001mr rhoden you are live on youtube amy can you hear us okay thank you we'll resume this session of the board of education for september the 13th 2021 it started with closed session and now we're back opening open session for the meeting next on the agenda under open session i have the pledge of allegiance so if you will point one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you nbc next on the agenda under number two we have comments from the superintendent so i have a few things to share today um that are some positive things going on within our school district um first of all we had a generous uh donation of a flagpole for ash county high school and so if you come to the game to our first home
002game that we've been able to play on friday night um you will get to see the flag in flagpole um donated um by vanoy construction and so we are so thankful for fenway construction for donating this flagpole and they did so at the high school to remember incredible men and women who serve our great country the united states of america so we are very proud of that flagpole we're very proud of ash county schools and we're very thankful that we have a community that cares not just about our schools but our veterans as well so that you will see very soon say thank you to bernoulli construction um we have some exciting things um that have happened um recently believe it or not and it seems like a lifetime ago already um since our last
003regularly scheduled board meeting we had the ash blast back to school blast and so what i said was that really after the last regular board meeting i knew that we had one in between there or actually a couple in between there but i wanted to say thank you to our community thank you to the sheriff's department what a fantastic partnership that we have between local churches and businesses the shoes for kids program they gain fresh at least 25 000 dollars worth of shoes we gave with hundreds and hundreds of brand new shoes for children the time that some of our hairdressers in the local community cutting hair that was one of my favorites and kids having a fresh haircut for the first day of school we loaded backpacks i know amy and jamie and i
004had fun uh 10 o'clock the night before at walmart thinking oh gosh we're around we ran out anyway um but buy more um stuck through the generous donation of lots of different businesses so um thank you our community really knows how to pull together and that was pretty special so between the sheriff's department and our community in general that's something i think we can celebrate and i say that was the first annual we planned to do that again and of course thank you um to our board members who are there who have donated their time um thank you to our schools um who were there on a saturday before school to see smiling faces of kids and families that was a lot of fun so that was one of the positive things on friday we
005hosted the state teacher of the year eugene floyd and so she um is from chapel hill carbo cardboard schools and um is trying to visit all of the different school districts and we were we visited two schools and her first request was to see holly mcclure our district teacher of the year which we love to see polly holly is in a role currently she was in self-contained last year this year she's teaching inclusion and so we got to see her in an english class we also visited the classroom of our beginning teacher of the year charlotte horton and along with lots of different teachers at the middle school they were having their very first maker day and so students were really in a creative mode teachers were in a mode where they were helping to
006facilitate that throughout the school and we saw evidence of high levels of learning lots of stem and lots of creativity the things that we want to see in our schools we also visited blue bridge elementary school following the visit to the middle school and we saw the clubs the new club day that was taking place and our stem innovator had been busy working with keep ash beautiful and so third grade students were had some lessons on um the new river and the cleanups that are going on and things that we can do right here in our own community and lots of collaboration that we saw so i was really proud of what i saw from our teachers at blue ridge elementary as well as ash county middle school lots of high level learning it's evident
007of why our kids in school here in ashe county do so well um another thing on our beginning teacher of the year she is right now currently spacex invited her to go to florida she and miss cronk they were um offered an experience to uh see inspiration for and space spacex facility in person in florida and they had the opportunity to attend a welcome reception for the spacex team they did a meet and greet where they got to personally meet those who they zoomed with earlier in the year and do you guys remember ash county middle school back at the end of the year got to zoom with spacex and our students were fortunate they've been featured on a documentary about spacex it gives me chills just to thank you a former science teacher and
008being really proud of uh a brand new teacher taking off for this opportunity and um she actually is a private tour of kennedy space center and the historic launch pad go to a pre-launch spacex executive presentation it's to view the falcon 9 and then she gets to watch the launch from a special hanger so i'm really proud of that opportunity again it happened quickly and um they are um it's an amazing opportunity for them so um netflix inspiration four series has been released and there's a documentary that aired on monday and it really provides acms to join them on this journey because they were a part of their journey so it will be again on september today so it happened again netflix was it airing it today um so proud of charlene wharton and again
009great teachers here in ashe county and that's just one piece of evidence um tonight also going on right now at the high school is a college fair so um there are colleges live in the gym to answer student questions so we're excited that um students are really thinking about what's next um coming up at the end of this month we're going to have our blood a blood drive um it's the first that we've hosted in in two years um and there are our our medical community still needs blood and so they are of course doing it in the gym at the high school following all of our coded precautions and of course the blood drive with our nurses they are held to a very high standard when it comes to those precautions we started talking
010about veterans day events and how we can honor our veterans coming up in november and so last year we did a video live out to our veteran community um but our rotc wants to do more this year so we're talking about what that can look like um no news yet we also have um next friday so a week from this friday on september 24th we have a vaccine clinic information will be coming home to families tomorrow so with parent permission of course students at the high school and at the middle school will have the opportunity to have get the vaccine if you know of course with parent permission but it makes the access to the vaccines easier on families if that's something that they choose and so that will happen a week from friday um
011this coming monday we are going to host a stakeholder event so for teachers and parents and anybody who wants to join us with the abc collaborative if you guys remember this is the collaborative that i've been working with for the last year to help keep our schools open and to ensure that we have [Music] the most information that we can about coping and what's going on and know how to deal with kobit as well so a couple of the doctors that we've been working with that are some of the lead specialists across the country will be just giving some information on things like the vaccines what's happening with the delta variant and do some q a so if families have questions we'll have an opportunity to answer some of them at that time but more
012information i'll be sending out some information on how to access that if families want to and then um oh and then i just want to mention the vaccine clinic it is only students 12 and older and again only with parent permission and there are parent permission forms that must be signed and then um um oh and then we have a federal audit coming up that's not exciting news but it's something that we're doing we have to do um ash county schools um we've done well in our audits in the past um this one is interesting because it's happening in the middle of um kobit and in the middle of and we because we're in a right we are ash county schools um we get one of the first visits um where other schools is over
013a three year time period and so we got lucky we're drawing to go first so julie taylor has been very busy and working with teams to make sure that everybody's informed of what needs to go into that audit and of course we have all of our evidences in place that you know but it's every single title program title one and title ii title three title four um any federal monies that we receive um they will be looking at and looking at evidence like that so um i will say that that's a a positive thing um it's of course making sure that we have the appropriate documentation for all the different rules and so those of you who saw the extra funds and solve how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rules well this is
014very similar with the other type of funding between amanda and julie and other directors on the team it's a lot of work that goes into ensuring that but they're a lot of it so good thing and then um i do want to call your attention to and everybody at home's attention to we do um have information on um covid posted weekly and if you haven't seen it yet most people i think have but we do have the flow chart i think most families have been referring to it on how the health department is making the quarantine decisions and rules and those are all on our website along with the data that we've been posting there weekly and of course um i do want to say thank you to our nurses um they're pretty special people
015and um in any way they they work very very hard to keep people safe as well as do all of our teachers and employees that our nurses have really i'm glad we have them so thank you to the board for ensuring that all of our schools have them too i think that was all i didn't forget anything today i'm going to say the positive things first because some people don't rachael the end and so switch it around let's make it positive that's why we ended on the federal office that's right i'm sorry that's we'll continue down the agenda next we've got public comments so before we go into public comments i will read our policy on public comment in accordance with policy 2310 the board chairperson will recognize speed speakers in the order which they
016are signed in each speaker will receive three minutes to present their comments however the public comment session will not exceed a total of 30 minutes except by a majority vote of the board if a speaker is unable to present all of his or her information within the specified time limit the speaker may provide the board with an additional information in written form please refrain from addressing any specific employees or student concerns as a part of this public comment concerns may be directed to district leadership as prescribed in policy 2310 board members will not respond to individuals who address the board except to request clarification of points made by the presenter the board chairperson has the authority to speak on behalf of the board and to refer concerns to administration except in cases of emergency information
017received during presentations will not be acted upon at this time it is received also on that i do have a clock up here for the three minutes so as the speakers are speaking when we get to kind of the one minute mark i'll come to give you a one to kind of let you know we're kind of into that short end of everything so we do have according to here we've got a three uh signed up for public comment again we'll go in order as they were signed in first we have jessica carter ms carter you're okay that's fine um as an educator myself i understand responsibility of the school we're charged with providing safe spaces for children nurturing their spirits and developing 21st century learners schools are not charged to serve as an authority
018on any child's health and well-being but rather just to safeguard these to the extent possible it is my opinion that a mandate which forces all children in schools at all times to cover their mouths and noses with damp sometimes soiled cloths is counter to this principle a cornerstone of 21st century skills again a primary goal of our educational system is the ability to be a critical consumer of information and an analytical thinker to that end i have spent a fair amount of time doing my own research on the benefits and risks of face coverings for healthy individuals the literature is at best conflicting and confusing discussion around the ineffectiveness of masking would require much more time than i have to speak this evening and i'm not here to discuss masks per se anyway i don't
019take a stance on masks as they are a personal choice and a security measure for many during these uncertain times what i am here to take a stance on is a mandate that requires children to cover their faces at all times unless they're eating or drinking in order to ascend the public school system in our community as this mandate effectively removes my right as a parent to determine what is best for my own child's health and well-being i was told by your school nurse recently in a conversation about masking that i have to be the advocate for my child's health and so my presence here tonight is a demonstration of that effort her many masks make sense some children though are suffering debilitating headaches irregular heartbeats and asthmatic episodes that their parents can directly connect
020to masking for hours and hours upon end now that school is back in session children already lack a voice in so many ways as they exist within systems developed by and managed by adults and i believe that literally covering their mouths all day further silences them in a new and uncomfortable way our youngest elementary children usually don't have the social and emotional skills necessary to advocate for themselves and their own needs and a mandate that requires at times physical discomfort and that may have potentially dangerous side effects for all of us is not something that i will silently stand by and watch our children endure my simple ask is that this school system continues to provide clean spaces for children to gather learn and play but that you would give parents back the autonomy to
021make their own decisions about their children's health and safety practices in particular whether or not they may choose to wear a face covering for the duration of the school day thank you for your time thanks carter thanks uh signed in for public comment mr drew martin this location here okay i'll just stand right here my name is drew martin i live in jefferson with my wife barbara together we raised our three children all of whom attended dash county school we now also have a granddaughter and lansing who made one day attend i'm here with you today to voice concern for the health of the children in our school system and to express my opinions regarding your actions as a board which directly affect the psychological social and physical health of our kids i'd like to
022think that we can all agree unless it is absolutely necessary covering a child's face is wrong tasks do not stop the spread of viruses they can't physically do it reliably even when worn constantly and properly according to the strictest guidelines we've seen evidence of this in our own schools so far this year moreover data show that kids are not at risk from coving any more than previous generations like ours had been from colds and flu what masks can do is harm our kids a basic understanding of human emotional and social development should make it clear to us that separating young people and especially very young children from one another putting on natural distances and physical barriers such as space coverings on them to break normal social contact between them will almost certainly have serious and
023lasting impact on every aspect of their health so who are these masks for are we willing to accept that the risk of causing permanent damage to our next generations is the price we must pay for our fear of an illness against which millions have already developed natural immunity and millions more have chosen to receive vaccines we still have the freedom to make personal choices regarding some of the risks we're willing to live with in the workplace and at home children however do not and increasingly neither do their parents what's happened to parental rights and autonomy to choose some politicians seem to think these days are over i'm here to say those individuals who would use this kind of christ to further erode their our freedoms and use our children as political pawns will soon realize
024we've had enough their overreach will not be tolerated any longer in closing let me say the citizen i commend each of you for your willingness to take on the duties and responsibilities of your position and i thank you for your service having served a number of boards myself i appreciate how challenging your job can be as a parent grandparent someone who cares deeply about the health of our youngsters those who depend on us completely to protect them i urge you please recognize the authority of parents not politicians to decide whether masks must be worn please do the right thing make masks optional as you had earlier decided to do thank you mr martin next i've got on the agenda is mr chef mark well my name is jeff martin and uh they call me grandpa
025for gramps or dad in this case i'm 80 years old so i guess i can be considered a senior citizen my three grandchildren from my son all grew up and and went to school here in add county all the way from uh kindergarten and through k-12 and did some works county extension they do my concerns as an older person kind of are part of what they've been talking about with these masks with all of the outside pressure from government both state and national mandates and directives i want to make a few points first of all and this is i don't have the slightest idea what's going on in the schools right now as far as curriculum is concerning but i do want to make some points because of my concerns history how do they know
026where the country should be headed if they aren't aware of where we've been i want to see real history how it happened and not somebody's cleaned up history to only show the idealized version of the history nobody should graduate high school without having been taught about the declaration of independence and the constitution and how they relate to today's world and the end of each other and this first cut this is the first country to ban slavery and i'm not sure the kids know that science real science the study of the weather the atmosphere the elements etc not phony science such as masks which is more for controlling people than based on science gender there are only two how you feel is not a gender social programs to actually help prepare our youth for adulthood not
027the 1619 project or critical race theory which are meant to divide us into groups i grew up when the country was still separated segregated we have been trying to integrate all of us into a united unified society ever since and now our government is trying to separate us again my only bias is against people who think they are smarter and somehow better than us we me i don't know if any of this new thinking has creeped into our school systems yet but i and many others want to make sure it does not thank you mr martin those are the only three we had for public company next on the agenda going on we have the awards and recognitions so i'm going to postpone that until the next time the awards and recognitions we're going to
028have a few of them um we'll have a few of them and so to make sure that they can be here in person we're going to do that um moving on into action items now number c first under number six i have approval of the minutes i have a motion to approve the minutes mr chairman i make the motion when you approve the minutes it's written can i have a second i'll second the motion any questions or changes to the menus hearing nothing all those in favor raise your hand motion carries next we'll go into number two under action of those coconuts and mask so the um state of north carolina has directed boards um under um in accordance with sl 2021-130 section 10 the board must adopt a policy uh regarding the use of
029face coverage by employees and students for the 20 21 22 school year the policy will be reviewed each month just as we had decided last month and they are attached so what you all see are the footnoted and clean versions obviously the clean version is what you would adopt you can amend them as written but these are the ones that with the legalese that the school boards association recommends there are two um one of them option a and the other is option b one of them is essentially with masks and the other one without masks and with masks so you can adopt these or any other ones that you want but we have to revisit this every single month and so this will be a new standard item moving forward but and once you adopt
030one next because it only is good until the next coordinating you can choose to adopt the different one at the next after next meeting again these are from the school boards association they sent them following last week's um decisions by our general assembly okay so one option is optional one option is mandated required correct okay correct no matter yes correct yes i'm sorry yes you can see there's a difference you're right you can choose to wear a mask or choose not to wear a mask is one of them and the other one would be they're mandated okay yeah i just yeah we're not cut right now under that that's right sorry okay so we've got these options here in discussion from the board or a motion of the board do we need a motion before
031we talk about it okay and if you wanted you could also if you wanted to look at the other information that's below it um under all the code 19 items you could do that as well would that be better we talked about the information first and then come back to the policy i'm ready um but we will talk about the information first okay but i have read everything here okay so if you want to kind of explain what we're currently looking at as far as the board and the numbers here um i've been sending you all numbers each week as the nurses get them so that you would know how many um cova cases how many are quarantined both students and staff and then we've been posting the total number the last three weeks online
032once we figured out how to get our dashboard up and working so we've been posting the positive covid's and both students and staff each week so this is broken down by school but you know where you have one student or one staff member we can't share that out because that would identify the student or staff member and that would be you know a violation of hip or or refer by depending on depending on who we're talking about but we have been posting total numbers and um so far since the week prior to school starting we started there because some people started calling and saying hey my child's gonna be quarantined next week because we have copied or quarantined in general so this starts the week prior to school starting and since then we've had about
033seven percent of our students this year that have had covet or currently have covered um which is of course because of the delta buyer of uh the delta variant uh which is spreading a lot faster than the previous one especially with children we didn't have that many all of last year so obviously different measures in place this year than last year you know as far as capacities in schools etc but so far this was through friday we've had 196 students that have had coded and 17 adults that have had food and that's positive staff actually in our school buildings i did not add in staff that are in like this office and that would be that increase if we included central services from you know other leadership positions quarantines that's the one that we have
034a lot of unfortunately in about 18 of our students have been quarantined most of these believe it or not um have nothing to do with the school setting they are coming in from outside because it's moving across families um uh the large chunk however that has been in the schools from a quarantine perspective came from our football team which as you all know was cluster and you know we later found out that there was non-masking going on um during a brain delay and you know if you have any symptomatic child um and other kids are not being asymptomatic that's the evidence that we've seen um moving forward you know in that setting um but that was a two-hour period not just 15 minutes they were delayed for some time so they didn't spread and high
035school you'll see is higher than the others there are more children there but they're also i mean i have a high school high school said myself they like to hang out together so a lot of this is happening outside of school um we do have some instances spread inside this school um a couple um through lunch because that's when the kids are [Music] i mean they're most vulnerable according to um you know the cdc and and the others that we take direction from um so it's been lunch or on buses and the ones on buses we've found um we've been spot checking mass compliance and that's unfortunately that's where a lot of quarantines come from because if you have your mask off if you have the mask going you're okay you have your mask off
036um that's from the inductive importance and you know their kids that we're talking about so we're gonna have um we're gonna have some of that so um 501 students have been quarantined um due to being a close contact or living with someone or um 22 of our staff members now on top of that and this is a number that's next to impossible to keep track of but some are out for a day because they're getting tested and they come back because it's negative and it's or they come back with a different diagnosis that it was their allergies some of them may be out because they're showing symptoms but we learn that it's the flu and flu is going around as is strep throat right now um and then for the littlest ones even rsv um
037so those are those are the numbers that you are looking at and then i put the place and i put the percentage of the total population um we have our current enrollment approximately four and 450 staff members approximately if you include all of our bus drivers and uh custodians and teachers and administrators and then from a student standpoint we current our current enrollment is 2795 students most of those are in in-person instruction dr cox it was mentioned that we had a grant for rapid tests where are we on that ground okay so that's where pool testing is um we have two different things so that's next on the list um it's all under covered uh kind of lump it all together so you know um the uh rapid test yes our nurses are in the
038process of being fit tested and so that's for equipment and they have to have appropriate equipment and stuff to be able to do that um and so that is in process and then the vendor um that will come do them so we can get the actual rapid tests through the health department and administer those on site however um the um pool testing is something that can help us to be proactive so um and there are some choices within that that's what we shared before um specifically with athletics i want to keep sports teams play and it you know we spent two weeks without our football team playing because they were quarantined or had coded and um that's just not healthy for our kids not to be playing um bottom line is you know you know
039short of stopping it they're by nature going to be together um and again we have as many health problems when kids are not together and doing things that they love as if they are so again we want to keep them playing um but um the state has contracted with a vendor that will come in and do what's called pool testing so essentially the kid with permission um swabs and it goes into a vial and it's a group of 25 no more than 25 and so football team will be split up into two groups and so if anyone shows positive in that group they come back on wednesday and texts to see who the positive is that way you can isolate it before they have a game and in fact somebody else that could have caught
040one of our kids that was asymptomatic you know clearly the kids were playing and they didn't know they had it and then we had kids who got really sick um so this this is a way that we could be proactive um and there are a couple of choices within there so again it's mainly to catch asymptomatic severe symptomatic we send you home um [Music] but again if we were doing pool testing you could potentially catch it beforehand be proactive your quarantine starts earlier you can get treatment earlier you can be home earlier if we know about it and hopefully save some of some of the spread but there were a couple of choices in there and again it could be any one of those um some i'm not as much of a fan of um
041but you could test off we could test all athletes as a requirement to play we could test student athletes who are not vaccinated as a requirement to play or we can often testing student athletes who are not vaccinated and make everybody else wear a mask during you know at all times so those are some of the options within it that would help to make that pool testing work for our athletes our athletes are in small groups they usually run in the same circles and that's why it's suggested in this uh in this setting we also could do opt-in and i wouldn't do it mandated um for our classrooms but um opt-in testing for students in the classroom setting you're not going to catch everybody um but again parents would be able to choose and what
042would happen um you come in monday they swap and if any of them come up positive they'll come back wednesday and individually so that they can isolate the virus to a certain classroom so again opt-in for that often it's not gonna catch everybody but it needs to give some choice in it um it might help us be proactive um you know and you know somebody else is sick and you're not positive and you just had a test um you know you might be able to go and say hey i think i might have strep instead and go to your doctor and avoid being tested again so um it's easy it's painless and it's obviously free for us we don't have to have paid for any staff they send somebody on site to do it for
043us and it's a company out of charlotte other school systems doing this and some of them are visiting just like we are so the entire state is eligible well i'm going to say they had 68 school districts that were [Music] that had signed up to at least entertain um it so far there may be more than that but i haven't really i haven't had time seeing exactly who has a compassion elkin city um i know last week their board noted to do it so and i can actually start to type it up um this last week um they voted today to screen all athletes band members and cheerleaders regardless of vaccination status effective late this month whenever they got it started it's going to be late september early october um they have the same vendor
044that we that's been offered to us which is game code to screen the students to use a pool method up to 25 students we'll go into one test kit if it comes if one comes back positive then they test them individually after that so if nothing comes up positive you move on and that happens on a weekly basis and again they started off with student athletes as well but the purpose of course is to help prevent students who are asymptomatic from spreading it to others who might end up getting sick and that's kind of what's happening you've got somebody's asymptomatic um and they've and you know you don't know you have it until you're not until you're sick and um you know that's how it's spread all around so that's what they're doing but i
045don't have information on any other current districts who have voted um yay or may but it is an option and it's a way we can perhaps be proactive and my goal is to keep kids playing and keep kids safe and have some um opportunities to maintain that i know last year it was heartbreaking and he likes to have i've got a a current sophomore who didn't get to play in the band he's in app state they got to play for the first time and i have a current uh high school senior and i remember senior year activities with spencer being cancelled and then last year i mean some kids didn't get to play and then last basketball we were so quarantined and or because they were positive and if we can do something that avoids
046that for kids um i like to do that um and again as many options as we have um out there like i said i want to keep kids play man if that's going to help and then if it doesn't we can revisit it but you know it's an option that we have and it's not going to cost us any money just a couple minutes of time um weigh in on this so um coach hampton um after uh you know he's the football team and um as far as uh what the last time i talked to coach hampton he said i'll do anything to keep playing and um so he's already bought masks um as far as the all the pool testing this is brand new as far as procedures and stuff so um they're going
047to have to take a deeper dive into what that actually looks like for um for the athletes at the school and procedures you know if you guys want to move forward with this um but he went ahead and bought the masks that went over the um uh helmets so similar to what we had last year i don't think he wants to quarantine like he did last time the woman was too convinced that was heartbreaking for some kids so um you know i can't speak for coach hampton as far as the details of this because these are these are new but um we will pull him into the conversation later whenever when it comes to procedural about uh what happens next aren't these wrecking tests the pool so it's a pull test so what happens is
048that they will come in on a monday morning and they will have kids self swap so it's not somebody else bringing it up their nose they put it into a vial so all 25 go into one bio and it gets off to a lab so these are the like a pcr type test um but it only the pull testing um rather than join everybody individually because that's more whatever the test is it's more expensive more expensive so they're not going to individually test on monday they'll individually test if anybody's positive in that pool and that will be the vcr test so there is a couple of day quarantine that might happen within that group but you've already been exposed because you you have um you've already been exposed so so how is that going to
049help the foreign absolutely i'm missing that point if we have to wait two or three days if because you will already have your test and it'll be your exposure would have been before from monday so you would already have the rapid test on when you will have that new test on a wednesday so you wouldn't know that you were exposed on monday because the kid's asymptomatic so you're you're testing on jamie you might want to pull in here keep it on all those all those calls with me but um if you have a for the pool testing you have everyone that goes into one vial right and so it's going to be in a small contained group so it'll be one click let's say let's use a classroom instead of a sports team that one
050classroom so you know that that's your pool of people that are typically your close contact it's usually not somewhere else because they're eating together their domains together so you've got that one classroom on monday if they were already symptomatic we would have sent them home they're not symptomatic they're in school but we see that something that asymptomatic kids are coming to school clearly that's they're getting sick um out and about and um this pool would um how do i say can you help me on this so this testing is just to try to catch the students who are not having symptoms and then when they would come back on wednesday that test would be my understanding would be a rapid test so we would find out that day who the positive student is and so
051that helps us speed that process along because at that point that child may not still be exhibiting any symptoms does that mean the exposure date starts from monday not wednesday and so if they then they would go through the contact tracing at that point in time and see who was literally a close contact so if they're all wearing masks for example and they're you know apart from each other using using the tart then and they haven't been eating lunch next to each other for 15 minutes or more um sorry i've turned it over here um according to this uh the flow chart that we have online uh the health departments and our nurses are using uh to determine that so if they were all mass and they weren't close contact they don't have to quarantine
052but you would already know who your positive is rather than waiting out even longer to get test results and sending them home etc so this allows us to identify that positive right away so it is a rapid test jamie if that is my understanding and then if um because they were already show you know showing as positive so yeah we would do rapid tests just on that group so if we knew it was just you know a small group of athletes whichever team whatever um and however that's divided up it does help us because that's that's the piece we're missing right now we can monitor and we can screen out students who are symptomatic we can do close contact but right now what we are not able to do is identify students who may be
053actively carrying the virus but not showing symptoms so this is a way to help us do that we also would like to eventually with this testing pool be able to do um day of competition so that we're not infecting other teams around us as well and i will say i know that watauga county is doing this and some other teams near us that we've already talked about that have opted in um and so the goal there is to not only catch our students while we're early but so that we aren't quarantining another team that we compete against so it is a rapid test that's what she says the wednesday one is so the one on monday is just a pool but they they don't come back to do anything um on wednesday if there's not
054a positive that shows up so this is nothing extra placed on our nurses the people doing the uh the pool testing will be provided through the vendor um and uh we are still in the beginning stages of that but all the materials are covered through the opt-in process that we've done um and any of the the testing costs materials the person coming to do the pull testing will be provided as one of their employees not costing us anything so are they going to pull this whole team out of class monday morning at one time or one student so that's where brian hampton would come into play as far as the procedure um to ensure that they would uh that wouldn't be disrupting anything but so i um this being at the beginning of practice i'm
055not saying that's how it would be but i'm envisioning this being as just at the beginning of practice before you go out we're going to do it on monday and you know and then you go out to practice i don't envision this taking away from class time is there parent consent or is this just part of the process of do they sign a consent form from parents there are consent forms available from uh from parents so you know we could do it often um you know if you wanted to you could make it be inventory for the team um like i said there are some choices surrounding that you all would have you know one of them would be that you test all athletes as a requirement to play you don't have to be on
056that end of it um another one you could often test out you know testing athletes who are not vaccinated but require them to mask you know you could do something in the middle of that is you know testing out you know all athletes um and have it opt-in opt-in are not going to be as effective because clearly you could miss someone in that pool and most of the ones um like elgin's testing all athletes not often um and but there are some choices surrounding that it's just a matter of trying to be proactive we do have and we have coconut we have 196 kids with code it's still there most of them is coming from outside but if we can prevent them especially in high contact sports um in in in ways that they that
057keep them playing as much as we can we can't prevent everything but i'm hoping that this could be a proactive measure so kids can continue to play i don't want to see another senior who just learned that they played their last game last week and didn't get their senior hurrah um that's as hard as a parent and i know it's hard for the athletes too i'm personally not a fan of segregating between vaccinated and not vaccinated i'll just put that out there definitely i'm a fan of all or nothing myself i just put that out there because those are some of the choices that other districts are entertaining so how would this affect indoor sports like volleyball they're masking directly supposed to be they're supposed to be that they're supposed to be masking yes um
058volleyball if you look at the spectrum of sports is in the medium of the contacts so your football your basketball are going to be your high contact things like golf or down like you know i hope you're not that close to the golf swing you might um you know you're not going to be you shouldn't be too close to somebody else if you're playing golf or an individual sport but volleyball is considered one of those that is in between because generally you are spread out a little bit more it's not six feet but they're indoors so that they are masking at this point in time um and also um from about anyway see we could distinguish between sports they can just test them all because you know they are um student athletes and start there
059that's it you know that's a tv i just love the easy decision [Music] you know one of the things that i think is really important to um you know we do have choice we do have some choices in this um none of this is easy and i you know i don't know what's right anymore there's all kinds of information out there um about uh um you know that vaccine and masking and um you know how how quickly it spreads among among children and um i know that it's spreading more among children because i've seen it um all of last year um all of last year we've had more kids with covet since in the five weeks that we have been in school than all of last year combined so if we can do something that's
060going to be proactive it will not nothing's it's not going to catch everybody um but again i want to keep kids playing and i want to avoid some of the heartbreak that i saw last year especially and even in the beginning of the year the you know with the football team you know we had what 18 cases 14 18 we had a lot of cases on football team um you know it goes quickly and you know we can prevent that from happening and you know stop kids from missing school and being sick um that's what wanted to do well i i've got a question sorry um so i'm looking at the chart so if you do this pool testing and in the pool testing by wednesday you find out there's a positive in the pot
061all right then they're going to single them out but now they practice together monday tuesday and wednesday correct because you've not found out to weinstein that there's a positive in there they haven't necessarily been close contact and so contact tracing would take place at that point in time but if they've been practicing you can get a thick i don't know that another person has copied because there's no symptoms there hopefully it's allowing them to be proactive and only the ones close contact catch them early only the ones close contact to them would have to quarantine and so if they've been following these other rules then likely they're not going to be a close contact but it would help us find that positive who's asymptomatic start their quarantine right there and then because if not it's
062not until they show symptoms that we are going and they may never show symptoms um but they could be spreading the disease to other kids and so high school kids you know outside of school they're on the back of somebody's pickup truck they're hanging out and watching movies a week and they're being kids and i would expect them to be kids we can't i don't want to to avoid all of that for them but what i would like to do if somebody is positive be able to let's let's remove it so we don't have 18 somebodies who are positive and that's kind of what happened to us a couple weeks ago um you know had we known uh you know for that friday night when they were all together how we know that there was
063somebody in that group that was positive we avoided a lot of quarantines i think we had a cow between the middle school and the high school football team um you know we had like 60 kids that were or more that were quarantined and part of that was in the old quarantine roles i mean there was a touchscreen at that time that is no longer in play um but we would still have quite a few um quarantines as a result um you know we could we could avoid some of that you know you know you're positive might not be hanging out on friday i do want to say that you may mr wroten find out earlier than wednesday so they would actually do the testing on tuesday and find out if there's a positive in that
064pool and if they were to find out there's a positive on the jv football team let's say then we would be notified so then they would probably not practice that day and then they would know that we're coming back you know to do rapid tests or whatever on wednesday um for all of those students but there's a possibility if it happens that the turnaround is quick enough that they could be notified on tuesday of a positive in that group so may not be exposure you know at practice other than maybe monday right so would that team have to be out of school the next day till they can get rapid tests well the wrapper test would be that day privatizes immediate within a few minutes well josh if they practice together that afternoon they've been
065exposed monday that's what i'm getting no matter when the test comes in i'm just i'm just trying to wrap my head around it and i'm not criticizing anything or anyone it's it's hard because to me by the time you get it there's a free a one day a two day so if it was tuesday and they tested monday morning but it came back tuesday morning that day there's a positive in there then they practiced and practiced monday night but you would already have a negative test and what they're saying is that would meet the guidelines of not having a quarantine after that because you know who the positive is unless you are a true close contact and does that shorten the uh time jamie at the end oh we can find out clarify it so
066each one is so different but again mr roten these are these are students who would have been at school because they're not showing symptoms so it really would hopefully close that gap down just a little bit so that we don't have someone there that's spreading the virus because if they're symptomatic they're not going to be there um but i agree yes there is a potential for there to be exposures and we wouldn't know who those students were or those athletes were until we get the rapid test back to you know identify who the positive is this is just to sort of say there's covet in this group of students that's what that's designed to do um and i agree with you completely it's taken me a long time to get my head wrapped around the
067the benefit of pull testing um but we are hoping that this might catch some earlier and then with the rapid that would follow then we can start contact tracing immediately instead of waiting for a pcr to come back or two more days for symptoms to start that kind of thing i'm still what's the point why why not just rapid test everybody else that's my question why not just give them all a rapid test monday because those resources aren't all available as my understanding this pool testing is a very easy quick cheap way to do that rapid tests are not it's a student doing it so it's on themselves versus somebody coming up and having to use that long thing which is up to your brain okay that's uh that's what i mean i mean this
068right this pool testing is a is a q-tip and it goes into the vial and you get you know and i think it's a real quick easy cheaper way to do that for your asymptomatic okay is the cdc still defined in close contact it's 15 minutes um within what six feet or three feet so basically if they're practicing they may not be um close hundred correct or if they're in the classroom they're not necessarily touch is not necessarily close contact anymore it used to be when the football team was quarantined we were under old cdc guidelines which is if you touch somebody you slapped somebody a high five they had a body bump in the middle of the aid that was considered close contact and so you had to quarantine if that was a positive
069student you were contacted with um the next week they changed those rules and they said that's no longer close contact you know our rules change like that are given to us like every other day it seems like um but they changed that thankfully um got a little bit of a little bit more sense of slapping a high five a man shook somebody's hand the other day and i'm like i shouldn't feel bad for shaking somebody's hand right um you know because before that would have been a close contact um even though i like my hand sanitizer and i like to shake people's hands um before that would impose time now in a football game if you do that you've got to be there 15 minutes with that person so you know your offensive line if
070you're if you were one-on-one with that person you might be might be a close contact so one of the other superintendents um shared because every one of us has watched film or video in the last year um trying to determine close contact for something and um anyway uh mentioned that um even with her team um the closest she she found a close contact was 12 minutes and of course less students to quarantine at that time that's why we're you know record games you got to watch them see the you know videos in the school bus for an hour long bus ride if you're wearing masks you're okay we have some rules that help us out but um but yeah close contact is still after a few minutes well i know we've been talking football football
071but i want to make it clear that this is any athletic team that might be affected i know we're going to need football as an example but we'd have a number of other teams that this could affect so i i don't want to put it all off on football because of an unfortunate incident absolutely i mean we've had others too not this year but not this year teams we've had people on teams but not a full team like last year so um it just happens to be football cheerleading [Music] sections are you know i just unrelated but testing in general because i was looking through some of my papers here so this is a rapid test they would do if the pool was positive they would do whatever that came back all right as far
072as if i was not an athlete and does the school if i was or what i'm gonna say asymptomatic i was showing symptoms does the school accept a negative rapid test another except positive rapid test what about a negative um so that will that depends on the situation again um so it depends on how if you're if you're testing because you're symptomatic or if you're testing because you've been close contact to someone else um if you have been exposed to someone else and you're testing you have to wait so many days because otherwise you are very it's it's very likely that you could get a wrong diagnosis a false negative so if you um get a negative rapid test depending on the situation a lot of times we are requesting and asking that there be
073a pcr to follow up especially if the child's been symptomatic um or if we know they've been in contact with someone or there's someone in the home whatever so i hate to say that because i know that's not cut and dry but it really does depend on the situation we we're working with families the best we can absolutely and we're consulting with the health department for each of those situations when i go okay wait a minute do we need to do we need a pcr in this case the one that we are ex the one that we um i think the confusion is that we have not been accepting jamie correct me wrong is the outcome negative correct but we do say we do accept an at-home possibility we'll be accepted and positive typically but
074we ask them to go back to the health department because none of the none of the numbers that you see on um the health department dashboard have any iphone testing in them so so we treat a positive as a positive i mean that's kind of one of those it's either there or it's not however yes we are encouraging them to go be tested at some facility or the health department because at that point then it gets entered into a way that we can actually do the tracing and the close contacts um because we are not medical providers we don't get to put that in that way so it has to come through the actual system and especially with our adults and we have to have the health department's quarantine orders in order to not dock
075their pay differently so we can if they're quarantined and have those orders from the health department um there is the infectiously infectious disease leave that they receive versus um if not we don't have the appropriate documentation that comes right out of recycling so we do that to help our employees as well um so because yeah and we have to keep all of those and roy has a i think he's on his second notebook but it's like this uh from different uh testing and stuff and like i said part of it's you know red tape that when we have to cooperate we have to jump through just to make sure our people are protected i want somebody to have to use their leave because they've been quarantined by the health department if we can avoid that
076um we want to avoid that it's just all on how you define a close contact that is um well we've been um that's evolved i mean we've been under what three different roles already this school year and what close contact is you know we're doing the best that we can i mean it just dictated to us and we just have to follow it follow those rules and of course the health department is where there's where all of this is coming from which you know they've got they get it from dhhs and the cnc so they're pretty much following these guidelines we just put a little chart um we have this chart here that hopefully makes it a little bit easier so families understand um the families understand and i'm just glad the touch role was
077taken off because if not like every middle schooler should probably continue if they come in contact with somebody who's only working by nature they weren't one at one the number of quarantines really bother me as a former teacher and as a parent because i know of some students who have yet to enter school because the way the quarantine rules go um i'm sure if we can do something to keep that down it would be i think helpful for our educational people um i mean there is i have a couple cases today it's part of the family and then you have what really gets me is that the kid who has is positive gets to go back to school well the sibling who is not tested positive has to stay out for two more weeks and
078that to me seems very um not fair uh very weird that we we're doing it that way and i know it's been explained to me how that works but at the same time i'm going okay we're missing three weeks of school because my brother had coded not because i'm sick i'm not sick at all but my brother has cove and so i'm missing three weeks of school um if you add it up because he can't go back to the 10th day then there's two more weeks so you know that's a lot of time it's a tremendous amount of time yes and we have several families that are in that situation right now i don't know i knew you know i mean i checked on one of them on friday during one of my school visits
079and that particular teacher had six kids out of her class all four none for you know in the class but all due to family outside um i don't know that all but one of them were negative themselves they were just hanging out waiting for now zooming into classes and we're making every accommodation that we can but it it truly is heartbreaking what some of them are having to go through i'm just glad we have some technology to at least be able to keep in touch but it's not the same our teachers are really doing a lot of great things for kids right now i mean they truly are testing the burden on the family of getting the test and showing the results and i heard about that some as well i did the health department
080is not open for testing all the time monday through friday 8 30 to 10. so that's a small window to get tested [Music] i'm just to me it's hard for me we're separating again between your school population your athletes well we don't have to i mean we could test everybody we do in home room that's i just don't know what the speaking of a place to start that where people are already quarantined that we can make a quick impact that athletes tend to you look at the state data and nationwide data when kids are passing it along to each other sports you have more of a chance of passing it than in the regular population that's the only reason why i suggested that is an easy starting place um you know i don't know that
081we can well that's what jamie and the nurses can we start on day one do whatever you know i'm not saying to everybody i just worry about that you know what if you have a class that takes a field trip they're all on the bus we're not talking anything well they're on the bus they're on the bus period because that's where it's being spread more besides the ambulances lunch period is where our kids are most vulnerable because they're they're talking they're laughing they're being kids you know and i had to test my 20 3 month year old a little girl sorry and you talk about something hard to seek a swab and hold her head down and stick a pencil up your nose and i mean i just have to me to give an example
082merle fest is this weekend yeah i could go tomorrow fest but merle fest is requiring proof of vaccination or a negative test i'm finally go at home test them i'm going to have to test my three children if my wife and i choose to go because they cannot get vaccinated they're under 12 all three i'm not putting my children through sticking a swab up their nose just so i can hear some music i'm sorry i can turn the radio on and listen to it but i mean that's that's that's my choice i'm i'm that and that's this is my one low board member opinion us doing this we're putting another requirement on these we're taking another option away from um if you play sports you're going to be tested therefore you're i don't call it
083penalized but therefore you're set apart from the other group it's like vaccinated and [Music] but you have to look at from the standpoint of they are the ones who are more likely to catch coga because they're more exposed because they're not wearing masks on the field when they hit each other underneath well they've got masks on their helmets now well they're they're the ones that go over top of the helmets now that is correct but um we haven't required right we're talking about vaccination you know testing right well and again those are just some of the options that other school districts and the company has you know suggested and we could do pool testing in the classroom we can start off with the high school in middle school and just do it in their lunch
084period each day we could do that um lunch period is going to be somewhere to you know first block or whenever because you're still going to catch who the positive or negative is at that time but like i said it's uh if there's nobody with the positive they'll go through the big old long thing that goes up to your brains and i say that lovingly that's how my child described it he had what and so um twice a week he had to test because they were living on campus and so they had to go through the swab twice a week so but it was not the pool testing the little cotton it was the real deal twice a week so um that's how i described it so will it be required for me to play
085ball i said do you i i don't do that do i i mean another that's one of the four options on here i mean there are three options there there are others that you could you know any variation that's really up to you all but i didn't want to start even testing kids even if it was all opt-in and we had parent permission without a decision of the board and without explaining you know what some of those options really are out there and what other school districts are doing too they need to share that you know otaga is opted in as well i don't know what they've chosen as a part of that i know what elk and city did but we could start as early as the 27th is that correctly requested next monday
086and they're telling me that i can't get those supplies and materials because they're so backlogged so the the shooting date is the 27th we think that's where we're aiming who would have thought two years ago we wouldn't be talking about teaching one of them we've had more silence at the last few board meetings but we're difficult here but i just i i feel like people need to know what's out there and you know they say this will help us to be more proactive um like i said i just want kids to play and i want kids to be in school i definitely don't agree that we need to make that as a requirement for them to play i would love to see it optional but i'd also like for the coaches to weigh in some
087on their decision coach feels like it's important for those athletes if they feel it's important for their athletes to be tested maybe they i don't you know hc required by the coach but he could that coach she or he or she could say i want you to do this that would be my preference there but i know that's not again we're off on another topic from where we started does the coach have the authority to do that he can suggest it and then if it's optional with me tonight our new athletic director would have had a lot of weight in here with me tonight what he would have advised me would have i would that would have had carried weight with me is his well you know on how serious how his athletes athletes feel
088or how careful they're being how careful they're not being now they're all they're a lot closer to them than we are and they know may i make a suggestion we are going to have to schedule another board meeting pretty soon unfortunately and so um because this one they last that one but what can we table this one until that other board meeting so we can get some input from coach hampton and um you know i guess when i read this i didn't realize what it entailed i really did not and i apologize for that it's hard to explain until you actually have a discussion about it jamie and i sat on several different meetings both with the company and listening to um the state and what they're um looking at as far as providing these
089um options and it hasn't been easy i i at first with the pool testing i was like wait a second here we need full testing you're gonna put them on a while why don't you just swab everybody like that was my but i think it's because of the ease of the pool testing and the short turnaround that they promised um as a part of that so the results are on tuesday wednesday they come back and test that group of kids and jamie i think the second test the um you know from what i remember maybe this is just my memories they would come in in the morning on that wednesday and test the kids that way you would know right away and be able to isolate contact traits because if not you're right it doesn't
090make sense for them to be in the general school knowing that there's a positive in that group and just doing their thing um you know because that would defeat the whole purpose so do i hear a motion that we're taking this later in september for pool testing here i go again mr chairman i make the notion that we table full testing for uh further discussion until the next board meeting uh and i'm look i'm thinking at our financial board meeting that that we need to schedule tonight okay do i have a second to miss elders motion second any other discussion or questions well then i thought of course i want to hear from jamie as well at that time there may be additional data that she has that um dr cox has that they want
091to share between now and then now that we've had a discussion about it and some of these questions have come forward very specific for actually i'd like to hear from our nurses too sure none of them were available tonight one of them was teaching a class and i would really like to see if some other school systems jamie are already implementing this what their what their results have are and what maybe the potential issues they may have come across or positives they may have come across during this time i don't know i think most districts that have opted in are very much in the same boat we are is that they've not got up and running because of the um it's just super backlogged at the state level however i will find out what their
092potential plans are um and i agree with you that we need to talk to our coaches i think we just kind of wanted to know if this was going to be an option from you guys so we definitely we will get that opinion um from them and from the students and families if we can get that before then i think personally and that's why i made the motion i need that extra information before i can really vote on this issue right tonight well diane normally we would have put this under a discussion and tabled it but there are um you know by chance if you wanted to take action on it um there are some turnaround times at the state level that once they know it takes them like if they knew tonight the 27th
093would be our first date that we could start so whatever date it is it pushes it back [Music] more backlogged then than they are now so i mean they won't do no good it won't i mean okay so the motion on the floor to table until the september financial meeting and a second from uh mr mcclure i believe uh or ms smith sent dr simmons um so all in the favor raise your hand motion carry all right so we're gonna back up here where we started on here to the two policies proposed in discussion questions motions are we on part a now we're under number two yeah yeah we're under number [Music] you know um they said there will be a policy that will put these visited at each board meeting from here on their
094next board meeting will be first monday in october so that's not long so um you know i'm seeing that our our positive studies are going down a little bit i'm seeing that our quarantine students are going down a little bit um positive staffs going down just a little bit or holding it with the quarantine and to me that's a good sign that we are doing something right um i know that there have been other school systems that i have not been as fortunate as this and i don't like these numbers i do not like these numbers at all especially the quarantine numbers but i'm thinking our masks are essential in our classrooms because we can't distance and it seems like the most positives that we have or the most spread that we're having is during
095the times that they are taking off their mask and i would like for us to find out some creative solutions to separating that more than we have been i know we're doing we think we're doing what we can but i'm sure we can creatively find some different ways to spread students out during lunch so i'm just going to jump right in there and i'm going to make the motion that we adopt the mass again this month with hopes that we can eventually the rates will go down and that we can dismiss with those as soon as possible as soon as the data is i have a motion in a second any other discussion or question my heart says one way my mind says the other it's a tough decision and i think either way we're
096going to be wrong in some instances [Music] for this because being one of our bigger decisions i will do a roll call vote as we did last time we'll do that the next month the following month on that um so um starting on my right here dr simmons no miss aldrin yes mr robin no miss jones yes mr mccrooger yes okay carries three to two we will revisit this in october october and i just wanted to point out you can revisit this any time so um i feel like we've got we've got to change some time i just don't feel like right now this exact time we've got written these myths or make them optional well according to the state and the statistics coming from the state we are in a hot spot we are
097in a red zone statistics show that children are becoming more susceptible to the delta variant and we need to do what we have to do to protect our children and i imagine that any parent that wants to as far as i know dr cox can go on line and look at the policy that we're talking about here because it does have face coverings required and then in the b section it has space covering exceptions the individual's exempt of children under ages under the age of two individuals who cannot wear a face mask into medical or behavioral conditions children who are unable to wear the face mask covering safely and so um i think we're doing the right thing i don't i i would not trade any one child's life and vogue is for taking off
098those mess because according to all the things coming down from cdc from the who from the department of health in raleigh mass do make a difference a big difference in what happens in our school and nice county only has about 50 percent of its people vaccinated and out of that 50 percent most of the people in this county who have been there who have been vaccinated are 65 or older and 65 or older with the exception of me are not working in our school system so i have to commend our teachers because i think 73 of those teachers have been vaccinated but the bigger part of the people in our county have not been vaccinated bigger part of the people vaccinated or 65 or older so i think i think code spread i think it
099spreads quickly and it's a dangerous serious um killer i know the lady in next county over they've had uh tobit her lungs turned hard as a brick another lady had a hole in her lungs i'm sorry we can't take any comments i'm sorry due to the board regulation um mr chairman i'd like to bring up another topic that's related to kobe may i do so um i know our teachers are dealing very very well with everything that has been happening i'm concerned about their not having enough time to do the kinds of things that they need to be done during the school day when you've got a revolving classroom with quarantined kids there's a lot more contacts you have to make with our parents there's a lot more issues that have to be dealt with
100there's extra lesson preparation that has to be done and i would like for us to consider changing our calendar we do not have but one work day between now and christmas i believe if i looked at it correctly and i think that's scheduled for staff development is that true dr collins i would like for us to consider two early release dates between now and christmas to give our teachers a chance just to be with no staff development no meetings except those they choose among themselves like maybe plc's or whatever grade level meetings to um get some more time because time i think is the enemy right now is having enough time for everything and we've experienced that from nurses to central office staff all of these folks that we might give them a little extra
101time to prep and to get their head above water plus some of them we have asked them to do um staff development on their own on their own time there's not enough time in the school i know an elementary school teacher's day to do 20 some minutes of staff development there's not time to go to the bathroom most of the days um and meet with the nurse and talk to the parents so i'd like to have those early release days between now and christmas for our teachers so if you would like to do that we do have enough hours built in within our within our system that we can potentially carve that out but i'd like to take it back because there are certain state regulations right that we have to follow to ensure that
102we have enough and win but we can bring back to that next meeting an opportunity to uh look we look at the calendar for um to see what that might look like i know that it's a pain to do that but i know also know that our calendar when we said it we were not expecting this amount of quarantined students this year we have delta wasn't even around then so i just feel like that we need to adjust our calendar to help our uh teachers in this case to try to relieve some of their stress and the amount of workload that they have at this point we can bring back some options for you all the concert okay that sounds good anybody have anything else before we move forward it's okay with you all we've
103been sitting here for almost two hours um i'm going to call a brief break as chair we will convene back in here and about uh we'll do about five till eight so that'll give us and it's roughly a ten minute break on there so this uh miss walker will be back on about ten or about five until eight okay thank you very much dr cox if you'll hit the mute key please amy are you ready for us yes we're ready thank you so we're at five from eight here we'll continue through the agenda of action items the number three i have developmental date contract for the school 2021 2022. i assume we'll have mr richardson with us maybe or i believe terry um is on but if not these are funds made through the state
104board of education um for special education related services to special to children who qualify and these developmental day funds basically allow us to meet those needs this contract is the same as it has been essentially year after year so the prices change um oftentimes but um other than that based on the numbers it's based on the number of students yes do i have a motion to accept this contract it makes a motion we accept a developmental day contract any other questions or discussion all those a favor raise your hand motion carries next we have the oh i think there's terry sorry terry they passed it i was listening to the whole thing i couldn't get my computer to up upload the video in the in the voice it was freezing up i'm sorry that's okay
105dr koch did a great job explaining thank you thanks jerry thank you for being on with us next we've got the learning through play lease so so this is learning through play has been in our building for many many years now and we have not however had a contract a formal contract in place since 2015. so the last signed contract was in 2010 and it expired in 2015 and so there hasn't been an updated contract with them since then and so we um i have been looking at this contract fred looked at this contract as well to make sure that it was updated we worked with terry richardson and jerry baker to ensure and amanda coldiron as well as the director of learning through play to make sure that the contract was reflective of our
106needs as a school system and [Music] keeping in mind that we do have a need for child care within the community so it did not stray too far from the original contract unless that is the desire of the board but we did add the exhibit a that looks at the least premises and what they actually do use we changed some language in here about custodial services and upkeep to make sure that those definitions were more clear than they were in the initial contract additionally we felt like some of this was a little vague but i wanted to provide to you a couple pieces of it pieces of information so one of them is the scholarship document um our teachers and you know i don't know how well aware they are but if they have a
107child um who is um eligible under these ages for daycare here learning through play offers them a slot at a reduced rate and essentially the rates are what is listed here and uh the scholar and of course the scholarship rate is what our teachers uh receive um though i've been told that those um rates have not increased um since they started this lease agreement so they've been holding steady for a long [Music] period of time and learning through play does hold harmless all i can see about signing in that's weird now i see what you're saying it's not it's not pulling up that's weird okay um [Music] no it's the state it's going to a blank sign-in page that's weird because it doesn't join that look at scholarships so the um is the same the
108link is the savings to employees so i am going to that was a link that jerry had provided did it pull up on yours okay how much per week they're safe zero to 23 months two years three four five years in school age um no actually it was a different document that looked at specifically how many teachers that we currently have enrolled so i'm going to forward this to each of you right now but jerry just copied this and i'll make sure that it gets reposted in the system um we currently as of um when we put this in here had 13 children who are attending you are our employees children who are attending learning through play and i don't have the ages of those children specifically last year when we started the talks we
109had 19 children there of course we have it varies by year um but you can see that if 13 children were all zero 23 months the cost of that savings to our our employees is right around 43 000 so um [Music] looking at [Music] the utilities and stuff that learning through play plays for that facility they do pay a proportion based on the number of rooms that they occupy and they pay for their facilities as well and then um that's for the whole year right that's for the whole year correct because they are 12 times year round and our employees if they send their children to learning through play during the summer months and holidays they are not forced to pay they hold their spot for our employees so when you look at it the
110ones who do send their children there are offered an additional benefit um they're offered an additional benefit now if we look at um i don't know what other questions you guys um have or might have about the contractor i wouldn't want to point out those documents to you questions now notice next is learning through play contract for meals so they do buy meals off the school they do they do so food services contracts through learning through play through mountain view elementary school so their cafeteria staff does serve the meals at learning through play um from alerting this as well rather than having a five-year contract we went to a yearly contract um that way we could revisit this um each year to make sure you know like we do all of our others i don't
111have contracts the last five years would there be an opportunity for another daycare if one so chose to to go to this facility under the same kind of um we i don't think we have the capacity in that facility um for an additional um daycare to go in there i think there are a couple of open rooms um but i don't know that they i don't know about their outfitting and what that would look like or a couple of unused rooms too i think terry might know the answer to that she's still on [Music] yes uh oh i'm still here we have had um karen young our regional consultant in our building to see how evan ash county could expand we have one room the ash county schools could expand and provide additional program but
112that is it for our facility that meets the qualifications to be able to move forward with any type of child care i noticed that we don't have an ending date on this police force one year i the reason why there's no ending date on there is because i think in the past it's been a five year period i would like to do this every year i think that's more important than waiting for you know five years at a time and [Music] anyway i just think that's better in general um there are you know different options you get paid over for their wrench which but they do you know we do get it back as far as our teachers are concerned and oftentimes our our younger teachers are the ones that are having um children and
113they also some of the least paid teachers so you know it's a definite benefit for them and they do hold those open spots when you look at what the county charges for their buildings it's about seven dollars and 62 cents i want to say and i should have written it down um per uh square foot and so that's roughly under seventy thousand dollars um but when you start adding fpga to these and that's including utilities so um you know when you start adding a benefit to teacher plus what they're paying utilities there's not a whole lot of difference because we could have you know 20 teachers tomorrow versus the 13 we currently have last year when we exported it was 19. did i talk in a circle that makes sense terry did you have more
114input i did have input yes [Music] okay oh no she was talking about from the lasik oh i mean yeah i was just wondering if you had something else you wanted to tell us oh um that i do think that this um was looked at very carefully and and it took time to look at everything and that i um dr cox had been over into the facility many many times to investigate and to point out things that needed to be taken care of and to really understand the um the process of the child care site versus our ash county school site so i appreciate her diligence and and um working through this process and um developing um a solid contract mr chairman i make the motion we approve the learning through police okay i have
115a motion do i have a second second any other questions or discussions i like the fact that we can give our younger teachers a break with the daycare because it can be quite expensive i remember those days anything else all those in favor of the lease all right motion carries next we've got the food lease for the meal services for learning through play so this is essentially helpers mr chairman and board um we're requesting um that approval of the contract to provide meals for learning through play day care for the 21 22 school year anybody have any questions on the contract for meal services i'll entertain a motion so i just i have a question is the same thing delivered to the early learning center that's served at um mountain view well served anywhere it's
116the same meal that goes to the ash over there that serve at the school market it is it is supposed to be that is our menu yes there are there are some meals that um for learning through play um that um are altered a little bit such as i know we we do not serve hot dogs there are certain things for younger children that are not served to learning through play but essentially pre-k meals should be the same mountain view does a great job and martha with um the service of our meals and work very closely with our health inspector um every year and matter of fact we just got inspected um today and they work very closely with making sure that we meet all those requirements for the health inspection and delivery of meals
117and we greatly appreciate it can't beat me in action that's exactly right i make a motion that we um we passed the contract for what i'm for the food service the food first yeah the food service contract do i have a second second any other questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor raise your hand motion carry now we've got to schedule another day for a ford budget work session as well as a couple other items added two um on there and there are some dates on the agenda well i'm gonna be the one that throws a kink in it i'll be going i'll be gone on monday september the 27th and i cannot meet september the 16th so friday 24th is about it for me when you're gonna be young dying i'm i'm
118going to the beach the 26th and we'll be gone that whole week and i have something already scheduled for thursday the 16th that i cannot reschedule that morning there's possibility i might compete that afternoon i'm just not sure how long it will take what's good which one 16 16. i i i can't yeah i mean after any time on the 16th i came to 16 well i can cancel an appointment right now i've got doctor's appointment so we're looking at the 24th i'm thinking that we need at least to the 24th to get some of this other stuff that we were going to look at again could um amanda what's the 22nd in the afternoon look and really the 24th you know we can potentially do just about any time we can start 9 a.m
119if you want it on that day it might be so we can start any time we might need i may have to bring the budget resolution the day of october 4th instead of having it in the packet that week because that it's it's a beast which is better than doing the 27th right [Music] certain absolutely all i want to be doing is approving capital outlay projects um until we know what states do i can't feel good about committing any more current expense funds for anything okay so 24th so you said anytime it says on here after two yeah [Music] hopefully before hopefully before yeah okay let's just start let's plan to start at nine then on the 24th that's good now give me time to do other things around here but 12. we should be
120able to get out of here fairly quickly i'm giving you josh a hard time yeah if you're not having a little staging that works too nothing gets seating rather those devices are closing down so budget work session date the 24th started out there just here at the end okay please okay we don't need all this close down [Music] that actually gives us more time to bring back the calendar and look at the pull testing specifically for um maybe brian speak with the other coaches and we will so next we've got on the agenda school nurse funding initiative the contract approval for the 2021-22 year this is our standard school nurse contract that we do every year it's 150 000 dollars to help support our three nurses at the high school blue ridge westwood anybody have
121a questions for ms colar unentertained emotion this emotionally approved contract for school nursing services but i have a second okay any other questions or discussion all those in favor raise your hand motion carries next we've got the jody providence counseling services contract i believe i see miss little's name there you are good evening again board i'm i'm actually the next couple of things so the first thing i'm going to come to you with is um we have been partnering with jody province counseling services um in our school since about 2015 and prior to this year what that has looked like is um students were able to receive mental health services and therapy um in during the school day um that was a huge benefit for families so they wouldn't have to worry about transportation and
122children were able to attend their sessions much more frequently and consistency which was a huge benefit um through some funding that we're receiving through essar funds and other mental health initiative monies we are looking to be able to contract with her once again um in a little bit of a different way what we're hoping to do and um looking to do is be able to provide some more assistance in our elementary schools you had looked at the proposed contract last month and in our elementary schools there would be a person that would serve them for half of the school day um in each elementary for about 37 and a half hours weekly total between the three therapists and um the the counseling agency would be able to build private insurance or medicaid and then any
123funds that are not collected that way we would be able they could um bill us for so that this is no cost to our families and our students would be able to have somebody consistently there in the building every day of the week for half the day so it should open up a lot of opportunity for students to receive mental health that have not currently been able to do that we've we current last year we would have maybe a therapist there for part of the day one day a week at each elementary school so this would give us someone there half the day every day and then with our top dog clinic in our ask center serving our high school and middle school this way we have some on-site mental health services for all of
124our students any questions for ms little i'll entertain a motion mr chairman i'll make the motion that we approve the jody providence counseling services contract do i have a second a second any other questions discussion you're not all those in favor raise your hand motion carries next we've got the annual contract for appalachian state university for the assessment support counseling center i'm not good at acronyms i had to look it up yeah sorry about that we get very accustomed to that so this is for our ask center that um operates out of our uh out of ash county high school and this is a contract that we've had going i think this is the 10th year that they have been working through our high school um and we have a a unique partnership the last
125two years this is the third year with our us department of ed mental health grant but this is the piece that allows those students to be able to come in practicum and graduate and doctoral students to come in and serve our students um to gain their hours of experience while also being supervised by dr kurt michael um and so that's how this all began and we're growing that with our mental health grant but this is our initial contract to allow them to serve our students and to collect data you know just just research data with that and help grow their program but our students receive the benefit of giving those counseling services and this contract has not changed from last year um and mr uh johnson has reviewed these contracts as well any questions entertain
126emotion [Music] mr chairman i'll make the motion that we accept the annual contract with vladimir state university for our asc center all right second motion thank you motion in a second any other questions or discussion from the terms of agreement i assume that date will change um amanda do you know the answer to that it says july 1st 2020 through june 30th 2021. we typically uh put the contract just into place for the fiscal year um but we can have that be that the day that it's signed um there's a place on the back for where here is jamie the years need updated i didn't catch it either oh got it 20 20 yes it should be i'm sorry i have a different one in front of me that's i think correct so sorry yes
127we will get that corrected [Music] any other questions all those in favor of the motion raise your hand motion carries all right mental health training plan okay so um the state board put into effect a a policy last year was the school health it was a school health policy that required all public school units to develop a school-based mental health training plan that would also include suicide risk referral protocol and so i've worked um extensively over the last about year about how this needed to look and how we were going to get our staff trained the very first year this year it requires six hours of training on mental health and suicide protocol every year following that every other year that you have to do two years and so last year we had um two
128two hours of training on um sex trafficking and child abuse and that will be continuing every other year but for this one we had to have very specific things outlined and so in consulting with other districts and how they were meeting this need we we worried about having teachers attend all day trainings and being out of class and the cost of substitutes and so other other districts that i was working with um had been utilizing something called vector solutions and so we went to um i went to amanda and dr cox and we looked at some things that that could help us do there are certain trainings that have to happen each year such as bloodborne pathogens and school safety videos and all of those things osha kind of stuff that this platform also addresses
129and they were able to um they have customized a north carolina plan just to meet this exact legislation and so we've purchased this training module session so that um all staff members will do this this year it does require six hours but these courses are um 20 minutes ish to a most of them are about 30 minutes and they are modules that they can go through and finish them whenever they have an opportunity they can meet as a team and do that and we felt like this was the best way to do that without requiring our teachers to have to have additional time out of the classroom and it can be completed you know whenever they have an opportunity to do that and so if you look at the plan this is sort of how
130we paste it out um and it breaks it down as well as the general educators the the ones they have to go through and complete instructional support student services staff later on when mr putman has new hires um things that they will have to complete um and and i did try to keep it as concise as i could so that most of it was pretty basic and similar um but then on over you'll see for the year 2022 23 as well as 23 24 the two hours that would be required there with sex child abuse prevention or child sex abuse prevention and then human trafficking these are required this is not something that we can get around we just try to make it as easy um as possible on the staff on all of us
131because we all have to do it isn't there a requirement that it has to be done by december 31st so there are requirements it depends on the actual training itself that uh of which things have to be done that is correct i don't know which ones are what we're gonna have that reflected for the teachers within the module which ones are due first so for example i got a reminder that i have an upcoming date on the very first platform pathogen i got an email reminder just this week to complete on that particular training so i don't know whether a vector does it with all of the different trainings that we have input in for the different staff members i'm assuming i wasn't special in getting that delinquent reminder i'm not going to get it
132but it does send reminders in the system which i appreciated that it's their up-to-date videos and then you can deal with your own pace or you can sit with your team um and do it so you don't have to bring everybody into one space and sit there for two hours and to me this is a lot better to get it done any other questions entertaining motion why is this emotional because this is already happening this is already in because the training plan the is requires we're asking for you to approve the training plan are the fates negotiable i know probably the bloodborne pathogens or not because that's a state level thing that has to be done all of these are statements repositories are all required now yes but they all need to be completed by
133december 31st there's no leeway after christmas has to be completed during this school year there are certain pieces and parts of that that are going to be due by december 31st but not the full six hours um and this and so this plan is just having you guys there are several different methods to have this completed but this is the way that we thought would be the most time efficient and effective for our staff gotcha through the vector solutions correct i like the idea i was just wondering i make the motion we approve the mental health training plan do i have a second second any other questions or discussions you're not all those in favor measure motion carries now we've got a safety assessment response policy okay so on jamie's behalf real quick this is
134bragging on jamie um jamie put a lot of time into this policy um and it's brand new and same way with the plan and she and her team um but even fred when he looked at this poll he said where did you get this this is really well done well jamie did it so i'll just brag on that that fred was very impressed well it looks i thought it was just a plan that was provided so yes it is it looks it looks great jamie it does that's why i said while we um yeah no it's voting it looks like it's already that we just purchased it so yeah kudos to you thank you thank you um so the safety assessment and response policy this is an um as a result of our u.s department
135of justice grant that we received for school safety and threat assessments so as a portion of that grant this was one of our goals is to have a very specific safety assessment response policy and how we deal with those safety issues when they come up whether it's physical safety or mental health safety safety of students safety of others um and so one of the portions that um that we've been looking at and working out on really hard is this policy and how we're going to do this we want it to be very consistent across the district so that all of these situations are handled very similarly so that we don't have gray areas we want all of our students to have the same type of processes and procedures in place and the same type of
136safety afforded them so this may we i had no idea if this is how you write policy or not but we went through and i just wanted it to be very clear as to what needs to happen and who needs to be involved and so if i'm asking that you not only look at it but if it's possible to go ahead and approve because we are we are moving forward with our plans with our safety grant and we would love to start moving into that so i'm asking that you not only look at it but hopefully approve if unless you need it to be able uh to sit or have questions about it and fred did look at this policy and um again he was the one who was complementing jamie on the actual policy
137itself um [Music] do we have a mandate that we have 30 days to review a policy so it's just the policies of those state policies the state policies so if it's a local policy we do not have to spend the same amount of time okay i just want to make sure so i make the motion we approve this very well-written safe safety assessment policy let's second the motion any other questions or comments hearing none all those in favor adopted raise your hand emotional caring this is one i hope we don't have to use very much all right next we're into personnel see mr putman there good evening board i hope everyone's doing okay i've got um the personnel agenda and then today i did upload an addendum um because we've had a couple of leaves
138that came up and we had one substitute teacher to add and since our schools are in need of substitute teachers i wanted to add that as quick as i [Music] could questions for mr putman hearing none i'll entertain a motion to accept the personnel mr rutten before i'm sorry i neglected to mention one thing i want to mention this before y'all vote um we have been doing covet 19 lead tracer interviews for the county and during the as you guys can see with the um the numbers and the district going up especially at the high school with the amount of quarantines and such miss um miss goss is really she's undertaking a whole lot of the covet burden right now and so we did right down there under seeking prior approval to add an additional
139uh esser funded nurse there at the high school especially if we're talking about potentially doing testing on site for sports and there's a lot of things there that she's doing and she's really carrying the i guess the um the bulk of a lot of the the contact tracing right now and since we have the esser funds it wouldn't cost the district really anything because it's grant funded we were wanting to request an additional person not just the contact tracer to kind of oversee everything but a person actually on site as well down to high school to assist miss goss so i wanted to bring that up i did put it down under seeking prior approval just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of that and we did um conduct interviews for the original
140and excellent candidates um we had four that we've been hired so if anybody was looking for nurses um i've got colleagues across the state are begging for them and we had some really strong candidates so and of course these are would be uh these two positions would would not be uh it would be tied to the user funds so there is a limit on them and hopefully we won't need them too much you know for more than a couple years this contract would this point would be for a year at a time [Music] yes yes man this would run through this school year and then um we've conveyed to the candidates that um we would re-evaluate at the end of this school year and if we did not need the contact tracing assistance then these
141positions would go away any other questions do i have a motion to approve personnel mr chairman i'll make the recommendation that we uh approve the personnel and agenda as presented to us by mr button do i have a second to the motion second motion any other questions or discussion all those in favor raise your hand [Music] motion carries thank you thank you next we've got beginning teacher support program and it's a funding approval yes so the beginning teacher support program we have that money that comes to support that program comes out of title ii funding and last year the district adopted the position that we wanted to use as continue to use at a greater level asu's coaching and support for all beginning teachers not just five or six and so last year we made
142our greatest commitment to that and i think it was an overwhelming success i would say around 50 percent plus of our beginning teachers cited in a survey toward the end of last year that they felt that the new teacher support coaching that's offered by betsy rosenbaum and karen walker was the best support that they received as a beginning teacher other sided you know also school level support was a big help but being that the amount of money that this cost is over 25 000 we were seeking board approval um to use it so currently uh gear up's going to pay for four of our beginning teachers at a rate of 8 800 for this coaching so we're partnering with them and then um out of our title ii budget we're going to pay 39 hundred
143dollars for new teacher support this is a tool that um out of title ii comes for recruitment and retention of new teachers and you can definitely tell the difference um from year one to three with people who've had this kind of coaching and so i'd like to ask that the board approve of our use of title two funds um for the new teacher support program okay any questions do you feel like this is helping your attention excuse me do you feel like this is helping your teacher retention absolutely i do i really feel like i know that um i can cite several individual examples of beginning teachers who after it used to be just after year one they'd get uh they might get coaching um from asu's coaches in their first year and then that
144second year we typically took it away and gave it to new teachers just beginning year one level one teachers um but i've had several that have told me i don't want to lose betsy rosenbaum i don't want to lose karen walker they're very energetic they're a pick-me-up um and if you're around either two of those ladies you can definitely see that they have they have all the the qualities and traits that you would want every teacher to kind of have at their disposal they're very resourceful they send out newsletters every month they meet with them every week give in-person and virtual support send them all kinds of articles artifacts help them with uh classroom strategies so i think that it gives an opportunity for every single one of our um our teachers not only to
145receive school level support and support from their principal and ap and curriculum staff and and from us here at the district office but also from high level coaches that this is what they do for a living they coach new teachers so they do it at a much higher level than i could do it i remember their presentation a couple of years ago i'm guessing once i was very impressed and i think this is a very valuable resource that we're using here so i make the motion we approve this what's called beginning teacher support program yes do i have a second any other questions or discussion is how do we how do we evaluate what is the evaluation process of the program though really like i mean where's the data points here i i agree um
146stacy is a rock star but how can what are our data points is there um yeah so that's a great question um so they send us an annual report that tells us how many coaching visits that they've had and to what specific types of professional development whether it be working with ec students classroom management differentiating in the classroom universal design training so there's a lot of there's about 15 to 20 different indicators of types of trainings and some of them are more specific to just individuals and then some you can see they were they occur more often than not like i'd say for beginning teachers classroom management's a big one that's one of the hardest things to learn so we do get data points there and then i and then i also check in with
147new teachers and ask how's the support coming from uh asu's new teacher support and when i sent the survey out last year and asked you know is this something that you would recommend continuing overwhelmingly the response from the new teachers was yes and they felt like it was a valuable resource the only feedback on the on the opposite end was there was a few teachers in the third year that felt like by the third year they might not need as much support i would beg to differ i think that i'd take as much support as i can get for as long as i could get but i do understand um the the differences of opinion there but i think that overall we assess it with actual data points like how many contacts how many hours
148of contact what the exact types of training were the teachers get to go participate in the beginning teacher summit that's covered in the cost of this so they're they're constantly getting resources that are helpful and then i'm attached to the emails that go out to the groups so i can see with my own eyes what what's going on with the program julie taylor and i kind of evaluate the program each year when we're going through title two and if i felt like the program was no longer successful we'll put that money into something else where i think we could get more bang for our buck but right now i've been very impressed i don't have any complaints with it so i feel like overall it's a good thing for us our new teachers thank you
149thank you thank you any other questions i've got a motion in a second all those in favor of the motion raise your hand motion carry all right next we've got walden university mou this is this is a very easy one this is just uh walden university uh is another university that we're trying to partner with so that we can try our very best to recruit student teachers and recruit potential teachers we're very fortunate here as most districts are really struggling to find qualified teachers in ash county we're very blessed we have great teachers and i think that by and large that's been a strong partnership with asu in the past year we've added western carolina um we've added north carolina a t lee's mcrae liberty university i think east carolina university and unc charlotte and
150now walden's just another one that we had a request from them for a student intern to come in so i told them we'd have to have an mou in place i sent this to board attorney fred johnson and he approved the mou with a little bit of negotiation back and forth with them on the terminology so i feel like all we need is approval and then we'll have another partnership with another university question roy of course i have a question right i'm sorry none i know walden uh has been known as it's an online institution how will they be supervised by walden or will we will they be doing all of that electronically or through artifacts or some kind of process there i would think that since it's an online university most of that communication
151will be online like with asu they have some in-person contacts in they do some remote contacts i would believe that walden would probably be mostly remote they have their people on their side that kind of oversee the i guess the the post-secondary education side of things and then at the school site like for our our purposes we have a a teacher or an intern coming in at one of our elementary schools and that person is overseen directly by their clinical educator just like asu would require and so they they do have to go through the criminal background check process they do have to go through the drug screening process just like any other student would and so i feel like it'll probably be more similar than different but that was one of my one of
152my concerns as well when i was approached by walden um however the the teacher that's going to be the clinical educator knew the system knew the student in question and felt very comfortable with allowing that student per year approval to come in and be a part of the classroom any other questions entertain a motion to accept the mou mr chairman i make the notion that we accept the nou from walton university do i have a second segment any other questions or discussion um i have one more thing that i just thought of is this just a one-year mou because i'd like to see how this works before we approve something for more than one year correct so currently this is on page one of seven the agreement shall commence on august 30th 2021 which of
153course we're going to have to back that date up and continue for a period of five years however as the board you do have the jurisdiction here to say we want to do a one-year trial and all that is is me just changing that date per your permission i would like to see how this works with an online institution just for one year and if everything goes great wonderful we're not locked in for five years um if we go for five years we may be stuck with something we might not know about at this point does that make sense would you like to change your emotion okay let me look at this thing i'll make the notion that we accept the mou from walton university for one year and then review it at the end
154of the year all right all those in paper motion caring thank you all right announcements and information i don't think we have anything no i moved that to the uh to the front i just um we will have some more information out on the new vaccine clinic and the opportunity for parents to learn more about movement in general and what the latest research is out there on monday and so that information will be going out to families in the next two days and then with their football game on friday first home game um after um you know a little bit disappointing delay in that first time game and we're thankful for again for bernoulli construction for the new uh flagpole and flag it's uh exciting to see something brand new and uh that we can
155all enjoy together and celebrate the same thing football and our veterans i guess we have miss ella john for an update for the endowment so i put it on there i don't know whether she is or not this is what i neglected to talk to her about beforehand i knew that we said that we might have some additional data um at this meeting based on the golf [Music] dr cox can you hear me yes he can hear you can't see me sorry i don't know what happened to most my video uh but anyway uh here we go there we go yes um i do have some additional information and i'm excited so if i could take just a few minutes i appreciate your time um as you know the golf tournament was held july 22nd
156it was held at jefferson landing country club and i just can't say enough good things about our current endowment board from the planning stages to volunteering on the day of the tournament to the cleanup afterwards all of our members work diligently to make this year's tournament a huge success um just wanted to give a shout out to the current members it's jeannie coward joanne eller joyce kilby michelle limly sheila mcmillan tasha roundry vicky yates wesley barker diane eldreth amanda calderon and dr issa cox so along with several of our endowment board members there were volunteers from our central support services office and several representatives from our schools they were very helpful with the course from offering assistance to the golfers providing information about the endowment to extending just you know being there to thank him
157for supporting our school system several school staff members assisted us with a new addition to our tournament this year while playing on the course the golfers have opportunity to participate in additional games um to win prizes or better their score for instance they could pay a little extra and try to beat the pro uh they could better their starting team or they could win a donated prize which was um and kind of encouraging to the members they got to play and enjoyed it the corporate and business community has provided great support of our fundraising efforts this year we had 24 businesses and individuals from ash and watauga to participate and or make donations we had seven corporate sponsors two of those corporate sponsors have supported us in each of the 18 years that we've had
158a tournament uh there was one hole in one sponsor 11 hole sponsors and five team sponsors this year we offered new opportunities also for businesses and individuals to participate or sponsor or donate to our fundraiser we had golf cart sponsors lunch sponsors and a host of monetary donors i'm pleased to announce that our net proceeds for this fundraiser is thirty two thousand four hundred and eight dollars and that's about triple what we've been able to raise in the past so on behalf of the endowment board i want to thank everybody who participated supported and volunteers to all of you school board members and to dr cox we are very appreciative of your support and then support the community has demonstrated for the ash county educators and most importantly for the students that we serve thank
159you and thank you marcia for all of the work as we certainly could not have done any of this or have raised this much without your leadership thank you marcia yes yes thank you i saw several pictures i believe we saw dr simmons there as well and looked like dr cox taking a swing yes yeah i think i bought some mulligans [Music] all right well we're to the bottom entertain a motion to adjourn on that one i make a motion to adjourn all right have a second second all right paper we are a journey thank you