001e e e and for being here um and we're going to start with George reading our Equity statement in Asheville City Schools we are committed to equity and anti-racist policies for all students and staff to learn and Thrive we recognize that our positions come with power responsibility and public service for the entire ACS Community we will model our commitment to equity through our practices and decisions during this meeting we invite a pause if harm has taken place a moment to name the harm and space to practice repair thank you um we are all present except Amy Ray Amy had work commitment she had oral arguments in front of the Court of Appeals um so that is where she is and she's going to listen to this afterward but otherwise all board members are present and
002we have a quorum in a minute I'm going to move to approve the agenda but I want to note a few changes for everyone and these are in chronological order um after we approve the agenda the next thing we're going to take up is item 2.1 um Tish representing for Tanya is going to talk about student releases we are then going to move to 4.1 which is strategic planning and take that up next and then we'll come back to Ian at 2.2 and move forward from that point um a couple just small Corrections you'll see in 4.4 there's an inadvertent reference to standing committees and that should have said staff committees which we've talked about we all know what we mean but it should say staff committees and and then last when we move to
003closed session just some extra verbiage we don't actually adjourn we just take a motion to go into a Clos session so with those Corrections are there anything other amendments to the agenda or I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended so moved second thank you can can we approve by consensus excellent okay the agenda is approved at this time I'm going to call on Tisha Russo she is the magnet school enrollment coordinator and she is presenting student releases on behalf of Tanya who's on vacation okay in your agenda you should have two lists for releases there short list is for the 2425 school year the longer list is for the 2526 school year do you have any questions about other report any questions board members I think we're all good thank you
004thank you and this time we will move to um a conversation on strategic planning um and I'm going to call on Dr Mar ravender process which has been oh sure so Amy can hear us what' you say oh okay for Amy and everyone and and everyone um so we're we have about an hour with you all this evening uh we're going to go through a PowerPoint presentation some of you all have participated in our previous sessions but we've added additional um items to talk about so stick with us some things will look familiar but there will be new items as well anything you want to say hi uh nice to meet you all I'm Julie KY I work with an organization called connected the national Center for College and Career this is a real treat
005for me because normally I get on a plane to go to work um and so to be able to have a conversation about the school that I live literally next door to is really exciting so appreciate you um allowing me to be a part of this process excited to be here today great all right excellent um uh just as a maybe a little background just so you know who maybe the random stranger who sits next to Lucy Herring is sitting in front of you and why Dr lavender and I are doing this together um I've been working for an organization for the past eight years helping school districts like yourself who are interested in uh transformation and thinking about the high School the middle school and Elementary School experience differently but through the lens of
006thinking about how do we impact the learning not for a subset of kids in a district but for all students what does a system of high functioning high quality education look like um and so one of the things that I think is really important for us as a school district as we start to move into this work of a strategic vision is we've had a lot of transition um I've lived in this community for eight years and I think Dr Ferman may be the fifth superintendent I've had the fortune of of meeting and uh having the opportunity so we've been through a lot of transition which means there's been lots of things that have been tried in our community uh things that have started things that have faltered things that maybe no longer are here
007things that we are really really invested in and want to make sure that they happen uh that's why we've been spending some time over the past couple months to look at the past and to compile some of our data so today today uh we're going to be spending a little bit of time now starting to think about the future um in a couple of months we're going to start talking about the present how we link the past work that we've done as a district the good bad and ugly of that to our future vision and that's where the work um that Dr Ferman and her team and our principles and all of you that will be the work we have to do how do we bridge that gap between what we want and what we
008have in place so just to remind you of our timeline we'll click onto that next slide um if you can read that I can't but if all of you can uh we're just beginning to uh what we have been in this phase zero taking stock of ACS history um we've been kind of digging through a whole bunch of things uh from rep reparations uh education committee's work on some of the history in Asheville uh to some of the listening sessions Dr Ferman has done to looking at past history and achievement rates in the district we're compiling all of that into one kind of comprehensive report that tells us what we've been about and what people really care about in our district and we're beginning to move into building a shared vision for where we want
009to be um and so we're kind of in the middle of two processes right now and over the next couple of weeks all teachers staff and uh students and parents will have an opportunity to engage in some moduls to um both their input on the past as well as their thoughts for the future of Asheville so that's kind of the process we're under amiris anything you want to say there and I think we'll we'll move through this all of you have seen our proposal um we're today going to really focus on actually the last the second to last bullet of building our shared vision for acss so um just to give us a little grounding we're going to start our session today with thinking about um this this dark the dark black uh circle at
010the center of this Bullseye uh the thing that is unique about you as a board of education from any other stakeholder group that uh Dr L and Dr fman and I are going to have the luxury of speaking with is you are the only group in this city that is charged to think about all students all the time that's why I love talking to Boards of Education everybody else get gets to think about their classroom their school their kids their neighborhood but you get to think about all kids all the time and that doesn't mean that all kids need the same thing all the time but it means that all kids have to be impacted and get to the end result we want for all young people even though their Pathways to that end result
011might be different and so that's exciting that you that we're going to spend time talking about every single kid uh and I'm going to really encourage you to hold yourself accountable for that today um to kind of if you think of yourself starting to lean towards well my child my neighbor the kid across the street my kids's best friend if you're starting to think about those students that's great but then I'm going to push you to extrapolate that to all students um and the more we can talk about all students uh the more effective we'll be in our Solutions and in our vision for our district the other thing I wanted to share about this systems approach slide that's up here is it's a way of thinking about um how we develop a system and
012why putting what we want for our young people what we want them to know and be able to do at the center is so critical uh in many districts we think about what we want students to know as grade level standards end of story that's it grade level standards uh there's all these other things then that we expect other people to fill in for our students uh so we expect Community groups to sort of figure that out we expect parents to sort of figure that out uh we expect uh our custodial staff and our bus drivers to fill in all of those gaps and what that means is it's unsystematized it's anecdotal and it's completely relational 100% relational and other words if I get along with my bus driver I get some golden buckets from
013my bus driver about wisdom and life if I don't get along with my bus driver I might not get those what we're trying to build is a system where every student gets that and what we know on this visual um that the organization I work for sort of put this together is that the people that are most important to making sure our students get those pieces are our classroom teachers right we all know that the classroom teacher this person closest to students needs um and does the most powerful work for young people we also know that then they need to be well supported and you can substitute the word on this slide Pathway to team um and that they need to be well supported by a team they need to be well support supported by
014their principle the other thing we know is that the second or first most second first most important positions in changing outcomes for students classroom teachers and site leaders which means that everything a district does from the Board of Education decisions uh to Dr Ferman and her team's decisions have to be about supporting principles and teachers in service of those College and Career outcomes and that in essence we want the community to wrap around that District to support that districts where we've seen this done well are higher achieving districts there's a correspondence to thinking about this as a Bucket Brigade for a better way of thinking about it um and to have everybody organized holding the right bucket passing it to the right person is really the critical work um but in order to do that
015we have to know what's at the center what are we defining as success for our students so we're going to kick it off with just some thinking um what we want to do is bring in a couple of experts from across the country who are telling us about how education is changing and how we need to think about what it is young people need to know and be able to do to be successful in our future world that on a daily basis none of us could even have fathomed it's really good riveting can [Music] be for all of human history the primary focus of education has been acquiring more content knowledge and the only way to get it is through the teacher right you don't have to do that anymore today content is ubiquitous it's
016free it's on every Internet connected device and it's growing exponentially and changing constantly the world simp simply no longer cares how much our kids know what the world cares about is what they can do with what they know which is a completely different education problem when we were growing up parents and teachers talked about work ethic that you really had to want to work hard but it turns out in the 21st century work ethic isn't good enough you can't just intend to work hard you actually have to know what to do next yourself you have to be motivated and you have to have knowledge about what is the next step I ought to be taking if we can compete with other countries it's got to be in producing citizens capable of innovative thinking not citizens
017capable of industrial production not citizens capable of assembling iPads we're going to lose if that's what we think we're producing the old blueco collar industrial model of education is already gone we're already living in its wake so what is everyone looking for they're looking for people who can do critical thinking and Prof problem solving dot dot dot in order to get an interview critical thinking and problem solving are really table Stakes today they assume you've got that what everyone's really looking for are people who can only do their job but invent reinvent and re-engineer their job while they're doing it a recent study by the Rand Corporation found out that among the state tests that are used for accountability only about 2% of the items on the math tests measure higher order thinking skills 98%
018of the items are you know can you apply an algorithm and do the procedure the problem with that is that quite often people who can identify a particular problem format and crank out an answer or find and guess an answer from a list of five which schools spend a lot of time on cannot reason their way through a mathematical application in the real world we have to prepare students to be resilient to be ERS to be collaborators to be communicators we have to prepare them in such a different way I think there's a sharp tradeoff between what can be tested easily on a large scale and what's important in life think of a different Universe where you're asking kids to invent a science experiment write a creative essay come up with an interesting historical perspective
019on an event they care about far more important challenges for a kid far more l with what they need to do in the real world when they graduate much harder to test and very hard to say you got a 731 on this experiment somebody else got a 627 on the experiment so that's the existential trade-off we face in education creativity cannot be taught but it can be killed because to me creativity and Entrepreneurship and in the spirit to innovate they all are human nature we can enhance it we can make it better but more importantly a lot of times we're discouraged by forcing people to do what other people think is right to force people to find answers not ask questions to force people to shoot for answers very efficiently not ask them to explore
020there's some really big questions here is what should we be teaching you know who is our who are our major stakeholders so getting that consensus among all the players the parents the teachers the business Community the politicians of this is what we want our in product to look like this is what we want the students coming out prepared to do not just to know until you get that aligned um getting tough doesn't matter cuz you're getting tough on what I would argue that beyond the morality of this issue it's simply a matter of self-interest for all of us because if we don't train and teach and really support children from all these backgrounds they become our responsibility or our fear so of our fear because we have to teach them about what we consider most
021important in our society this is not about something that would be nice to do this is about the very essence of our future this is about who we become as a [Music] nation for all of human history the primary focus of education is all right y'all so um we want to have invite you all that was a a great intro from Julie and this the thinkers um from the education space so we want you to turn and talk I think everyone should be in a pair of some sort or able to get in one at least and I'd love for you think about what stood out to you about the video and also the materials maybe shared by Julie and what implications do you hear for the students and Ash City Schools what does it
022mean for us for e e e wrap up that final thought beautiful I'd like to invite a couple of folks oh wow it got louder join us back in the meeting I I love that let's talk to the group okay so we'd love to um hear some feedback from what came up to you this could be a thought that you like to share something that came up or a question what do you think about does this lead to some of us we learn information we have more questions so you know I can always say something um one of the things that stood out for me was that the statements that manufacturing was in the past and um what I've seen is that manufacturing production producing things creating fabricating is very much much in the present
023and it's not an either or that it works really well with a broad liberal arts background that provides the broader context including economics accounting International Trade all those sorts of things so it's it the this looks like it's an either or but I don't think it's an either or for our students fair enough yeah thanks for sharing that is there any other thoughts or questions I'm I don't usually jump in first but it actually ties in with that I was telling Rebecca as a business owner with employees that is dead-on about what we need like have you all tried to hire It's hard out there and people who have the ability to learn their job and change their job and adapt like those are exactly the skills employers needs so I'm just kind of tagging
024on that that is absolutely right uh Liza and I talked about the uh the importance of this higher order these higher order thinking skills and have questions around how how do you measure um creativity how do you measure growing in that in that idea of creativity or or in collaboration how do you how do you have a Baseline and then how do you see that oh yeah we as a district are doing better at at um uh I want to say foment but that's not the word I'm looking for um to um to to help those students to bring that out even more beautiful great does can I ask something I think in most schools there used to be alter mechanics there used to be uh uh most of them still have a culinary you
025have uh cosmetology not only uh you have a wood shops you had where kids can see can do about two or three of those trades when they reach that High School level that is where the kids by the time he become a senior that's where his focus is is which one can I do better all right and then with the testing coming up with the ninth grade starting this next school year they get they should be able to take several tests every student maybe during the summer or should be taking some type of test and see where they are good at if they parent par is a doctor they might be good in medicine if their family was in the military they might be good in the military but they would never know unless they
026take some type of test to see where they are within that grade level and by the time they reach that 12th grade for me military um I took Adra test I figured I was good in several things in the military but I chose one all right probably wrong decision but uh but that's what the kids have to do they have to be involved in something right now our kids we don't we don't have auto mechanic we don't have I think we should have a wood shop right we don't have we we do have a culinary we do have a cosmetology but so many the kids maybe would like to work with cars and but how can how will we ever know how would they ever know right can I um you all would anyone from
027this side of the room like to jump in I thought I thought so actually I was I'm glad we were on the scene I really wanted to go over and talk to rafica and Derek for just a second because but the first time I saw that video was at the high school and I was looking at it through a different lens it was a Saturday I was I was looking at through the parent lens like you asked us not to do so I look this today I'll look through it through all kids all the time and the opening line where he was talking about how employers don't care what you know it's they they care about what you do with what you know and I felt like you know I was never measured as a
028teacher on how well I taught that I was measured as a teacher on how well did I teach a child to find the slope of a line or the intersection of systems but I could tell the kids that were in my math class at Asheville high school if they were in rafik's class at Asheville middle like and I remember talking to rafika about that like the grit the ability to problem solve a different way the language she used and like and you can see that across the board and like what a disservice it is is that we haven't built a system and then talking to Kim and Tim and Heidi we had we do have things like Po Pockets like Project based learning or uh graduation portfolios or student-led conferences or um Socratic seminars or
029fishbowls where we Foster that but we don't measure how successful and what a disservice that has been and it's kind of frustrating and I also want to say Jesse none of my seven children like math none at all I was a great math teacher so thank you thank you for sharing this that's a great segment to our next SE thank you great um so you just a couple themes that that pop up um is that one how exciting that there's things you can point to in the district that you can say we have some things or we do this well so that's great that there's some seeds in place that we can grow into a system over time that's really exciting to hear um was the comment about career exploration and interest exploration right Too
030Late by grade 12 to find out what I like because the system has already set up so if I find out in my second semester of my 12th grade year that I'm interested in being a doctor and that's the first thought I had about it it's a little late right my trajectory and what I have to do is totally different now so that in that idea that this isn't just about help helping kids in high school but helping kids Downstream Elementary Middle what do I like what am I good at let me try it out that's terrible right my niece who was like I'm going to be a direct patient care provider and healthc care and then she went and got her ears pierced and she passed out and then her aunt had to change
031her earrings and she's probably super embarrassed if she knew this was on TV right that's that was not a that was a good scenario for her to have because she learned what she wanted to cross off that list right um I'm sorry to interrupt you can I push back a little bit on this I it might be too late um because I think you know I can sit here and say that when I went to University I had an idea of what I wanted to do but sure right but I but I didn't come out of University doing what I do now absolutely not I'm not saying that I guess what I am saying is that for our young people to uh not have a clear path or options by the time their second semester
032to not even have a sense of that by that 12th grade year that's a set of more um of now new Pathways new supports especially for children who may not have a lot of supports that they can access it's a lot to put on a young person who in their second semester of their senior year is just realizing some things for the very first time as opposed to having a system that has some checks and balances along the way that's done our very best by every child I appreciate that CL yeah that's fair yeah and I think the one other thing to say about that is well then what is the purpose of schools and why do young people think they're going to school every day if the Educators or the adults who are interacting
033with them in that space is not connecting that what they're learning today is for some sort of future through opportunities to so it says something more about the school system than the student themselves not knowing thanks for that so um we wanted to what what we're trying to paint the picture of a little bit is why setting up a portrait of a graduate as a district might be helpful um and that where where in some ways um as we think about the future vision for this District what might we need to do differently or more of or where might we need to interrupt today some historical practices or current practices that just aren't serving our young people all of our young people um and I just wanted to share a couple things so part of
034the question we've been asking folks and you all are going to get a chance to weigh in on is this idea of developing a portrait of a graduate you may or may not know the state of North Carolina has been a leader in the country of having a Statewide portrait of a graduate that has these competencies set out um I know that we've engaged um some previous thinking to find out from families and um in the community which of these uh most resonate um and many states are adopting a portrait of a graduate as a way of augmenting or supplementing uh a standards-based uh testing system right that that in addition we want our young people to know this and they make for beautiful posters I have to say um it's it's a lovely poster
035there's some great things um and I'm just going to show up two other examples um but we found that it's also helpful not just to wholesale adopt a state's Vision uh for a portrait of a graduate but there's some things that are unique to this community um and we and we want our students if they want to stay here and if there is opportunity here we want to create opportunity to keep um our students um interests and their skills and their brain power here in our community so that we can Thrive um this is an example of a portrait of a graduate from another school district it happens to be Dr lavender's alma mater so I threw it in and a district that we've worked with uh which is Long Beach Unified School District um
036and you can see they have they kind of zeroed in on five specific competencies with a little bit of a description uh another District that I'm just putting out um is a school district in uh New Mexico Gallop McKinley County schools that I do a lot of work in that's adjacent to and on uh the Navajo Nation um and you can see that while the state of New Mexico has adopted or is in the process of adopting a graduate profile these were things that were set up that were very specific to their Community uh the colors and the directional uh the four directions aligned with the D culture which was really important to them so there's an opportunity that we have to say what's important not just to us in North Carolina but particularly in
037the aftermath of uh the hurricane and many of the many of the things that make us unique in the state what's of particular importance to us uh so that's part of what we're what we're thinking about um we also just want to take this opportunity to maybe share a little bit um about how a a graduate profile can get utilized and uh appreciate your comment uh George about um how do we how do we operationalize this how do you measure this and um again terrible font but what you can see is that um in districts that have adopted um let me just say this in our traditional uh School District right now the only outcomes that we have set up are those that are listed under course outcomes content teachers talk about how are our
038students doing in relationship to the content that teaching them that is dictated by the state standard in a district uh that adopts a graduate profile they can begin to align School outcomes and team outcomes as well as classroom project outcomes or interdisiplinary outcomes to a place where you're both integrating these broader graduate protrait skills and standards which often ends up helping kids a uh answer the question why am I learning this right like great I can write a persuasive art uh persuasive paper I can calculate the slope why would I ever need to calculate slope lots of reasons if you're designing a dogghouse in your yard and you want a nice uh lots of reasons if you're going to be an architect lots of reasons if you're trying to figure out how fast you can
039run up that hill for your next race lots of reasons to do it but for a young person they need that help in doing that this is the type of The Graduate profile can help young people answer those questions in a way so we just wanted to do a little grounding there um what questions are coming up for folks anything so great so we want to just provide a couple other just little tidbits of some data um one being the current state of North Carolina's graduate uh portrait of a graduate is aligned to this notion of durable skills uh organization called uh America succeeds has done this huge research project on what do employers need they called through 80 million job postings I'm glad that's not my job um looking at 22 different sectors um
040and what they found is that 77% of most job postings required these types of skills and the types of skills um that are listed here are exactly what's often found in a graduate uh portrait our employers want things like communication right uh seven of 10 of the applicants that were job hostings that were looked at people referenced not content specialty not can you do slope but can you apply slope right um they want uh the top five uh were were often wanted more than the technical skills so uh can you show up on time do you have uh communication skills creativity critical thinking those types of pieces um and of all of them communication interpersonal written um verbal are all the is really the most desired um and you can imagine that in a world
041that is filled with all sorts of ways to communicate with one another locally this was a little an analys the chamber did in 2022 so obviously some of this may be at a date due to the hurricane impact um but we can see some pieces here as well um that we were a growing econom that um we were expecting uh to grow new jobs um but we were expecting to fill those new jobs from folks outside of our state in some cases so people are coming here for our jobs but are we growing the young people in our community if they want to stay and if we want them to stay are we growing them to have opportunities so that they can stay and have high high wage uh life family sustaining jobs um the
042other two pieces that maybe we would see Healthcare and social services along with manufacturing were kind of our two biggest areas and in that to bottom right corner you can just barely see that our employers also want those those skills to Sarah's point we want people who can uh be responsible be on time critically think communicate so that's that's the world that our young people are uh kind of going into after they leave us in their high school years so the question for us as a board and for us as a community is are we creating young people are we growing our young people so that they can participate in this in this economy and in this community in a way that they want and in a way that can be received um and then
043you can also see that uh what our employers are seeking are of course young people with high school skills and a high school diploma at minimum but you can also see fouryear college is needed by a lot of our employers uh twoyear College uh twoyear colleges plus um and some sort of certificate or apprenticeship um so some type of postsecondary education uh there's a statistic right that 2third of all jobs in the economy require some type of post-secondary I don't mean fouryear I mean certificate I mean Community College associates degree lure apprenticeship um and currently one less than onethird of the American population meets that demand uh so not only do we need young people to attain these but we need to have young people who are going to be cycling in and out of
044education for probably the rest of their life I myself just completed a little certification course the other day uh for my POS for my job so that's a that's going to be can are we raising young people who know how to learn and can teach themselves um and all of those types of skills that many of you talked about so as we head into um I think we'll skip I think you all are intimately acquainted with the financial impacts of the hurricane and maybe you'd like a little reprieve from that from thinking about that but you know that in the back of your head so we're going to um take you into a conversation and we'd love for you to just take a moment quietly to just jot down on the post that's in front
045of you um what do you want given all that's changing given the our economy given our world what do you want all ACS students uh to know and be able to do when they walk across the cha stage and Shake Dr furman's hand and she hands him that diploma what should that diploma mean what do we want all of our students to know and be able to do upon leaving us because of their gradu because of their uh experience here so we'll take a moment for you just to jot your thoughts down and then we'll do some charting of that e e e all right folks once again finish that last thought Julie is going to be our scribe this evening in the spirit of public comment or a public meeting um so I'm going
046to ask that um folks share out what they wrote down and I'm going to implore you to be brief such that more voices can enter the space and uh Julie has time to write down the the posting notes yes okay who would like to get us started what should all ACS students know and be able to do when they graduate from Ashville City Schools leadership and work with others leadership and they need to communicate and work for others with others Julie do you just want to collect their postage shut them out okay shout them out in case people have things they want to Okay add on and then I will allow a shout uh be able to make good choices based on real information and informed predictions with confidence and discernment uh analyze ideas and
047Concepts um challenge the set status quo with respect and logic advocate for themselves others and the future understand personal finance learn from mistakes how to do things differently the next time from what they learned and then teach all of us how to do that right I had the basic skills of a good citizen participate how to communicate with anyone even if they don't speak the same [Music] language does anyone else have something that uh the ability to communicate with anyone even if you don't speak the same language understand democracy mhm adapt persevere be accountable to peers and adults be accountable to their peers as well as adults act with Integrity I had find a vocation yes feel confident in their curiosity I'll repeat one from another session the ability to to make a telephone call
048there we go yep can't can't miss that read and write stand up for injustices and support anyone push to the margins and we all talking about high school kids right okay I'll okay um you could you could differentiate that there might be things for a young person that might be different than an old well I think they need to know that race was not a choice race was not a choice Jesse I these so can I ask you what you mean by that if we all picked a color what color we would have liked to be uh it wouldn't probably be the color that we're are right now so when they walk across their stage and go out there into that world that person that they might like and the other person don't like it
049wasn't their choice to be that way that they are right so race was not a choice I think our kids sometimes forget that especially uh is that feel that they can't go wherever they want to go right so and I you know it's just not no I like to type with Integrity now not want to remember that thank you I'll add that I will want every child and every student to be able to love who they are and feel safe Julie can I add one that I heard in another meeting just cuz she's in the room um cursive that's really been sticking with me since you said that because it made me think of um all the old documents that students don't have access to be able to read uh because they're written in a
050handwriting that they don't understand so if you want any you know to go dig in an archive you know they did away with that and now our students think uh cursive is Spanish wow that keeps me up now thank you and also there's studies that show that it connects the two lobes of the brain to right and cursive so if you do have a post that even if you haven't read it off we'll collect them tonight we have one more um knowledge is power and to be able to treat people how you want to be treated and I just had one other to add um being a good Steward whether it's with our you know our environment or with just your your personal being just I think being a good Steward is important I think
051we have time for one more the next question is what so thinking about these things that we want students to learn what would schools look like sound like or feel like for this because I have learned please write what you're talking about at the top of the Post-it note is this a look like sound like feel yeah and if it's easier we'll kind of combine this with the with the next question as well so you could think about what are the types of learning experiences students would have to have uh to have these to gain these types of skills so on that board behind you you can see in some places the idea was big students should um you know know how to express um or work across difference right so that that might not
052be a class that might be in how groups are structured and how learning is structured in other CL in other places there is some discret skills you want students to learn financial literacy but what are the learning experiences that students would need to get us to these types of skills and then what might they look like sound like feel like if that's a helpful um kind of descriptor for you to get your thinking there you might already have some ideas uh but either of those kind of prompts would be helpful do uh we will collect these Post-its as well so if you need to add a little bit more information so we understand what that means that's super helpful for would anyone like to share one of the uh looks like sounds like feels like
053or a learning experience as we close our time with you today play this game before if two people talk at the same time we got to start all over again there was a game two people oh yeah yes I too have played that game yes yes yes yes I've got something if you are looking so just generally um multilingual Intercultural expansive educational experience and a specific with that is Spanish English bilingual education improves executive function and results in better testing um uh outcomes for English uh among native English speakers and um uh English language Learners thank you I can take one more um individualized and differentiated learning thank you we'll be adding all to all of you is in the board um with some recommendations based on what the data is telling us in terms
054of what are some of the common themes that are emerging uh for you then to be able to finalize and create our own Asheville graduate uh portrait or or profile depending on the language you want to use um just as a reminder kind of in terms of timeline we'll be in this space we'll be working with um the the district on getting information out to um get way um information from staff students and parents um and then really our goal is uh by April Mish um that will have kind of culminated uh all of the data we've collected into a report for you all to then uh begin to see those recommendations and make decisions about what of those recommendations you want to adopt how you want to take that forward in your strategic plan
055um and then we'll begin the second phase of this work in May which is really beginning to map what do we have that exists in relationship to this Vision um where do we need to do some growing is great to hear that there's things we can point to um and say we've got student-led conferencing in some of our schools and for some of our students if that would be part of our vision then that's a a step we would begin to take then how do we scale that for all students those will be the types of conversations that'll be happening uh May through July with then the final strategic plan uh developed uh over the summer with then an implementation plan is sort of that next step just to kind of make sure so before
056we depart we want to make see what questions are emerging from particularly our board members for either ourselves or Dr Ferman or comments or any closing thoughts I just want to say thank you this is part of what I imagine work sessions should be for myself on this board like we're getting to the heart of of what we value and vision um and to do it this way to know it's coming back to us to help formulate a picture I really appreciate it thank you thank you thank you for being here this was excellent and we look forward to continuing along the timeline great thank you and uh as we circulate around please hand us your Post-its I'm giving a minute just for them to do that but just looking at Ian to say you're
057up next you you're done they're gon they're going to be cleaning up but we'll go ahead and keep moving forward we are on item 2.2 the summer program plan and Ian Nelson is back with us can you hear me through the mic um so uh DPI requires that uh the board approves our summer testing plan um they sort of explicitly don't call it a retesting plan because it must include some of instruction um uh what you have in your agenda is a link um to DPI which um details the instructional days and the testing days that we will have at each level the the details of who will be working that sort of thing will be dealt with internally um but uh overall plan um this year slightly different than it has been in years
058past in that we will be offering uh summer testing opportunities at all levels so elementary middle and high uh the timing will be um in the order of the Middle School offering it during uh June 9th and 10th which is during uh work days um followed by Elementary schools which will be um the end of that week and the following and then the high school will offer testing opportunities at the end of the month after um summer school instruction um so the big picture of um the consequences of this instruction is that the students taking these tests um uh will not affect their grade individually um but their uh scores on the test will uh count towards proficiency scores for the overall school performance grades that come out later in the summer any questions about
059the plan we have laid out would you repeat that last sentence yeah so um so the retesting uh gives the students the opportunity Eng with the the same test they took in the year um the accountability side of it is that um for high school students for example um it will not replace their grade that they received on the original test but it um will potentially contribute to the overall proficiency rate for the school so if a student scores proficient in the summer that will towards the school's proficiency rate um the two that the schools are measured by on our school performance grades are overall proficiency and growth so these uh these retests or the summer testing program count towards growth calculation for either the teachers or the school and and and so we will
060offer this opportunity to students to uh pass the course but we're not proficient on the exam and it's a you know it's um it's optional for families you we will implore them to take advantage of the opportunity but it's not required in in any way it am I reading this correct that there will be two waves for elementary school or am I misreading no so that's math math and reading and the potentially opportunity for science to depending on interest yeah sorry and do we have any incentives to encourage High School participation in the retesting um I'm I'm sure uh Mr Edwards maybe can come up with those some really creative ways I mean so uh you know from from my sort of the technical accountability side there's no real um incentive we can offer from
061the from the data collection side um but you know I think giving students opportunity to re-engage with the material and um uh you know take take the same testing format that they will with other assessments so they'll engage in the same testing platform NC test more familiar more familiarity with the testing platform so just the experience of having success that's great that's y there's one box uh that's not checked on assess types uh NC extend one yeah great question so that NC extend one those the uh a test for our students who uh participate in extended content standards those are uh most severely uh disabled students and so we're we're not um asking them to engage in the assessment again in the summer and I have a question do you have a sense for what
062kind of participation we get I know that I've seen this before it doesn't and I'm not asking for anything exact but what kind of participation do we get um it's so the the pool of families that are engaged with initially or invited um I'd say um you know it's it's less than half for sure participate um um in terms of both students and numbers of tests that they engage with so a single student potentially Like A fifth or eighth grader could not be proficient on three assessments so it's both the number of families overall that participate and then once they choose to participate they may only choose to participate it's you know it's it's it's not a majority of the families that are invited but you know some percentage given given what the year okay
063okay um the do you have I know we got a great sheet from um uh from uh is baggot with um details on testing the definition of proficiency for these test that we're looking at is that proficiency uh definition somewhere around the 50th percentile or is it higher or lower so it varies by assessment um and that so that it's it it's really determined by scale score which is closely most closely equivalent to a raw score for the assessment the percentiles calculated based on um the norm group when whenever that EST was established for the year of the assessment so um it is roughly around 50 60th percentile depends on the assessment okay thank you Ian do you need anything I'm supposed to submit to the state by April 4th a sign copy of this
064document that that you have before you so um either now or the the March 10th meeting um could that could happen then so yeah does it need to go on the consent agenda yeah that's what we'll do then thank you thank you I next up we have school nutrition we heard last month about the I want to say it right I don't actually know Community eligibility provision um and you have in your information um Memo from Heidi this too would go on the consent agenda um I think we were all in favor of it but do you all have questions of this request this recommendation that would be approving okay it will go on the consent agenda next we have Dr deant and there are contracts and memorandums of understanding and those two if acceptable
065to us will go on the consent agenda but I will let her talk about those or if there are questions so you have a list of the contracts one will need your approval and that's the um the chiller replacement at Claxton because it exceeds the dollar amount uh the rest of the contracts are information only and then um you have a few M on the back do you have any questions about about those um cim I've got a question about that the chiller replacement is that um on schedule or is this uh a unforeseen Chiller replacement I'm going to defer to April Dr deck um this was the chiller that broke right before school started this year and we had to put in emergency Chillers um it was a malfunction but it had passed its
066warranty it had lived a long life but it is time to completely replace it but no it was not scheduled it is an unscheduled expense thank you any other questions or concerns yes is this similar in scale to um The Chiller that potentially would be replaced at Asheville Primary School uh Asheville City preschool building at 441 Haywood Road I apologize I'll have to do a little bit more research to answer that question correctly that is completely Fair thank you very much you're welcome anything next we have po next we have policies for second read um so you've already had an opportunity um to look over these for first read unless there's any additional questions I can move on to um the policies that are up for first read and Kim I just want to interrupt
067because I spent some time with these today and for all of our benefit I want to organize us on these the four on second read have moved on track through first read and second read and we haven't had any issues with any of them and so I do I do want to pause here and make sure we're good with those four going to Second read I do have a couple of questions nitpicky questions okay um it's very nitpicky on the um web page development because it's a blank line where it says where our web address is uh when you look at when we when I pull up the web page development it says in the first paragraph school system has established at system website online at blank I just want to make sure that's going
068to be filled in when it yes on the once the policies in there okay all right um and then just a curiosity on the student promotion and accountability so code 3420 um assuming that it gets passed does it go into effect immediately is it is it for next school year so the career development the career development plan will be implemented for the next school year next year okay so that okay so 3420 it gets passed is goes into effect for student promotion next year Dr chinks has been working collaboratively with cni to come up with a implementation okay great thank you yes um to carry back to the web page development um there how do we address uh an issue with and maybe this is a policy thing with having multiple websites and multiple URLs
069that contain official information and the search features on the different websites not finding content on the other websites and so for example if you go to the main page it's and you search for a policy it doesn't pull up the information on the policy page necessarily or the food and nutrition page and so if we are making this making an official website presumably um the what we generally consider the the website the web address for the school do we need to have something in here that expands on that or do we need to change something in practice and this comes up with um meeting notices that appear on the diligent website which isn't necessarily found through the main website is that too complicated of a question no I understand your question um so because we
070contract with the North Carolina School Board Association um all of the policies are housed in their um on on their platform so I what I'm understanding correctly is you want to be able to type in a specific policy in the search engine on the website and be taken directly to that whereas currently you have to go into the link that is on our website to search for a specific policy and with the with the school nutrition again that's through an external um that's also linked and with with different guidelines that they use so you have to actually go to that link to find school nutrition is that's the concern I'm hearing the concern that I've I certainly experienced it years ago before I learned the ins and outs but I hear this from uh parents
071and families that they go looking for the information they can't find it and so perhaps there's a way in policy perhaps there's a way in practice but it's an issue and it's a possibly an issue having to do with open meeting laws Maybe and so we've got something that's supposedly the website for the board but it's different than the official website and so it just creates some confusion so my recommendation would to um be to share those concerned with Dr Ferman and then we can work through those and then if Anna has a comment on public on the um Public Law piece I'm open meeting sure certainly um so what's required is that we publish that to our website because that link is attached to the website and is available that way I don't think
072there is an open meetings law violation we've actually looked into this at our office Chris and I both and we see no issue with the way that the notices are sent out through Asheville City Schools website and through the diligence site um as for the policy I mean I don't see any legal issues as long as all of the websites that are attached to Asheville City are accessible through the general Asheville City Schools link even if they're not searchable necessarily that doesn't create a legal issue but if there are things that that parents are struggling to get to I know do they have shared with Dr Ferman some concerns during the um Muffins with Maggie she's brought those back to me and merily and I've been working collaboratively to get those addressed on the website
073so I would say share any of those with with her and we'll we'll address them thank you very much for your work just to call the question though are we ready for this to go to Second read or are you asking for something additional okay sorry Kim so then you have um several policies that are up for first read uh parent uh involvement that's a a simple change on page six the biggest notable change is the addition of the career development plan School Board associations making sure that all of those policies um that pertain to that addition are being reflected in their existing policies uh board committees um I know there was a lot of discussion at the last uh work session about um how to implement those uh and Dr Ferman has created that
074list so what we did was um we looked at other policies where school districts uh did not have the the commit the standing committees linked and what they did was they um stried out the section A and that's what the we've brought to you today for first read um 3410 testing and Assessment program what they've done is they've made some changes for students who have IEPs when it comes to factoring in um end of grade and end of course test as well as ml students and so that is reflected graduation requirements if you have specific questions on that in just a second U Mr Edwards has been working collaboratively as well as Stephanie day with cni there's several changes there and they've been to ensure that they are meeting all of those um use of
075unmanned art uh aircraft drones they just remove the ncdot that was the most noticeable difference uh student wellness um they've added um School nutrition members to that team they've also included a mental health component uh and then we have the um when you start with policy code 232 4320 5026 and 5030 those that those are back on there for first read because I know that you wanted to lift up potentially some changes so I'll turn it over to you for questions so um 2110 um there's two things that I want to lift up um but the first I'm going to pass down the oath this is copies and just to show that there's two paragraphs and so we're missing something in this just pass that pass one down or keep one and pass it down
076um and so I just think we should um uh harmonized with what we actually do for our um oath um and then the other thing um I think the board uh would benefit from a conversation about when we want new new board members to start uh I know that we were in a situation where we were paying my predecessor and myself for December um and I had raised an issue and then you know stood back from it about whether the new board members should also be attending the work session uh in the December month of their first meeting since they're going to be discussing and voting on it and so I'm thinking that maybe that that should be added at if not at this point at a future Point um for uh policy 2110 so
077Pepe I'm just gonna I think the first thing you're asking for is that paragraph C match the verbiage that's actually read is that what you're asking more or less yeah that it includes the full information I'm going to look to Anna because I don't know if which needs to I mean our policy may be right and this needs to change or vice versa I don't I don't know the inconsistency doesn't bother me but I take your point yeah I was goingon to say I haven't had an opportunity to review this at this point and do you need 2110 Anna it's just and that was from your office sure yes it is um I mean you can add it it's just a statement of affirmation that you'll uphold those rules I mean I think that the
078first paragraph is kind of the piece of it that covers what the allegiance is um but I mean I I don't see an issue with adding it not at all I mean so there's legal issue either way I guess Pepe I need to know because we're going to do something with this are you asking that we change the oath of office to be consistent with the Campbell Shatley Law Firm uses are we asking Campbell Shatley to change the oath to make it consistent with our policy I mean I think those are our two choices sorry I'm suggesting that um section c be consistent with what we actually do okay so I guess Kim we're gonna put that back on for first read with and they'll come back I think it's a m that's a minor
079change understood but we got to they're going to do it and it'll come back to us um the second thing that I'm hearing and I guess I just want to take the consensus of the board on this is Pepe's request and I'm trying to figure out where it would be [Music] um so pepy tell me where in the policy you're asking for a change because I I know what you're asking for but I don't see in the policy what it is yeah um so at one point we were doing work sessions and then what we I know but what's in tell me about the policy section B thank you and it doesn't say anything it doesn't have anything about seating when when a member that we just be specific so that the people who follow
080us have clear expectations okay Anna do you have an opinion on this and what do other boards do um so when board members begin their term um is based on our local law on that um that was passed by the statute or by the general assembly um and so we would just need to ensure that any language changes were consistent with that if we wanted to add it I think I may be incorrect but I believe there's another policy in the 2000s that addresses when board members start um serving I would need to double check that and look back but um I would also want to consider that as well because I I wouldn't want to duplicate things if you don't need to but um but yeah so when board members take office is straight
081from a statute um and so it would be dependent on that it wouldn't necessarily be a policy issue but we could say what the statute says in policy it's going back to Kim any way I think we could put both of those in your lab but the distinction is that um the statute that applies just to us refers to new board members being seated at lowercase r the first regular meeting and it's a conversation that we can have whether we want to include that first work session if they are indeed on different dates and in the not too distant past they were on the same date so it was a moot point I hear you and it could be done either way I think we're going to put it back in the capable hands of
082Kim Deck with guidance from Anna to come back to us with something to look at that's fair I don't want to be word SMI it but they'll bring us back something thank you very much so hold on though I guess Kim you went through so there's also um you 232 remote participation and board hearings um that was one that was has been on first read um since December and there were concerns about that one so do this right what concerns do people have about 2302 that need to be addressed I think I just had a question that may have been moot or may now be moot about whether the governor's emergency declaration um regarding public education qualified and I think at this point it's you know it's a moot point so do you have any
083concerns about this policy in its present form all right so this one goes on to Second read um the next one is U 4320 tobacco products the one pertaining to students um there was a uh there was concern about that um and it was put back on first read and those concerns were mine and it had to do with readability um and I'm I'm unsure do we is this supposed to include um CBD items or other chemical vapor products and whether any additional Clarity um so whether we want to spend any time and money having any additional Clarity on this so with 4320 as well as 5026 um the what the School Board Association has done is they've expanded upon the definition and um the definition is definitely more um extensive than it was originally
084and it does include electronic cigarettes and refers to vaping products so I just want to get clarification Pepe I actually appreciate you bringing this up because I think I want to make sure that let's say a student gets caught using a vape pen that's a fruit vape pen and I don't know I'm not I don't Vape so I don't know like a fruit flavor does it contain nicotine and if it doesn't does that mean that that student is not out of compliance with this policy right and so that's that's kind of where I'm that's the question I'm coming with because it does say at the top it's like nicotine related if it's not nicotine related does that mean that that's a loophole for our students Okay then if if Anna says no Then I'm yeah
085all good yeah and I think of things like spice you you know or grass clippings with with chemicals added to it um I am wondering whether changing the title would make a difference like tobacco Pro tobacco and vape or vaping products I don't know if that um would help clarify that it applies to both or nicotine products I had the same Wonder nicotine is CBD covered by something else yes okay okay okay there's a separate policy on other drugs and paraphernalia so would the board like for us to take this one put it back on for first read and put tobacco SL vaping products can it continue on second read with just that name change if that's yeah no I just wanted to clarify that other things besides nicotine are covered in another policy yeah
086we have a drugs and alcohol policy so I actually want to be careful that we're not if this policy is on Tobacco and nicotine that's what it's on and there's other types of drugs and substances covered elsewhere I don't know that it makes sense to mix them here when we have two policies they're looking been pretty mixed when I read all the pink stuff yeah I mean I think it's fine the way it is I don't and and this is an SBA policy I am going to be extra careful that we don't add words to SBA policies because then we create a level of complication for our ongoing maintenance of policies it would take a big lift for me to say yeah let's mess with the words that the SBA has sent us I also
087want to advocate for the secondary principles who are in the room it makes it more complicated if you back it into a corner because then it becomes a little bit it even though you're trying to ask for clarification you're actually making it more vague and you're you're kind of the closer we can align a state board the better I understand the concern about supporting parents and board members and better understanding that but that is really the job of the school administrators when they apply the policy to provide consequences for behaviors thank you okay so I've heard I just um is it going on to Second read referring to tobacco products and as we've seen whatever way they are ingested into the body through Vapor otherwise are we good with that or do we want it
088to say I heard Liza say nicotine do we want to change it to that do we want to add the word Vape to the title I'm at some point I'm just looking for consensus folks about what you want I would prefer vaping being the title of the two policies however I am I will vote in favor of it regardless of whether that changes made okay um okay I straight up have to have a vote y'all I don't know what to do I got two different people I've heard two different things so I'm G I would say I would lean towards Rebecca as well and keep it as is um because vaping can happen with tobacco products or CBD products so vaping crosses two lines um so I would just I would leave it as is
089and to clarify that's because if you're vaping something other than nicotine there's a policy on that we're not leaving it as some No Man's Land we're saying this is policy is about nicotine and tobacco you guys are okay with that okay yes no I me not gonna have a vote Pepe I don't know how formal you want me to be about this I'm not hearing everybody be on the same page with you so if you want to have a vote on this we can straight up have a vote and see what people think oh I wasn't I I think georgees also you know have some concerns about adding The Vaping or oh my concerns were clarified I'm happy second okay really good that's fine all right good second read as is okay Kim and then
090uh this would I assume because that's how um anyway 5026 the same concern and it's just the it's the definition and so again we do have in the in the 700s we have a policy about drugs and alcohol when it comes to staff as well so all of that would be covered in that policy if we had a staff member who was using using an illegal substance which won't happen so we're good and then the next one is uh 5030 Community use of facilities I would uh appreciate advice from Council about um whether um whether we can discuss this uh informally guidance I got from somebody at the Schoolboard Association is we can talk about policies but I could not talk about anou a specific mou related to the policy I'm not sure I follow
091but um yes yeah we're we're trying to get a replacement discussions on that one yeah so it may be that that this isn't a policy that we can discuss at this [Music] moment okay I'm trying to catch up but because you would have to recuse yourself I don't believe I can recuse myself but we also can't have a um uh we can't discuss anou related to a parent teacher organization and the boat and you you are unclear or you are sure that we can't discuss the policy I don't think it's recommended to have a policy discussion when um and I I agree and so it may be something just to kick down the road for another month okay just to be clear though this is a policy that already exists and I just want to
092say some of the things we've talked about and had concerns about like to PTO have to have an insurance waiver that's the law of the land right now so the further we kick this down the road we're stuck with all the things we don't like their policies already and I just want to remind folks what we had them come back and Kim and her team do is whether we could use the pH facilities for for-profit use I guess what I'm trying to figure out Pepe is we've spent some time with this and I know there are some concerns and I'm not clear whether you're able to participate in the conversation or not and if that's what we have to clarify before we can have this conversation that's fine but I'm we might clarify that in
093in uh close session okay okay would is that true Anna I feel like Pep's action as a lawyer here can you tell us when we can discuss this as the lawyer when you can discuss the policy policy discussions need to happen in Open Session okay issues regarding conflicts that's that can be attorney client privilege if there's concerns and you need guidance on what would be a conflict so those are the two things um what I am saying about this policy discussion is I think what pepy is saying is you feel there's a conflict poti given that there is an open with a body that you are there's not anou okay um but the policy could impact that yes isn't the issue that I mean I'm just going to speak cleanly isn't the issue that you
094py you're not feeling like parent teacher organizations should have to get the insurance that's the requirement that that we have in this policy is for PTO to use a facility they must have an insurance policy to cover liability that is actually not what the policy says that there's a mismatch between procedure and policy and so it it makes sense to me to have that conversation at an appropriate time I think this is what I would like to do unless somebody else tells me this is wrong I think if there is a question about whether we can discuss this with Pepe then we have to move this to close session to figure that out and then we will have a discussion about this and it may be with you and it may not be with you
095that's the part I need some clarity on and we'll have to do that in close session so Kim's purposes this is not moving forward at this time once we clarify that we will bring it back on a second read and we will have a conversation about it and we will make recommendations okay how that makes sense and outside of that situation I the policy states that groups need the coverage alternatively the superintendent or design may require the user group to execute a waiver of liability that states no liability will be attached to the Board of Education individually or collectively for personal injury that we we all got into that that language and just because they may be required to it doesn't change whether they need the insurance is well it doesn't change what your insurance
096carrier requirement and that's correct that may how the superintendent decides whether going to happen we check with insurance and they said they would not cover like they said you should have them get the insurance on their own so that was the recommendation from our carrier to say yes if you want to let your PTO people use the building they should be getting their own policy which impacts how you as the superintendent Your Design would decide whether to right this based on and right that's what this policy is doing and how you're executing it is G to my insurance company correct got it exactly so that would be my recommendation is that we leave that language in there as is and as we implement this proed policy through procedure that the procedure is we would require
097pto's to get the um Insurance liability I will point out that I believe it's improper to be having this um discussion right now okay I think what we're going to do is for Kim's purposes everything on second read is going forward except 2110 and you have got um elections and you got some feedback from us to bring that back to us and for 5030 we're going to figure out when and with whom we can actually discuss this policy so it's just gonna sit here and first read okay and I will say just as a um a general reminder on 5030 um when the board first looked at this for first read uh with the red lines from the School Board Association we did you can see in green we did make the change that for-profit
098groups will be permitted to use school facilities uh which is a change and we have updated that facili um spe schedule to include uh for-profit so I just want you to be aware that the any any additional delays on this will cost is going to essentially or potentially cost the district money okay thank you we will figure this one out so proceed ma your code 34 sorry Kim Kim I'm sorry I just want to make a point of clarity but so with the potential conflict that we were discussing we can have the discussion you just can't take a vote or influence a vote but it's okay for you to be present when the discussion is happening okay procedures um procedure 3 uh 410 that's a testing and accountability testing and assessment and worked with the
099children's department and curriculum instruction just so that we had a process in place that was clear uh when it came to the IND grade test in the IEPs to to partner with the the new changes to the policy and then uh Transportation uplifted some changes to 6305 um bus conduct um we needed to update it with student code of success um and also uh the change to 15 15 minutes um to the bus stop any questions about the procedures and Kim we don't vote on these these are just for um procedures are information only question um can I are we allowed to go back I just want to make a do you mind um go back as Kim you mentioned the um graduation requirements and I just want to make a a point U that
100I think it's interesting that this came up on the same day that we just had this really amazing work session with Dr lavender and and Julie um and the graduation requirements I think think it's wonderful that we continue to evaluate that as a district as a high school and think what do our students need and also keeping that in context with that conversation we just had about what does a graduate of asille High look like and what do we want to see our students graduating with um and this is a very content heavy or course heavy graduation requirement as we go through the strategic planning process are there other things we can be visioning as a district for for what our students can quote unquote complete when they graduate okay I have a question for
101clarification on 6140 Dr duck okay in section B there is this striking the insert board's goals and then we're striking the appendix the paragraph right ahead of striking the insert references the board establishes specific evidence-based goals what how do we comply with that so the team is meeting um and so those goals haven't been established yet with participation from a board member to bring back so we're omitting that until those are established okay and then we do have the link um to the um commit the team the individuals that are serving on the team and their um mission and vision and like the direct the direction that they're heading so that will be linked to the document to George's point we're we're doing the kind of work that I think is really student focused and
102student centered and wherever a policy can actually be in alignment with that this feels like a great place for it so if we're able to put those in at a time where they really align with the work that's happening that would be my preference thank you forif and so that team is working on establishing goals so there will be specific goals that the district will be that they will have around health and wellness and yeah seal I think I lift it up to say I hope that they're meaningful I hope they're in alignment with this powerful work as opposed to just in compliance as much as possible thank you Dr dekin um for purposes of the board just kind of orienting us on our agenda we've already done strategic planning we're going to take up
103items 4.2.3 and point4 which we'll have some discussion about but I don't anticipate those being too much time because I do want to leave time for the budget discussion so just letting folks know that's where I'm headed would you say that one more time I'm so sorry um just saying we're now skipping to 4.2 and my hope is that 42 43 and 44 we're going to spend some time on but not an undo amount of time so that we can preserve as much time as possible for the budget discussion those are the three things left between that and the budget discussion so I'm just orienting the board on that so Maggie 4.2 meet confirm and collaborate do you want to update us yes I'm happy to do that so um kind of rewind just a
104quick summary been going back and forth with the EAC um or acae group about makeup her collaborate as a procedure instead of a policy um and we were able to come to an agreement on the language um I see I missed one um as a procedure and some of the updates um just so the board is aware is that um we settled they wanted I was recommending to meet every other month they had a specific number of meetings we settled on eight meetings per year um the other piece where we settled on is um item C or section c um that they we had kind of a general um needing to prove that they're 50% plus one um membership and we decided that we would pick two points in the calendar year to check on
105enroll on um number of staff that are U joining and part of their organization um and then the last thing that we um discussed was the information and transparency section they were still requesting um a very firm timing on return of M you like if they request data or materials that they would have it within a certain number of days um and I just really felt strongly that you know we the staff is very busy already um they're already working 40 um or 50 plus hours weekends and nights um and that sometimes depending on the amount of information they'd be requesting that that could really potentially disrupt um their regular work um so we just we came to an agreement that we would get them the requested information as soon as possible within a reasonable
106timeline um so the next steps with this um is that we'll kind of put it in official language or put it in like the official policy um attachment as a procedure but as the procedure for the policy um and then got a follow-up meeting with AC next week or later this week maybe I'm just offering to add on to what Maggie said I've been copied on a lot of the emails and there has been what feels to me like a very respectful back and forth they you know we switch from a policy to a procedure and they you know ask questions and and understood that and there were some back and forth and it feels to me like this is a win and um they seem pleased also so folks do you have comments or
107questions for Maggie about the procedure I appreciate you engaging with um acae and making this work thank you of course okay at this time we're going to move to board Norms Maggie did you want to say anything or you want me to walk folks through it well um you know I the just kind of catching everyone up or reminding you is we left the retreat we had board Norms kind of sketched out um I went through and tried to just summarize and clarify the language after the discussion on the Norms so now they're up for Board review to make sure that you know my summary or kind of capturing it it matches the the the intent or the the feelings of the board so what I'd like to do board members is just there's three
108of them governance Communications and meetings and if we could just pick up them one at a time and you all let me know if you think there's language in here that doesn't reflect what we discussed at the January meeting and as you structurally I see that um you know Amy and I had worked on what we sort of called ad hoc where does this fit you know where does it go and so do I understand that you've in a couple places I think I remember that these blue like additional norms for consideration is sort of how those got brought over exactly do we need to agree that that's where they belong and that's then then they'll become they'll live in these places yes or we could just say you know we can discuss those Norms
109at a later time the ones that are for additional because we haven't really had an opportunity to Deep dive deep and discuss those or if you're fine with them then board members I'm trusting that you guys have read these' had them in front of us and I'm just look down the table does anybody have concerns about governance Norms I'm getting thumbs up Sarah I'm sorry I have I have a question about the first one um make decisions that keep the best interest of all students is the main focus of board action while ensuring that one group is not disproportionately impacted over another and the the one thing I just want to Center um is my commitment to making sure you know we've got a pervasive [Music] um racially based achievement and opportunity Gap and if
110we are making some decisions that will um disproportionately impact our black students are we then like violating our Norms right like I mean we might need to make some decisions that are centering black students in a certain way um that's a great question I think Maggie and I were the governance Norms little subcommittee at The Retreat and that is not what we meant we actually meant the opposite but I take your point that in these challenging times people put things on our head um I think the intent there was like to over for a a group that is already privileged not to get more when we need to allocate resources so we can close that disproportionate right yeah no I yeah I appreciate that that explanation so and I I don't want to like to
111me the work of the board is more important than nitpicking specific words I just want to name that so we are understanding this is if that's what we mean we mean that we're not continuing to disenfranchise our black students and families and black and brown students and families yep because I'm going to say it a different way I mean it's what you said before but sometimes we may need to spend more resources on a particular right group and I think I mean I'm happy to re word this and again Maggie and I wrote this and we did not mean it the way you heard it but I get that it could be read that way um so I'd be happy to I I don't want to take a ton of time on this but like
112is there a way to people would feel more comfortable with that language um I mean one thing we can just do is to I mean we could go back to the verb insuring the Jaren or whatever that is um being mindful of which groups are disproportionately maybe just maybe a delete that sentence and then change it to you know each you know the board will be intentional about ensuring students will get what they need regardless of what they have basically like saying if we need to invest more resources in something we will so just what do you feel about well not take out that sentence but put a period after action Magie you say it one more time the board would be intentional about making sure um that the board would be intentional about ensuring
113every student gets what they need so the sentence would read number one make decisions that keep best interest of all students as the main focus to board action the board will be intentional about ensuring every student gets what what they need they need okay with that one yep can you live with it thank you I mean if you got words give them to me but otherwise I just don't want to I really want to you know that the this whole thing feel doesn't feel good to to me it's something that um it seems like a constraint up on individual board members speaking up um and what stands out to me is that one of the phrases that Jesse and I put in uh trust but verify is no longer in the document and so it's
114um I think that accountability um I I have concerns about accountability I have concerns about siloing the board or board members from their responsibilities and at the same time I appreciate that you're trying to come up with a consensus on all of this so I just have real mixed feelings understood um I don't think the trist and verify was in governance just no it was but it's deleted from the document um governance Norms I'm looking for cons we all pretty good with it we understand there are benefits and burdens to Norms and we said in our meeting we're going to try to act in ways that won't surprise our fellow board members but we know you know we inadvertently screw up we do know that I don't think there's any intent to Silo board members
115I don't read it that way um but I do think we're trying to acknowledge what I mean I think part of what we're being asked to do is respect what Maggie and her team do and that's not our business and so we're sort of saying we acknowledge that's not our role and this is our role and I don't think that's hamstringing us I think that's us acknowledging where our energy should be spent so I mean I I feel like we may have a different opinion about what that means but what we say is that I mean I don't know that the words Silo was I don't I'm expressing the concern that I have I think in some of these you know we saw like there was recognized that the only staff person at astral City
116schools that reports to us is the superintendent and so our in order for the District staff to be able to do their jobs without delay or without interruption right one of the aspects of how that needs to play out is that when we have concerns when we hear things that are concerning when we see things that are concerning when we have questions and we want to verify we do it through the superintendent and that is what I I mean I I see that as how these structures are set up to ensure that the people who run our district can just run our district and Maggie's accountable to us and if if we're and if it's not making sense we talk to each other about that if this this concept of verifying isn't passing a smell
117test through that channel like we need to pay attention and do something about that um but we do it with each other is is what I'm thinking in terms of how we steer clear of silos but we also hold ourselves accountable to not get into the the operations of the district in a way that actually hampers the staff's ability to do their work that's a take that I have on it well we can always try and then next year we can always change it at our next Retreat uh if we need to I mean but we do have some type of guidelines that we can use for Le for the next upcoming year right like we can wa change it are we okay by consensus with the governance Norms I would not vote for it
118okay um what I'm hearing is the rest of the board feels these are appropriate and I'm hearing that you don't but I feel like more people are in find it useful I respect that okay all right we're going to move on to the communications norms people have specific comments about this one that they wish to address now let's make sure we understand that Pap we do understand that it's not a Bard thing I mean we understand that if if any of us are disagreeing on something it's not against it's not against you oh no Jesse we're good okay all thoughts on the Comm Communications Norms okay again try it come back revisit it okay last is the meetings Norm norms okay I'm seeing lots of heads nodding okay to Jesse's point we're going to try
119it see how it works revisit it we need to okay thanks you all um I hope we will find those to be helpful and our work together okay I think we are ready to move to our final discussion item excuse me ahead of close session so I'm going to turn turn it over to Maggie and Heidi yeah I'm sorry I just skipped over that apologies just quickly on the standing what I do with the committees or stakeholder input sessions that they have on a regular basis we've listed those out we've given a purpose and then we've got the meeting date frequencies there um so what we can do is as those meetings come up um we can just share like hey what's coming up this month is are these committees whenever we um list out
120on the board agenda like upcoming events and if the board members are Keen to attend um we can collect who plans on attending meetings um these standing the standing staff committees um and just make sure we don't get more than three and I think just to add on that we talked about at the retreat that if we do attend there'd be an expectation you report back to the board at the next meeting and then I also just I think it would be important to remember that we're not attending these meetings because they the staff needs us to attend it's not our place to go and talk it would be a place to go and listen and report back um so that's the list of committees okay all right so next up is the budget presentation
121some updated information for for the board is that up there okay here we go thanks Lisa okay so when we met on the 18th we had some initial projections um and then as Heidi and I worked through these and looked at um kind of updated information um we do want to update the board um kind of on these the two arrows that really Drive decisions that need to be made with the budget um so we did update this um with uh on the revenue loss side did decrease that a little bit um so made some changes there so now looking at our overall shortfall of instead of being 7.7 million to be 6.95 again this is still really early with the county budget not really being sure of where they are um we're seeing different
122bills being put forth at the state level some that are making dramatic you know but proposing adding dramatic increases to staff pay so as you know as we follow through and kind of monitor this um budget information go from the county as well as from the state we'll keep updating this and what we'll always make sure is that we have our updated date on there for people to make sure they're looking at the the most recent information um any questions about the revenue or expenses where where did the 78,000 go between that was just an error actually on my part because um when we talked about the $718,000 decrease this year that's included in the $4 million fund balance number so we don't need to count it a second time for next year even will
123yeah great thank you um so Heidi um I'm going to let you kind of talk through some of these reasons for a budget shortfall just so you can clarify these well we've talked a good bit at the retreat and then we've talked some more um so just to keep in mind and and I guess part of um current events is a little unsettling at the moment just as a rem a reminder that obviously what you all get to do what decisions you might get to make have a lot to do with things completely out of your control so um at first as we heard news um from Raleigh actually there's been a surplus there's been a surplus there's been a surplus and we didn't get a budget again this year so thinking into this year
124at least you would think that then with the hurricane implications on top of that that at most we might be looking at a modest increase not not a huge increase and maybe not a no increase year because there's still a lot of pressure to up teacher pay there's still a lot of pressure to increase those wage rates um the state treasur is currently trying to balance the State Health Plan situation um which will if they don't pass that cost entirely on to us and the employees themselves which is a new approach are taking to it this year where it may be a blended approach that would still probably be some additional cost to us so you would think then in that big picture of all the pieces that we might be looking at a modest
125increase well then the news came out a week or so ago maybe two weeks ago that now there may be some support for a significant increase for teacher pay and so that's kind of why I just wanted to put it back on your radar that that would be fantastic and I'd be jumping up and down just like everybody else and just very excited for everyone except to understand that we are never fully funded for that not even in the state allotments the position allotments are those only line items that were fully funded for those teachers um and other staff salary and French benefit increases even though the others get a factor added on and it does make some attempt to fund those especially in our exceptional children's area we have to that huge budget um
126that's usually a big problem when they pass a big raise because that passes a large cost on it all at one time instead of a gradually increasing cost so I just kind of wanted to put that back on your radar and we obviously know there's things going on on the Washington side of things that are very uncertain at the moment and they never consider what a State might do as far as an increase and that will be based just on a form whatever Mone um and you know this because you've been here a lot longer than I have um our preschool program is outstanding but it does not break even every year so as as we move forward when we talk about budgets we have to understand that part of that commitment to our preschool
127program is that unless we can find some other funding sources out there we can continue to fund a deficit in that program depending on what sources have been available that's ranged anywhere from a half a million dollars a year to1 and half million dollar a year right now running at almost $800,000 deficit for this year um we talked about school nutrition and the C adoption will cost us at least initially a little bit more money even though each year it has varied as far as how much of a deficit that program has run and then our exceptional children program um it it's not a huge difference right now from what it's been every year but now that we have reduced revenue streams coming in the fact that that program program does not break even for
128all their dedicated funding sources becomes something we have to consider when we talk about where our priorities are and how many people how many programs what kind of programs the expans of those programs that we're going to fund because that program right now is running about $2 million dollar short of what those dedicated EC funding streams are um so that is significant and that is not different here than anywhere else we're right there at that bubble with the cap and this year I gave that information in the retreat I mean the majority of districts are exceeding the cap right now because that's just an artificial basically way of funding from the state level as far as our EC population just to keep those on the radar as we continue to talking about uh continue to
129talk about the budget so that we have more conversations thank you Heidi any questions on these Heidi is it your perspective that there's I've seen writing about a change in funding around weighted student formulas playing out differently is there anything on the horizon that would impact that last one from your perspective it's still on the horizon it's been a conversation for quite some time now um DPI has been a strong Advocate to the legislature to if if they don't want want to go all the way with that and make a completely weighted student funding model for all funding sources that they at least start with the exceptional children program as a way to take a good first step forward because we are all significantly for EC um the problem is when you look at that
130lineup um like if you pull up the state board of education budget document it's not two digits it's three digits to fully fund that it's about $ 225 million extra dollars to fully fund the weighted pupil formula so um there's apparently a lot of conversation going on to see if there's a way to phase that in you know originally what we said when that wasn't even on the table we said well you at least raise the per pupil amount within that 133% cap that will get us closer you know if you will bump the 133% cap up another quarter percent half a percent because you know they've done that they've done it twice so if they could make any step in that direction but most fairly and equitably to all districts would be that weighted
131model because it actually evaluates the needs of the students and the money associated with funding those needs so hopefully at least there'll be some um progress towards for the exceptional children not everything else and there is a whole harmless component to that because there would be just like we see on that list where I highlighted in yellow some districts exceed the cap some do not um they don't want to make this legislation that would then penalize some districts and give them less money so that's part of the reason that initiative cost so much thank you I appreciate that information is this the extent of the presentation no okay I've got some additional questions but I'll hold them um so one of the things the board asked at the last meeting was some more information on
132our state allotments um so Heidi's pulled together some information about our enrollment versus what we earned through the state allotment process and Staffing history so basically this is a a sheet I've given you before and I just updated the current year and um and just just so you can in as you're thinking about um where we might be going with a budget think of Trends so the yellow section is since Co which is significant because we have seen a pretty significant dropping students since Co um but there's a longer history there obviously for you to review as well and what I did is I had originally given you the ADM data which goes through about the middle of the sheet and what I've done has added the actual um total number of positions that we
133employed at The District in each year and some of those main categories of employees and then a grand total of kind of everybody else just just to give you kind of some frame of references okay and this year if we lost a 100 kids did we decrease staffings you know correspondingly to that l00 did it lag behind did we do it at all um so if you look from start to finish I thought it was pretty interesting that our staffing honestly has been almost consistent I mean in the last two or three years since Dr fman has started implementing the allotment formulas you can see that we are actually starting to make some progress to correspond our lower student count to a lower Staffing account but over the years it really stayed fairly steady it
134just might have changed categories as who we employed when um and then obviously in the middle of this I can't I can't speak exactly to what impact Esser had here because that's the problem right now is when we try to do anything where we look back the last 10 years all that money from Esser kind of skews all the totals um but just to give you an idea of a trend and where we've gone and where we might need to be um you can see like in the year that we lost 20% of our instru inal um assistant allotment like everybody else did across the state we really didn't change the total number of instructional assists that we had at that time you know just things like that um and then back to that point
135I made about the position allotments um I listed just a couple of those grand totals out there in that next to last column to show you how that is dropping and that's what we've got to keep in mind those positions are completely driven by our ADM and that is our most solid funding source so the fact that our ADM continues to decrease that very stable funding sour just some supplemental information um Heidi just for clarification that that line or that column total DPI position allotment that number is the number of [Music] positions that we actually get allotted across all the categories that have all the categories okay not total dollars but total um and then Heidi also pulled some additional data um on our class size allotments or not class size I'm sorry um of
136where we sit compared to the state for average class sizes um so and comparatively just to help show there is we are below the state average for class size allotments um so that is one one area to consider about how we could potentially save some funds um and looking at our class siiz allotments Heidi do you want to share anything else um some other interesting information that Heidi pulled and shared um regarding our local fundings that we hear a lot at the state level that our the state of North Carolina doesn't have as like 49th in funding effort which means the percent of the general fund from the state and compared to all other states is ranked 49th um so their effort on funding Public Schools is at the bottom um so Heidi found this
137interesting information about bunam County so we always hear there's you know adequate funding we're one of the top um you know when it comes to what is our actual local supplement for teachers um and they're funding our schools well when we actually look at the data um we see that bunkham county is funding us 21 is% which ranks them 79th across the across the state in their funding efforts so of what they proportionately allocate to the schools within bunkham County the bunkham county Nashville compared to every other county in the state or every other y every other County um it is we are ranked 79th so just some information for the board to consider when we go to the Commissioners and ask for funding um um for what we need to provide um high quality
138education for our students um I just think that there is some some space here to point out like yes bunkham county has a large budget and are they funding us in a way that supports our public schools and then I included in the slide just a snapshot of the top um I think it's the top 20 um and what they're funding and you when I did I share this presentation with you guys Oh I thought I did yes I did um so you can kind of see what are the top I think 20 districts um when it comes to funding effort and then I highlighted here where bunam County sits um and kind of with our peers at their level of funding so Heidi and I have been kind of racking our brains on where
139we can potentially find some budget savings um so at this point um you'll notice what's not up here is any more cuts to operational budgets I feel like we have already cut cut operational budgets as much as we really can um so which means the rest of our um budget savings would have to come from Personnel changes um so really again going back to looking at our allotment formula and deciding do we need to bump up our class size allotments um so from 20 but fourth and fifth grade our class sizes we assign a teacher for every 22 students do we want to maybe bump that up to 24 if we look at middle school do we need to consider changing those um so just some options for us to consider and what Heidi and
140I will do is play with the numbers bring some things for the board to consider and what that value of um that could be um we also are looking at central office positions to determine is there potential for elimination of any additional positions at central office um and then the other area that we've determined is a potential for us to examine is looking at our employee calendars um so some employees are employed for 215 days but they um but then students are only in our building for 180 days so do those staff that maybe not um like provide an actual instruction for our students could we decrease some of those days some administrative Personnel are employed for 11 months of the year could we look at rolling them back to 10 months of the year
141to find some additional savings um so that those are the three kind of big a buckets that we started to look at um to find some budget savings to get us closer to that Break Even budget um just a reminder of the budget calendar and um that we are working on a campaign to increase that supplemental tax um we would anticipate if they would raise that tax that would be an additional what did we think about I about a million and a half yeah so if we could get it up to 12 that would close us about a million and a half dollars um and it is open for discussion for the board anything else you would like us to consider like I said we're going to start crunching numbers around those potential budget reductions
142um bring the board some options to consider um POS possibly not next at the 10th meeting but at the April work session a question uh what is our current uh class size ratio um it's different at every yeah it's different at every grade level um so let's see I mean it's it's a report card that we are looking at I mean that's the tit that's the state data it just shows the report card um class size so you can compare it to the state now is this across the board for every Elementary or correct yes so every Elementary that we have our average class size is 15 students per kindergarten classroom that's average and we talking about maybe raising it and with the ratio it's going to well we can't raise kindergarten first or second
143grade or third grade those are set but what it means is we're not having efficiencies because of the number of schools so like I said I can't have a half a kindergarten teacher I have to staff that classroom full like I have to get if there's enough students to fill four and a half classrooms I have to assign five teachers so that's why our averages look lower even though there is an allotment formula or then we have to reassign those students to another school um so there's just that's why we funded it in excess we've averaged up talked about that a little bit before because more schools you have the more difficult it is to manage those ratios because you do have that situation and especially in a choice District like this is because you've
144allowed people to transfer back and forth so to to Really adhere to those strict formulas per class every single place would take kind of a whole new mindset so that's we have some schools where the class sizes are bigger and some schools where the class size is smaller um I feel like um part of this we've done to ourselves uh and I think that we need to work on correcting the message the we have put out there the idea that you can close schools and it's going to save a set amount of money because we can move staff and students into other schools as if they are widgets and what we've seen is um with the merger of the middle schools um we now have approximately 95 fewer students at the middle school level I
145know with the closure of APs um and there's some things that we could have done differently like moving the monor program into another building to retain uh staff but we wound up uh I think we we've got about 140 students who live in the ACs District or would attend a public monory school who are now at a new charter school so one of the things that we've got to be mindful of is when we close schools does that alienate families does it actually save money because I know we had predicted um the district had predicted that we would only lose 20 students last year but we've lost according to the food and nutrition reports about 95 um and that is about a million5 dollar in Revenue so when when I hear all of this stuff
146about you know declining enrollment and I look at 140 students approximately over at the uh charter school that we effectively spun out um and that's over 2 million in Revenue I'm thinking about how we can Preserve choices and how we can encourage I know they've got lower class-size numbers over at Lucy hearing because of uncertainty last year about whether that school would be closed and that's a real thing that they're dealing with so whatever we can do to increase a feeling of stability in our schools um and increase revenue and for me that's things like can we have a onee twoyear moratorium on school closures and let things stabilize in the district can we have a policy on how we um evaluate capacity of schools because right now we don't have a policy on that
147we don't necessarily in the data that we're passing on to the Commissioners say yeah we've got this capacity in a building if every classroom was at capacity if all the space was at capacity but we can't include these things that the we have to reduce this number by General Assembly mandates we have to make sure that we've got room in our district in case a charter school fails we have to be able to take those students on immediately and we have to be prepared if there's a demographic bump like we had a few years ago where we had three grades that were 15 to 20% larger than they had been before and all of that needs to be in our planning along with the knowledge that uh if we empty a school if we close
148it then by law unless we move something else into it that school becomes available for a charter school to use and then what inefficiencies do we have if we take central office and we just keep spreading them out to every school that we close and the travel time and the coordination time between all these different locations so let us take some time before we start talking about closing schools and figure out what this capacity is and what the unintended consequences are and let's also figure out ways that we can grow enrollment like waving out of District fees and you guys have heard little bits of this from me before but these are all the things that I'm thinking about when we look at a $7 million budget hole and we've got 2 million approximately from
149uh closing APS as a budget ho we got uh a million and a half from closing the um uh the Middle School merging that in and these things add up over time I want us to be sending out the message that everybody belongs and I think the superintendent wants to send out that same message and we're in this big push to create this we belong and how big can we make that so Pepe given what you just said recognizing that we can't go back in the past and recoup the alleged I want to make sure that's clear the alleged 2 million and the alleged 1.5 million how do you propose if you're I think I heard you say something about keeping class sizes small so that we can absorb students if a charter school closes
150how do you propose Rec figure out how to solve a $7 million shortfall this year not two years ago or three years ago this year I'm so glad you asked no I do not have all the answers I have some pieces um so I'm not saying that we have to keep class sizes as small as they are in this moment but I want us to be mindful of just across the board increases in class size and the unintended consequences but I think that when we look at the school capacity we don't want to look at for example Lucy hering and say we've got to close that school because every classroom isn't used because we use classrooms for reset rooms we use them for art and for other things we don't want to do um Isaac
151Dixon over at the William Randolph campus where we had to have art on a cart and traveling Specialists where we jammed people into every available space we don't want to be demolishing buildings or emptying them out um so it's just something to put in there for me like one of the things we need to do is something that the County Commissioners and Prismatic kind of tasked us with is working with our bunkham County counterparts um to fix the moth e and doily that is our district and address um some of those issues and I think one of the things that we should consider as a board is in light of hurricane Helen it'd be a good time to try out having a moratorium on out of District fees because outof District students don't have to
152pay an outof District fee when they go to a charter school and maybe we want to do that just at elementary and middle school because we've got um uh more students at the high school um uh versus the number of possible seats but there's a lot of things that we can be doing to increase enrollment one is providing assurances of stability that we're not going to be closing schools and another is to be more welcoming to those out of District families that in the past were 20% of our district TMI no I asked the question I like the the doly thing that's I have a hard time believing that if we were somehow able to get both districts and or whoever it is to say oh yes the all the homes around Beaver Lake for
153example on that side off of lak shore where every individual when that home was originally built got to choose which district they're in a family that's going to buckham County right now if we passed the law would' say okay my kids's been in buckham County schools for seven years but now I'm sitting in Asheville City Schools I'm going to go to Asheville City Schools I don't I have a hard time understanding that that's have a hard time believing that as well I think that that we've got to do a bunch of incremental things so I'm sorry to interrupt have that be volunt my point is that right now we've got a budget we've got to give to the district I me to the County Commissioners in a couple months and if we we can continue
154down the road talking about it dly but what are we going to do right now to figure out how we're going to make up a seven million doll shortfall I'm so glad you asked yeah you you said you're so glad I'm asked the last time I said the same question which you just answered so no but I'm now to answer it more thoroughly we have a bill I think you've already given me a a pretty thorough answer and I just want to acknowledge time so um we need to talk about um uh Senate bill I believe it's 131 and the potential impacts of that and we need to talk about Community Development block grants for disaster relief and those are pieces of this puzzle and if we haven't talked about that then we're missing a
155big part of the budget conversation so I think both of those are relevant but I think before we get there because those are not we aren't going to balance our budget on those and we do owe the we do owe the county a budget proposal in a month and so right now I'd like to hear from other board members who have other things to say I'd like to make sure everybody has a chance to talk about what they're he hearing what their concerns are um what other thoughts are on their minds um I'm I'm really interested in considering the possibility of waving out of District fees um and doing so on a on a trial basis that at some point we can revisit and see with intention how how it is impacted enrollment um just
156kind of like circling back around to our discussion with Dr lavender about strategic planning and um you know we want to Foster this idea of creative problem solving and challenging the status quo in our students and we as the decision-making adults in this community have a duty to model that and we've got to we've got to get creative um when we're we're given you know two pennies to rub together um to come up with a budget and so I think that you know out of the box thinking is is very much needed in this situation on the out of District fees I I'm just trying to get some information back to us I think the math of it would be what do we lose if we do a away with that I mean that would
157just be the piece of information and then to your point if we choose to do that we would want to track the and I think that that that would require committing to it for out two years um which is you know something that this district has not always done really well is like committing to something with the intention of revisiting it longitudinally I don't think there's I mean I think that's something we could discuss more I do think one thing we need to know is what's that amount because IDE has put it at one 160,000 in the past but it may need to be updated as far as the revenue generated from the fees that it's current a memory okay and our per people Revenue was somewhere around 15 16,000 is that which for people
158just uh the combination of local and State allotments uh by ADM but yeah feel free to get back to us on that so I'm hearing a request for some more information about what were cost away out a district fees and we can talk about if that's a place we want to experiment that's not the right word but see what happens and point to itly not halfhazard um what are other board members thinking I'm thinking about the side of put potential FY 26 budget savings as you've presented and I really appreciate you just leveling with us you know doing the work to figure out how do we Bridge like just like what they were talking about with us where do we want to go but how what what puts us in a position to go there
159all of these make me sad I don't want any of these and so so I think I'm asking for consideration of to the degree they're necessary all of the things that you've lifted up as a vision for a district in the future to what degree do any of these become obstacles to achieving that and to what degree do we know how to mitigate the Implement like if we implement the how do we mitigate our ability to be the district we want to be nobody wants to close schools and I hear you highay like it's just a fact when you say the more schools you have the more you can't control your Staffing costs because you get you know if you need four and a half kindergarten teachers you you don't get a half kindergarten teacher
160and I mean you could right but then who wants the teacher who's I mean we talked about that with Specialists we know that the county schools they share Specialists across buildings so that to me is a half a teacher um I think we have to be responsible today and tee up the vision for what we want it's not an answer but that's my ask for your consideration I'll note that Isaac Dixon has um had multi-grade classrooms in order to address that uh same issue and that separately uh the monor approach calls for multi-grade classrooms and that helps with um uh student balancing can we ask the county commissioner to give us about two years to uh put a hir put a freeone hiring to uh that people retire uh use this opportunity to try to
161close the achievement Gap that they are asking us to do with smaller class size um I think that is what they would like to see is Raising is closing the achievement Gap as close as we possibly can and by having maybe smaller class size with the teachers that we have in the classrooms maybe they can have the opportunity to spend more time with that particular student and maybe that student will have enough time to uh learn in a in a different way um but if there's a choice between closing achievement Gap and they get money um we always going to have this problem for the next years to come um I think that we should that ask them to we will you know I mean do we need to hire anybody else right right now
162probably the answer is we probably can't afford to um but do we need to try to close the gap as close as we can right now we have the opportunity we got the we got the staff we got kids that wants to learn we've seen that throughout every uh presentation and good news out there that kids wants to learn and we have the staff to do it uh we just have to find a way to let the teachers buy into to smaller class size let's let's let's get to it um we're not going to be able to afford give them back the money and still have a uh teachers in classrooms and the class sizes would be bigger what have we caused now we have caused a prob a whole different problem because of U
163the more kids in the classroom the last time teachers have one at 101 with that staff with that kid so maybe we can talk to Commissioners and and and just let them see which one would would they rather have right um is there a choice do we have a choice I mean and I'm asking is there a choice of giving them back money that we can't afford to give or have bigger class size who is going to get with a kid is have be better off in bigger class size with less money within the budget to have to uh to uh to fund Educators to be here inside the classroom I don't know I mean we are we got some smart people in this room here we're just going to have to and I think
164the maybe the County Commissioners they will listen to us if we tell them we have a plan this give us time to work um what do we have to lose how can we afford to give them money and still keep uh as City school is a good school it really is and people want to come in here and if they see that we are trying now and if we tell if we tell the commissioner hey we can't right now we can't do this and do this at the same time what the end result what could happen I think we've got to do both like figure out how to work with money that we're expecting but also lay out the vision that the County Commissioners and the public at large want to fund we are going
165to have to ask for more cents on the $100 um uh as uh Dr Ferman has suggested we are going to have to ask for our our full 12 cents um and then we also have to come up with the vision that is going to close the gaps that we see uh we need to be able to have I mean we from my perspective preschool we have to have preschool we have to expand preschool and it's not just us but the county recognizes it employers recognize it it's something that's I think a universal but we still get funding from the state the reimbursement rate covers something like 60% of the costs we have an opportunity segueing to the Community Development block grant um uh disaster relief funds um I'm reporting back I went to the
166the state meeting I went to the city meeting there's 1.2 million of the 1.4 million that could be used for school Capital expenses for preschool Capital expenses for uh other unmet needs including stiens for training for initial startup costs that that can be combined with um uh a request for all of our Capital needs coming from from the community block grant development funds which are to be expended over six years there's 225 million going to the city if they get enough demand talking with the staff person who's overseeing that process that justifies them asking for more funds so it's in our benefit to ask for all of the unmet need we have and I'm I mean I'm not super excited that there was a Senate Bill put in to divert our our Capital funds to
167any other funds but it can be an opportunity because if we're trying to fill the Gap with what were the capital funds then we can ask for the Community Development block grant um disaster relief funds to replace our Capital funds so it is a way that we can really tap in if we go ahead and make the requests we can move the capital funds to help fill this Gap we can do the Outreach to fill the Gap we can make some other decisions to broaden our reach and then the Community Development block grants can help us Shore Up preschool help us Shore up our Capital needs with all the respect oh I'm so sorry thank you how you answer that question probably too difficult well I I think we have to recognize this is not
168a normal year correct so that's a plus for us well it's it's not going to be a it's not really a plus for the whole Community though so you know there there is a lot of pressure on the County right now to meet a lot of needs so that's why they had some of those early conversations to kind of temper our conversations and why I think that uh you all thought that it might be a good idea to again approach the 12 cents versus the 10.62 cents because that would come directly to us um instead of through the formula which we don't have control over how much ends up coming down to us um I would say that their their projections right now um it it's going to be very difficult to get any more
169money and that's why I wanted to mention those potential shortfall issues again because I put that proposal out there we we at $7 million on a normal 3% raise I mean if we have the state flying here with a 10% raise option I I I don't really want to bring you that number you know so I mean th this is the good news to get off the bear of Doom and Gloom chair that I like to sit in would be that we do have a nice respectable operational fund balance at the moment and I just strongly encourage you to do those things you need to do so that we don't lose that Comfort position as much as all this sounds uncomfortable you're in a much better position than a lot of areas are and as
170long as long as we can make some initiatives to try to start trimming those costs even with or without everybody else's help like at the county if they're not in the position to help us this year you you can make some start of decisions that will go a long way into making a long-term better plan for the district and I don't think it's all that Heidi can ask you a question make sure I'm hearing you right the that's not the correct the 6.95 million that presumed we got the same exact amount from the county as last year and we will still be 7even million short just want to make sure I'm understanding that I want to share with board members conversations I've been having and many groups state legislators and County Commissioners are are signaling
171that they are going to budget for a $70 million shortfall in the county budget $7 million and so there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't I mean I'm G to put two sides out here that we shouldn't have to bear a a part of that but I think the county is going to say you are the largest recipient we we saw that during the budget presentation they give us more and I mean they can't cut any more Librarians right so I think it is not going to be um I don't know that it's I think personally it's realistic to assume we're even going to get what we got last year and so seven million has now grown um the state when I talked uh in emails with Julie Mayfield I don't think we
172should expect anything more from the state they've done what they're going to do um to Heidi's point the salaries are going to exacerbate so I think we have really difficult decisions there's no question about that and they need to be next couple months and it may be that there's some opportunity to later replenish funds from cdbg Grants I don't disagree with you but those deadlines are not until after and so if we do I think I want to say one last thing about the article 39 funding the way I am hearing it from the County Commissioners and from state senators is they are saying just wouldn't why wouldn't you pick dollars for people over buildings that is for sure the way they are hearing it let the buildings Hold Steady for two years and it's
173it's the the new capital and at least let this plug some of the hole in your budget but it would only at a at best make us whole it's still not going to touch the extra 7 million so I think I I just want to offer that we may have great ideas for the long term and I don't disagree with any of them I I feel like maybe what we need to do though is sort of say what is is most important to us so that as these folks wrestle with a budget they can come back to us and I'm hearing that what's important to us is making sure our kids are learning making sure this Gap in outcomes is addressed and that might mean keeping smaller class sizes I I'm not an expert but
174if that's what we're going to commit to then we're going to have to give up some other things and I just don't think it's realistic that we are going to come up with a budget by May ail 21st um unless we make some hard decisions and so I just want to say that and we're going to have to give some input um to Heidi and Maggie about what's really important to us which is what we've done today to play Devil's Advocate to your Devil's Advocate which I really do appreciate um we have a a shorter timeline with the City Grants uh Community Development uh block grant uh for disaster relief um I understand from uh Dr Ferman that a request was submitted on Friday um i' not sure what the dollar amount is for that
175request and I know that the first draft is supposed to come out this next week and there'll be 30 days to comment and make amendments and I think it is appropriate for us to ask for 25 million 50 million whatever it is because schools are at the top of that importance list and the demographics of schools it's one of those rare cases where our demographics meet what the Community Development block grants for disaster relief are targeting and we've got a real opportunity if we go ahead and ask to get on that calendar and even if they say you know we're only going to put in for five million or 10 million they can use the rest of that ask for when they go back for more funds and they've got six years so we should
176put six years of needs on there and maybe that frees that SB 131 funds longer term than two years to meet those other budget needs if the Community Development L grants for disaster relief can be used for the capital needs so that's the kind of like juggling and I think on the cbdd grants um I think any input we want to give to Maggie and her staff about what to ask for we should I think I would I have read those also pepy and I certainly don't see education at the top I think we fit the needs but I don't think of their 225 million they're likely to give us the most but we can ask I don't have any problem with that and if it comes in over a six-year plan that would be
177fantastic I'm not saying no but I am getting us back to a budget by April 21st and we've we've got to give some input about what that's going to look like and we should also continue to make long-term plans about how we're going to grow the district and how we can gather new funds I mean I think all of that happens do you remember off the top of your head ish about how much the request was submitted on Friday was for ballpark we put in a kind of a range um based on what we um were anticipating it was very much a ballpark and what I'll tell you is they're really much more looking for ideas than dollar amounts so at this point it's not that I mean they're going to have a formal Grant
178application where you put in a dollar amount I was just trying to give them a ballpark like here's what these things might cost and I only did it for like you know you know probably I was ballparking two years and we did a range you remember what we settled on Heidi range for the nine I think I bummed it up to like 10 to 15 million um but again that we can't use those Grant funds to balance our budget because what we're going to have to do to balance our budget like those funds won't come by the time we need to set a budget and second of all those the programming that we would add we have to consider what that would cost after the block grants are gone just like with covid I'm never
179a big proponent of adding staff through grant funding does then those staff dis positions disappear or you have to find the revenue to do them on your own so very much when we were looking at what to provide it was things that we felt we could maintain longterm past whatever amount of time these block grants would be distributed I believe I'm hearing Pepe say that it's his understanding that what is El ible in the Dr block grant is to say Out of This Disaster our legislative delegation has put forward legislation to take our Capital funding and divert it to just because it's just a temporary moment and we want to get through it like to Sarah we'd rather fund people than buildings right so I think what I'm hearing him say is that puts our
180buildings into a category that makes it eligible for disaster relief I'd like to learn yeah more about that and that's yeah so the three categories that they per that your your Grant has to tie back to is number one it has to tie back to Helen what's happened from Helen number two it has to meet their National objectives which is Ben which the one that we would probably do is benefit low to moderate low-income families and address an urgent need um and then it has to promote um um support economic revitalization or a mitigation so a mitigation cost that we could apply for is like we want to put generators at every school so we could say hey one generators we need starlink at every school um we need a well at every school so
181those are mitigation costs um I don't know how I could justify replacing a chiller at a building as one of these three categories so as I look at our Capital needs I don't see how they link to these three objectives maybe the restrooms um like modifying the restrooms so we can open additional prek classrooms you know that's a potential I had actually I had an extended conversation with the gentleman in charge and he said absolutely off the table are operational and maintenance costs in my extended conversation with the same gentleman I'm assuming um was a a thumbs up for anything Capital that we can't get the funding for because Helen happened so when funding disappears when funding is diverted then it makes those projects that would have been possible and pulling out the the proposal
182for the new preschool building that that the county sent us even though we hadn't approved that particular concept would be an example of something that would qualify as a as a valid request now whether gets funded or not it's just something that we can put those funds towards that then we can take the article 39 money and put it to the needs that we're identifying that are the hole in our budget so um the risk of going doing more back and forth it sounds like Maggie and Heidi if if y'all can go and like do FAQ about the cdbg um and what truly we can apply for what you think we can apply for um that that to me is like one of the things that this board is asking for I would agree thank
183you George for the way that's put together because it's causing me to see that what we're dancing around Heidi sorry is to what degree would we be pushing you to use more fund balance because we won't know right to use more fund balance than we'd like this year to get us to a place where we think we can increase enrollment and deal with these larger pictures so that I think if you could be thinking about if we're if if you're giving us numbers that keep fund bounds we're having to use it this year more than we wanted the county has passed along a cut so we were already using more this year than we had intended but what what would happen if we were saying we want to not H like to to dip further
184in and help us understand the drawbacks what could happen so that we can make an informed decision about that I I think everyone's struggling to tell you what to cut because we don't want you to cut anything you know Sarah is saying we got to help you get to April 21st and I kind of expressed that to Dr Ferman earlier today when I said you know if we can at least make some start at the process then if you can Target even two to three million dollar of savings this year then basically that rolls out and buys you another year you know um so that that way you know you're you're starting the process understandably that's a huge bite in one year and we hope that won't be necessary and I appreciate that language if
185you can start towards I think if you could help us understand where there are decisions we could go with that represent that start rather than things that some of us may fear cut us off from the success we want in the future that would be a helpful thing for us to understand agreed thank you for putting it out there I don't know that we've helped Maggie did you get anything that yeah um no I've got we've going to pull some data around um the out of District fees um it get some more information on the CBD grants CBD grr what are those I don't know what they are um and then um you know I think I have an idea about what's important for the board so as we look at what these potential savings
186could be making sure we're prioritizing things that will continue to set us up for long-term success for the out of District fees could you break it down by Level Elementary Middle High School and then I'm also wondering and maybe George knows this um how much is the article 39 funds either this year or historically we're gonna ask for that we're gonna askor okay yeah we don't know we don't know yet okay thank you very much number and we're gonna ask for more information about that just everybody to keep in mind that number is one of those numbers that it's in a fund that right now is used for bunam County and us without adhering to our favor without adhering exactly to the 8515 split they've been more generous but if the funding stops and there
187is some way to replace those reallocated funds come back to to us I mean I guess I'd sort of expect it to be 155 I think do it so we're only getting a portion of that but we can we're going to gather more information and I know um I've asked Maggie and I don't know how to do this exactly but I'd like more information about where the projections of a $70 million shortfall are coming from so that we can better understand is that a one time thing is this a permanent thing how is how is this come to be we just need more details it doesn't actually saved the budget and I'm hearing from at least one commissioner that the sales tax revenues have rebounded to above the previous year and so I just don't
188know what the trend is and maybe we're just too early to know yeah I haven't heard that okay anything on some budet close session pursuant to General statur 143 31811 for the following purposes under subsection A1 to prevent the disclosure of PIV and confidential Personnel information P pursuant to General saturate 115c 319 through 321 and under subsection A3 to discuss matters protected by the attorney client privilege is there a motion to go into close session I move that we go into close session second by consensus can we move into Clos session yes we can and so at this point I thank everybody else for being with us take a five minute break for folks to come back yeah