001[Music] good evening everyone the Durham public schools Board of Education is now convened in this regular monthly meeting we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has come to join this 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 are doing within the school system the administration will present the information some of which was presented in our monthly work session to keep you up-to-date and to ensure that our vision for 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 carefully listen and consider the comments but do not engage
002in a discussion with speakers our interpreter for tonight we do have an interpreter here if needed as tanita flowers so if you're in need of interpreting services please see her thank you for taking the time to join us Matt would you say that somebody see necesita services per interpreter tenemos sake signora flowers yeah la playa gracias thank you for taking the time to join us tonight our next item on the agenda is a moment of silence and so as we start this school year I would like for us to reflect on the event we had yesterday we will talk about that a little bit more the convocation and just a challenge that our administration staff parents teachers have moving forward for this year and students think about the safety of our students there's a lot
003going on so join me in a moment of silence thinking about our district districts were worldwide thank you next item on our agenda is celebrations chit to be fair to be fair it's been a long 36 hours thank you thank you thank you so oh now the microphone is working good nobody heard me say good morning good evening it is my pleasure to introduce the celebrations portion of this evenings meeting where we have the opportunity to recognize and thank outstanding students staff and partners process is going to be a little short this evening we resume be our guest next month tonight's first celebration is the Durham public schools student of the month the student of the month program spotlight students who distinguish themselves with character and integrity who are active in their schools and community
004and who maintain excellent academic standards I think we've got more than a few of you who are here for tonight's student of the month and that makes me really really happy I would like to ask miss Marcia Navarro principal from middle college high school to introduce the August student of the month good evening everyone sir student of the month is angel a Jana Lucas she is a senior at middle college high school which means that she's duly enrolled in both high school in college courses during her time at middle college angel has demonstrated that she is committed to the full learning experience she actively engages in their coursework and makes every effort to explore and apply information beyond the classroom setting it has been noted by her instructors that even when encountering a challenge or
005barrier angel continues to come at the issue doing whatever is necessary to find success within her learning she actively seeks out areas for improvement and asked for support as she pursues her own personal growth last semester angel was on the Dean's List at Durham Tech she was also inducted as a member of the Durham Technical Community College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa society an international Honor Society recognizing academic achievement among two-year students to be inducted in a Phi Beta Kappa students must be enrolled in a degree program and have a minimum of 3.5 GPA with at least 12 hours of credit when angel is not at middle college she often spends time volunteering in the local community she enjoys volunteering at the Durham rescue mission she's especially fond of working with the children there she
006also loves music and spends countless hours playing the piano and drums for her church during her spare time she delights in singing traveling and spending time with family the quote from the selection team on why angel was chosen as that angel always has a smile on her face I can attest to this always always smiling her joyful presence in her learning environment contributes to a contagious positive outlook middle college high school at Durham Tech is proud to have her represent us as a student of the month so here with angel this evening she has a host of relatives grandparents are here her parents William and pelvis Lucas will ask for parents to Stan she also has grandparents here her brother's here and lots of members from the community in her church so angel and parents
007would you like to walk the red carpet all right we have one more celebration tonight it's now time for us to celebrate our community partners who support our students and our school improvement efforts and I'd like to ask Denise Nelson our lead teacher for a DPS deaf and hard of hearing student services to come introduce our next honorees good evening it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you thank you introduce you feel boring who is the president of the Bull Durham Civic club this Civic club has been a wonderful wonderful support to deaf and hard of hearing services in durham public schools they have supported us for five years and have given us very nice donations over the years we have purchased a number of items specialized language and literacy materials since we
008are such a small group of students the materials that we use with them are somewhat different than what is used with the other students and they can be quite expensive so to have this support has been really wonderful so in addition to the language and literacy materials specialized standardized assessment materials and a good deal of technological equipment so all those things have been wonderful and this year we had the biggest donation from them that they that we've had they had a golf tournament that support the proceeds from it supported us and we had a wonderful check that we received a $3500 [Applause] you want to say something further yourself I know you do I'm not that sure but nope well thank you so much I really appreciate that Denise and the board for recognizing our
009club but let me just say this we do a small part for what the teachers do that's all the teachers god bless our teachers we love them dearly and especially the durham public school deaf and hard of hearing teachers they do above and beyond the call of duty we're so grateful for Denise and their group [Applause] thank you everyone and with that that concludes the celebrations portion of tonight's meeting I can check I think I'm the only obedient all right tell me we have awesome students and awesome community partners we'll wait a second let the noise down died down a second okay moving forward the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's update I'll turn it over to dr. umma Benga new chairman good evening mr. Lee board members so we had a lot
010to say at yesterday's convocation at DPS employees so I'm going to keep things very brief tonight it was an excellent gathering and I'm grateful that's almost all of you were in position to attend along with City Tanny dignitaries dignitaries and the people who helped us create our strategic plan every guest there honored our educators and staff it was a great moment for us all coming together as one to ignite the Livni's potential of every child I want to publicly thank our chief of staff Daniel Giovanni and all the staff from across Durham public school for the time and effort they put into planning this wonderful event we are ready for the traditional school year to begin most of summer building project are wrapping up professional development has gone well and our Department of Human Resources
011has been doing great job great job recruiting teachers in a very competitive environment we are at this point 99 percent staff for core classroom vacancies and more than half of our schools are completely stabbed thank you ever see the remaining schools with vacancies are spreaded enough that there are only a few per school let me say one or maybe half per school we are continuing to progress aggressively we could and we wish or we have a list of fully staff substitute teachers that should be used to cover those class as a plan-b so with a strategic plan to get us with the energy that we all saw yesterday during a convocation and with the support of a community beyond us this is going to be a great year thank you mr. chairman thank you doctor
012no thank you we're excited about this year nor excited about moving forward the next item on the agenda is a gender review and approval mr. chairman I'd like to ask to just add one brief summary of my leadership in SVA leadership seminar to give you all some updates on what's going on to the agenda please I'll be glad that that uh let's see what do you guys think after academic services that's fine before after general public comment however after what's your pleasure what meeting minutes it's fine whenever you want to pick whoever you want to place it okay so we'll add may needs update right out there general public comment Alex I'll probably entertain a motion you move approval of the agenda as amended that good mood and probably seconded that we approve them the
013agenda as amended any further discussion any further updates all in favor say aye all opposed please use the same time passes unanimously next item on the agenda is general public comment we have one commenter we'll have three minutes Morgan Mathers hello everybody hello so my name is Morgan Meadors I work for the Durham County Department of Public Health with a nutrition education program called dine and dine has been around since 1999 so I know most of you are familiar with it so I'm here tonight just to provide a super brief update to keep you guys informed about what we're up to in the schools if you ever want more information I'm happy to come back to another meeting or I invite you to come to one of our classes or events you're always welcome and
014I'd be happy to set that up so the dine program has several sub programs and our community team works with adults in the community we work with grocery stores convenience stores farmers markets childcare centers but most relevant to you is our school program which I'm a part of we have seven dietitians who work in elementary schools providing nutrition education as well as one dietitian who works with middle and high schools in this past school year during 2017-18 we taught a full Dyne series of nutrition and cooking classes in 16 elementary schools reaching over 8400 students in over 270 classrooms we also support the schools in a lot of other ways as well by serving on school wellness committees working with school gardens posting bulletin boards providing toolkits and other resources for teachers PTAs after-school programs
015things like that we also work to do policy and systems and environmental changes which try to help make the easy choice I mean sorry the Healthy Choice the easy choice for student in this past school year tendyne elementary schools made at least one policy systems or environmental change at the school I'm an example of that would be working with the cafeteria managers to make kind of simple changes in the cafeteria to promote fruits and vegetables to make the kids more excited about trying some of those healthier options we're funded largely by the USDA's snap-ed program in a little bit by Durham County and so we provide all of our services at no cost to DPS we do evaluations each year pre and post screenings with about 25 percent of the classes that receive our full
016nutrition education curriculum as well as parent surveys and teacher surveys I'm in this past school year 71 percent of our students showed an increase in knowledge from pre to post tests 85 percent of parents reported that their student was more willing to eat healthy foods after our classes 80 percent of teachers said their students were having more conversations about health and healthy eating and 63 percent of teachers reported that they themselves had made a healthy change as a result of the nutrition classes so we're hoping to impact the students but also their families and the teachers in the whole whole school community have some of that information on a sheet of paper that I will provide for you and again you're welcome to join our classes anytime I'm happy to help set that up and
017we're looking forward to another really great school year with DPS this year thank you you can thank you okay that's the only public comment that we had for general general comments we do have one for Career and Technical Education update we'll get that in a moment all right next time on agenda as a minute was Minnie's update well we put it out there to public comment as you know I was in Chicago last week starting on lesson on last Thursday going from Sunday I was a part of the nominating committee and so I went in on Thursday and we started the leadership seminar on Friday the focus that I want to bring to you today is about equity matters the 2018-2019 agenda for NSBA is going to be focused on equity matters so they're finally
018being bold about saying what equity is and I'd like to read to you what their stance is what our stance is because we're in SVA we affirm in our actions that each student can will and shall learn educational equity is the intentional allocation of resources instruction and opportunity according to need we recognize that based on factors including but not limited to disability race ethnicity and socioeconomic status students are deprived are deprived of equitable educational opportunities this requires that discriminatory practices prejudices and beliefs be identified and eradicated so this is the first time that NSBA has taken a bold stance toward equity so this 1819 agenda focuses on those following things with the direction being championing educational equity working to ensure that essa is implemented implemented in a manner that recognizes the law is clear directive
019to restore local governance and community ownership in public education to advocate for policies and funding to further enhance student and school safety to defend against privatization by challenging vouchers tuition tax credits and similar schemes that would weaken public education and harm students and lastly to work to secure adequate funding for the I da now miss Clemens white is going to give everybody a copy of this and so we'll have that our next meeting I want you to know that the advocacy Institute is January 27th through the 29th in Washington DC that's when districts send people to go to talk to their legislators or Congress people in North Carolina has a delegation if we'd like to join into that delegation we come as one and we voice and we talk to our legislators ok so please
020that will be included in your packet the annual conference is going to be in Philadelphia this year please attend that it's going to be March 30th through April 1st as far as North Carolina is concerned our district meeting is going to be September 12th Wake County will host it we don't know which school is where it's going to be first but I think we might have some presenters from our district included in that if not we certainly will have some at the annual conference in November the law conference is in Asheville it's always great if we intend to go to it we send anybody to it we need to make sure we make reservations now lastly I do want to tell you that we had one special person at the speaker at the Chicago seminar
021and his name was Tim Hodges and he was from Gallup and I said this to County Commissioners the other day the top three challenges facing k-12 education at first in 2017 2018 was improving academic performance for underprepared students that was number one secondly the effects on poverty on student learning and thirdly but it shortfalls but the Gallup results say now the number one challenge facing public education is attracting and retaining high quality teachers that's the number one challenge and they also say a positive school climate contributes to higher academic achievement and decreases the negative background characteristics that often and often risk factors that affect academic achievement so we are right in line here to public schools the things we're doing in terms of assessing climate in terms of putting equity practices in place not only
022just putting them in place but also monitoring them and making sure that they're delivered so I was happy to report that one district in North Carolina I can clearly say is doing what we need to be doing and that's durham thank you all for supporting or did but I want you to know that I represented Durham thank you well thank you for representing us all right thank you many the next item on the agenda is the Board of Education meeting minutes approval this is for a July 10 special called organizational meeting I was gonna point out that my that I was pleased to see my entire speech was caught in that in a minute move approval it's been moved and properly seconded and we approve the minutes for a special call organizational meeting July 10th
0232018 any discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same time passes unanimously all right academic services is it all good good evening um it is my pleasure to be before you tonight to talk about the whole child resolution and very interesting in a couple weeks I will be before you sharing all kinds of academic performance data but tonight is a night to remember that we really work with the whole child and so I bring forth a resolution for you to consider in partnership with NC ascd which is the largest state affiliate of ascd which embraces a whole child approach and a whole child initiative I would say that Durham public schools is well versed in approaching our education of our from the whole child approach and I could give you
024a litany of examples but I think you know them whether it is literally the lady who spoke earlier about dying and keeping our students healthy whether it's the presentation for day one whether it's the many many remarks that were made yesterday including what you just said many about our relationships and our connections with students that that is at the core of what we do when we educate our students so it is also priority two of the strategic plan providing a safe school environment that supports the whole child so although NC ASCD is jumping on this and says we would love to make Oktober whole child month across all of the state of North Carolina I think of this is a wonderful opportunity not only to highlight October but we do that and I'll tee you
025off Betina from day one so from day one we want to approach our students with a holistic approach of taking care of their social-emotional making sure our schools are safe making sure that we do everything we can to keep our students healthy so with that said I would bring forth a recommendation that our school board join many other districts across the state of North Carolina in endorsing whole child month for October we know that it is not about one month but that it is about what we do in Durham and as certainly is our priority and focus of making sure that we do that so I bring that recommendation to you for your review and approval mr. chair do we need to read the resolution to let the public know is it up online I
026mean yes oh we should stop I've got it hang on okay yeah we just like we generally read the resolutions since you volunteered they're mini you can start for us and we'll just continue old ciao resolution whereas the observance of North Carolina whole Chao month in October of each year provides a fitting opportunity to reflect on how to best address the needs of our children whereas recognizing the success entails more than just academic achievement the non-profit professional association ASCD the association for student and curriculum development launched the whole child initiative in 2007 this comprehensive approach to education seeks to adequately prepare today's young North Carolinians for the demands of college career and good citizenship and whereas the initiative highlights five key elements that children need to become happy productive a happy productive members of society
027that they are healthy safe engaged supported and challenged and whereas the first element is at a child inter-school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle and whereas the second element is that each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults and whereas the third element is that each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community and whereas the fourth element is that each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified and caring adults and whereas the fifth element is that each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or future study and for employment and whereas the North Carolina affiliate of ascd NC ascd it's the largest affiliate and provides professional development and networking
028opportunities for thousands of educators across our state and whereas the continued prosperity and vitality of our state depends at our children's achieving their full potential which in turn requires educational policies that ensure young North Carolinians be successful now therefore be it resolved that this board recognized October as North Carolina whole child month and encourage parents educators and community members to support a whole child approach to education yeah I would move approval of that resolution second it that we approve the resolution with the whole child resolution any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously thank you thank you and I will share that with NC ASCD as they share across the state who has supported this resolution thank you okay so thanks just continue on
029next on our agenda is the day one pledge so if I can have just a met Hickson and Astra Christine come on up so our new vision in durham public schools is igniting limitless potential and has been cued up very well by you many and by the resolution earlier we know that we can't ignite the limitless potential in our students if they're not feeling physically and emotionally safe in the buildings that they're in and so one of the things that we've heard from parents since I've said on this board is around bullying and safe school environments and how they really feel like we need to do more to make sure our schools are safe places for students and so the day one pledge is a pledge for all schools to take there's an elementary school
030middle school high school version there's versions for universities for workplaces so if you're watching you want to take it to your job you can do that with the goal of setting the expectation on the first day that we will not stand by creating schools that are unsafe places and so the day one pledge I learned about it from Bull City Schools United so organization that will star about educators here in Durham so some of them are here some of them are at their schools for open house tonight I think Matt ran over from Neil and so thank wanta have a sure who is here who's their youth coordinator DPS graduate and who also feels passionately about this as well as mr. Hixon who's a assistant principal at neo and also works for Bull City Schools
031United so y'all wanna give us a little more introduction so good evening my name is ash Erskine and I'm a 20-17 graduate of Riverside High School I am also a non-binary transgender man my experiences at Riverside being an out transgender person were mostly positive rather supportive or indifferent and most of the administration and strap and staff tried their hardest to support me in every way they could however I did still face homophobia and transphobia in my time there mostly from a few staff members some were well intentioned but uneducated and how to support students like me while others went out of their way to silence Riverside's LGBTQ voices in ways that were obvious to the rest of our school community it was incidents like these that brought me to my current role as the youth
032coordinator for Bull City Schools United who I'm speaking on behalf of today I would first like to thank you all for reading the day one pledge your support of all students and their intersecting identities is so important to the success and safety of our dps community research shows that LGBT youth are two times more likely to skip school due to feeling unsafe and uncomfortable 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBTQ identified and 85 percent of LGBTQ and gender non-conforming youth in our juvenile justice system are youth of color these numbers show that our students particularly queer and trans youth of color are under supported by their communities and their schools we also know that supporting these students makes a difference students who know that have they have at least six supportive staff members are more
033likely to feel safe in school and are then more likely to graduate earn higher GPAs and enroll in college we at be CSU appreciate you for helping to make DPS a leader and supporting our students with actions such as reading the day one pledge dural excuses role as leaders within our North Carolina education community will not stop with the reading of this lunch today Bull City Schools United is currently collaborating with DPS administrative staff and officials to begin writing a guidance policy for our district to provide clear guidelines on how to ensure safe and supportive school environments for transgender students across the district we are also working with the DPS 2019 Teacher of the Year micah tweet meyer to organize a coalition of durham public schools educators to march in this year's pride durham we're
034registration for pride can be found on our website Bull City Schools United org as well as more statistics and information on LGBT student safety in the classroom and what BC SEO is doing to help create safer environments for our students wait Bull City Schools United are grateful for your continued support as we push for safer and more equitable classrooms for all of our students and we do hope that we'll see you at pride thank you Jim so I just wanted to share in context I actually did literally just come from open house and I was like because of it I snuck in the back as we ended around 6 o'clock and there was a huge turnout of families at Neil's tonight I think it's one of the coolest things that we get to do is
035educate and I think when we do that I asked myself the question all the time are we doing everything that we can to make sure that every single student that walks through our doors has a phenomenal experience and that they feel whole and welcomed everywhere that they go and I think it's things like this that we're doing away and whole child and looking at a cultural framework and then also some of the pieces that are in goal one quite frankly thinking about how to get students through school and make sure the most successful things like this really are essential foundations to ensuring that we can answer that question with a yes that we're giving every child everything that we need and there they need to make sure that they're fully supported and whole and so
036I do ask that you as a board and the administration here continue to think about these issues as part of everything that we do when we're thinking about equity and whole child and cultural frameworks throughout the district that we provide good guidance so that every student can have that experience and then we ensure that we continue to make the steps and to be a leader not just in the southeast but across the nation so I again thank you so much just like Asher said and hope you continue to do these sorts of things and be a leader for our state and really the whole region thank you alright so we've heard from our administrators we've heard from students it's time for us to take the pledge alright this is all research backs and you can
037go on the website to read more of the information if you like we're gonna go to page 26 on our board packet and if we all take a sentence I think we'll be able to all have a piece of this is the day one upstander pledge on page 26 of the packet oh yeah yeah there are a lot of them but it's page 26 bottom right corner 26 mm-hmm I want to ask you if you would like to do you know do a workshop or presentation and the conference the annual conference to since we're the first school district mm-hmm to talk to other districts about this I think this would be an excellent thing so I want you to work on that just send that to Ramona - absolutely and because I mean we know
038the research says positive school climates increase academic achievement for students and especially in schools with students of color and students we talk about intersectionality of race and culture gender sexual orientation all those things matter all right so we're all on page 26 yes all right many do you want kick us off day one up standard pledge when I witnessed bullying at school home work online at practice or in my place of worship I will choose to be an upstander I will intervene or report the abuse and I will reach out to the bullied person to offer support I will work to make others feel safe and included by showing respect and compassion I will not use demeaning language slurs gestures or jokes about anyone's sexuality size gender race ethnicity any kind of disability religion lack
039of religion income politics or other differences even if they behave that way to me I will tell some who is in a position of authority what I saw and heard and made sure and make sure there is follow-up if I learned that someone is feeling very isolated depressed or potentially suicidal I will reach out and tell this person that their life has value no matter how they feel at the moment and no matter what others say or think I will support them to be the best of my ability and connect them with resources or people who can offer assistance that's the day one pledge and also if we don't mind read the elementary one because that one it has language that I think families would appreciate how it's framed for younger children and I don't
040remember where that one is Bettina do you to six eight fourteen upstander pledge for kindness and inclusion and this everybody say this together that's how it goes let's say it together like so don't you read the introduction and then we can say the Pledge together and all together the introduction we all want to be upstanders here for ourselves and others being an upstander means being someone who stands up for kindness and who makes people welcome even if they are different or we disagree with them I will make a mistake I will say I'm sorry I am a sander as you can see there's varying four early elementary from middle school for high school there's differences and it makes sense for where students are developmentally so this information has been pushed out to all of our
041principals so they have access to that and we hope the schools will take this pledge on Monday do we have any sense of how widely that was done last year nobody here was done George was I was added to our thoughts it was done at Sandy Ridge okay I'm sure was done well I'm just kind of curious maybe it's maybe this year we could afterwards just gonna get a sense up so we know to what how widely it's being used and then we can decide whether we need to more actively promote it though is this information or do we need to approve this or information okay well thank you good evening board members our next presentation is specifically around Career and Technical Education tonight's presentation will highlight three specific areas data outcomes program accomplishments and
042our high schools and future programming that's underway our Career and Technical Education program aligns directly with two goals under strategic plan priority one increase academic achievement goal 1a speak specifically to 90 percent of our schools meeting and exceeding growth standards in strategy for it says develop diverse and robust pathways for all students and provide increased guidance and resources for equitable access for students goal 1c speaks specifically to improving the DPS four-year cohort graduation rate that will be at least 90 percent strategy 5 indicates specifically that we will increase the number of CTE completers in all high schools at this time already at the podium would like to introduce to you mr. Rick shelled all our director of oh we have public comment I'm sorry no need for you to apologize it's my fault I'm gonna
043do the public comment and then we'll hear from the man himself Rick so our public comments from Antonio Jones on this topic and it's okay I'll let them go really quickly before I get started I appreciate the whole child report the whole child resolution and day one I think in a day of when we're losing common decency respect I think that's the beautiful thing for a school district to uh to really take a stand on but I won't here to talk about the career in tactical update before I do that great job yesterday heard you gave a great speech money I hadn't heard it yet but I heard about it thank you right sorry I couldn't make it I wasn't on daddy duty my son was sick yesterday so I couldn't come out but at
044any rate so according to a George Washington Center for Education the workforce of about 20 2016 5 % of all jobs will require some sort of post-secondary education and according to article that was on WRAL over 50% of linemen between private and public utility companies will be retiring by 2026 50% and at that rate North Carolina will need 1500 line workers in the next for the next five years so that's 7,500 jobs just in live in and I did a little research talk some of my buddies over at do power and some of those linemen are making some serious money serious money between the double time triple overtime and things of that nature and peak seasons some serious dollars so it kind of brings me to this uh the ski Latrese Academy at Southern High
045School I think that we are in a space to where that can be a beautiful thing or it can be not so beautiful depends on how serious we want to take in a few things is in terms of how's that program gonna roll out like what skills and what train what trades are going to be over there and how it's going to be funded and the curriculum that's associated with it I think that one things that we probably should not do is create this as some type of a drop out or push out factory if some of our CTE programs have been known to do over the years I think that's important because there's a lot of state for a child to leave a school even knowing that they're going and stuff for your institution
046or going directly into the workforce so I think that's gonna be key secondary is that we can get some community Beaton's to get buy-in from the parents and what happens when a child who goes to Jordan or northern or somewhere else wants to go and take that what does that look like I think there's some of the things that we really need to look on look at because what we do know is that in order to ignite the limitless potential have to have conversations around what do you want to do to establish some type of potential and marketing talking to the business community what do we need clearly right now do powers saying they're gonna need 50 percent a workforce is gonna be retiring we know that all right so the last thing I want
047to say is funding funding is key funding is key and what type of skill trees are we gonna have or just gonna be some sort of one-size-fits-all package to kind of find spaces for kids we really don't know what to do with so what if you need me I'll be glad to help out in any capacity in terms of giving me this community supports me by in organizing folks or whatever because I think that the type of skills that's gonna be needed about 2026 we can be the leaders in that space as well thank you you ready to go Rick all right thank you thank you mr. Jones all right I'm gonna try and be good night cuz I got a new boss and she wants me that lying it's really hard for me to
048do you know you can dress the old boy up but you can't really take I'm sorry doctor okay so I'm gonna whip through the first couple of slides here if I can if I can because dr. hardy set me up very well with going through our my part CT East part and I take that I can do a lot for every part but if you go to these three strategies right here and this goes to what Antonio just said our job our job as educators is not to graduate kids from twelfth grade our job is to get them ready for pathways careers livable more than livable wages and the way we do that is we create a diverse group of pathways and when we go through what's going on in the presentation today please understand
049we have a lot of pathways that aren't going to be discussed tonight so don't think that what you hear tonight is all what we do all that we've got the second one in sure every student develops their four-year plan it's important for our kids to have a four-year plan but it's more important for them to have a career plan and a college and career plan and that should be based on what they want to do and where their love lies and the only way we can help them do that is by starting as early as possible helping them figure out where do my interests lie and then plugging them into the appropriate programs and then strategy five has always been something that I've strove striven strove whatever for is we need more CTE completers and
050I'm going to show you why if you haven't already seen the presentation so 2016-17 I realize its we're getting into 2018-19 but we're behind a little on data so 2016-17 which is our last official data we had five hundred and fifty means they've completed four courses in a pathway one of those being into vamps class four or more five hundred fifty five of those 550 graduated 99.1 percent growth in each I have all of the A+ students you're wrong I have the entire cross section and I want the entire cross section because CTE can positively impact our children I want to and let's just look at 2017 18 we don't have that data yet it's supposed to come out in September I can tell you that the entire time I've been the CTS were actually
051been in the mid 90s this is the highest we've ever been graduation rate but usually it's been between 94 and 96 next year it looks like we'll have about 592 completers don't hold me to that that's our best guess testament and to tell you the truth we ought to be increasing at a much higher rate than that and I think with my current administration who I adore we're gonna do that so technical achievers who really did well and technical attainment when I say that please don't get confused technical attainment is our EOC scores it's our final exam our post assessment scores CMA just like you guys know are always top performers ninety-eight percent of their kids are ninety-eight percent proficiency rate not average on the test but proficiency and objectives for health occupations in 1617
052you can see ninety-four percent in 1718 and they are almost always in the 90 percentile DSA technology engineering design only have two teachers at DSA because I only have small categories that fit into that arts area 91 percent and then I've got I have two fan family consumer science teachers at Hillside high school they are Selita Carter and crystal Greenwood 96 percent in their family and Consumer Science in 17 16 17 and then in 17 18 our culinary arts program you guys know that's a stellar program ninety percent and and you go in there and you can see that we've got the whole gamut of young people in those classes and I am very proud of that including the EC kids I love having our EC kids in our classes so what's really can we
053really celebrate for CTE for past year Project Lead the Way who I would say has one of the best engineering programs in the state and probably the nation and it goes back to teachers it doesn't matter what kind of program I put in place if we don't have good teachers who are consistent we won't have this kind of performance but if you look at that it's amazing what they've done 5000 Project Lead the Way schools applied for this award 340 or more selected 103 at 133 out of those 340 or high schools and only 10 of them were in North Carolina we were one of them and look at this selection criterion look at how Riverside outshines that selection criteria significantly we didn't just barely scrape over the edge we blew it away three or
054more Project Li the way courses we have seven thirty three percent of the students take more than two classes a hundred percent of our students do 70% proficient on the exams or they earn an accreditation which would allow them to qualify for college credit 70 percent we have a 90 percent proficiency and 70 percent of our kids earned that achievement that that is really saying some we can replicate that kind of program everywhere with the right teachers in place and CTE teachers are tough to get there they are tough to get so what else did we accomplish this is amazing sitting at Madison Academy there are a little bit of a row group over there and they just kind of go do things and one of my teachers is named Melissa Russell over there and
055she is a go-getter she decided she was gonna start an EMT program got with the city partnered with the city we have had we have qualified 18 EMTs in the past two years 18 of them and that means they can leave high school and go get on the ambulance and work and with their needed here that's why the city was so excited to partner with us and we've got four students working locally right now that are they're not students anymore they've graduated and they are working for students are using what they learned to fund their ability to go to college and that's another powerful tool we can give our children northern culinary arts what can I say 97 events after school on weekends during the summer and they don't get one penny of extra pay
056and here they cater and here you guys know very well with those what those young people can do and it's the young people that do it because the teachers empower those young people to do it and they shine um scholars at work as a program that I have this fantastic employee her name's Andrea Austin I wish every single one of you got to know her I actually came into town specially for this I was gone and if she would have been able to give this presentation she would have been in front of you she has started a program called scholars at work kids do work a job shadowing and internships for four days of their Spring Break kids are working on their spring break four out of the five days we pay him $100 stipend
057we scraped the money together from various sources and we had 85 students participate in that this last year this is only the second year that we've done it and that program into the summertime because our businesses like so much that format the six to eight week internships are very difficult for our businesses some are internships within DPS many you've been with me the entire time I've been the director and I don't know if you remember but I've been trying to do internships for a long time and we with the city to do this and we actually have about 200 interns throughout the city but 40 of them worked for DPS 15 of them in our different departments 25 of them through a program called Betsy which is focused out of the hub farm and they
058have gone to different elementary schools and put in better management practices which is helpful with water run off the grounds it's created ability for the kids to walk right outside and do science experiments and those are our EC kids from Southern and our AG science kids from Northern they partner together and it was wonderful and it's so wonderful having teachers cross pollinate with each other because they see a lot more than just what their little silo is and then you know you're not gonna get anything from me without the hub farm being mentioned and we are great partners with dime dine is phenomenal with us and the kids come out and they pick their own stuff and they make their own stuff out of what they picked and then they eat it and trust me
059they have not eaten this stuff before so if we last year we were able to serve almost 2,200 students in the forms of workshop our form of field trips we specifically focus on 5th grade science yes I know I'm not supposed to work below 6th grade but 5th grade science we bring them in trying to get them ready for their and into grade tests because we can show them reality of what they're learning and 117 DPS teachers were out there with workshops and assorted things please don't let that go away when I go away the future programming computer science we've already started we've been piloting at Riverside this is Project Lead the Way computer science I have come to grips with the fact that computer science changes so fast that the state cannot keep up
060and very few organizations have the wherewithal to provide us with what we need curriculum wise so I have settled it Project Lead the Way needs to go in every school with computer science because they train our teachers they give us a great curriculum and they're very supportive it's expensive but it's worth it so Riverside has piloted the past two years we're adding it to Jordan school for Creative Studies in new tech this year the new tech teacher and the Dourdan teacher went to training this past summer school for Creative Studies teacher was hired the day before school started so we haven't gotten her to training yet we'll do that as soon as possible and then it's going to go into every comprehensive high school in the next couple of years so that would be adding
061it a hillside at Northern and it Southern then one other thing that I've been working on with partners I use I very loosely it's actually a huge we I'm just the person out front is a work based learning continuum and I think this is something that I would love for you guys to sink your teeth into this is not a DPS only initiative this is made in Durham and made in Durham has made a tremendous turnaround over the past at six to eight months please please know that they've become valuable partners Durham Tech who has always been right in my hip pocket helping us develop programs that we're like a continuum and then also economic workforce development we're already trying to do some of this stuff and what I'm going to do is go through
062this chart with you because it kind of explains it and I'm sorry it's kind of small hopefully you can see it in your packet this is just kind of a it's it's a template it's not set in stone Antonio I need you to get in touch with me because I want you on that skilled trades work because we are working with a lot of people and this has been determined with a lot of people businesses community members what we're trying to do is in ninth grade make sure we have career conversations every month and and and it's Rick telling you this but Andrea Austin did it all career conversations every month she has a net different focus so at every school community members are coming in and talking with his larger group of students as
063we can get together primarily freshmen because we need freshmen to start thinking about what am I going to do when I leave so that what they're doing right now gains importance and then they do better because they have a reason for doing better we also have career fairs in the summertime I want and I'm not talking CTE ninth graders I'm talking all DPS ninth graders summertime the goal is is that we send every ninth grader on a job shadowing day long job shadowing to some company that matches what their career interest has indicated they're interested in so it's not just this shotgun approach kids getting on a bus will take you here no matter what you'll want to do we're trying to figure out what do you want to do send them to that business
064so they can start narrowing down whether or not it's a it's a viable choice or not then scholars at work spring break in tenth grade expanding that into the summertime because once again we can serve a lot more students if we're doing eight to ten day work things instead of six to eight week internships we can serve the entire DPS student body and not just have it be mainly CTE students and as you can see there we it's it's a scaffolded experience so by the time we're sending them to internships through our partnership with the city the companies are getting people getting young people who have skills and they're not saying hey you know what are we we're taking on this extra baggage you know we're doing it out of the goodness of our hearts
065no they're good and then 12th grade we want every child to be involved in a have a mock interview with business people we want them to have a resume review with those business people in the 12th grade we send all of our young people or are we to identify young people we know who aren't going to college and we take them to a Fair where they're introduced to a variety of employers and Durham Tech so that we keep trying that trying to get them plugged into some college if they want it and that's a very brief ex nation of that it's a huge undertaking but I think could turn our turn our kids around so future programming thank you for the introduction sir I we have an incredible opportunity and and this is business driven
066okay the businesses came to us and said we need you to help us solve this problem and our solution to the problem is not creating a skilled trades Academy that says here's the Masons here's the electrician's here's the plumbers we want to bring kids in as a in their junior year having them figured out that this is where they want to be not pushing kids in this has to be voluntary because it is going to be a three hour a day two year long program 1,400 hours these kids are going to invest in this your one is training and it's training across the skill areas it's giving them a little bit of plumbing it's giving them employability skills it's giving them a little bit of electrical it's giving them resume writing skills it's giving them
067a little bit of masonry and then it's giving them leadership training it's because we want these kids to become our future business owners yeah we're starting them out here but we want them growing to be the the WL bishops out there we want them to become the CT Wilson's we we aren't looking just to create kids that are gonna go and be Mason's the rest of their lives and the cool thing about this is is you we're partnering directly with durham tech so that our kids would even be able to go directly into their programming hopefully having been hired by our companies already because the twelfth grade 11th grade year they'll be in training 12th grade year we want them working with companies all year long in the first semester will be a rotation so
068that they can figure out what trade do I want to focus on 12th grade the second semester will be hopefully with the company that and you can see how we're planning on putting this into place and you know Rick could not be not Rick at least in one slide so this numbers you see at the top of those columns does not quite correlate to reality so we did not hire a teacher last year and a business liaison last year we're hiring this year so it's 2018 19 in that first year and by the way the business liaison were hiring he's probably gonna come from a grant from AJ Fletcher foundation they're gonna they're looking to fund that for probably three years and then if you look we've got a we've got a wonderful teacher in
069place he is not a professional carpenter he's not a professional electrician he's a jack-of-all-trades all of his training has come from being in AmeriCorps Peace Corps and Habitat but he loves our kids and I think he's going to do great he's just going to teach regular carpentry this year 2018-19 he'll start bringing in kids we need to hire another teacher next year another teacher that's licensable in this area so that we can have a cohort of 40 children 2020 21 we would hire another teacher we would add another cohort of 20 so we would 60 in the junior class we'd have 35 to 40 accounting for some loss in the senior year and then the last year because that's a big task there I'm thinking we might have to hire and a teacher assistant to
070help out with the numbers we'd have 75 in the third cohort we'd have 50 to 60 seniors then and we'd be graduating 35 to 40 it does not meet the 1500 number that mr. Jones talked about but it goes to start creating some creating some kind of assistance for our workforce this is not a low-level program this is going to be curriculum written by us for us and it's going to be honors level that's what I'm asking this day for so it's not going to be some low-level class now do I want some of those kids that maybe would drop out if they didn't have this option you better believe it cuz they may Excel because they're not stupid it's just we haven't tapped into their potential and that's what this program is for I'm
071sure I'm past my 10-minute times questions I have one yes ma'am you talked about Chuck Wilson yes I want to know are we gonna bring in those professionals those business people those journeyman that work in the trades to have real-life conversations with their kids yes in fact the whole intent of this program because my guys not a jack of all turret he's a jack of all trades expert at none kind of like mwah I we're gonna add the businesses have already committed that we do the plumbing phase we'll have a plumber there from that business there and hopefully the way I envision this is we'd have three weeks in plumbing and one week would be one company the next week would be another company and the next week would be another company because then you
072share the burden on all of the companies that we have and yet you give three different companies access to our children and you give our children access to three different companies and we would mirror that all the way through the year with all the different programs certifications we want them to be certified so they will have an a.1 certification NCCER and in the basics of construction I'm thinking about forklift operator scissor lift operator which is used in every warehouse Red Cross CPR and we do OSHA 1000 already which is the lowest level but there's an OSHA 30 that I think if we got our kids through that employers would be really impressed and once we promote this with our County Commissioners who are bringing in all these builders you see all the constructions going here
073then clearly our kids will have those opportunities oh yeah they'll have more than their eyes I'm for seeing these kids being recruited like college athletes exactly I'm seeing this program having more than 50 to 60 of 75 kids well and I think what we'd have to do is we'd have to look at where we spread that and maybe it would be Northern when we build the new building we'd replicate the program and then you have a hundred and fifty graduates maybe but we have the ability to pilot it through here and see how do we do all this stuff marketing we're talking to all of the construction associations because they're already marketing because they're hurting for people so they're right there with us doing all of this work how does this work with youth build
074isn't youth build already here youth build is a very kind of short-term program and it's very intense primarily for kids who have dropped out of school but I see some mirroring there I see some kids coming back yeah and I see chill I also see us partnering really heavily with Durham Tech and maybe Durham Tech who does not have the spaces to handle seventy-five graduates maybe we share our spaces because we don't use our spaces after-hours and we don't use them on the weekends we don't use them in the summertime so maybe we can really create some kind of synergy here sounds good thank you any other questions thank you I don't have a question just a thank you Rick for your vision for CTE and if we've talked a lot and really push for
075when students connect they're you know schooling to their future lives there's so much more motivated so the more that we can get people in front of them the better and so I'm really appreciative of your work and your vision for where we can go thank you thank you I don't have questions Rick but I do want to thank you and thank you for your your visionary leadership on this and in guiding our program to where we've gotten so far um I do think that it's important to let our community know that this is this is some of what we're doing in CTE but there are so many other pathways and so many other options that we didn't even talk about business and finance we didn't talk about animal science market we have any we barely
076touched what we're doing right but what we don't do and what we need to do better is get the word out to our community about all these options I feel like families have to dig and find it yeah and I know we're gonna get at that some with students really making that ninth grade plan that's gonna be critical but we're doing CTE in middle school our community doesn't know that to me nope we know we now are doing summit elementary because I wrote them grants for Project Lead the Way so maybe a career fair that does only CTE then that's our community know that brings our parents and I think we can do that and then that's one of the ways we can expose our you know like we do the magnet fabric for the
077magnet fair so we can do CTE fair and let people know these are career opportunities there are students as well and I want to tell you the hires of Mary Griffith and trued O'Neill are going to help me amazingly because I've been working with Mary a long time and true it was one of my teachers so we're gonna utilize that thank you alright this was just for information and so we did yes just few comments could history call for your wonderful leadership just remembering um the first meeting that we had a sudden when we wanted to kick off his program there were a lot of business folks the part of the meeting is matter of fact I got an email today from the president of Durham tech they ain't ready to fund most of our
078programs and even one of the initiative that was to celebrate these students as they're graduating as we do for athletes they say they're ready they're gonna put whatever found it possible to celebrate those students so a lot of business community they will excited about this program and I agree with Natalie that's we don't really do a good job of telling our community what we're offering and this is just the beginning I think we're going to scale it up we're starting with that seventy-five students are on a sudden hopefully we're gonna spend it to other places but a lot of other programs that we don't really do it whichever for telling our communities and I think that's our charge to make that happen all right thank you very much the next item is the Human Resources
079bakken's good evening board members administrators it's unfair for me to follow Rick Sheldon with my boring little praises but um I just have a administration is proposing to make a change to our contract term length for our workers comp provider our original contract was executed with Sedgwick in 2015 and nothing has it will change about the original contract it's just that we're a requesting to move from a one-year to a three-year term which will actually save us 2% over three years so they said ouack the company has an automatic three percent increase per year and so eat for each of the past three years we have been getting a three percent increase and so this plan will allow us to have three percent this year and then two percent in each of the two subsequent
080years the actual addendum language was not ready at the time of the board materials but I do have a copy for the board members and I'd be happy to I also did send it to miss Clemens white today so she has it for public posting so I'd be happy to go over it that was the question I came with was was it just being worked on right up until the last day it was so the first page of the document is just our standard one-year agreement which we've been doing for each of the past three years and so if you look at the so the the date the dates in section 1 it would say 2018 through 2019 the second page would be what the 3-year agreement looks like if you'll notice on the three-year
081agreement which is two pages the only things that are different are the dates in section 1 and then on page 2 you'll see that B and C the fees just increase math by two percent for each of those and then the third page that's sorry the fourth page is just the summary chart is the original agreement posted somewhere we have it we can post the original contract is it a reason why we didn't do it for three years before sure I guess because we changed providers in 2015 and so maybe we wanted to see how the provider did and we've been happy with their services in the original terms of the contract to allow for a 60-day termination and that has not changed I don't have any I don't have any trouble taking that following
082the initiations lead I'm just wondering whether or not haven't been posted what we are we able to approve this site we need mr. su can you give us some guidance yes you can approve that by reference so long as the copy is available here obviously it's for the preferred practice to have it as part of the packet beforehand but we can hearing that I move that we approve the contract for Sedwick for the extended term of agreement which is the cost savings for the district second so moving properly saying that we approve the psychic said Sedwick contract with the addendum for the additional years any further discussion all right okay all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign it passes unanimously and with that I'll accept the motion go into
083closed session move that we go into closed session for the reason stated on the agenda second has been moving and properly seconded we go into closed session for the reasons reasons stated on the agenda all in favor say aye all opposed please shoot the same sign passes unanimously we are now in closed session you don't use cameras yeah the plan back to playing my board members I'm here seeking approval for the personal reporters discuss at a gloss session prove all the personnel report dated August 23rd 2018 second it's been moving properly seconded that we approve the personnel report dated August 23rd 2018 any further discussion all in favor say aye aye all opposed please use the same sign passes unanimously and with that we are adjourned you