047would like to make a statement emphasizing and addressing and also reiterating some of the prior previous and previous statements that were made regarding the disparities between the race of teachers and their students and the academic achievement gap among students of different races and ethnicities as well so as you all know much of the durham public school system is currently composed of students of color meaning students of the African American or Latin blood next communities yet only a small portion of the teachers and the durham public school system are persons of color now according to published recent research this lack of representation in the demographic makeup of teachers is harming youth because students of color don't have access to teachers that can provide more culturally relevant teaching and can better understand the situations that the students

048face so I believe that by making more of an effort to recruit african-american and Latinas teachers will translate into a higher test score and higher achievement test score a higher achievement among populations of color which would thus contribute to the closure of the academic achievement gap thank you for listening to my statements today thank you [Applause] good evening I am Giovanni Lewis and I'm here representing Durham Committee on the affairs of black people as the Education Committee chair over the past couple of years we've hosted a couple of black parent engagement workshops black parent empowerment workshops with the support of village of wisdom we are impact parents of african-american children we wanted to hear from black parents what their individual and collective concerns were and have been with their students in Durham public schools we

049wanted parents to have a voice and come together collectively to deal with the disparities that our children are faced with with that the new leadership that came in brought a strategic plan bringing the community together with a strategic plan we took the collective data the qualitative data of over a hundred parents who participated in these empowerment workshops and connected it to the data I am happy to say that over the 80 plus comments suggestions and concerns that came out of these workshops was connected to each goal strategy and priority that you all have listed we built relationships with over 100 parents to collect this information one of the goals that had the most input was priority for strengthening school family and community engagement some of the comments had been come outside of the school meet

050us in the community have more workshops like this believe in my child engagement has been occurring engagement will continue to occur but that engagement looks different for different people and this is what I call the iceberg effect with this goal and then priority looks really good on paper and it's a lot of good intentions behind it but how do we make sure that what lies beneath is that the intentionality the genuineness the true partnership those collaborations are really happening the acceptance of inclusivity and a growth mindset who is who is executing these priorities what resources are available to make sure it's done well and if it's not within the school can we resource outsource to get the resources to get a racial equity matrix happening the intense discussion came around priority number one academic success

051for our children some of the comments were cultural responsiveness eliminate bias testing we know that the test scores for african-american students was raised by three percent this past year that's good but we want double-digit growth towards proficiency as attributed in the plan but it's not disaggregated we know teachers are doing their best the district is aligning curriculum and strategies but again we have to make sure there's a culture and climate conducive for parents to be engaged and whether a parent chooses not to or cannot for whatever reason be engaged we can't throw that child away either we stand in the gaps for those parents we are there for those children we must pull together and support the whole child we are here for our children and others to stand in the gap none should be

052without proficiency in the meantime it's the last thing I want to say as much as we can change and improve the system and provide resources for those economically disadvantaged and those discriminated against with implicit bias for all children of color we must focus our energies here is not us against them parents against teacher it is us against structural racism that persists within a system from this DPS system we need transparency the plan for intentional execution and accountability all of this is just a piece of paper without having allocated resources in the right places to get better results for our kids and equity in every decision that's being made thank you thank you okay our next speaker is dr. Rhonda Taylor Bullock that was the first time I got to call her that officially good evening

053and he said I'm not a tailor Bullock I'm also the co-founder and director of we are which stands for working to extend anti-racist education and we are was a co-sponsor of the black parent empowerment workshop and so as part of my role at the meeting I worked with priority three which is related to HR and so I just wanted to highlight a few of the takeaways and major concerns that black parents shared at this meeting so for one black parents talked about the distribution of black teachers because the recruitment of black teachers isn't a specific goal but it is talked about in one of the strategies but we just wanted to highlight that and talk about how sometimes there are concentrations of black teachers at certain schools and not as much at others and so

054one parent in particular shared a story and this is not an exact quote and that's close to it but she talked about how her young black child didn't have a black teacher until the child was in third or fourth grade and how in a lot of people have already echoed the importance of having teachers who look like you in front of you and I think that's something that we should think about and after looking at the numbers and seeing is this a place for growth and what schools specifically because it may not be district-wide it may be certain schools that need the increase in black teachers another suggestion was to survey the black teachers specifically to get feedback on their experiences and I would say black and brown teachers but we don't really have that

055many black and brown teachers but for those who are present definitely their voices need to be heard two comments were shared about black teachers feeling undervalued and so they're leaving and going to other districts and plant and taking on other roles so that they can feel valued as a teacher of color and third was to analyze the number of teachers who are teaching core academic classes honors classes AP and IB courses because some parents felt that there was not a fair distribution of black teachers teaching some of those core academic classes especially when you think about the maths and if you read some of the research and data related to that it's really important that kids of color who already coming in and with as having negatively experience at things from the system telling them

056they're not math and science type people that's not for you it's really important to have educators and all core classes but also thinking about math and science and well as well so looking at specifically the distribution the racial demographic distribution of those core classes in looking at is this another place for growth and some of the students have already talked about them to make sure that we're working towards parity that the population in the school is represented in the population of the teachers and because I'm a critical race scholar and I talked about as a critical race scholar we talked about moving making what's invisible visible and often times and talking about the under-representation of teachers of color we don't say and this is this is for us to sit with discomfort of this we

057don't talk about that white teachers are overrepresented as far as the numbers are concerned in our district that's not saying that white teachers are bad teachers that's not saying that they're not some amazing hard-working anti-racist social justice minded educators in our district so there's no if taken away from our white teachers but looking at numbers looking at parity looking at representation there is an over representation there will need to be more thoughtful about how are we creating parity where our student demographics are also reflected in our teacher demographics thank you thank you Danielle Caldwell RV Hinton third good evening I'm here today not only as a pack member but as a parent of two DPS graduates and a current tenth grader at Jordan high school my experience at DPS has been both good and both

058bad so when I come here and I speak about equity I speak from a lens of having really good teacher for my students who were white like dr. Bullock said and having difficult struggles for teachers who have been african-american so when I come here and I talk to you about teacher training I'm really talking about cultural competence because I feel like across the board cultural competence training needs to be happening not only for our white teachers but also for our african-american teachers so we can have african-american teachers that do not support our children and do not see their giftings and speaking of giftings we need to look at our children across the board we need to look at the whole child not just someone who's academically gifted and being celebrated for that strength but also

059for their artistic create creativity for their athletic ability for public speaking so we need to be able to celebrate our children and look to them for their giftings so when we talk about equity and cultural competence there's a wide range that we need to look to to meet the needs of our children so I want to thank you number one for creating a position of cultural equity office in DPS that's the first step but I encourage you to go further in your training for your teachers not only that to learn how to de-escalate some of these situations because some of the teachers are good teachers but they don't understand that some of the problems that they see are not really problems at all they're they're things that can be de-escalated with a simple Johnny didn't

060eat today you know there might be problems at home so across the board I would say please continue in the path that you've gone but continue to train your teachers invest in that as well as hiring more teachers of color thank you thank you [Applause] good evening again my name is dr. Harvey in the third and I went to I was part of the the meeting that mrs. Lewis talked about earlier today and I want to kind of comment and contextualize some of the comments that the parents had around priority number one which is the academic achievement one and so I was summarizing in three words representation rigor and relevancy so in terms of representation there's a concern that the minds the ideas the experiences of african-american students are not being included in the curriculum

061so that's that cultural stuff that we've been hearing about so we want to make sure that books are being reviewed so that the content is right we want to make sure that teachers are trained so that they have the competencies to every t6 students in terms of rigor in the curriculum we want to make sure that the students are identified early along the processes and that multiple intelligences are considered in terms of looking at gifted students so there's a dis representation in honors courses and AP classes when it comes to students of color so we think that that would help contribute to the academic success and last is a question of relevancy meaning what the information that our students are learning in the schools that they can actually use it so our students do want

062our parents do want vocational program and I heard about PLT today Project Lead the Way that's engineering by the same token there's a way to include all students and some type of vocational programming that is relevant for them when they leave there's a concern that students who do take vocational routes or leaving with degrees that they cannot use that they're not able to take the certificates and go into higher education with them and that employers are not valuing certain things so there's some concerns that the work around vocational education be made rigorous and the stigmas are changed around that so if I could just summarize it once again representation in the curriculum rigor that fits the experiences other people and relevancy information that can use moving forward their parents think of those three things would

063be there USC academic success thank you thank you yes Stephanie Hopkins everybody I'm a little nervous though bare with them in there no my name is Stephanie and I'm here as the Durham resident a recent college graduate an older sister and as someone who hopes to have kids one day I'm here on behalf of the Durham chapter of black youth project which is a national organization composed of 18 to 35 year olds across the state committed to building black futures one thing the Durham chapter feels strongly about is the decriminalization of blackness and the radical inclusivity we hope that any restorative justice programs implemented in Durham public schools consider the experiences of black children in this district and across the country let's think about what's in the news let's think about the relationship between black

064people and law enforcement consider what we know about the school to Prison Pipeline consider those students who don't get their basic needs met and are instead pushed into the criminal justice system let's think about the potential of these students let's talk about what would truly support the needs of dps students let Durham public schools be an example of what public schools can look like without the need of law enforcement in our schools thank you for your time thank you our next agenda item is the brief overview of free resources from the Department of Water Management they're coming in now yep yeah come on oh I'm sorry I'm sorry while they're coming up I skip right over that we have to approve the Board of Education minutes for September 20th 2018 our previous meeting move approval

065of minutes from September 20th second the mood in properly second we approved the Board of Education meeting minutes from September 20th 2018 all in favor say aye the same sign passes unanimously now the brief overview of free resources from the Department of Water Management thank you I love this nameplate I'm gonna use it so thanks for allowing me the time to talk to you I'm with the Department of Water Management and I'm a water efficiency and conservation analyst and a big part of my job is doing outreach and education for our residents and a big chunk of that is at public schools so as a way to sort of try a new avenue of reaching our teachers and our students I thought I would come and just give you an idea of what we do

066and hopefully that will encourage folks to kind of reach out we have so much to offer I've kind of included in a package for each of you some of the things that we've got going on the big thing is the poster contest that's coming up we do that every year kids can win money kids love it have included the North Carolina essential standards that correlate with those activities so teachers should be pretty motivated it's for K through 8 so and if they have any if they want to incorporate lesson plans into their poster contour their poster making in their classrooms we'd be happy to come out and do in-class presentations so we do that come to schools we'll do you know 30 minutes an hour-long presentation if you'd like we have activity books lots of

067materials we have a lending library as well as we could rent out our activities as well to teachers and it's totally free we also just wrapped up a video contest for high schoolers they could also win Visa gift cards through that and Andy has worked on a curriculum for teachers to present in the classroom as well that will be correlated as well with the standards for North Carolina and we also have a fix a leak program for middle schoolers and that's totally correlated sees huge curriculum for middle school when we love to partner with a middle school to kind of pilot that program it's kind of weeks a couple weeks worth of curriculum for them so if you have any ideas or if you know a little school that might be of interest we would

068love to kind of pilot that and be at like pretty much at their win so if they want us to come in and help them with things or walk them through the program we'd be happy to do that other than that I'm trying to think there's anything else normally we offer tours of our waste water and our drinking water treatment facilities but they're under construction we still offer presentations to kind of talk about that one of the highlights of our program is a enviros cape model which may be familiar to some folks who are in education but it's kind of a small scale model of the drinking water and wastewater treatment process and kids love that it's all made with edible things it looks like a tiny town and they like the wastewater it looks

069like it looks really gross but it's just cocoa powder and rice so kids really enjoy that those we can tailor that to a lot of Ages so most of our programs do that list that I gave you have a specific grade level that they're kind of targeted for but things can easily be tailored to other ages and we can also provide all the essential standards that would be applicable for those programs for the teachers so a lot of times I've been emailing packets to teachers every year I go through and go through these GPS websites and look through the emails and update the emails and then send them an email but I'm not sure if that's the best way to reach them and I want to make this thing yeah oh yeah that is that

070is a tough task and it's you know it can be challenging I know there's a lot of turnover too so that's why I try to do it every year but I guess I just want to make this as easy as possible for the teachers to utilize this resource my goal is to make this simple and to provide it's like just so they have no pushback from anywhere I don't know that they do but I just want to make sure that they know it's available I'm not sure that they do so and that's pretty much it if you have questions my card is in that I'm mostly gonna leave just a little stack of my card here for anyone else who out we do general public outreach as well so you have an event and you

071want us to come out and talk about water conservation and efficiency or where your water comes from so we'd be happy to do that as well so and I'll leave some little goodies for you guys it has our website so you can remember and I'll leave them up here on the counter for you okay so thanks so much for your time thank you all right thank you all very much okay the next next item on our agenda is a brief report on the Durham bull Bowls event the Durham balls event good evening thank you board members for letting me be here dr. Moo Benga the audience we appreciate your time this past Saturday at the scrap exchange in Durham we presented the Durham Bulls presentation it was a cooking competition we've been working the last

072year and a half with nine cafeteria managers and myself and we've been paired with ten local restaurants and each team of two has worked on a recipe that can be translated into nutritional values that meet the national standards and to fit into a bowl to be served at the schools when we're able to continue with the cooking process so the competition went on on Saturday we had 450 people purchased tickets a large event we're very pleased to have mr. Lee miss buyer and mr. Andrew there as well as to County Commissioners Wooley bullsháá up we had a tremendous turnout a lot of fun the competition was won by sweeties out of Chapel Hill and sweetie southern vegan cooking we appeared with Ino Valley cafeteria manager Keisha Jones so they won the overall taste test for

073the children what we've agreed to do is Durham public school school nutrition is we've committed to putting all ten bowls on our menus for next school year we have ten months in the year we have ten bowls we're going to feature them all we're going to take the summer to train our staff on how to make these specialized items and we wanted to make sure that represented well for the district and we wanted to show some pictures of the actual presentation the event was hosted by the North Carolina PTA as well as the food insight group of Durham we had many local sponsors from cocoa cinnamon to the neo Monde a cafe to the Durham co-op the scrap exchange we had as I said the cafeteria managers represented very well working with their team members

074it's amazing to think that ten local restaurants gave up their time to come work with our our employees and committed to that's time away from their businesses that's their livelihood and these are very diverse groups from we had the executive chef at the Durham Hotel is a James Beard Foundation winner we had mr. Rickey from the salt box we had Borissov soulful cafe we had as I said sweeties we had the black twig cider cafe so it was a great representation of Durham and our managers represented well and we appreciate them all being there and good one more that's so we can see all ten chefs and then the last thing I wanted to show was what the bowls actually look like so this is the type of food that we're hoping to get on

075to next year's menus in the schools and they'll be represented at all schools thank you so two things one is could you send us a list of all ten restaurants so that we know who all the chef's were yes and then how do we get those bowls served here we can with your phone we can work on bringing one two maybe one of your work sessions bring some of the bowls and I did forget to mention that the restaurants if it's meets their menu pattern or if their type of menu they're going to put our bowls on they're read their menu so that the public can try them as well and the Durham co-op is going to be featuring all ten bowls on their menu over the next few months all right so mister just

076just to celebrate it one more time every Durham student is going to because even though it was a competition it was a healthy competition where these will all be on the menu and Steve I don't know if you had trouble picking a favorite I definitely did but I mean the diversity of a coconut chicken curry and Cuban pork and beans and quesadillas a vegan mac and cheese that had no dairy at all that all the kids will love I mean our our kids are in for a treat and if we can even highlight each month maybe with public-affairs these restaurant and food pairings and share the recipes if the chefs are willing to I'd love to make sure our community knows about these restaurant partners and I neglected to say that farmer FoodShare provided local

077produce from for all chefs and local products had to be featured on each of the dishes so that will also be part of it thank you thank you and board members you will receive the complete list in your weekly board update tomorrow thank you alright next item on our agenda consent items we have three policy 2015 parent and family engagement in title one program second one is quote for ino Valley classroom furniture replacement and then policy fifty eighty ninety forty operation of unmanned aircraft systems drones this is the second reading for that policy all the information is in your packet I move approval of the items on the consent agenda second it's been moved and properly seconded we approve the items under consent agenda all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the

078same time passes unanimously next item academic services school improvement plans and state identified low-performing school dr. hardy good evening board members tonight for information and discussion I will be discussing our school improvement plans and state identify low-performing schools I would like to bring our school improvement plans back to you for approval at our November work session each school is required to develop a plan for school improvement Durham public schools uses NC star as the tool for our school improvement plans Jamie Stroud director of school innovation created a school improvement guide as well as a collaborative process of support for each school all schools were visited by the district support team this year this support team included their principal supervisor dr. Stewart dr. Ryan or dr. Davis Chanel said Barry executive director of curriculum and instruction

079and Jamie Stroud director of school innovation dr. Dietrich Danner director of federal programs participated in all of our title one school visits since this was a new process we thought it was important to get feedback from our principals we asked principals to provide this feedback during our October principals meeting 95% of our principals reported that they found that this si P review process was not only beneficial but helpful to them annually each year in October the State Board of Education identifies low-performing schools according to general statute 115 C - 80 3.15 these schools have a performance score of D or F and a school growth score of met expected growth or not met expected growth based on this designation the superintendent is required to provide a recommendation to the school board record regarding the principal

080and a plan that identifies how schools will improve school performance and the school growth score within 30 days of the initial identification this year the State Board of Education meeting was in October 2nd the superintendent of each school district shall take one of the following options recommend that the principal be retained in the current position recommend that the principle be retained and develop a plan of remediation recommend that the principle be transferred or proceed to dismiss or demote the principle the timeline regarding notification within the first 30 days all local boards are required to make sure that we make notification to parents and you have the opportunity to review the plans Eleazar required to make sure that our plans are public and once approved by our board they are accessible not only on our district

081and school websites but also accessible through the Department of Public Instruction now let's talk about how we're supporting our schools and the strategies school improvement planning as we know it's a continuous process the school leadership team in each school creates an improvement plan with input from the staff in September as discussed earlier our district support team reviewed and visited every school revisions were made based on collaborative feedback from each visit the district support team will continue to monitor and provide feedback and support throughout the year with a middle and an end-of-the-year review visit in an effort to provide support to each of our schools and most importantly to improve outcomes for our students we have used several strategies our strategic plan the Durham public schools along with our school board has approved a strategic plan

082with a five year progress plan that outlines specific strategies for increasing student achievement and for supporting the whole child which we also heard a lot about today the goals specifically within Priority One include increasing growth proficiency and our graduation rate using one of the strategies in our strategic plan we have implemented a school support model that includes literacy math and teaching and learning coaches these instructional coaches have received professional development to ensure they have deep curriculum knowledge as well as the tools to support and coach classroom teachers with each and within each of our schools student achievement goals and individual goal-setting meeting doctor my Venga along with our principle supervisors a leadership coach and myself conducted individual goal-setting meetings with every low-performing school principal all of our other schools had individual goal-setting meetings with their

083principal supervisor these goal-setting sessions allow principals to look very carefully at their historical data and discuss students individually resulting in attainable and ambitious goals for each school in each accountability area beginning teacher support with the support of our board we have full-time release mentors and we have developed a plan to support our beginning teachers in a manner that allows them to provide instruction to our students on a daily manner we make sure that we provide this individual support and differentiate them differentiate for them during their first three years of teaching our principal supervisors are a key and integral role to the support that we are providing to our schools dr. stewart dr. ryan dr. davis and dr. jones have an integral role in school improvement they spend extensive time in schools every day providing instructional

084leadership support to our school leaders and providing feedback to our classroom teachers and last but certainly not least professional learning we provide professional development at the district and school level in each content area as well as strategies for classroom management lesson plan development and general best practices sessions are provided in multiple formats such as face-to-face and virtual sessions staff also receive professional learning on the use of resources that are available and how to appropriately use these resources with each of our students the office of professional development has partnered with the Department of curriculum instruction to provide a seamless onboarding process and a series of professional learning for our coaches our EC facilitators and our mentors a congruent language and feedback process has been established for each group school-based coaches provide on time and shoulder-to-shoulder support

085to teachers within their classrooms to assist in the use of instructional resources and implementation of high-yield instructional strategies coaches receive regular professional learning from our curriculum and instruction Department on coaching strategies and how to best support our teachers throughout the adult learning process they also receive content specific learning so that they can support teachers in the specific standards for each grade in each content area school based leaders principals and assistant principals receive monthly professional learning connected to our strategic plan this year our school leaders are reading despite the best intentions by Amanda Lewis and John diamond isn't it this is an eye-opening contribution to a public policy debate that has raged for decades it is based on the five years of in-depth quantitative and qualitative research that focuses on a diverse suburban school in a

086relatively wealthy neighborhood the author's take the revolutionary approach of looking within the school for cues which might be causing the racial achievement gap furthermore our curriculum instruction department has also created and provided several resources for our school-based leaders and teachers the curriculum at a glance document provides a quick summary of standards to be addressed in all four core areas this is a tool that all instructional leaders can use to provide teacher feedback along with standards alignment and pacing interim mid-year and end-of-the-year benchmarks are also provided to measure student progress and mastery of skill and knowledge at the midpoint and near the end of the course of study benchmarks are not used in state and federal reporting they provide students parents teachers and our professional learning communities information about student learning along in a particular course

087they also provide specific data about district and school trends to guide the strategic support from the curriculum and instruction team this information is used to improve student learning teaching practices and curriculum materials the teaching and learning coaches serve as instructional support to classroom teachers and the coaches primary role is to make sure that there is effective implementation of our districts curriculum and to provide ongoing coaching support to our teachers finally in Durham we use NC ed cloud and single sign-on to help facilitate the login process of mini programs I think we've often forgotten a password or two with the places we have to log in each curriculum area maintains a page in canvas that provides links to curriculum resources and documents teachers also have access to educational resources such as an mentum in class and

088Schoolnet we also reduce the number of sign ons for student access by using clever integration with the same platform tonight I'm sharing this information with you for questions and discussion and I would like to bring our school improvement plans back to the board for approval and our November work session all right thank you for bringing this to us this may be one the most resource-rich school improvement playing process I've seen if I were still teaching you know what is really clear where the leadership kind of gets saturated in all of this if I was still teaching who's that person that I'm really connecting with in this plains of the teaching coach you say and it's that's not just for beginning teachers correct yeah so our schools have either a literacy or math coach who our

089teaching and learning coach they could also be connected with at the high school it would potentially be their department chair at our middle school or elementary it might be their grade level cheer that they would be connected to this working on their school improvement plan and in the district support team we met with the principals and often times Prince brought their process manager which is the person who works with the technical tool in C star and that really is a robust tool that helps us track and monitor their progress on their school improvement goals but it also gives them an opportunity on an ongoing basis to celebrate and to document the work that they're doing this is very as you know being a classroom teacher very challenging work and all along the way we want

090to make sure that our schools are celebrating throughout the year and not just waiting to the end of the year and using NC star really as an opportunity to do that thank you it's definitely important that the teachers can connect to someone but also you have some on demand I think for teachers on the element ishutin can come to these resources so that's very very encouraging one more thing but oh they just stepped in so I'm gonna just stop right there I really appreciate that you brought this information but I appreciate that chairman Lee started this meeting with a moment of silence about voting and the importance of voting early or on November 6th because I fundamentally believe that every speaker tonight that challenged us is telling us what this Durham community cares about which

091is equity which is justice and which is undoing broken systems and so here we are with his general statute 115 seat dum-dum law right low-performing schools get identified even if you meet growth as the principal and school leader in a teacher you're still dinged and deemed a low-performing school it's a flawed metric to begin with it doesn't account for the growth that our that our students are making and then our teachers are bringing it comes from Florida it has no basis in the reality of what we know is best for students and then we are and and most of all if we were going to identify schools and stigmatize them good policy would stay we bring additional resources to bear but that's not the state of North Carolina does with this designation this is what

092we're trying to do locally but there's no funding that comes for these schools that are in need there's no additional supports right there's just a there's just a designation so I appreciate everything you all are doing to jump through these hoops I don't agree with the stigmas that are put in this law that that may be a principal needs to be moved or demoted because that that trajectory of growth might be turning around that that community of a school that culture might be changing and none of that is able to be reflected in in North Carolina statute and it's happening across the state so I appreciate what y'all are doing locally with it but fundamentally it's broken in North Carolina and voting is gonna be what helps us change it so I just wanted to

093not ask a question but just going a little rant I appreciate it for this presentation I wanted to know me can you give us a little bit about the process of when you sit down and your team is going into the schools and you're creating the strategies for the next year like what does that process look like me and what questions are you and the principal asking and then how are you developing those strategies so I think the process actually started this summer with a conversation in terms of looking at the historical data and really being very intentional and looking at students and I think that's one of the things that I have truly valued about the process that we have in Durham under dr. Mabuse leadership is that it is about each and every

094kid and how can we make sure that we are paying attention to each and every student so it actually starts there where principals who know their kids can talk about where we can put in strategies and support and start to identify what those goals look like so it started this summer and that team working together to identify the goals and then that the principals took that back many of them had school improvement plans over the summer to look at and to talk about the goals that they had developed and then start to think about how do I make sure I build a schedule that really honors the goals that we need to have and then what are the specific strategies maybe specifically in literacy for example at an elementary school may be focusing on phonics

095or reading comprehension so that we know that we can make sure that we intervene appropriately so at the school level in September when we had our school improvement planning discussions it was looking at the goals that they had identified having the principal's talk through what are the opportunities for our success around those goals and we are some areas where they may need additional support and that was why it was so important to make sure not only the principal supervisor was there but Miss Sid Barry and dr. Danner because then we could make sure that we are providing the resources that our schools need or help them think about some of the school-based resources and even community support like we heard tonight with fidelity to make sure that we are supporting our students and then it's

096about making sure that implementation occurs so after four weeks until the school year all of our schools also create an intervention plans so they had an opportunity to say you know I knew I needed to be looking at Nakia how was she doing in phonics Nakia did pretty well on the beginning of your assessment and in class or it might be Nakia still needed some work how do I help support her and so those intervention plans have also given us the opportunity to work with our schools to provide support it really is this ongoing process of discussion in terms of what they're seeing with individual students making sure that we're listening to what our principal supervisors are seeing because they are in our schools every day and then we're allocating the resources that we have

097in an intentional manner to get outcomes different for kids thank you it's like the strategic plan I think talked about it all day yes it is and I'm the energy that you bring for them process and and and just to back up my sister friend over here that talks about growth I am really interested in proficiency and so I want our children to grow but I want them to be proficient learners the state of North Carolina talks about a sound Basic Education that's from the leandro decision but I think we've moved well beyond that we want our children to go beyond basic we want our children to be able to thrive not just survive so reading proficient doing math proficiently being on grade level it's where we want to go and I think these interventions

098that you have this intentionality of looking at data looking at each child having high expectations it's really it's really exciting I'm glad I think we've got the people we've got a community that's that's that's right for this we got an office of equity we're looking at things with intentionality on moving out children to proficiency good and I think I'm gonna add to mine I'm thank you to all the people who came this morning this before for the public comment because I'm looking at this hole with this lens so where is and this is this is a future presentation probably where is the opportunity for us to talk about where the racial equity fits into the school improvement plans I know that is a lot of the cultural pieces and when I look at my you

099know students reading scores it might not show up that they didn't connect well with that teacher right and so I think well I know we're doing a lot of that work and we're having a lot of conversations and teachers are going to training and I want to know how we layer that into the strategy so that we're not only talking about the phonics but we're also talking about making sure teachers are connecting because those relationships matter so that's I know what's happening and I think we can get in a future conversation but I want to make sure that it's also layered into everything that we talked about and I definitely don't want to take away from our future presentation because I think it definitely warrants that but one of the things that I did mention

100and under you know the leadership of dr. Bullock that's one of the reasons we chose the cortex of despite the best intentions for our school-based leaders we launched that this summer and that is actually the cortex that we're using all year to really help us think through about systemic racism that you did hear talk about from many of the public comments today and to make sure that we're having the opportunity to start to think about how do we dismantle that and how do you do that as a school leader and then how do we make sure that we're providing opportunities for our teachers so that we can get different outcomes for students so we are beginning that work and we can also make sure that dr. Bullock's shares some other strata in a future presentation

101I'm sorry just quickly they thank you first of all oh I think you just went off that screen wait you had this the matrix go back up that right there oh so that's great I'm just I'm so pleased to see in the context of school improvement that entire matrix of of activities in the past I thought our school in fruit flies were very limited and very perfunctory oh and and all about well meet this little standard here in this little standard there and and I don't think schools get better that way they get better by having a system of support for what they're trying to do so so my question is how if I look at a school improvement plan the ones that we're supposed to approve in a couple of weeks am I gonna

102see all of those pieces in the plan so if I pull up those if I pull up the Clin plan and you do have access through the guest login that is available on our website well that was my next question so we do have access to those okay am I gonna see each of those pieces in that yes you were gonna see some specific targets you know so you are gonna see some things that you have probably seen before that in terms of specific goals for reading math science you are going to see that but you're also gonna see in terms of processes and strategy some of the professional development you're gonna see connections to our strategic plan the beginning teacher support probably you won't see that necessarily as much you might see that more

103specifically in Glenn because we have done some things differently Clint being glint that Glenn is a restart school and so in terms of the indicators and strategies if you dig deep you are going to see how important professional learning is for our teachers but you're also going to see some goals so it's it really is both in we have to have some targets and goals so if you remember I talked about that goal setting but you also have to wreck that you don't get there without a process you know you only get there if you implement some things if the doctor says in the kid you need to lose some weight I gotta exercise I got to change my diet you have to do some things differently if I want to improve scores and reading

104I have to implement good reading strategies provide professional development for our teachers support them with high quality resources all of those things have to come together for us to be able to reach our goal I think I think that's great I look forward to seeing what this looks like you know I will just I will say that you know I I'm sayin I saw these things for 30 years and they're a lot easier to write than they are to do oh but but I just this week at it as schools talking with a beginning teacher who was beginning teachers are overwhelmed trying to keep up with the planning and at that school the principal gave the teacher a day covered the class asked the teachers take a day to do planning so that the teacher

105was actually planned ahead instead of scrambling all the time that never happened when in the past and so that you know if if we're having that kind of systemic intervention that that gives me hope that this would be more than just an exercise but will actually get us someplace so thank you let me piggyback from dr. hardy there are some other layer of supports that you're not gonna be able to see in that instrument tonight we have dr. dan Davis if you can stand up that's Ryan and that is Stuart since the beginning of the year I think they're put in about 168 hours they have been in schools going to those classrooms and providing feedback based on our school improvements that's just one layer that's coming from central office and then you have Mesa

106Berry with those coaches providing those supports you're not going to be able to see that same plan but that's another layer of support and then when you go to the school level where you have those instructional coaches and that you have a school like Lakewood elementary have about two or three instructional support supporting that school of three hundred students or less so we have a lot of layer of support that is supporting that school improvement plan that's you're not gonna be able to see it in the documents alright thank you dr. hardy the next item on our agenda is from human resources and it's classified salary study update but we have a public comment before we start in this from Antonio Jones and that is for the classified salary study update it evening board we've

107had a lot of excitement this evening right something really quickly first of all thank Don for being in dr. hardy word only traditional doing good stuff right so yeah listen to the word on the street so I me to talk about this classified pay study so as a form of Durham public school classified employees this is what near and dear to my heart is several others and primarily one of the reasons actually you know left and myself and uh miss fort Brown had several conversations over the years way back when so whoever came with this presentation actually did some good work I think this presentation captured captured the flavor that what's going on in the classifier ranks and by highlighting that all employees deserve fair and equitable and competitive compensation I think that's important because

108what we do know is that classified employees are the glue to this entire operation I have nothing against teachers I love teachers however there's nothing like a good solid bus driver cafeteria for an office assistant and everybody else maintenance and I'm sure dr. hardy moving can't appreciate their administrative assistants so one thing we'll talk about is really how do we get to a minimum $15 hour for all full-time employees in Durham I think if we look at the values of the community and what's going on with the affordable housing they're just living in general cost everything has went up over the years so we can figure out how to get to the $15 an hour I think every employee would appreciate that is seen mean that most of those employees have kids in our schools

109those kids gonna fill have the feel the direct impact of a pay raise in their home I can recall growing up it was a struggle but you knew when your parents got a raise you know so you might have went from generic cereal to a store you know so we could become kind of laugh about it right now but it's real like you can tell so one thing is I know it's gonna take some fresh from the county commissioners get this done so I think that the flavor of Durham right now I don't think that would be a problem if we organize and get the appropriate people at the table so put some pressure on the county commissioner to make sure that all falls on employees in Durham public schools or at least paid $15

110an hour the city has adopted this the county has adopted it Duke University and several of the major employers have adopted this I think we're on the right course and that's all I have to say about that who have done this I appreciate it and I'm sure the employees of the classified employees who make under $15 appreciate it and as a side note being that we are moving in the right direction in Durham public schools we have the strategic plan with the new mission statement and what not just as a thing of aesthetics can we change the mission statement on it that's already on the works so you want advice you want you your own I think we grow on it and to the parents who came today I have nothing to say about that

111I think we've covered that one but thank you all right the seconds good evening board members dr. Roy Banga my colleagues I'm gonna be doing this presentation with my wonderful colleague Alex Modesto he's gonna be coming up in just a sec but so I'm here to talk about the classified study priority recommendations and our next steps so I do want to apologize in advance before I get started because this is a very it's pretty lengthy presentation and it's very text dense so I apologize in advance but I for two reasons I really think it's important though the information is important because we rarely get a chance to delve deeply into issues around compensation with classified staff and then when we do we usually talk about it during the budget season when many other priorities are

112on the table and classified compensation generally kind of gets pushed down so that's one reason but the other reason why it's very text dense and not a lot of pictures I apologize about that but I wanted people to be able to pick this up classified staff members if they're not able to watch this or you know to be here with us so they can pick it up at any time one year from now two weeks from now five years from now and really get a historical context about what the rationale was some of the complicating factors that we're going to be talking about related to compensation so how did we get here this has been a long process I've only been here since January but this is this is has been going on a lot

113longer than I have been here but back in 2016 a couple of years ago DPS worked with a small company called Pete point LLC to conduct a classified salary study and that includes central office positions like administrators directors not non-certified so pay point plan to compare DPS salaries with comparable organizations like other school districts similarly sized government agencies as well as private companies what happened was they received a low response rate lower than they would have liked and from many comparable districts so wasn't it ended up happening was that they compared their data which was really good work but they ended up comparing it disproportionately with private companies we're going to delve a little bit more deeply about the differences between private sector pay and public sector pay but because of this the data provided

114an inaccurate and kind of skewed data was it was not accurate so following this draft report district staff took over the project to really do an apples-to-apples comparison based on districts and organizations that are comparable to us so what has happened since then so Scott Denton who is has retired is no longer with us but him he and his team really did a fantastic job of reanalyzing all of the data and they did the arduous and very tedious work of the salary analysis and they really did a great apples to apples comparison um Scott Dunn as many people may not know but I was like how did you learn how to do all this and he actually had a compensation analysis in his background and so it wasn't just somebody that was selected randomly he

115he had a compensation background but in 2017-18 as many as you all know DPS experienced a time of a large transition in senior leadership dr. rebenga myself dr. hardy lots of new staff lots of transition and so it was important that we had several priorities the strategic planning the custodial transition new teacher contract smooth school closing and opening and all of those things were of critical importance so understandably there's been a lot of just frustration understandably from our classified staff that you know why why have we waited so long for something to come out in this past budget cycle as you know you graciously approved of $500,000 to address some priority recommendations so we're gonna go over tonight based on the district's review so a couple things to remember before I get started and into

116the presentation I really think it's important for all of us collectively to activate our awareness of our privilege as administrators discussing and deliberating thinking about classified compensation we're talking about people's lives and people's livelihoods like mr. Jones just mentioned it's not just numbers on a paper it can make a real difference in someone's life and their livelihood so it's really important for us especially as administrators as highly paid employees to always activate our awareness of our privilege we know that our students will be positively impacted if all staff have an overall high morale and part of that in large part is compensation that they receive and it's important that people have a sense of pride about working here and that really elevates morale and compensation like I said is a huge factor I want to

117start and you'll hear this again in this presentation but a fundamental truth and thing to remember throughout our review and all throughout our analysis and we really did approach this with a respect and a reference for the work that our classified staff do but that all employees deserve fair equitable and competitive compensation so what are some of the issues with classified staff so like other North Carolina districts and really across the country the recession negatively impacted classified salary in a variety of ways several years of frozen salaries caused much havoc and at the same time health care and other cost of living increased for employees position reductions caused workload imbalances and then there's also think about when when we're in a time of cutting positions and layoffs and how much stress that is what's placed

118on the backburner is professional to a lack of focus and professional development goals for classified staff and that led to stagnation in growth and at the same time think about all of the things that have happened in the past couple of years with technology and all of our district needs have changed that new legislation it comes out every other year like you mentioned low-performing schools that's just a lot of things that require a higher skill set and thinking and problem-solving at the core so like I said you think think about the changes that have happened just in the past couple of years about technology software changes that people have to learn and all the complicated issues the economy improved but as usual in public districts we lagged behind because we're dependent on funding there weren't

119large scale changes at the same time while the economy improved to classify pay scales and of course this caused a variety of other issues too to be revealed so during those times of frozen salaries one of the things that happened was that there were a lot of internal pay equity inequities that were revealed now I do want to stop and say that I have worked in two other North Carolina districts and one other out-of-state district and this is not uncommon like Durham is not this is not the only place that this is happening this happened across the board I could pick up the phone and call any one of my HR colleagues and they would say the same exact things happen in their districts I think that's important but it did happen that there were

120internal pay inequities of positions that were farthest off the market rate are more pronounced for middle management positions surprisingly like specialists coordinators managers and directors because there was a lack of structure for these positions as a result it caused some large variances in how supervisors chose to use and classify those positions so that was one of the complicating things when we look back at all the position titles and and the pay so a couple of fundamental truths again a fundamental truth all employees deserve fair equitable and competitive compensation another fundamental truth and a lot of these have come just from over the years of hearing about compensation listening to employees and getting their input most employees if you ask any employee and say hey do you think you should be paid more it's a fundamental

121truth that most employees like yeah I think I think I think I should be paid more um many employees think others are paid more for doing the same job so that also is a reason for frustration and all of these things you know maybe separately they're not you know terrible and escalated but if you think about the cumulative effect of all of these things a lack of you know frozen salaries pay inequities all of these things have a cumulative effect on employees also classified employees and educational institutions often feel like their work is undervalued because as we know we're an educational institution academics is obviously at the heart of what we do and so sometimes classified employees both in public schools as well as higher education there I worked in higher ed for a year

122and it's this is a very common theme - so think about faculty there and teachers here and other instructional staff many classified employees they feel that their work is undervalued and also because salaries are generally lower for classified staff in public sector or to talk a little bit more about that so compensation is really complicated it is a fundamental truth but many people think it's simple so you may have people probably at the end of this presentation because I'm talking and talking like alright lady just be quiet just find the money and pay me more you know a lot of people think why does it have to be so difficult but be thankful for this only visual soeul visual in this but it's really not that simple important thing to remember is that the decisions

123that we make and you'll hear this from me this presentation all of my presentations that we can never think about decisions in a vacuum that even though we're talking about classified compensation now we may be talking about teacher compensation in a couple of months and so we can never look at things in isolation just like a rubberband I think to myself you know when you stretch it one way it goes back the other if you stretch it too far it's gonna break so I just kind of have that visual in my mind but like other priorities like I said we can't think about compensation in a but in a vacuum or in isolation so what are the compensation factors to consider one of the things that we really don't do a good job of in

124a couple of years ago the state tried to do better with this is to try to help employees understand total compensation so we thought we think and we talked about base salaries but often we forget about the cost the hidden costs and the total compensation and all of the different ways of compensating people aside from their salary and so I wanted to put a chart here of just the comparison between 2008 and 2018 now of course it's ten years it's a decade it's always going to you know costs are gonna increase but they really have risen very very far think about that rubber band is really stretching but in 2008 the employer health care cost that we paid was about $4,100 now it's 60 $100 retirement I think is even more pronounced it used to

125be seven point eight three percent ten years ago and now it is close to 20 percent in eighteen point eight six percent we're gonna talk a little bit more about retirement in a second the state has provided general guidance that we can expect that retirement contribution percentage to increase about one percent each year and if you look at the ten-year rate it's pretty it's that's pretty indicative of what what we see so it's only gonna continue to increase in the future the next four slides are just a couple of other factors that we have to think about when we're thinking about sensation 1 and people rarely talk about this stuff particularly when it comes to classified compensation but generally speaking private sector companies generally they typically pay more but then public sector jobs but the

126benefits of public sector jobs are generally more desirable than the private sector I talk to my friends all the time about who work in private sector we talk about retirement and I don't know any other person who has a defined pension plan that will pay you for your entire life after a certain amount of time and in North Carolina that is thirty years of creditable service at any age 60 years old and 25 years of creditable service and age 65 with just five years of creditable service and so if you are 60 years old and you come to work for Durham public schools and you work for five years you could retire with a check for your entire life for retirement I want everybody to think about the local positive economic impact of being able

127to provide a steady check and income for somebody and their family for the rest of their lives it's really really important to think about the benefits of retirement and and that that being part of the total compensation package not just for their service now but long into the future and for the Durham community it's also rare for paid sick leave to accumulate indefinitely ask one of your friends who work in the private sector if their sick leave accumulates indefinitely and can be used toward their retirement so a lot of people don't know that every 20 days of unused sick leave it it equates to one month of retirement service credit that could be used to get one of those thresholds that I talked about earlier but for both employers and employees we recognize that health

128care costs have also gone to the employees for sure but employers definitely have borne the brunt of the increasing healthcare and retirement costs another thing to remember is that I often get questions from people and compensation about I'm a really I do really great job why can't you pay me more one of the things we have to remember is that we exist within a seniority based compensation system versus a performance-based system many public employers have a seniority based system that is we we reward and recognize those with years of service and people get paid more based on their their years of service rather than a competence based compensation system like many private employers have so it's understandable that many high performing employees particularly those in middle management might come to us or their supervisors to

129say I am doing five times more than the person next to me who may not have and I don't have as much years of experience but I know I work really really hard and so many people feel frustrated by a lack of pay differentiation in in seniority based systems those who might have a very strong skillset and ability but who might not have a lot of experience are often hit the hardest so again these are just complexities that we have to consider when thinking about compensation another thing we have to think about is skill set versus volume and workload so during the recession there were positions of course that were cut that were never backfilled and as a result we have some employees who took on a larger workload a larger volume of work but

130not a skill set change in their actual position so this had the effect of course of making lots of employees feel undervalued and and and overworked now I want to point out that the solution to a workload or volume issue if you really think about it's not necessarily to change somebody's pay grade because somebody's pay grade is related to their knowledge skills and abilities and skill set but so it's not necessarily a strategy to like I said to change their pay grade but one option might be that supervisors really have to think hard and reflect on the needs of their department maybe slowly requesting to add jobs back because think about it the skill set is the same for a job but they're there let's say there are three positions and now there's only one

131that one person is doing a lot more work but maybe this it doesn't require a change in the skill set and that's just one way or they may need to change the skill sets needed times have changed there may be different technolon needs different needs altogether that we're they may actually change the job descriptions and possibly have people reapply but do you see how complicated those are that's not fun for anybody nobody likes as we know nobody likes to reapply for their for their jobs and so these are all complicated complicated things one of the things that that that we've been thinking about my colleague was able to do this presentation mary jane palmer along with mr. manescu the other day and i was asking her you know what was the feedback what did you

132share anything in addition to the slides and we were talking about really the importance of Supervisors using and reflecting on their departments and using what we call a guess zero based approach in looking at their departments not thinking about the people don't think about the the employees that are in the job but think about the needs what is it that we need to accomplish in with the strategic plan what is it that we need to accomplish to propel Durham public schools to go forward think about the functions and the skills that's needed and then think about the positions that you need to fulfill that and then it's the responsibility and we'll get into this a little bit later of it's our responsibility to train our supervisors on how to to get to those skill sets

133and how to professionally develop their staff so that they can rise to the challenge so there's another thing I was just talking about just person versus position supervisors often make the honest mistake an understandable mistake of reviewing salaries against the person or employee who's in front of them at the time and that could be positive or negative rather than looking at the position and the skills required to get the job done like I mentioned before you may have an a stellar employee that's that is you know I really just I can't afford this pay another company is offering me something you know what can you do as far as my pay but maybe that person only has three years of experience so that could be a nap at supervisor comes to me to say what

134can we do can we change this pay grade these are some of the ways that inequities have been created because of that phenomena or it could also be negative so it could be when somebody says so-and-so is not really doing a good job and so they may throw the baby out with the bathwater and say you know in a layoff situation I'm going to cut this position because they're thinking about the person they're not thinking about the function so this can happen both positively and negatively I think that unintentionally this might be the single single largest contributor to pay inequities so where there has been some flexibility this is where it usually happens but remember the kind of pressure cooker environment when we're in times of recession that people you have to keep good talent

135and so I think that sometimes people think that these inequities have happened by from some negative reason or from some sinister reason that you know they just wanted to get their friends pay raises and things like that but really it happens quite frequently and unintentionally or with positive intent to keep somebody that really is doing good work for the district for example so like I said before we have to continuously train our supervisors to review the position and department needs rather than the employees they have at the moment and I know that's easier said than done so what about our salary comparisons and initial adjustments so I wanted to put this chart up because this is this represents the most some of the most common classified positions just to kind of give us a comparison

136about how we're doing against our comparison neighboring districts in common classified position and again this is minimum salaries we're going to talk about this in a second but as you can see against our competitors that we usually talk about in terms of teacher compensation and other compensation Wake Chapel Hill orange and Guilford we are doing pretty well and I think the board in the community really need to understand that you know we can't look at our salaries in isolation without looking at our neighboring districts and I think this chart shows that we're doing pretty well of course we have some recommendations but just wanting to leave that up just as a comparison so just a couple of notes about that previous slide all of the rates like I mentioned were the minimum hourly rates for

137all of the current scales the rate is the same for at least the first ten steps and that is you that's very problematic that was a result of the frozen salaries and so we have a recommendation to help fix that there's wide variance the reason why there you see the office support secretarial office support administrative assistance this is one of the areas that we saw wide variance and fluctuations in titles and pay grades and things like that and so that's something that we definitely need to look at but it was based both on skill set and school level so for example you're gonna you know Data Manager if there's one data manager in high school serving 1,300 kids that work is gonna look very different than someone serving the elementary school with maybe 300 students

138most of our employees are above the minimum so it's important to note that the average length of experiences is about 12 for our lower pay grades that we're gonna be talking about in a second one of the things just in terms of our compensation philosophy which i think is a really good thing for our community is that we have made a deliberate effort in Durham public schools to maximize the number of full-time employees as possible so the more employees get access to benefits and retirement even for the lowest paid position which is currently at $13.32 we pay thirteen thousand four hundred forty nine dollars in healthcare Social Security and retirement costs which represents nearly half of the compensation package and not even factoring in health care when you factor in just the retirement cost we

139already are at over $15 an hour at fifteen dollars and 83 cents even for our lowest paid employee at zero years of experience we talked a lot about the living wage so I included a little bit of information about the Durham County living wage so just I'll read it to you the city of Durham and Durham County along with several other North Carolina localities have living wage ordinances that apply to their own employees Durham ties it's living wage amount to a methodology based on the federal poverty level which is updated annually over the last 17 years the livable wage amount is increase from 8.58 cents per hour to thirteen dollars and thirty-five cents per hour in 2017 and that came from the Durham living wage project a reporter who wrote an article Sarah dem see

140from Indy weeks wrote the living wage is the minimum required for a single person to put a roof over their head and food on their table without the help of Durham Orange County or the local food bank for Durham that's 1335 an hour or 1185 with employer provided health insurance benefit so remember I didn't even factor in the health insurance benefit with just the retirement cost it's 1583 and so you could see how they factor in with health insurance that the the living wage would be 1185 and we we exceed that thankfully we're doing well so let's talk a little bit about some initial classified salary adjustments so after careful analysis and deliberation we propose starting the classified salary adjustments with this $500,000 with the lowest pay grades where pays currently has been flat like

141I said for the past ten years at least we also propose adjusting pay for occupational and physical therapists who as a group were farthest from the market rates and so alex is going to talk a little bit more about it but one of the things that we were thinking about doing with this small amount of money $500,000 initially I thought let's just look at all of the people who were farthest from the market rates no matter what positions they were in but again it's very complicated and we didn't want to pick out singleton positions we would rather do this systemically and and in a better structure so that we can it can help us in future but the occupational and physical therapist as a group they came out to be probably half of the people

142on that list when we were looking at people who were the furthest off so we thought it would make sense to to adjust their rates so as you know while the $500,000 is a start it's it's inadequate to address the needs for the classified for the classified study but we plan to bring a proposal during the budget cycle that brings all classified positions in alignment with state salary schedules and also competitive with market rates it's really important for our board our employees especially to know that we're going to hold harmless any employees who are currently making above more than adjusted salary schedules so mr. with us who's gonna come up and talk to you a little bit about our salary proposal good evening dr. Amega and board members so the biggest change that we're looking

143at implementing with a new classified salary schedule is moving from an internally classified grading system of grades 1 to 18 towards the state defined grading system of grades 50 through 86 and as Miss Atkins said we're proposing to start with the lowest pay grades so this would be grades 50 through 56 on the state defined schedule with the which approximately correspond to grades 1 to 7 but primarily grades 1 through 4 on the previous internally defined classified structure so the minimum pay we have here monthly rates the biggest change that you'll see is that pay is no longer frozen for the first 14 years of experience in the lowest grade or the first 10 years of experience in some of the higher grades that there's annual paid differentiation starting at year 1 so the people

144that are gonna be most benefitted are going to be for example our cafeteria workers or our teacher assistants who have been here 4 5 or 6 or 10 or 12 years they're really gonna see a big impact as we're racing for both raising the floor and we're providing annual differentiation so these are our monthly pay rates that you see in this first schedule based on 40 hours per week as per state guidance any work below 40 hours per week will be prorated based on the 40 hour schedules but just for more tangible terms we have the dollar amount hourly pay for the grade so we start at 1335 and it moves in secession to the state maximum allowable salary of 1588 in grade 50 and we go up to 1425 starting salary for grade 56

145all the way up to 1926 the maximum allowable state compensation and again you're going to see annual differentiation so somebody with you know who's been with us for six or ten or twelve years isn't gonna be paid the same as someone who's in their first week or first month with the district this table just provides brief summary of where people fall in this state classified salary structure so grade 50 is custodians and child nutrition assistance grade 52 our lead custodians office support starts at grade 55 along with child nutrition managers and then grade 6 56 includes several of our maintenance positions along with teacher assistance and if we want to compare Durham public schools compensation to that of a of a typical large private sector employer in North Carolina with the North North Carolina General

146Assembly Office of fiscal Research has kind of analyzed what's the average private sector retirement contribution and that's a 6% 401k defined contribution that so we actually have 6% that employees contribute to the teachers an employee State Retirement System and your average for a large private sector employer would be the employee contribute 6% and the employer also contributes 6% so under that system of 1335 minimum hourly rate is equivalent to about fifteen dollars and seven cents for a large private employer just just for that comparison and I will note that while the state employees 15 minimum was funded in the past budget cycle there was no funding for school districts to have a $15.00 per hour minimum and then also our new proposal for the physical therapist and occupational therapists they are graded at 78 on

147the state system so their monthly pay would range from 47 hundred dollars a month for a brand new physical therapist or occupational therapist up to around $7,000 a month or $42 per hour at 30 years of experience up to the maximum state allowable salary and so that is really gonna have a tremendous impact on these people that do really phenomenal and difficult work with us you know our students have tremendous challenges to get a good start in life and it's going to impact 41 out of 43 of them with an average increase of three thousand dollars annually and then when you all when we had the deliberation we made the decision to move back to in-house custodial services due to some of the budget constraints at the time and in that full budget cycle there

148was a decision made to have a separate part-time custodial salary structure so that we could bring it in-house this year while staying within those constraints so that would be starting at the state minimum grade 50 hourly rate and then moving up in some increments so this is the proposed part-time schedule along with that decision that starts at 11 67 per hour and has small annual incremental increases up to 1337 413 $17 per hour and you know it's the intent of the administration to kind of work in our budget development cycle to move all part-time custodians to the standard grade 50 hour that would start at 13 35 moving up to 1588 as part of the 2019-20 budget proposal when we bring the full classified salary schedule adjustments from grade 50 through 86 we kind of

149consider this as a bridge to to get the custodial services in-house dealing with the dollars that we had available to us at the time and so I mean this is a really positive news for some of our hardest-working direct student facing employees that's going to have an impact on at least 650 individuals with the median annualized salary increase of $1,100 and this decision will have impact starting January 1st on a going-forward basis so they'll have it for the final six months of the academic year and then all classified employees did have kind of a much-needed relief perhaps you know well I won't say why may may not been happen but all of our classified employees did have a 2% pay raise effective July 1st this year so that was really a overdue welcome for them

150and then again we'll be bringing back to you in the spring a full analysis and proposal for all classified employees from grade 50 all the way up to our directors and above the grade 86 and then one last thing is we're trying to consolidate the salary schedules right now we have really five salary schedules we have a 1011 we have a 12 month schedule some employees are compensated based on 40 hours a week authors on 37.5 we have a separate schedule for bus drivers so what we're really trying to do is as much as possible and practicable consolidate this to one uniform schedule and then have things prorated from a 40-hour workweek we are going to maintain as the state does a separate salary for bus drivers we're considering a separate salary structure for IT

151as well really based on kind of retention needs but as much as possible we're gonna try to consolidate to one uniform transparent salary schedule so you can expect that when we have our full presentation along with the budget requirements for it with that I'm going to pass it back to a rest I would take a second to really thank mr. Modesto he was instrumental in doing this work and he is so smart and so hard-working and I want to give you a true story from the time that I first met with him and he did like all these tables and like a day like I had this I had this he broke his arm in between and he had to get surgery for his arm showed them your arm he called me to less than

152two hours after he got out of the hospital out of surgery and said I have something to tell you and Kim can I took it could we go over some tables of like Alex so he are so lucky we are so lucky to have mr. Vanessa to with our district I really really we really appreciate his work and our district benefits greatly from from his employment so thank you so what happens next I'm gonna try to skim through these still a lot of information but we're gonna be working hard to be competitive with classified salaries and and to make sure that those salaries are commensurate with our the actual duties like we talked about so that we can and we could so need to make sure that our employees are evaluated regularly because that's a

153cornerstone of being able to offer professional development is to evaluate and give employees feedback and we often forget about classified employees or just kind of a check the box or put them to the side but it's really critically important not only from just an employment perspective but for a compensation perspective that they're evaluate and given feedback regularly and supervisors really need to be cognizant and we need to do a better job of training and we plan to do to recognize that we exist within a seniority based system and that employees should continuously seek to improve their skills and professionally grow and this is both an employer responsibility and an employee responsibility and in order for Durham public schools to have a long-term positive impact we're gonna have to make sure that we do proper training

154and professional development for our classified staff and we talked about receiving regular feedback we also have to do this is just my soapbox item that I always sneak in a slide about better hiring and selection practices because we really have to train our hiring supervisors on better selection to get the skill set so we talked a lot about that to get the skill sets we're looking for critical thinking problem-solving and self reflectiveness are skills that are required for every single position it doesn't matter what position you hold in durham public schools all of those things should be screened for and then hiring supervisors need to understand the importance of past successful performance it's the biggest single predictor of future success and so that is really important that supervisors don't skimp on the interview process and

155practical tasks related to the job and reference checking more a couple more slides we have a lot of work to do in the next couple months we have to review positions there were just a few positions that were not on any scale there were some interpreters and a few other classifications so we're definitely going to review that we have to really look at alignment and titles classification we talked a lot about that secretarial clerical office support our specialist analysts a lot of those folks and then a more thorough analysis of IT and Finance position so there are positions that whether you work in the private sector or the public sector they're so critically important you know we have 53 schools and many departments we have have somebody with a good infrastructure and networking you know

156we we can't survive without that so there are some special unique positions and they usually come up in IT and Finance like in my previous experiences we just have to make sure that we're doing an analysis of those positions that we also need to explore the cost and internal pay equity inequities and all of that this is something important too that we have to do a review of inner thighs funded positions and so for our community members who don't know what enterprise funded positions these are positions that are funded through fee-based so community education like after-school child nutrition but we were able to recommend a salary increase for our child nutrition employees tutoring driver's education because you have to think about the increases to their salaries may equate to fee increases for our families and

157we don't want that happening so we we just have to do a thorough analysis and make sure that if there are rate increases that they're manageable for our families and Alex already talked about no employees received the 2% increase even in the enterprise funded positions but we still need to review these classifications we have to review the salaries for central office classified staff whose position require a higher skill set education and experience and there's great variance we talked about that earlier and inconsistency and classification and pay we typically what people may not know is that I would say that I've been here for nine months and all of the compensation issues have come from people in the middle range so they're not in the typical classified staff that we talked about and you saw the

158chart that we're doing pretty well and so that's probably one of the reasons why people in those pay grades typically don't come and ask for a salary review but it's specialists analysts managers coordinators and even some directors where there's large variances and we definitely have to take a look at that one of the other things that we have to take a look at is I'm sorry it just keeps going on certified salary scales versus classified is a big issue so let me give an example this so let's say when salaries were frozen for teachers let's say a teacher came and let's say she was a positive behavior support special serving one school but she came eight years ago to work in the central office as a coordinator serving many schools well maybe at the time

159the coordinator scale was higher but as we are seeing increases in adjustments to the certified scale by both the state and and the district we have to take a look at that because it may be out of balance now and so you may have somebody who's a coordinator that oversees 20 schools but would get higher pay if they were serving one school so that's something that we have to think about we have to make sure that we send clear written communication to every employee impacted whether they're positively impacted or even those that whose salaries are likely to be frozen as a result of until their proposed salary catch up with their actual salaries and we're not advocating at all like I said we have a very hold harmless sort of perspective but if their salaries

160may be frozen until they get to the proposed scale and we have to review singleton or highly unique positions to talk a little bit about that we also have to make sure that we have proper documentation of salary steps we're in a pretty good place but we just have to make sure that in a seniority based system that that the experience is accurate and then we have to meet with hiring supervisors and we also would like to engage those who are hired since the classified study began so I forgot to mention that during the study a couple of years ago there was a lot of input gathered and that was that came out as a result of the recommendations so this didn't occur in a vacuum like people didn't sit together and come up with

161the recommendations they did focus groups they did surveys and all of that stuff but now it's two years and so we have new employees and we have to make sure that we're continuously getting that input okay I think this is the final slide so the bottom line is this I'm gonna end with the way that I began but really just like Alex said we're really trying to get do our best to get everybody paid in a uniform consistent predictable and transparent manner and again just ending off with all employees deserve fair equitable and competitive compensation she's done questions well that was nice and short and sweet to the point I don't know that I have a question but I will say it was although it was long I really appreciate the background and the details

162because it was important to have all of that stuff I really I really appreciate the work you guys are doing in HR and know and find HR finance and things like that because this is a very long overdue for our classified staff I always say that you know bus drivers cafeteria workers custodians everyone else is just as important with the successes that we're seeing in Durham public schools the increases that we're seeing as the classroom teachers to understand in front of our students every single day I really like what you said about thinking about the position instead of a person I think we had a lot of that in the past of people of when cuts were needed to be made it was you know keep my friends oh and you know sometimes it could

163be personal and I really appreciate that I appreciate it and it tying back to our strategic plan because when there needs to be cuts now we can look at how the positions align with our strategic plan instead of you know we just need to cut five people from this group well maybe this group doesn't need to have five people cut because their their work specifically is heading towards our strategic planning goal so I really appreciate this I really appreciate the work Alex obviously always appreciate your work thank you all for presenting this I think this is very important I think it's gonna make a lot of people very happy in our district and continue to make durham public schools the district we wanted to be for everyone who works here so thank you all thank

164you very much so so first of all don't apologize I mean this is this is what we're here for this or the public elects us to watch the how the public's money is spent and and I for one am very happy to see the presentation done in depth and and thoroughly so so thank you I I too many years I've seen school board's spent an hour and a half debating a hundred and fifty dollars for for books at a school and then pass a twenty five million dollar but budget item without even looking at it so thank you I did have a couple specific questions Oh first just on them the money the at the top it says that the money the five hundred thousand dollars came from the strategic plan but inside it says

165five hundred thousand dollars was allocated in last year's budget are those it was part of the summer allocations for for our strategic plan goals so we included the five hundred thousand there I just see in my mind this one pager that was labeled Thank You June 28th so it was okay thank you and then what when we say market when people paid at a fair market right are we what does that mean is that include private market and if so then we're doing analysis of the various benefits so for classified said remember back to an long ago and that first slide that we were talked about the analysis of public versus private so if we rely too heavily on private sector it's going to be skewed to be higher because generally speaking like I said

166private sector salaries yeah so so yes when we're looking at market that's why we did this whole thing my colleagues did this whole thing over because they wanted to get an apples to apples public sector jobs similarly situated like the county and other comparable district oh and so when we say market we're talking public sector exactly so last time I checked we don't we don't have school nutrition so this is important for the public to know that those jobs are very specific like school nutrition and bus drivers and so though it's important that we use market rates comparable to school districts although if we keep working for these chefs we may have on the so assuming the state at some future point also again raises pay for classified how does that factor into the into

167these tables so let's say they do we'll be generous here they say a five percent salary increase starting next year do we simply bump our Dyer table up by five percent that's what we would typically do or we might have to look at our resources our proposal for grades 52 56 is approximately seventeen and a half percent higher than the state minimum starting pay for those grades for school district employees so for those who are above that that minimum we would apply or for anyone who's been with us to the plan would be to apply that five percent so if you were with us for a year at we would move year one up five percent all the way down and obviously there'd be budget implications for that that we'd have to evaluate as part

168of the whole budget process for step zero which is already at right now on average about seventeen and a half percent above the state minimums we'd have to decide again as part of the whole budget process do we also raise the state minimum which we we've intentionally put significantly higher or do we leave that in place and just move the rest of the scale down so that those who have been with us do get an annual pay raise at commensurate with those of other school districts who are implementing the state's proposal at this point it's not saying concretely we have to look at what the what the state brings us and then do an analysis and then we'll get a proposal from what that's going to look like yeah our intention would not be to

169do anything less than what the state proposes as annual raises it's really the question of the floor do we also raise the floor given that it's significantly higher than the states floor or the lowest compensation rate okay no great to have a mathematician as a colleague because in HR 2 plus 2 equals grievances soft spot in my heart for math teachers and then the therapists physical and occupational therapists are they 10-month employees 12-month employees they're ten month to month so that monthly salary we saw was a ten month salary yes okay and then and then finally I just want to applaud the attention to evaluation I for one was appalled when I came on the board at what passed for evaluation in this system I I think training is gonna be essential because if you've

170been in the system clearly that was not a good system of training for how to do an evaluation I think it has a factor it's been a factor in some unhappiness with what custodians that the evaluation system was was pretty broken and so people are unsure of actually their standing because they had not had an effective evaluation so training our lead custodians on how to do an evaluation effectively but everywhere in in Durham public schools that training including evaluating teachers and certified staff is critical we have to do that better I'm so I'm I'm delighted to see that in there and want to see that continue to be emphasized thank you and I would love to mention that on November 6th we're actually doing a training we're really excited about it we really think that

171we could be a model district for non instructional departments and so we're scheduled for training for the custodial supervisors and all of the lead custodians and so we're excited about that that's definitely one of the things that we're gonna be we're putting together that training now so on November 6 that's what we're going to do I just like to thank you a Rossi thank you Alex Thank You Aaron and I know this is part of your work as well and Scott Denton who gave hours and hours and hours to this project I think you didn't put any extra details in here it all needed to be said and speaking as old board members over here I do like that old boards have done some things right right so the living wage thing that we have

172in Durham is actually what got us here the Durham values you know show that we are in good shape as a starting place what this is is $500,000 that we pulled I believe out of fund balance to try to make this move forward as quickly as possible with the people that would have the most impact in their homes that are working in our schools and I appreciate that you've applied the Durham values of equity to really get to our custodians and our child nutrition workers and and folks as instructional assistants that really it will make a huge difference in families I'm trying to understand all of it and and I imagine a big part is going to have to be that communication because some people may stay frozen as people move around them and peers

173are moving what you talked about that how many employees do you think are in that category it have you've done analysis of that I will say that the average length of experience is 12 years so that's kind of in the middle of the scale but I you know with our proposal one of the goals was to make sure that that there was some small increase between each step rather than being frozen for many years and so the skills were adjusted skillfully to to account for that I don't know I can definitely pull the numbers for you know how many people may be frozen but I would say it would be those folks that are already at the top of the scales like the this slide I can it refined anything again in this I'm sorry

174I Ross you had so much but one slide said that their average of Floy 650 employees would see $1,100 but that's an annualized amount that's and we're talking about starting this January typically December for custodians right so really we're talking half of that and through the end of the academic year right right so I don't want employees to think we're going backward that we have the funds allocated to be able to go backwards academic year right and I understand okay and then I know it's early to talk about this but have we talked about where we see a source for the funds in a wreck on a recurring basis we have a lot of steps to go through but that's one of the things that we're gonna be thinking and talking a lot about so

175it's a commitment we're making we're not we're going forward and you're are you actually asking this is here for action yes so we would ask for approval for the $500,000 to be used as proposed are you asking for approval of the scale yes yes I would have lived through this to be on a work session because I imagine I'll wake up and think of something or hear from someone tomorrow um and I you know I I trust the amount of work you've put into it but it but for future stuff I hope that this can come to kind of a work session where we can take a little bit more time with it since the payments are in January we can wait till the work session so that would be perfectly fine I may be

176the only one that might think of a question tomorrow so it's up to everyone here I just think it's a good practice if we don't have to make the decision I think it's good practice to wait two weeks and as long as we don't have to go through the entire report again we have to go through twice let me just make sure that we that we got some Spanish so we could all excited about 90 people that are held harmless that won't be math quickly final question if I could um so thank you again for the detail and for all the hard work that went into this it's not just good for us in our analysis but the public looks at this and I've gotten calls and the calls I've got at Ninian we're talking

177about classified staff here and we even talked about the enterprise funded positions like drivers aid and community schools so I'm getting calls about substitutes what where do they fall and they're not consider classified staff clearly and so they were asking what about us so could you kind of help so substitutes are variable our employees so they wouldn't fall under our permanent either part-time or full-time scales but that's definitely something that we can look at the substitute rates I don't know I just haven't done research on the you know one the last time there was a raise or an increase in the substitute rate that's definitely something we can look into and of course the other part with substitute value that we hear often is just a timing of when they're paid and that we've all

178talked about that so I'm anyway just as you're looking into that just kind of see what the possibilities are we did substitute fairly recently didn't we well you know we had them in the list two years ago but the increase in substitute did not go we still go with the state certified and non-certified rate for substitutes so we did not pass anything okay thank you thank you for this thorough thorough analysis I appreciate the numbers but also how you pulled out one I'm thankful that Durham was above a lot of our neighboring districts but the freezing from zero to ten I imagine you lose some people in that time so I hope that the change will allow people to stay and we increase our attention and also appreciated the intentionality around the interview process so

179how do we make sure we have skill sets and practical tasks and interviews I really like that I do have a question for if we bring this back Natalie I might agree with you of how much this might cost over years so I know we have an initial cost for this year but how much and I would like to make sure we can increase the salaries but for 2019 2020 21 how much will this be kind of in that classroom since we're doing a strategic plan on the five-year it would be interesting if we could go through 2023 all right is that the only other thing that occurred to me from the brilliance of your presentation is you know since the benefits are so strong in the public sector whether we're clear enough about that

180with new employees and and as part of orientation helping them to understand as the retention tool I think it's known by some but not by all so that might be that we need to continue to highlight with new employees I wonder if on the scale there's like a astrick that says with health care this equals the amount of one's retirement benefits this equals this amount yeah my help actually when I was talking to my colleague Mary Jane who did this presentation last week we were saying the in the in the letters we were going to to put the total compensation package so every employee will receive this is her base salary this is how much we is provided and paid for retirement and for health insurance cost so we're definitely gonna do that and I

181forgot to mention something really important Erin Boley ur my colleague did a really great job he worked so hard and hand-in-hand with Scott Denton so I apologize Erin Erin did a lot of work with the classified study to really appreciate his help one more thing yeah on the annualized cost for 2019-20 where that analysis isn't fully complete yet they're still as using some kind of decision points around that but we're looking at a total cost requirement in the ballpark of two roughly to perhaps two and a half million dollars but we're gonna have to consider that with all of our other budget priorities but that's sort of what we're looking at and then that costs obviously escalates each year along with retirement increases health insurance increases and what the state and/or the board determines above

182and beyond that our local percentage increases for our staff so but we're looking at for the 2019 20 proposal on the ballpark of two two and a half million dollars for the full adjustments for all classified staff all right thank you so we're going to move this to a worksite into our work session in November work session to discuss we can improve it there all right it's me again could you introduce yourself please I don't know okay Kennedy is working on it this one will be a lot happier and fun yeah it's just an update on our strategic plan goal priority three okay all right so attracting and retaining outstanding educators and staff art this is a priority three update so first we want to thank our strategic plan team members and I listed their

183names here but priority three has three goals and so our strategic plan leads our mary jane palmer and dr. Jill hall Freeman for priority 3a which is by 2023 DPS will reduce the teacher turnover rate to below fourteen point three percent and will listed the members aside each of the priorities miss Kim Hager my wonderful colleague and dr. Kelvin Bullock who are the leads for 3b by 2023 the percentage of dps educators and staff who identify as Hispanic Latino will increase from three to ten percent and the members are listed there and finally finally three see my colleagues Freddy McNeil and dr. Amy Davis our strategic plan leads for 3c which is by 2023 DPS will create an implement and employment satisfaction survey geared toward all staff and modeled by the teach modeled after the

184teacher working condition survey and will achieve at least an 85 percent satisfaction rate and we listed the members there so I just went over what the individual strategies were so this is just to provide an update of some of the meetings and how we're progressing on our strategic planning goals and we'll be doing this throughout the year so during group three A's initial meeting members were shared some of the reasons why this goal was important to them which I thought it was really cool so I included some quotes about why they felt a reducing teacher turnover it mattered to them as a committee so providing stability for children opportunity to lessen stress of teachers to address the emotional and mental needs of teachers and students an opportunity to think outside of the box and a

185well cared for teacher will stay an impact student learning during the initial meeting members delve into how the teacher turnover rate was calculated the top reasons for why teachers were leaving they also did a six-month check in for turnover for between March 2018 through September 2018 because as you recall our turnover data that I gave a presentation on a couple of meetings ago was from March of 2017 to March of 2018 and I think it's at fourteen point nine percent right now but we're still it's only a six-month check but it's number is good right now and then they looked at key factors in leading and compensation and support and they brainstormed over 60 ideas during their initial meetings so there's a lot of great energy as reported by the strategic plan lead so we're

186really excited about our goals so then their next steps are that they're gonna review and refine those ideas that were brainstormed and then plan next steps around them one of the things I think that it's really important for us is we get excited a lot and there's a lot of energy around our ideas but one of the things that's really important with our goal is that we're only in the first year of our plan so it's important for us to take the time and really be strategic about you know we can come up with all ideas all day long but if we have employed to do 50 things in the first year we're gonna burn out first of all and I would rather do three to five things and strategies that really work that we

187can see the fruits of our labor and see the see the implementation and see it through then doing you know 50 things so that's one of the things that were you know thinking about even though there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm around the goal the next goal are already read before 3b I I believe that that all of the members of the goal strategic plan 3b are here this is so important for them to be here so I would like to applaud them for being here if any one of you want to do I'm sure they're sick of seeing me if you want to do your slide well they held their I tried I tried uh-huh they try they met on October 4th and they met to brainstorm ideas just as the other groups

188did and also to establish a regular meeting schedule they discussed the following it I like their header ready set go so said they discussed the following that they really talked about not just about recruiting teachers but changing the mindset I love this changing the mindset of recruiting teachers for our district who are who are we recruiting as teachers for our students who identify as Hispanic Latino so they were really able to delve a little bit deeper into that during their initial meeting and they they they wanted us to know that DPS we have to have a culture that is welcoming of all teachers not just Hispanic Latino teachers that that's a primary goal but all of our teachers african-american teachers we heard some parents this today and talked about teachers and making sure that our

189popular population is reflective of our student population so this team also thinks and talks about that as well and it is one of the strategies within this goal so what are some of the big rocks and next steps so they talked about developing pipeline programs that target high school students and college undergrads including first-generation students to enter the teaching profession and they listed the goals they're three B strategy one targeting tenth and eleventh grade students for grower own programs like Future teacher's and teacher cadet program and Kim and I are actually going to be meeting with the principals at Riverside and hillside on the 25th to talk about their teacher cadet program and scaling that up visiting districts that currently have grow your own programs that are successful like Charlotte Mecklenburg developing mentorship programs for

190high-school students to introduce teaching as a career option marketing we thought they talked about a marketing new programs and then also establishing partnerships with organizations like North Carolina Society of Hispanic professionals and we talked about the Hispanic serving institutions as well so the last goal was 3c buy don't we already read that so they actually met their meeting was today actually from started at 3:30 and I talked to dr. Davis after the meeting and she said the energy was really good they had a great meeting but a large part of their because it's about classified employee satisfaction a large part of that is going to be hopefully addressed through fair and equitable compensation so through what we just talked about and that work is already underway so that's definitely a positive step in the right

191direction they've already done extensive literature review of different surveys and current satisfaction surveys and other districts and also in corporate settings just to determine the most valid questions for this dps survey they also filtered survey content to match an aligned North Carolina on and Durham public schools teacher working condition survey like like we talked about in the goal we also wanted to include a little bit of information about principal feedback and input so at the last principal's meeting we did a brief survey and the large majority of our principals responded we had a great response rate they were really excited about the goals and the thing that I was really struck by they were not included at all in any of the initial meetings but their feedback was very much in alignment with what the

192group's thoughts and ideas were so that was really fantastic so just kind of compiled some of their thoughts for 3a which is reducing turnover rate they looked at compensation and financial incentives and tailored high-quality professional learning for teachers professional development came up survey after survey and also having making sure that teachers have a voice in decision-making 3 be developing a pipeline for Hispanic Latino students and other underrepresented underrepresented groups for high school students who are interested in teaching just like the the initial meeting of that group said so they're very much in alignment and then lastly the overwhelming majority of principle respondents they welcome the idea of having a classified working condition survey and they really look forward to getting the feedback from classified staff about employment employment satisfaction I think some principals thought that

193it was I think that they were thinking that it was about the teacher working conditions server but I wanted to clear you know clarify for the board in the community that this goal really addresses a separate classified employment satisfaction survey but it's modeled after the North Carolina teacher working conditions I did want to clarify that they answer any questions yes nassim this past Tuesday I was in Fayetteville governor Cooper has for the past few months have people come together he has a core of people that are looking at access to quality a sound Basic Education how do you provide a sound Basic Education and I was on a panel to talk about principals and the fact that that we're talking about teacher turnover and things like that with it number one factor is that a

194great principal will eliminate teacher turnover so when principals are surveyed and and they are talking about what kind of teaches they want I want them to take a look at themselves and I want us to take a look at who the leadership is other than the classroom teacher being having the effect on you know success academic success of the child that it's the principal who has the academic success of the school and so by making sure that they get a staff that is that is performing so I know we number three and I spoke to number three in our strategic plan when I you know talked about what Durham was doing by placing one of our a plus principles in a low-performing school they thought that was just a great great idea just so we

195get kudos for that so Sonny lad was saying everything she's on the panel is great so not on the panel but she's won the Commission she's on Commission so I want us to look at when we talk about number three's attracting and retaining recruiting and retaining quality staff and also includes leadership at the school so I thought I think that's important for us to to to point out that we will also be looking making sure that our principals are quality because they are going to determine who the teachers absolutely I think that that was also listed in that initial groups meeting compensation and support it wasn't you know I didn't put it on this slide but that's definitely something that their leadership absolutely man 3 that's okay absolutely so thank you for that just quick

196question on that group the three a group are there any teachers on that committee so we have our some teacher mentors Donna Dodson Jennifer Nifong I don't know if any teachers were included I don't know so seems like a good that might be a good addition and we do have opportunities during our regular cycle of meetings with our superintendents teacher Advisory Council our superintendent Student Advisory Council as well as the principals Advisory Council to make sure that we get feedback on the strategic plan so that is something that will be at the November stack meeting to get some feedback on priority three right in this case we're x specifically about what the what the district can do to reduce teacher turnover I would think I haven't having a teacher sitting on those meetings could be

197helpful Kim and I actually had a really great it we had to do it on a phone call him and I had like almost a two-hour conversation with Brian prophet and he talked that we delve deeply into the survey that was recently done and so we are really looking forward to partnering very strongly with Dae and and hearing some of those ideas that that he talked about the last board meeting and so we you know obviously need to make sure teacher voice is included and so that's one Avenue as well and I'm winking at Kisha Rogers and Andrea Pettifer have have been teachers so you know just because they became a principal they still have a teacher voice as well yeah I would still advocate for a teacher to sit on the on the committee

198in that a teacher maybe that's been here for five to ten years so there's someone who's actively choosing this day and I think is one thing to talk about someone's voice being represented at table some nothing for them to sit at the table and yeah so I think it would be really important to have teachers there and I don't I'm sorry I don't know all the people on this list but it's r3b if there is lot next teachers and that list yeah okay great you're a teacher awesome all right thank you that feels just really important to me to have that voice at the table and I think also thinking about we talked a lot about why teachers leave but why teachers stay yeah and there are some schools that have some really low teacher

199turnover right and studying what's happening in that school building seems like a really important thing to do for 3a that principal leader is the person who is going to help drive that retention and so figuring out people who are doing it really well what's going on in there feels like another important strategy for the 3a yeah and I for the sake of brevity I didn't list all of the 60 ideas that were brain servants one of them I remember reading about you know hearing from teachers directly on why they stay so I think well noted will include a teacher because it also says that many times mediocre teachers will stay okay all right you can rest your okay all right okay the next item is the Board of Education we did remove 13b all right

200good that saved a little bit of time we could discuss that see if we can get a record going on here all right so the superintendent evaluation and one-year extension so as we normally do we do an evaluation the board's responsibility to do an evaluation each year of a superintendent this year dr. mangle was here for I think seven months less yeah seven months before the end of the year and we did our we did an evaluation we think in an open session we selected a tool right and we did that and the results came back very positive and so I want to leave this opportunity to speak publicly if you just had any comments that you wanted to share publicly about the evaluation and then as customary or this time with excitement for me

201the extension of a one of one year unto us contract to show our appreciation for his work and and in hopes to keep him here you know longer we would take action on that so I'll open the floor for observations or conversation I'll end it up and then we'll talk about the extension I'll open the floor okay we starting to my in all right I think the mere fact that it's on the agenda and he's sitting here in that seat that we clearly affirmed that document being a you've done a great job and we appreciate what you've done we like the energy and the focus and the intentionality did you bring to the work and we wholeheartedly support you dr. Vega you have given your whole heart to the challenge of the Beloved Community of

202Durham and this board and I are so appreciative of your leadership at this time and look forward to continuing the growth towards equity and social justice that you have begun and continued on within our community so thank you I was into the conversation earlier this week about teaching hiring teachers and how do you tell a great teacher from an interview howdy how can you interview someone for 45 minutes for now and know if they're gonna be a good teacher without looking at that past experience I can definitely say that what we heard or what I heard in the interviews with dr. with bengis what we've seen you have walked the wall that you talked about and the community is better for it I think we all are so again we have your back we appreciate

203what you've done up to this point and we look forward to more echo everything that's been said I appreciate the attention to high expectations that you've brought into our district the belief that you have that our students can achieve and will achieve at high levels and I appreciate the humility of which you navigate the work that we're doing so it is I am the leader but I am clear to be open when I made a mistake or when we are holding people accountable and I think that is really important I'm excited for you to continue working with our district and I'm excited for us to see the growth that we can make they echo the the positive comments of this board I've been super pleased with how this work is gone I say thank you

204for that I do want to say to the to our to our staff that we're saying we're saying properly what a good job you're doing that's also want to be clear that we did a serious evaluation and when we docked with the superintendent we tried to model what we're asking the superintendent to - throughout the district and so we did identify areas that we want to see him improved now and reached agreement on moving forward on those and I think that's how the process is supposed to work so I'm delighted you're here you're doing a great job I'm glad we did this evaluation in a serious way and thank you for both modeling and how this shouldn't work and then for your work as well all right and so dr. Marvin Gaye the presentation about

205the classified salaries is just an example of the energy and detail and transparency and an excitement that you've that I believe that you your leadership and your staff that you brought in and the excitement that you had in staff as already here what you that's what you do what you've done I I'm really excited about the energy and the momentum that we're seeing here in Durham not just during public schools but in Durham about Durham public schools I can't remember not that I've been here my whole life just from 97 I can't remember hearing the good stories as much as I have about Durham public schools you know the excitement about you know wanting to go into schools the excitement about what they're doing in schools the excitement from teachers the excitement from administrators the

206social media just explosion that that you see especially on Twitter you know the good news is getting out there and it's being shared it's being talked about I'm a member of a couple parent groups on Facebook and you you hear a lot more positive now than you then we have in the past and there's actually more positive now than negative you know you have a look we have a lot of defenders of during public schools because they see I think they see the changes in the excitement that we that were experiencing here in Durham you have put together and captain and and coached up a topknot staff now you have people I was talking to dr. Dan back there I said I don't even know where you sit because they're never here we have people

207and fuller actually in the buildings that they're there they're out of the out of the building they're actually doing you know what their ties to do and they're excited about that he was excited to say yeah well we're never here we're in the schools and I like that I like the I really like the energy and I'm really glad to have been a part of it with you being here and so I am really excited about the opportunity of offering you the extension of the year on your contract because the work you're doing now the work you've done thus far in it it hasn't even been a complete year yet but the work you've done thus far gets me excited about what you're going to do in the future so I look forward to that

208I look forward to dr. Hardy's work and you know Aaron's work and you know it's the the changes that we've seen in the short few months in these 11 months that you've been here it's just exciting and so at this time I'll accept a motion to offer a contract extension of one year - dr. Marvin Gaye is - clarifies that could you clarify mr. su what what exactly we're offering uh my understanding that there's a doc desire to offer a contract extension through June 30 2022 which is the maximum allowed under state law oh I I would make that motion been moved and properly seconded that motion any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please she's the same sign it is with excitement that it passes unanimously and enthusiastically yes enthusiastically

209all right comments just want to say thank you board members we had a closed session laxatives under we said there were positive things that's we all excited about and now they're also area for improvement and I'm ready for it to make sure that I improve on those areas to make our district better to our staff thank you for working with me will excited this work could not have been easier without you being where you are and do exactly what I want you to do to a community I'm real excited about the work we're gonna do not trying to be cocky but I'm very positive about the things that's Rubin achieve we heard a lot for my account I mean for my parents today some of the feedback some of areas of improvement so they're expecting

210us to to be able to address and that's why I'm here I'll say this I'm not here to collect a paycheck I'm here to get a job done and I will get it done thank you I'll now accept a motion cause a closed session for some reason stay down the agenda no moved been moved and properly seconded that we go into closed session for the reason to stay down the agenda all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign we're in now in closed session