Asheville City Board of Education 8.5.24

001e e e t oh yes Liza can you hear us yeah she's in the meeting but I just want to make sure that Liza can you hear us cuz she cannot okay check check check screen good sorry sorry y'all welcome back it's been a while all right we are we are with power we are officially back as a school board um welcome to uh our first work and close session of the brand new school year 2425 um excited to be back uh we do have a quorum and so we will start um with the equity statement read tonight by Jesse Warren and asfi 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 a public service

002for the entire ACS Community we will model our commitment to equity through our practice 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 thank you Jesse I also want to mention that um in the interest of um language Justice uh the um opportunity for Spanish interpretation is available at every um Asheville city um work session and regular um session meeting um I did a terrible job last year of explaining that but this year I'll do a job better job of of explaining that at every meeting we will have Spanish interpretation and with that I want to ask for um an approval of tonight's agenda so move second it's been moved and seconded all in favor I I

003I uh Liza um get your vote as well maybe Ela we're looking for your um vote on the agenda sorry it's an eye for me she she messaged it does that count legal counsel does that work okay great thank you all right so uh agenda is approved and so again welcome back everyone we'll start um with student releases to buckham County Miss T paset good good evening board uh what you have before you are the student releases for uh August you have any questions comments and is this format the format you would like moving forward for the year okay this is nothing different right no these are just students being released from Asheville City Schools to go to bunkham County Schools can you for a sake of clarity for new people can you tell us

004what continued placement means continued placement means that they have been there um in years past or last year and they're continuing that same placement um this year with bunkham County Schools so Tenya can we then deduce that anyone with a code other than continued placement it is new newly leaving Asheville City uh yes except for the Dual language they get to choose between continued placement and dual language program but I'm happy to put both there if you like because some of them may not be continued placement we can't tell okay yeah that would be good Dan I have a question about um when you see a student who's in kindergarten and the reason is academics mhm you have a sense of what that might mean um it could be the Dual language program it could

005be um any other program that bunkham County offers that we do not any other examples of like other than dual enrollment like think of like kindergarten programs I would hate to speculate but I'm happy to ask as I'm as I am signing I'm happy to ask most of the time they drop the form off um when I have questions when it's out of the norm I'll give them a call but I'm happy um to get more specific in that I I I mean it's it's one student I think um I don't see it often I'll be honest I haven't seen it often so I I but it's just a curious thing to see for a kindergarten to see academics pop up so and then the code moving into District means that they've alerted us they're

006moving out of our district so they're just going to the where they districted to go but they used to live they maybe they start living here now and that's why we had to do this it's not just an automatic if a because if a student moves in the summer and now they live in bunkham County District they don't have to do this they don't have to do this they're currently still living in our district and they have they're looking at moving out of District or they could be up under contract but still live in our district I appreciate the question about the format um I'm just thinking about what this information what we as the board can use with this information um and it's really to me about just our um mostly about our numbers

007but also about like as we look at what we as a district offer and I think we as a district we offer a lot of amazing things right um but it's really helpful to see why mostly for the numbers but also the why um so for me I think the format is is good I I think the format works for me I like the format um thank you for the details especially demographic details that we have on here I would be curious as we go through the year to have sort of a cumulative total you maybe at the bottom sort of total numbers that might be useful um because we see these each month and usually I think is August what's our biggest month like most people it's usually doing we open it up both

008Ashville city and bunkham county we open it up for these to start in February so usually by September they'll sort of level out um but as you know we can have them we should not have them ongoing but we we have right we get a few this here and there just interested in maybe for next year calendar 2025 might be useful to or school year perhaps like for those who will be moving out for the next school year it might be just interesting to get the totals as we that's the only suggestion I would have about this chart but I like it thank you um before you go Liza um anything questions or comments for Tanya no and you're muted Liza in case she said she said no thank you okay I'm trying to get

009it piped into the room now okay great thank you T thank you uh next up we have Ash Primary School site feasibility study uh and Robert Brown architect board members uh Dr Ferman can you hear me well no can we check the mic can you hear me if from all right I know just what to do how about now I think so yep okay well good um thank you for allowing me to come tonight and speak with you I am um here to speak on the Asheville Primary School site feasibility study along with the associated studies that we completed for Hall Fletcher Elementary and the wind William Randolph School we we started this if you recall back in the work effort back in November of 20123 so we're we're really kind of at the conclusion

010of this of this travel um can y'all see that I'm not sure so I'm gonna switch over to my my documents because it's easier for me to read I'm sorry would you do me a favor um just you make sure you're talking more into the mic just cuz Liza I want to make sure she can hear thank you um that better that's perfect thank you okay um and if you wouldn't mind just um I might I'll just sit next to it if you don't mind um and will you let us know what firm you're from okay yes the the the firm in which completed the study with us is ADW uh two principles in The Firm have guided it through the process that is a Rob Woodruff and a Keith Carline now the the basic

011overall process that they've they've gone through is uh we we set priorities by both uh the city schools uh and and the the county we met with the stakeholders that were designated and that that began the process to collect information the the ADW then generated a questionnaire and sent to to each each member of the Committees to give a a lot more comprehensive information during that time they reviewed the zoning requirements for the land areas the code requirements for the land areas to kind of understand what can and cannot be done at each site um once they received the questionnaires back and completed the the site review of code and and and Zoning they then pulled together some Concepts those Concepts were presented um uh in numerous meetings and until the the overall committee concluded

012uh the the site presentation in which I'm giving you to tonight the concepts that that I present are those that that Rose to the top would you mind introducing yourself because I I know I've met you but I don't I introduce myself yes please yes I'm Robert Brown that's it thank you I just needed to know who I was speaking to or hearing from thank you I'm sorry I'm Robert Brown I'm a project manager for bunam County and assign this work task thank you and I am not an acclaimed public speaker I promise you good so so what I what you see on the screen is is basically the the asual Primary School site and it's just a recap that we're off of Haywood Road um the overall land area it's really three parcels and

013the overall land area is 7.44 Acres so it looks large on this image but it's really not not LGE it's split into two type of zones hr1 core which is a good bit more difficult meaning it has a lot more restrictions and then institutional in which is is less restricted so what I'm presenting to you is what I've shown you before and which is the the the layout that RADS to the top and in the on Haywood Road which requires two story structures there's the proposed Library facility and EMS and then in the central core is the maintenance and operation Center that that maintenance facility is slightly under 20,000 square feet it's it's two stories it would house maintenance food service and transportation are served in in the facility the parking area in the back

014also allows for bus parking the parking in the front allows for staff parking staff and crew parking kind of giving you the concept of how things relate to each other in the two stories uh you can see that you that the red area indicated is is dedicated to maintenance the green area is is dedicated to Food Service the yellow to transportation and then there's also um storage fa areas within the facility and then there's building support and shared space so that's just kind of in concept shows you how they would exist together I want to make sure you understand this is solely conceptual because when you get into the design the nuts and bolts and the exacts of everything begins to unfold through even greater study um so but under this concept the groups that

015are in it were good with the way that they uh were able to be cited with each other the next site is the Hall Fletcher Elementary site um and which we've presented before as well and I presented it in two facets previously because we've studied it in in the what I show now which is the prek only which is a single story facility we also showed that you have the opportunity that if you wanted to you could build another story that would land at the upper elevation of the land it's a little um kind of if you're looking at it in sight plan it doesn't really tell you the story that you've got about a 18t drop from where the entry into the facility is down to the play areas below this facility is down

016in the lower area um it accommodates the stacking of cars it accommodates the parking for the facility and what that and the way it's it's located keeps it from interfering with the normal parking and and drop off for the elementary school proper and also um has shuffled around and and accommodates all the various play areas required for the different levels of of school um as as the children I want to try to get down to this lower little area so the question is what does this building uh have well it has approximately 18 new classrooms that doesn't account for the support areas the offices and the bathrooms and things of that nature that's that's pure classroom and it can accommodate approximately 268 students so I'm going take you to the window William Randolph school we

017were asked to look at it for a fit up potential for the education in Career Center what the color squares tells you is that the the the planning and the the need associated with with the um facility can be met within this existing school um without having to build additional structures as a matter of fact we studied being able to build a add-on structure and that didn't work that failed which led us to well what what about if we use the existing structure for the facility it actually works quite well it it meets the separations needed between the various levels it gives you administrative controls at the points that you needed to it has your uh play area gymnasium it has the dining facility and so forth so as far as a renovation from one

018use to another it actually works quite well uh and and and I'm about to show you the sheet that might shock you a little bit but but understand that renovating a building versus building a brand new building is less expensive and overall also it would not add another building per se in your inventory all right when I was here last we went through a lot of the different concepts and and I said what I would be coming back to you with is cost or Associated cost I need to make sure I'm clear about this this is a ballpark review only when you get into the details of all designs in the current environment that you're working within can you be more exact so these costs can change they will change as a matter of fact

019by the time that if we move into design and into construction the cost will change in some cases the economy actually improves in other cases escalation makes it worse so uh these are at this given time with the information we have our best estimate for the operations center the construction cost which include site and building it would be about 10.45 million design and other soft cost is $2.6 million for a total of13 M65 th000 for the prek the estimated construction cost is 17 million design and other soft cost is 3.4 million for a potential cost of $2.4 million the education and Career Academy fit up the construction cost me in the site and any Associated uh the building and any Associated site changes um 10.8 million basically and the design other soft cost $1.3 million

020there's my disclaimer note at the bottom stating exactly what I stated in in the first okay I'm not here as an action item um I plan to come back next week to present basically what I'm presenting to you for an action item I want to make sure you understand the task that I was given um I was given the task jointly bunkham County and with Asheville City Schools to review these site areas for six priorities and what that means is is how they best would fit in those environments what could fit and how they would best fit and how they could feasibly exist together originally it was that just the asille primary site but it immediately showed that it couldn't occur all in one site not and actually functionally work and that's where the expanded

021locations uh became main part of the study so that was the p number one primary task I had the second primary task was to identify approximately what those costs would be to be able to achieve the goals now please understand that my task is not about funding I will I have not been tasked to develop a funding plan to to do anything in this stage in in that respect that is the next phase that would be a leadership phase in which I will pass forward what I what I have of completed uh after I've asked you if what I'm showing is acceptable meaning the actual site Concepts if the way we've jointly I mean in bunam County Asheville City Schools said hey these are what we think would work good together and how we would

022do it that's what I'm asking for and that's what's in my my my future action required that is the first step the next step is in leadership's hands to actually determine with your board how to fund things how how the fun would be anticipated so I just wanted to make sure that you understand because you you you asked that question in the original um review and I thought long and hard on that and I said well you know I don't know that answer because that's not in my realm of authority and and it it also not part of what I was tasked what I've been tasked is to with Asheville City Schools determine what could could go on these sites and that's what I'm Pres presenting and in reality at this point that's the next

023week that's all I'm asking for your your Buy in on but I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have for me so I will say that I really appreciate the work you've done um I for my part I think that the designs accommodate what we asked for um you know it Mr Brown this isn't anything on you I I don't know why we're going this far when I haven't I mean I appreciate the the plans and it looks good so if all I'm asked is does this plan which is what you're saying all we're being asked is does this plan satisfy Asheville City schools in terms of our priorities um sure I think it'd be great to have a prek uh location for prek we are not funded for it we have

024no money to run it we have no money to build it do we need a new uh place for our maintenance facilities especially if we give up the space we have right now at Asheville primary school as it exists yeah we do we have no money to build it we have no money to to fund any part of that um same with our education Career Academy would we like to have the that campus the Randolf campus um renovated in ways that would be wonderful for our education and Career Academy yes yes we have no money to fund it so I am a little bit perplexed and I'll just throw this out there for everybody else that's listening as to moving forward to saying yes to the concept when we have I'm subject to whatever I

025don't know what the rest of the board thinks but at least for me it's really hard to get past the fact that so far what I've heard is the that word is um we're not expecting any to be offered any new funding for these things and so I can say this looks great on paper um and if that's all the question then I can say this looks good from my perspective as to what I think would be lovely to put on some of these spaces I will say I would want to hear more from the fall Hall Fletcher Community about how that building would impact the functioning of the elementary school there so I'm not really passing off on that part of it but I do think that Asheville um the city of Asheville desperately

026needs more prek classrooms I want to see those prek classrooms in the Asheville City School School's district because I think that um we feed naturally into each other and we know from experience that we're not funded for to provide prek education so um that those are just my comments um ma'am my question and thank you Amy for you hit a lot of what I was thinking um in terms of the prek and I this is more for that second phase cuz like you said thank you for bringing the the I love the designs they look great um but uh one of the questions that arose after your last uh your first presentation to us uh that I was thought about and thought about uh was the prek building just out of curiosity whose building would

027that be would that be Asheville City Schools building would that be a county building would it be a joint Venture um if so you know and I know AAL is here uh but we're not talking funding yet um but that's the question that I have again to Amy's point if it is if what you're asking is for us to approve the what they what the designs look like they they meet a lot of what we have always wanted uh but also to her point we don't have the funds for for it and quite frankly if we're not getting any extra money for anything um our site that we currently have at APS is doing the functions of having uh maintenance there and transportation it doesn't have Child Nutrition no wait no Child Nutrition is there

028no they're not here they're here they're here um but it does have two of the three uh would they love a bus garage yes uh would Tim like a better uh maintenance area I'm sure he would um with our ECA building uh with Randolph that is you know we would love to have more work done there but that also that building is one of the ones that we've had a lot of work done on in in the past already so with the exception of the prek part I'm not seeing why we would need to do any of this to be quite Frank um but and you know again into Amy's Point uh we don't have the funding uh if we're looking at coming out of capital expense for our Capital commission funds uh we have

029other buildings that are aging within our uh within our district that need a lot more attention uh ashah High uh we know is our only High School um it's not being torn down we're not getting a new high school out of any of that um I'm sure at some point Claxton being probably one of the oldest of our buildings is going to need work as well so um I'm just to your point I I agree the designs look good but I don't know why we need to do this so Sir Mr Brown uh my point of view on this you might would like to wait until a couple months before you come back I think we're going to wait wait on this budget because I don't think funding I don't think we're going to have

030an answer for you by the time you come back next week because I think the budget is going to be a big um tilt for us to agree on how we're going to get it and who's going to fund it and you don't have the answers to those questions there uh I would like to talk to uh I like to go back over there and talk to uh the people over there at transportation and see how they feel about about it and everything else uh Randolph it looks good right now I think we are base in a building right now and it's going to take about maybe 3 to 5 years or more to get it to where we will like for that to be same thing with for Hall Fletcher and all the other

031Elementary School it's going to take a while um but my concern here is I would like to go over to uh where transportation and buses are and talk to them and see how they feel about putting thing to the side in order to get something new over there and I think budget is going to be a big issue to as for City school right now yes sir thanks I um now I I will tell you I'm I'm not here to speak on behalf of our Administration in that regard um and my focus is solely on the task that was given to me by both Asheville City Schools jointly with bunkham County this this this task that I've achieved came to me from both parties and so that's that's why I'm here the where before I

032I showed the presentation of what we could achieve but there was no understanding of what it might cost so a part of addressing how you fund something is to actually understand approximately what you're trying to fund um that's therefore the the answers to those questions relative to the funding have not are not in this task and yes they are part of what has to occur to conclude the actual development on these sites if it is approved by your board and if it's approved by the Board of Commissioners it takes it takes a joint leadership approval of that and then how it gets funded is also uh a a a unified conversation so I I understand what you're telling me and I'm I'm very advised by that thank you um but I do want you to

033understand that that we're just now getting to that stage of developing what those costs are so that's so my board is just now getting this information as well in a sense so so their ability to actually develop out any type of plans to communicate with you I'm not sure they've had the appropriate amount of time for that either so I just I just wanted you to be aware that that I'm here on behalf of the task and and I've asked for you to to to allow me to speak on that because I said the next thing I would do is tell you what I think the cost will be Mr Brown I have a follow-up question I think we do not wish to lead bunkham County down a path unnecessarily and so if I could

034ask the question in a different way let's say we say to you generally speaking the plans look fine we understand funding needs to be worked out and you proceed and six months from now you come back with a price tag that we cannot afford and we don't want to use it in Li of other Capital Improvements and we say we can't move forward would you then be coming back to use the land at Haywood to build your projects and ours would go unfunded I mean could you just help me understand how the County's needs and our needs which currently are um you know mutually beneficial to a certain extent but we don't have the funding for our end and you all do for your end and help me see where that ends so I'm not

035sure I can actually answer that question I I I appreciate the question a great deal uh I I will tell you kind of broadly speaking on uh the experience that I've had um as an architect and as a development manager for a little over 30 years you typically can't develop anything partially without an understanding of the entire outcome and the reason is without kind of understanding the full funding on on a project or an overall um you have to develop it in phases you have to understand what can go first what's most appropriate to go first which line item in the three projects actually afford the infrastructure cost there are numerous questions that if you don't have a resolution on the overall budget that you can't answer so as far as my experience with a

036site of this nature to be able to conclude and move totally forward with the site you kind of have to have a a funding plan and it has to be endorsed by whoever the authorities are um again I'm not a great speaker I'm a simple architect that likes to do this kind of stuff but that is my thoughts on it sorry can I ask a procedural question on the second approval um for the configuration for the randoff school I'm curious since that's a [Music] building I'm trying to make sure I'm using the right words since that's a building that's in within Asheville City schools that is operated by Asheville City Schools fun you know the the the funding for the Educators in that building etc etc I mean understand the county helps us with the

037funding you know but the operation of that school is Asheville City School's design right yes sir so I'm curious why what would our board asille City Schools board what would be the purpose of of our board approving something from bunkham County for a design on an Asheville City School building so this is this is not from bunkham County this is from both Ashville City schools and bunkham County the the task was three priorities each that being one of your priorities this is an additional study of how we can achieve your priority right that is only the priority and how we say that it can be achieved they were asking an approval got nothing else okay yes ma'am thank you AAL Pender County Manager right I do want to go back to your question because that

038was what I was coming to ask because the county does have a need for emergency services in that part of the county and that is why we even have the conversation in the first place when the facility became empty we really sat down with prior leadership at the time and work through is it possible that the county could locate an EMS station at that site so that is the question I would love to take back and make sure that we could coexist even if you don't move forward with what you currently have there and that can stay as you have it now don't put any investment in could we still have that front corner for an EMS station that is top priority for our County and we need to figure out how to actually if

039this doesn't move forward we'll be in the market looking for a space to have an emergency facility in that part of the county so even though we need to figure out what part of infrastructure we can how we can phase that that is a question that we would want to come back to this board and see if you're still interested in partnering with us to find a facility that we can serve the western part of our state our County so thank you for that question that's what I was going to come and ask if there's a possibility that we can then break the project apart if that's the case you don't have funding we don't have a funding plan yet but we do know that that's where our growth is coming that's where most of

040our calls are coming and we need to address that need broadly in our community um Miss Pender I I totally appreciate that and you know I know that when we first talked about this that was your concern the County's concern and we were open to the possibility I think the challenge for us is we can't give away something for nothing and so if what what we have is property that is not right now it is being used by US actually and so for you for the EMS to be put there that means the destruction of of a property that is now Housing Services for us and it means that that's the part I want to go back and look at cuz I know you're using something that gymnasium now you're not using all of the

041building we're not using the whole building but we're using more than the gymnasium am I right quite a bit more I think because we've moved Transportation over there now and but either way I will just say that at least from my perspective I I think and maybe this was my own naive I thought that if we we were going to give up a portion of our property so that the county could build what it needs on that site there would be a quid pro quo and we would be receiving something in return and if what we're receiving in return are designs but no funding to implement those designs that's not a return and I would say that then when you say well we'll need to go look elsewhere for a property then come to us

042with a proposal of how you want to buy or rent or whatever like we would have to think about how to make that property then yield funding that we need elsewhere I mean the reality is that this year and we completely appreciate and I want to be really clear about this the county commissioner support of public education right the bunkham county has supported well public education and that said we have needs that are not met and we have particularly mental health needs that we didn't get funding for that we asked for this year and so we are not in a position to just say sure take a chunk of property put a library put an a mess on it and then we'll just say great thanks um so that's you know I think that's the

043reality we we do have property we're willing to talk about and negotiate with but to do this now I think the concern of all of me at least and sort of what Sarah asked exactly the right question which was like well if we approve this now then you're going to take this back to the county with some assumption that maybe we're ready to move forward and is to be really clear we can't move forward on any of it without a lot of extra funding or at least some compensation f for what we're getting return again that is part of that financing plan that Robert mentioned that we haven't developed we we would if you're interested in moving forward that's the piece before we dig any ground or tear any building down we need to come

044back with that plan this response is what we asked for Robert to complete we work with the team at your leadership team to say what are all the pieces and do we have a property that we can put all these pieces on as you know from from day one early on we need EMS that hasn't changed that's still our priority and when the closure of the aps came we said oh we need some pre we have to address pre so those were really the County's two major issues that we were bringing to the table pre lined up with yours and when Maggie came Maggie said this is a terrible sight to even think about building pre what about this and she brought Hall fetcher to us is wife that even came into play but first

045and foremost no no issues for us was how do we move move forward with the EMS on that site and there was never a conversation about not compensating or working on that if the answer tonight is we agree that we need all these functions and we're okay with it we need to come back to you whether that's two months from now 6 months from now around how do we do move forward if it is to compensate you for land I'm sure it's not 20 million which was what your building was cost to buy that piece of land but what is that look like we haven't done an appraisal we haven't looked at any of that stuff yet it truly tonight was really a are you interested in moving forward still partnering with us and what

046are the questions that you have if that is the case we need to go back and do the next level of work we we paid for this study thinking that we're going to do the next phase of work if that next phase is not something you want us to do now that's okay tell us that and then as I said we have to solve for EMS so if this is not the right location or you don't want us to come back that's okay it's okay to say no but I I really wanted to come tonight show you what we have are you interested in moving forward how does this work and then we need to De develop if this is what we're working what is that landine work what is our piece that we will

047have to give to Asheville all of those questions would have to come into play but to this point we have not done that work um thank you I think that at least in when I was in those initial conversations I was sort of assuming that we were going to have funding for those things and so I have no problem with saying yeah I mean again subject to Hall Fletch I would want to hear a lot more from that Community about the impact of a prek on that school um and weigh those all those variables but um I I just think the the real concern that I have is that we say yes we want to move forward but it needs to be really transparent right that we just don't have funding and so to the

048extent it's asking us for money we won't be able to do it right and and I'll be clear we would not build your maintenance soly for you 100% right that would not be something I'm sure that our board would be interested as a matter of fact they told us last time is that the highest and best use for that site we don't know but we have not fleshed out all of those details yet I I would not imagine that the county would say we will build your maintenance facility at a cost I think it was close to 20 million how much for the maintenance 13 million yes right but that's the conversation that we could then have to see how do we do that if it's coming from some from schools Capital some from the

049land purchase what what does that look like but we have not buil that Financial stack at this point okay thank you I have a question to James point I wonder Miss Pender if you could help illuminate some that I'm I have an awareness that the County's strategic plan makes or access to early childhood education a top priority and obviously as a K12 school district we know that it's essential that kids have high quality child care and prek because then we get them in kindergarten and we're doing a lot to offer that and it's very expensive for us and it's challenging for us to afford to offer what we currently offer so as we keep holding this as a priority I haven't yet been clear it's I understand why it's a joint priority but James said

050your question was who who's would this be like is this something the county like when I go and look at what the committee is looking at there's a lot of infrastructure it's a lot of Workforce development are you is the county looking to get into building a pre facility or was that more something you were thinking that as City wanted to do because that what's your perspective on that we haven't brought this to our board yet but the board was to your point this was a high priority for our board and we have not decided who's going to own who's going to do that okay but I know that our board is very much behind we need to provide more slots in our community so but we have not brought this presentation to the board

051that's actually tomorrow night for our board to see where they want to land so tonight if you were saying yes move forward or no move forward we want to make sure we can take your message to our board but we're not taking any action tonight so this would be next not not an action we're bringing it to you but right we can take your sentiments back all right yeah so I guess along those prek lines then since we were talking about that no um is it I go back to is is this you you say joint venture um within this joint prek venture is it our staff is it County staff what there's a lot of moving pieces there that I I I would need a lot more information on um I like I like

052the idea of a prek hub that's something that we have talked about uh for the last 3 years um and uh had talked aled about some other opportunities with it but as it's been pointed out we're not in the business of prek unfortunately we are k12 and we do have an exceptional prek program within our our school district right now um anyone who is within our school district has the opportunity to come to our prek program uh so um I understand it as account it's a priority for the county but uh we also have to and have been for the several years looking at our own needs and what we can and cannot afford to do um so can you get more information on once you talk to your board uh on what that uh

053prek joint venture would look like so that we can have um a little bit more education behind what we're asked being asked to to approve again I like the designs if it's just approving the designs and then we'll you know that's it I I like the designs but I'm also being realistic and know that we will never have the funds to do any of this if it's based US based on our own uh is the county going to throw in $15 million to do a pre site and we have to come up with another five um you know again I don't think we need to do anything with ECA right now it's the building is good uh but there is no existing prek Hub within bunkham County or Asheville City so um I would love

054to have more information from your group uh from your board before we start to look at making any recommendations or approving anything I'd also just like to add you know the question was just the design you know not not the dollars and obviously we can't in good conscience not think about the dollars which is why we keep doing doing this but from my perspective even just from a design standpoint I'm not sold on building a new structure at H Fletcher I think we have work to do as a district we've gotten projections on enrollment recently we did pay for a group to look at our city the demographics the changing projecting out how many students are likely to be in Asheville City in the next 5 years 10 years and I think we have some

055work to do to look at the buildings we already have and what we want to do before it makes sense to me to build new buildings when we may have more buildings than we're using um so from that standpoint I I have a concern about that particular design thank you for raising that I actually had that conversation with Dr Ferman to Think Through are there vacant rooms and how many rooms if we were going to think about that would be eligible for prek even if it would need some retrofit at a much lower costs than what you're seeing a new facility is so so she was going to take a look at that as well and see so to your point that that's a very valid concer that feels like an exciting place for partnership

056where if we're in a position to retrofit some spaces in our current buildings to increase the overall amount of prek I mean I'm I'm paying close attention and we're losing prek we're about to lose the the Christine Avery Center is moving its previous site is not going to house children anymore so we're losing a head start while we retain a highquality child care center but that's a net loss in our community of Early Childhood slots so if if there's a more affordable way that we could partner to grow that I'd be open to that yeah yeah so I'm sorry I'm just that actually feeds into a question that Liza just texted me so I want to make sure her question uh gets in um and it feeds to that so um her question was could

057the county help fund Renovations on the building like let's say the primary school building um that to permanently house pre like at a hub like that um and if that were the case would there be space and I know you've already done all this work Robert so I'm not asking you to go back and like redesign everything but based on your work at that site um I'm going to ask the question again could the county help fund the renovations on the building necessary to permanently house prek there as a hub um if we approved an EMS Hub co-located there is it possible to have all of that in the same spot uh you you mean um APS site yeah the aps site so just just kind of bringing you on board with the code okay

058prek has to be ground floor can't be a second story it also has a requisite amount of secure play area that has to support for the each and every classroom has to have an exit out for each and every classroom as well so understand that when we looked at the total site it it began to not allow the actual amount of areas needed around to support a prek and still have other facilities when we looked at Hall Fletcher which currently actually doesn't have any vacant areas in it at this moment doesn't have vacant rooms in it um but when we looked at Hall Fletcher the reason it became a really a good site to look at is one it was dual level so you could develop a project that was in a in fact segregated

059from the functional entrance into the main facility thus it could be built and still keep School operating and two it gave you a future growth opportunity if you wanted another floor that would support the kindergarten and those an elementary area so it it just became a place of that kind of kind of helped with the the appetite of the function it also gave you enough land area to keep a large play area that's not only the school but the community uses and it gives you you the parking area required because of course I'm sure you're already aware for prek the parents have to actually Park and walk their student in and then be able to leave so there's a a large amount of time in actually getting in your automobile into sight and getting out

060of sight and so that that land area sets up much better than what we studied at at the Asheville primary because it did not afford a number of those um areas of need I'm not going to tell you that you you can't just make a preas center there I'm not going to tell you that the task that was given is the best shoes feasibility out of the six priorities and through the Committees which are joint committees it it pushed that towards Hall FL for that that function is that that kind of answer yeah yeah I mean from my understanding um and for Liza again this is a text exchange so forgive me um um that there are a minimum of 12 classrooms on ground level at the at 441 Haywood with director ESS sir there

061are a minimum of 12 classrooms on ground level with director ESS currently at 441 Heywood that's a I think that's a question more based for our operations team but I think the overall consensus here when we looked at the study is to put all those things on one campus was not feasible so when it was we know we want to put an EMS location or the county is Desiring to put an EMS location at 441 Haywood that kind of takes away and putting operations there that really makes that space not great you can't collocate all this Elementary too there just a lot going on so that's why we started looking at another location if we wanted to just create an open up a school on there as is yeah I mean that's definitely feasible there's

062lots of classroom space there but the question was how do we prioritize these six things and get what we want and putting ele putting primary putting sorry pre- students on a campus with an EMS with operational stuff just was not going to be a safe location um for our students right good thank you um I want to just say that I I think we're super excited and ready to collaborate with the county uh I don't think anybody here is saying we don't want to collaborate with the county using the spaces that we have to achieve our objectives which include all the ones that we described before prek and um operations and all of it the big the big stumbling block is that I uh you know we are we are having to cut millions of

063dollars from our budget this year um and so that means there's nothing more to give there but I don't want the message to the County Commissioners to be we don't want to collaborate we do want to collaborate at least I do I can only speak for myself um we're having a hard time seeing how that collaboration can go but we're super ready to do it um if if we can surmount those challenges are there any more questions thank you thank you I appreciate your time a great deal yep thank you all right next up April Dockery with some updated fees good evening board I trust that you were able to um review the memo that uh Amanda and I shared with Dr Maggie regarding um an increase in fees for the use of activity buses

064for field trips and Athletics and I just want to open up the to the board if there are any questions for Amanda or I April just for a clarification is this an increase in fees or this is a new fee to establish thank you Dr Maggie we currently already charge a fee we're required by the state to recharge a fee for the use of our yellow school buses for um field trips we are just requesting that we are allowed to do the same for our the use of our white activity buses so who how is this fee passed along or is let me back up each school has its own budget okay so right now right now when it comes to these uh this this charge if let's say I'll pick on Claxton Claxton has

065a field trip they use an activity bus right now they're not being charged the $4 44 cents per mile for the white for the use white activity bus they're not being charged so and so that charge would actually come back to the school out of their budget not out of local funds or things like that okay as you may know we are responsible for our Fleet Management of our wide activity buses this includes replacement repairs where yellow school buses are supported by the state funding directly which is why they already require that fee we are one of the few districts if not the only districts still not doing that charge for the white activity buses and it's just a cost that the transportation department can no longer absorb and it is an it is an

066equity issue some schools have more access to the white activity buses um and use them instead of the yellow buses and it's we need to be fair across the board that is why we're proposing that the charge matches the use of the yellow yellow use buses I have a question because Equity is what was on my mind in terms of where it we've we've said that the fee will be part of the school budget but is there is there an opportunity for schools to pass this along as fees to parents and in such cases some of our schools like if you think about the diversity of financial affluence across our elementary schools in particular and could there be schools where that's not not they can't pass that on to parents or parents to create sliding

067skills and will there be a net effect of some schools just having less field trips because they don't have anywhere to pass this fee could that happen would that be something we could I would hope that this District our small one of the beauties of having such a small district is we do have good relationships with our schools and we would work with those principles and and be mindful of that we are aware of the families that some schools serve that just don't have the means to do that but yes we are working with the CN team to ensure that all the field trips that we're going on are appropriate needed and fair okay go ahead April how you doing hey is it possible to cross the board let everybody pay a fee every high

068school student probably within their time at the high school will be uh probably be on that white school bus one time or another right so activity bus so why can we just instead of the athletic department why don't we just put a fee across the board for everybody at this time the school administration is on the next agenda item is only discussing athletic fees we are the other clubs and fi trips do already require a fee we're just they will that folds into the field trip and use of the buses already um but at this time they're not proposing to implement a fee across the board to students they are proposing to mirror other leas with their athletics department and support the use of the buses which is the next thing we're going to talk

069about in just a minute but this uh this is just the white explaining to you why we are asking to implement a fee for the use of the white buses April could you say more about what you just said about some schools are using yellow buses for field trips some are using white it doesn't seem to be equitably distributed of how when you know when a school wants to go on a field trip how do they know whether they need to use a yellow bus or a white well that's another another good point the athletic department does absorb a lot of that management in in relation to the transportation department and managing how to like divy up the activity buses but a lot of it is proximity like North like Jones Elementary H Fletcher uses

070mostly the white buses um but the clo the schools that are further out it's a little bit harder for them to get to those bus to use the white bus but they still have it and they will come and get that come get the white buses from the high school for example to use M so I'm sorry Amy um I I guess one thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around I just need some so the school district provides the budget for the schools correct and then the school is going to pay the school district back for the use of the white buses so they charge for field trips so if there's a field trip at the school and you'll see on the student Fe list they have chart ranges from 20 5

071to $475 for field trips so if you know if the board approves this they'll have to embed that cost of the 440 whatever the cost is per mile into their field trip cost like if they were going to rent a bus the issue is is that Transportation with the budget decreases we're just no longer able to continue to absorb that fund and replace buses in a timely manner so that you know as we squeeze everywhere everyone's getting squeezed so we've got to disperse some of the cost out side because we're not getting that Revenue yeah again again I think I mean I appreciate a what you said about how we're doing the district is doing a better job working with principles about making sure that field drop opportunities are Equitable Etc but I I think

072Rebecca's point is well taken like if we're now going to be asking schools to be paying for the use of a bus to do go on a field trip presumably that cost is now going to be fed out to parents to pay for that cost costs um we're now that to me I mean if we're going to be tossing around the word Equitable and ways that we're misusing the word Equitable that to me feels inequitable can can I back this up for just a second to get back to the beginning so just to help Amanda and April a little bit um so we get zero% funding no dollars no no no anything for white buses here the only budget Amanda gets from the state covers yellow buses period and drivers driving routes for yellow buses

073so none of the drivers none of the costs none of the maintenance none of the purchasing of those pieces of equipment have ever come from the state so what is always happened here for some reason where all the other districts like April said have charged a per mile fee to use any kind of bus to go on either field trips or activities with Athletics or any kind of trip that isn't actually just to and from school all other districts charge a fee and those fees like Dr mie set are generally embedded in the cost of a field trip that's just passed on to parents and here the District budget has always just absorb that and as you know we have a deficit and that's where this conversation started because there has been just somehow this

074mysterious pot of money at the district level that has covered all the cost C for taking care of activity buses I don't disagree with anything you just said I I all of that makes complete sense to me what you also just said was that money gets that fee gets passed on to parents with this assumption that all parents can afford that fee being passed on to them which which is what I'm trying to push back against there's no assumption that every parent would pay this fee so the schools do ask parents um for additional like sponsoring another student adding so the families that do have the resources can contribute extra we also work with the foundation and get some um you know ask for funding for stuff like that so if a student we don't

075we never tell a student know they can't go on a field trip if they do not have the funds and we know they do don't have the funds as we've identified through our school social workers through our counselors we don't deny that student we don't even ask that student for the money but what we do need to know we do need to start asking those that can pay for this to start paying for this so I I I was looking over this today and I I did some math um we all know how much I don't like math um four $44 per mile and I reached out to to miss rsby to make sure that I was doing this right if I'll use an example and this is the example I used if a field

076trip goes from Claxton and I'm picking on Claxton they go from Claxton to the Nature Center round trip is 12 miles that is is 4.4 four44 $444 per mile it comes out to $ 5328 that's all we're talking and that's for the entire trip that and then you take that and divide that by 50 students who go that's a dollar a student that's how this is this isn't this isn't $444 per child you're not passing $4 on to George as a parent we're not passing that this is just as a whole I mean you're you're talking about $53 for one trip which doesn't even pay for the gas for that trip to be quite Frank that's how that breaks down so we don't I don't see it as we're being inequitable and passing that along

077to we're not passing it along every one of our field trips has a cost in associated with it and we as a district do an amazing job of making sure that no child is Left Behind I can tell you as a child growing up in this District I did get left behind several times from field trips because I could not afford to go my parents couldn't afford to send us but we now do this amazing work of making sure no child is Left Behind no child does not go on a field trip so $444 per mile like I said that's just one example and that's from here to the Nature Center that's 12 miles we're looking at 53 $53 so a April and Heidi James's math is this what we're talking about like we're we're

078going to make this change to get 50 bucks actually it cost us more than the $444 to operate a White Fleet that $444 cents is the DPI average for our district to operate yellow school buses and they they do the math because they deal in volume we have 14 white buses um our high school is putting the miles on those buses because their conference is much broader than any other area that we're bunan County doesn't have to go as far as Asheville High School to compete so they they put a lot of miles on those buses so the impact of the wear and tear on our buses eventually becomes a safety concern because we do do not want to put our students on an aging Fleet and our oldest bus as of today we have1

0791999 still in our Fleet and then we do have our 20 23s that we purchase but we're still looking at a 16mon lead time to to get a bus on our on our lot so um you we have to factor in the those weight times so the $444 is a steal I talked to I had um Dr Miller from uh Guilford County Schools contacted me he's over their operations and he said what are you doing what what's your school district doing I'm calling Western North Carolina I'm going to my board they currently charge $325 they're going to $5 an hour they're much larger School District bunkham County Schools is increasing theirs they're going to their board for an increase they charge per mile uh Plus Fuel um Henderson County Schools is $3 per mile um

080fuel is included in theirs McDow County Schools is $1.50 per mile Plus Fuel they're looking to increase I reached out to Hickory City schools and they have not got back they're the own closest city district to us in this area that we could make a comparison so County fleets are much larger so their operational cost of course is is going to be much smaller um when the state has increased a technicians per hour rate which is now $27 an hour to work on our bus and we have to have those buses inspected just like our yellow Fleet and if we sent that out to Rush Trucking we're looking at $200 an hour so you know if we're comparing the cost of what it cost to operate the white bus it's much more than what it

081cost to operate the yellow bus but we can only do we can only go where the state tells us approved sites are for those yellow buses that's a state-owned vehicle so we can't take those to certain places we can't take them into certain parking lots unless I have signed off forms from the owners so there are places our children couldn't go on a yellow bus because they're state owned but they could go on a white bus so that's I hope that kind of helps that's going all over here I'm throwing a lot out at you but I'm hoping to educate you on the need we spent um close to $20,000 in fuel that that was a low estimate I didn't get all the high school's athletic fuel in um we we spent that out that

082did not include any repairs that we've had done on our Fleet this year or other things that we've had to to do miss rby um oh go I'm so sorry I have a question for perspective and if you don't know the answer it's fine you can email it to us later and it's a two-part question of the number of white buses you identified how much do you think is Athletics versus field trips and so my head is like in you know Elementary School versus middle and high school and then my second question is the um athletic fee would and I do appreciate that that said students on free and reduced lunch their families wouldn't have to pay that will the athletic teams also be paying the $444 per mile I just wanted Clarity on that

083um the your yeah it's approximately 25% usage for field trips but bulk of our use of activity bus is Athletics I mean Asheville City Schools is very fortunate we have a lot of Athletics offer way more than a lot of our neighboring eleas and we travel far far far far away um and then the second part of your question we are working with the athletic departments um both the Middle School and the high school to fine-tune that to where it's not quite as cumbersome um we have kids on the road every day of the week all year long playing a sport and so um Jesse and Sita have been amazing working with us trying to fine-tune that this is something that they don't want to have happen but they know it's coming we cannot maintain

084the programs we have to offer with an aging Fleet if we don't absorb the cost somehow um and that's just where we are we were asked to look and see what we can do and this is one of the many things that we are trying to do I'll be excited to hear about the other things you're trying to do um but I mean that's not snarky sorry sounded snarky I apologize um but um one question I have is it looks to me like they have to refuel before they bring the buses back right yes so they're paying so you're asking the athletic program to pay the $444 per mile and refuel no ma'am they already issued a wex card which is a district card we just do not want an empty bus coming in at

0851:00 a.m. and having to go out at 8: a.m. I get that I just was uh confused about that okay so I guess the next question is are we using our yellow buses up to capacity in other words are we really being careful about making sure that when a yellow bus is available which I guess I mean tell me if this is irrelevant in other words it sounds to me like the state funds our yellow bus and therefore we have a financial interest in making sure that to the extent a yellow bus could go it should be the one to go is that right or wrong actually it should be reversed okay so we want our white buses to go even though we're paying for them um because the r rate is so low I

086guess for theate and then you have to realize those yellow buses are provided primarily from home to school and school to home that is its primary function and a field trip has to be a board approved of course because it has to serve an academic purpose so we can't always not all of our field trips are for an academic purpose we we could probably say oh well we're going to uh uh cook cooking school for the day and the academic P purpose is math but not necessarily so academic purpose so we have to be very careful with that also keep in mind that our buses are on a 30-day all of our buses 30-day schedules to be um inspected and so it's very difficult to keep them on the lot so our mechanic can come

087inspect those we also have to um it's not always happen that whoever drives gets those buses refueled for the afternoon route and then um we're stuck with calling the garage bunkham County Schools saying hey we need fuel and that is not a conversation I need to have at 3:00 in the afternoon because it impacts a lot of people so if we can get away from we're good with using yellow buses for small trips but the white bus is the better option if at all possible and they're both which one is financially better for us to use they're both the same okay I mean if we go this route they're both the same if they're both the same and we're asking our families to pay for the white buses now as much as we can as

088much as we feel comfortable I just want to I just want to make sure that we're not asking families to pay more than we need to be asking because we have a yellow bus available to do the same thing and the state helps us with that cost the state does not help us with that cost we we have to reimburse the state at the $4.44 DPI rate we have to charge schools for yellow bus use we already are doing that a we do we pay for the maintenance on the yellow buses for yeah so why do I'm so confused you know is anybody else well I think Amy to that point where you're going is they're coming to say why haven't we been doing them the same and that's fine I think there's a I

089mean this isn't the first time that this board has faced an operation that's Legacy that we can't totally apply logic to and as we push forward with trying to make our systems sensical that's a good goal and there are are sometimes unintended consequences I can't help but think that white buses were just sort of put into some pocket because james' math says it costs $50 you know why not just cover that and let our kids go on as many field trips as possible so as we right siize as we figure out how to get things more in line in a sensical way my ask is to look carefully at I mean this the pie is not growing we're talking about the pie as it is we're just talking about reorganizing ing how the pi gets

090used and in which places will PE will there be access to Dollars outside the pi who gets to do that how do they do that who benefits from it versus where if any will some of our students which students experience missing out on something because the school now needs to budget for something they didn't used to budget for that's all I'd like to see us take into account we've done this same sort of thing when we try to figure out how compensation Legacy rules on compensation that were a little wacky and but the reality is they have consequences even when we make them logical and I would also like to add operational costs from the cost of the mechanic per hour to gasoline has also increased tremendously and it is not we are not asking

091to do anything different than what other leas are doing we are asking to do the same absolutely and I think every time that we've looked at a problem like this where we do it in kind of an oddball way it makes perfect sense that other do it that way but the kids in our schools the adults in our schools don't work in those other leas they work here and they know it the way we've been doing it and so it's fine that maybe we we can use our like already thank you Amanda because you're reaching out to other districts to say tell me how you do this help me understand that is exactly what the adults in our district need to be doing as we're about to change something that I'm guessing principles are going

092to now figure out how do I how do I make this work you're not giving me more money you're just making me pay for something I didn't used to pay for and we can figure it out I just want us to have our eyes open about what are the unintended consequences of it now they did pay for yellow buses I want to make sure that we all understand that if they used a yellow bus we did reimburse the portion by law back to the state for use of that bus that's a that's a requirement in the general statute 115c um one of those numbers down through there that you we have to reimburse the state for for that extra use of that bus so that was reimbursed okay who reimbursed that yes like we I

093is there a difference between the way I'm just really trying to grasp and I guess I'm dense about this but the yellow why are we what I understood you to be what I understood y'all to say initially is this is coming out of local funding that's a problem we need to pass this on basically to the families yes so presumably this is are the yellow buses also funded out of local funding no they're State and okay that's my no no no no what she's asking is do the schools have to pay 4.41 per mile to use a yellow school bus yes currently right now the schools have to pay for 40 per mile already for field trips and they can't cross county lines the yell and for athletic programs as well no or they just

094never use a you never use a yellow bus we can't use a yellow bus for because they're on the road it's not okay and also we can't cross a district line in a yellow bus we have to stay inside buh County so we couldn't go to Hendersonville to the apple orchard as an example yeah I I understand that I appreciate that um you know I don't know it's hard it's hard to to agree to pass more costs on to our families um at least for me and uh or and make the jobs of our of our schools it seems to me a little bit harder but I'm not worried so much about the field trips because we all get those things where we have to pay and we sponsor another student or whatever and that

095I get but athletic Fe are a little bit different and I don't know how that all affect but it it's fine I'm good thank you okay April I got one more question yes sir all right we talking about the band the cheerleaders of of and the athletes from high school and the middle school right yes sir and that's about what a thousand students we we looking at give or take it's three fours of the student body who participate is that about right is that what we figured out Mr Edwards to participate in something athlet expand so it wouldn't be that much of a cost if we if we got that many students that's going to be paying it wouldn't be that big of a cost trying to yes it would not be your asking would

096not be that big of a cost correct yes I'm agre like less than $2,000 right less no sir about 50 bucks probably per student yes sir it's 50 the proposed that you have before you tonight is $50 for second for high school $40 for Middle School athletics a year can I multiply that by a thousand and see how much we make in here so are we you definitely are we talking about Athletics now I think we're still talking about asking about the second thing I think we're moving on to the I think if we've answered all the questions about the use of the white activity buses we can move to Athletics and I would like to ask principal Johnson and principal Edwards to please join me since I I couldn't this link very excited about

097this for Blair you have no idea Blair did his principal internship with me when I was the principal SOC this moment for him we don't have access to some of us don't have a access to that athletic fee schedule oh good thank you d emailed it today thank you principal Edwards principal Johnson I really appreciate the time and energy they have both had to spend with me the last few weeks I'm trying to do two things one time could could you email that to us somebody because I get I can do that while you're talking principal thank you sorry you're welcome so I will not go into just reading the memo that you have and I have paper copies I can give you also but basically what we are talking in conjunction with this you

098know D yeah the excuse me the white bus fee we we have we are asking to add an additional athletic fee the reality of it is our our athletes travel a lot um some of them travel a really long way um field hockey lacrosse particularly because the conference that we play we're going to Hickory Winston and Charlotte um because that's our conference in those in those Sports particularly um we've only got Robertson here locally that we can play um but to speak to what Jesse was saying um the number of students that we have we had last year 700 and some odd number of students um that participate in athletics the problem with that number is that's across all three seasons and there is some repeat in that um and we don't track it um

099as like if Wade played two sports we don't track it that way so uh we'll be doing that this year the the what we're bringing in front of you is a request to say at the high school a 50 athletic fee for the whole year so it doesn't matter whether you participate in one or three Sports it's $50 to cover the cost basically of the activity buses the Middle School uh they don't have to travel as far as we do um so they're asking for $40 there um but as of right now I think we're just including Athletics because the band does not travel quite like the athletes do we'll go more more towards like a field trip request where we charge them per per mile of the trips that they do take instead of

100a blanket fee across the board questions um are these so I will say real quick thank you um that is comparable to what bun of county is doing right now in fact we um when we sit down we kind of talk through a multitude of possibilities and options but after some phone calls like that's that's kind of fair and standard what everyone else is doing right now it also supports equipment as well if children need something we are able we do and that's literally all we um charge for any participating any athletic U thing you can show up if you choose to buy your you know your equipment and and you want your own and you want those things you are welcome to do that um but I mean you can show up with literally

101zero things to either LaCrosse or football which are our most expensive things to outfit and we will outfit you with everything you need um everything from a jock strap to a helmet to cleats I wasn't I noticed it says that students who qualify for free and reduced lunch can can have the wave fee what would be the process for them to request the waiver It ultimately goes all fee waivers at the high school all ultimately come to me Athletics particularly will go to Sita first and then come to me but every fee waiver we have for anything whether that is okay you know I've broken my laptop twice and I can't afford to pay for that that comes to me if if you can't afford to pay your lunch bill that all it will all

102end up coming to the so we already have a process in place that this could roll into got it any other questions thanks thanks play we give April such a hard time disppointed me right now all right um the next one on there is school fees there's a board policy that says before every August I have to present the list of fees that students um before the regular board meeting I present a list to the board of any fees collected at the school level so I've collected them um I did get some classif some clarification I was initially collecting only the fees that were required for every student um um however based on some uh guidance from our attorneys I'm going to add all fees just so you know and then we'll code which are

103required for every student and which are optional so we will add that before the next meeting that's going to take a little bit of a longer time to get that full comprehensive list but this is the current list of fees that um the schools submitted that they um ask for from their students so um this is a a list that I have to present every year didn't know this last year when I started my first August board meeting so here you go you should have been seeing this every August um so are you saying this is a a draft yes this is these are the required fees that I got from principales up to today about like 4:15 I got a couple rolling in that I put in there um this is those are the

104quote required fees um do we have a school with no fees at all Fletcher so there are no fees charged to families at Hall Fletcher okay just wanted to was incoe but Miss Buchanan does that mean there are no field trips I mean I just what does the absence of fees mean the absence of activities is there a grant I I it's just it it feels like apples and oranges all these like silsa has different fees than the high school and that just again it just feels like it's an incomplete list but that's just my take on it this is what the principal I understand that I totally asked them for their request fees this is what I got this is what I'm communicating to the board yeah so I may be confused but I

105when I think of fees I think of Annual fees that we ask for for families like I know some schools like provide agendas for fifth grade so every year they ask we do ask for fees for field trips but it's not a specific amount of money and it's not annual it depends on what is planned for that year and the other school gave me a range on theirs oh well that's my misunderstanding I just when you said none I assumed that you didn't charge at all we do charge for fil TRS we can add that in there yeah I can do that I have no concern about this list please hear me say that and and y'all are just gathering information I it just seems to me that like some people are saying oh she

106means X and other principles are saying oh she means it just feels like it's all different data I mean to be clear even though this is a board policy from my years on the board this is the first ever seen this so thank you for complying and giving us this draft right and so I think this is something that we can continue to refine and make more clear what is actually a a strict fee or not you not strict but you know like an annual fee um versus like what are some fees that kind might occur throughout the year yeah so the policy goes on to say this list has to be published on our website in October so FYI St La good well I'm glad that we're also redoing our website so that's good

107here we go y so just I don't want to spend any more time on this knowing that it will be public information it the data seems inconsistent and so it would be great if maybe at a principal's meeting there could be some consensus about what each school is reporting because the reader is left with saying some Elementary School don't have any activities and others have very expensive activities and I'm just sort of I just feel like we could do some more with the data before we post it okay any other questions about school fees all right um so up next uh budget update um so if we can get the presentation up there is it up there and I just need to wake it up thank okay so just to remind the board going to

108take a couple slides just to refresh our memory on where we are with the budget um we started doing this budget planning back in April uh we came up with some initial numbers to present to the board just to start the budget planning process um initially projecting and still kind of holding here with about $2.4 million um decrease in Revenue Lo or Revenue loss and then increasing expenditures about 3.3 million do um so we're still holding those as we took those initial projections um we said for the um as we looked at that three $5.7 million shortfall we created some budget enhancement requests that we presented to the county to ask for $2.1 million in additional funding uh we also proposed 3 point or $4.4 million either through fund balance allocation or budget cuts um

109so it was $3 million in fund balance and then cutting about $1.4 million out of our budget and then also that gave us a total of $3.4 million asked to the bunkham County Commissioners um Heidi has some updated local Revenue you've got a handout um for this as I emailed it to you as well if if that's going to work better but I will let heidy talk through the local revenue and the state allotments um the next two slides thank you Dr Ferman um so last month I brought this information not realizing um with the notes I've added at the bottom and forgive me I am still adjusting to this dynamic between bunkham County versus Asheville City and how we're funded so so uh a tiny .1% change in the shift of um the pration

110between the two districts could actually mean a half a million dollars so um unfortunately where we thought we might be getting about a $600,000 increase at this point now this is still tentative because the final numbers will depend on how many charter school students show up at each district um and we won't know that number until midall based basically like when we normally bring the budget to you in September or October time frame um right now I had to reduce that increase in local Revenue down to $189,300 from where I had it last month so there is a very small increase in local Revenue at this point like I say until we can confirm until we can confirm what the um actual local Charter School numbers will be um does anybody have any questions about

111that so yeah I just want to make sure that that so I'm going to start running those totals at the bottom for us to keep track of where our split percentages are and that way I can communicate that better to you moving forward as well right so I just want to make sure that we're being clear on what we were funded for this year because you've got on the third column for 2024 25 under total increase you've got $34 million for total increase that's not a total increase of $34 million that's the actual budgeted amount that we received from the county correct correct okay no it says total increase total toal it says total increase need to change that label thank you yeah so what should that be if not total increase what what is

112what what verb what words are you not using there well the the column is increased the the line across the bottom line 15 in some columns is an increase and some is the total appropriation I'm sorry so right now we're looking at a $59,500 net increase across all funding sources in this group so and that is also I'm sorry goad that is also um I did get a little bit of good news in this last um piece is the appropriation of our um Asheville City school specific property taxes um they do look like they over collected a bit by the end of the year so if we can have that impact as well we might be at close to where we had origin Al reported last month that we would be so um again these

113numbers come in and change every month so this is the best estimate at this time so Heidi would that mean that that would be about a $500,000 difference okay and then again trying to keep up depending on the charter school count total that that'll be the that'll be the real trick right there because part of the other expense presentation we showed that we might anticipate another half a million dollars to have to pay out to the charge schools um see and that actually could be mitigated by us receiving less appropriation because they get per pupil but we get per pupil so if ours did not go up theirs won't go up so I'm hoping between the two we'll still be close to that half million Mark but we'll have to give you that verification once

114we get those counts so Heidi at the end of the day what was our actual increase this year the actual appropriation increased right now on the on the split as it exists today 189,000 so we asked for how much from the county 3.4 we asked for 3.4 million in addition to the 2.2 in addition to the 2.2 and no just. just 3.4 total increase of 3.4 and we got and we got under $200,000 do we know what the county got I know their increase their ask was higher of course but and everything's proportional so it would be we got 15 16% they get you know 84% so they couldn't have gotten all that yeah but they couldn't have gotten all that much right it was it was a double digit it was a double digit

115Millions less than they requested yeah I mean I'm guessing they couldn't have gotten much more than a million right I mean huh Sarah's back at the envelope is they got 1.2 million yeah there we go see I'm pretty good on my estimate there yeah I was I was thinking they they that's what they got in an increase okay oh can I on the Heidi I'm so sorry real quick cuz I you may have said it and I missed it it's actually on the the math towards the bottom of that chart you're tracking year to year that we used to be about 15% and I think where you were headed and maybe you already said this is with our declining population and bunkham County's increasing population so I I can't interpret this Are We Now closer

116to 14% well the the problem is we've changed and that's why I didn't consider it significant when I first looked at it I mean we we went from 15.5 53 to 15.12 but the number the Count's using at the moment because they don't have the new Charter numbers yet is 15.2 six so you would think just a tenth or two difference should not make that big a number but the entire budget that goes between the two school districts is about $120 million so a tenth of that a tenth of a percent of that is a lot of money so I I apologize I should have looked at that more carefully um on the state side we are um in a very similar position to where we were before they came out with the initial allotments

117um versus the planning allotments um a couple of numbers were a little better a couple numbers a little worse um we're right in that range of $8 to $900,000 less than we um received last year B mostly based on our loss of ADM um the other thing that is a factor this year which we all have to work on some more yet because we've just received that information is we're being told that um from the federal government to the state of North Carolina which then of course trickles down to each School District that the census had a pretty negative impact on the state and that most federal allotments um were impacted to the extent of about 15% and mostly the most um impactful of those being to the title one budgets which of course have

118direct impact to our schools so um the EC budgets actually stayed fairly constant so that was the good news in the scenario but um the the federal I haven't seen that big of a federal budget decrease in a very long time if ever usually it's much smaller than that but they are they are attributing that change in the census counts so I just wanted to bring that to your attention and we'll work on that moving forward how can we work on that I'm curious about like that's that's because of census numbers when you say we'll work on that what do we meaning we the the cni team and I will have to get together and see how we could best redistribute the money to schools so that they'll be the least impact possible to our

119classroom yeah we can't change that actual funding number no um there's ways you can set aside District initiatives versus School initiatives and we can just see what we can make the best of that thank you um so that's kind of where we are with Revenue so then to update our budget projections um still with that shortfall that we anticipated um updating our actual increase from bunkham County I was just played it very conservative even though it says 189 190 um just kept it at 140 of an increase um for budgeting purposes still allocating the $3 million of fund balance meant that we had to cut $2.6 million do out of the budget so we went to work and um worked really hard to find where we can decrease um funding however we two of the

120things that I did know we did need to fund is number one our student support Specialists um that has become an essential role at our schools that was funded through title we do have a couple months that we can pull funding so we knew we needed about $500,000 to keep our student support specialists in place um and then also getting ECA in the Middle School Academy up and running at Randolph that was an investment of about um $600,000 so even though we knew we needed to cut we actually needed to also add about a milon $1.1 million um to keep things going to provide the services we know are needed so then we started looking at changes to come up to a net change of minus $2.6 million and um we put the funding allocation

121in place um as we started building our staffing we did see an a more benefit from that than we anticipated we anticipated about a $500,000 reduction um our cost Savings in the fund um Staffing allocations but we were able to save about uh $965,000 through the implementation of the allotment formula um the Middle School consolidation actually saved us about $1.3 million um so that that did help our situation um Co savings through Personnel cuts um operational budget cuts and contract reductions we were able to save about $1.2 million and then I'm also recommending to get us across the line to that $2.6 million that we do limit our overtime budget and reduce it by about $250,000 um I think Heidi pulled the numbers for me and we had spent close to $600,000 in paying staff

122for overtime work um so we need to take a closer look at that not saying that there is no overtime um but that we do need to take a close look at it part of that overtime was coming from staff that are working in our after school programs that are instructional assistance and we were not building in the cost of that overtime in the grant so if a grant was supposedly paying for this program we actually were footing part of the bill so we are going to say no the grant is going to have to pay for all all of the cost of that program instead of us eating part of that cost so um that is the change in overtime um which does get us to a net change in our budget of um

123down by $2.6 million which is a balanced budget um so finally um we did talk about the the potential need for reduction in force um so I did look at all of these and I will give the board more details in closed session um but we do I am looking at the reduction of one full-time staff member but we do have an open position for that staff member that they would be more than qualified to fill um we do have five positions that I'm going to recommend to the board that we decrease from a 12-month employee to an 11mon employee and I have one position that I'm going to recommend that we downgrade that position one level um after Clos session if I the board is giving um an affirmation basically yes this looks like

124what we will approve on the 12th um we will have those individual conversations so through this um process we were able to to cinch our belt even a little bit tighter um and I'm pleased to present the board with a balanced budget and minimize impact to Staffing as much as possible um but also things like sorry we're not going to feed the board before me before the meetings anymore um we're going to say sorry everyone you can't have a personal refrigerator in your classroom um so we are taking additional measures to cut costs I just we wasn't a real good way to capture some of that until we put those things in place so um open for discussion or questions on the updated budget Maggie the um acknowledging that it's difficult to talk about reduction

125in force but those numbers were built into the prior slide yes the these numbers I did build into the to the overall Cost Cuts that I presented on the previous slide yes those are included in here and it's about a half a million dollars um of total adjustment based on that I Incorporated additional cuts from the first time I brought these numbers to the board so July when we left in June KN knowing I needed to look and try to find an additional about $600,000 $500,000 that's where we went back to the drawing board and looked at what else can we reduce um in addition to trying to increase Revenue um so increasing the amount of contract services that we're petting um increasing uh the the cuts to central office operational budgets we doubled that

126so that's where we were able to get the most of the savings and then you can only squeeze so much out uh we did have to look at some potential reductions um but um you know it's not anyone losing their position I just want to say uh thank you to you um huge thank you to the staff all of you had to go through and make some painful decisions and um I really appreciate that I you know we serve students and every single one of you serve students I don't care if you're at central office or um in a in a in a cafeteria or on a bus line or in a classroom all of you serve students and I just so appreciate that this was not easy and I'm sure that these reductions hurt

127um the benefit I think is the the raise that we were able to offer our our teachers and our instructional assistants last year and this is kind of the result of that and along with wholly inadequate funding by the state so let me just be really clear about that piece too so anyway thank you and I'm curious if you have any I know that this is this year and not next year but um do you feel like these Cuts will help sustain us as we move forward um yeah I do and that's continuing to evaluate our allotment formulas continuing to keep tight controls on positions when positions are added what's the rationale looking at all contracted services and really is this something that we need so much that we've got to do a contract and

128provide these Services is this something that someone within our school district cannot take on um so taking a close look at those and really controlling for what we are Contracting Services for I want to highlight Shannon has done a really great job of looking at her budget going to of her contracts and services and saying hey you know you allotted licenses for 4,200 students well we're down to 3,900 students so what's our savings there um and has done a you know I just want to put that out there because she had a sizable budget and a big tackle um and she really approached it with a positive attitude and um did a great job thank you anything else on the budget procedurally what's the next step so I know we have closed session yeah so

129in close session I will present the actual positions and changes that we will look for um and then Chris will help you kind of talk through what that policy looks like if I get that affirmation and yep we look like this is what the board will want to approve um we will talk about um I will talk with any of those impacted staff over this next week um and the board could also say you know what after we've looked at your additional reductions the ones that are on that on the on the list that I provide you could say let's just pull that out of fund balance that's your purview as a board to say you know what you've cut enough we're going to allocate more out of fund balance so we don't have to

130make those cuts so that's the conversation the the no reduction in force yeah just the recommendation on what any positions if we cut positions or decrease positions or downgrade a position that's the only piece that comes to you yep okay um all right next up uh Miss Karns is going to share updated power updated dat tables I don't know it's giving you some kind of [Music] powers so um I emailed to you um the proposal for an updated um hourly pay table so back to some of the earlier discussions we had just to give everybody a little background um DPI decided 2 years ago now maybe three uh that they no longer wanted to be in the hourly pay table business they wanted uh there's a state law that supports uh local districts um developing

131their own um pay tables for hourly classified staff um it was very um they felt like because the majority of those positions were also local funded that most districts were already developing their own pay tables to an extent and um the best thing they could do is direct us to the office of State human resources and their format and structure for those positions and what they did in return instead of if you'd ever pulled up the sour schedules in the past the hourly classified section went on for like 20 Pages now there's about three pages they gave us some very broad ranges of where people should probably be placed um in that um they did not include technology positions probably uh good move on their part because they're all over the place and so Market

132competitive um so Mr Whiteside helped me go through that section and basically did a whole little mini salary study which I appreciate very much um to make sure that we get those folks placed correctly and the other area there were a couple of the medical areas they did not um touch on and luckily here we do not have a lot of those positions so what I've included in this um first draft of the schedule only includes a couple of the um medical level positions since we're lucky here to have most of those folks employed in um salary positions so um that's a little bit of the background um apparently Georgia must have known she was retiring and did not take this on last year so I'm going to have to go get her at some

133point but um we do have to do it now um we obviously just like Dr Maggie said you know this is a board decision um we can go anywhere from giving everybody basically me replicating the page that is very hard to read and very fine print if you look on the website that we have right now for classified staff and just basically pushing people into the new structure at just a 3% increase or we can try to actually fix some of the things that are wrong with the idual as they are now and try to make them more easily understood and competitive um in our local market because we do know we have extremely high turnover in some areas and one of the things we've talked about at recent meetings is are things like the

134TP Howard plowing contract with the rate of pay that some of these outside contractors are expecting us to provide and to try to shore up our own salaries so that we can be more competitive and draw some of those folks in as employees which is the optimal way to operate in those areas so um just to give a summary of what I had already shared with you um basically again we're Guided by this DPI framework they've provided um I have listened to concerns from District leadership and employees and I would just like to say um there is very very few uh leadership positions I didn't hear from and people are very strongly advocating for all of their staff and I've tried to incorporate um those recommendations as best I could in this proposal yet still

135keep understood that we are facing this budget deficit that we can't you know what I might like to design and what would really be great for the entire community and our school district and to be the most competitive is probably not what we can afford so I tried to strike a balance on what people need and want yet something that we could afford moving forward um I did review all the prior salary studies done here in bunam County schools and the two most recent ones bunkham county has provided um which gave me some framework as well as other leas um pay tables and methodology um what I was trying to shoot for again is something um we hear very often about uh needing to be Equitable needing to be transparent I think sometimes there's a

136misunderstanding not just among current employees but when we try to Market a position you know oh you only pay $15 an hour for that well yeah and Longevity and local supplement and when you add that all together it's a lot more than say $15 an hour and I think that could help HR when they you know post jobs and that way people more you know when you just say 10% supplement or 15% people don't see the number so that's what I've tried to do here instead of just making it the flat hourly rate I've tried to include the whole compensation package in this schedule so when people get hired they'll know exactly what they make um um some of the obstacles I think some of the board would like me to highlight what people might

137really really like and what people might really really not like okay so in the beginning everyone in this schedule will get 3% or more than what they make now that's a a state law obviously plus that would certainly be what we want to give our employees um one of the problems we have here is there were some things back to someone mentioned things that come up that have been done forever and now we have to try to fix those and move forward and make them the best we can um Fair labor standards act says that hourly employees have to be paid hourly they can't get a stien a a a blank amount of money to just do a job they have to have an hourly rate of pay so what we've done here in two

138different categories um exceptional children assistance which obviously is um you know a more difficult job so they wanted to make a distinction between a regular Ed and a an exceptional child assistant did it in a stien and did not they had two different pay grades but you'll really kind of get a chuckle out of this when I looked at the two different pay grades they differed by 4 cents an hour so I don't really think that recognized the additional workload for an exceptional child assistant but that stien did so we certainly wanted to retain that and I'll show you how I did that in just a minute and then the other area before Amanda throws something at me and April throws something at me certainly would be our bus drivers and we all are familiar

139with what happened there and how that situation came about and we have to honor that but we also want to try to mitigate the cost of that moving forward not not the people that had the harm shown to them in that transition but the newly people hired did not have a harm done to them so we want to try to incorporate something that sustain is sustainable for the district moving forward and not cost the district more than it has to cost so all those kind of things came into play here um also um like I say I know that we have definitely made the news and that we are the most expensive place to live in North Carolina now and there is that that um movement of a livable wage that we hear a lot

140about and um keep that in mind if you would when we look at this because I think we have been able to by doing this also move closer to moving more of our um staff in that Direction and or letting staff understand how close they are to that wage or over it at this point so um that is something I wanted people to be able to see when we got through working on this project as well so um back up again you know a couple years ago we had a move to a $13 an hour minimum wage the state required and then it became 15 so obviously that has moved forward since then with the raises and then also um we had a request from Chartwells this year to start employees at $16 an hour

141rather than the 15 because they couldn't find anybody well that ended up working very well and um actually within just a few weeks of of changing that pay rate they were able to fill those vacancies that had been open for some time so that is another thing I think we can accomplish with this is if we have our pay rates up just just enough to to be competitive then we will also see fewer vacancies we'll see those vacancies fill quicker we'll see decreases in subc cost we'll see less over time that Dr Maggie is already um highlighted inter presentation that we want to shoot for because we right now have a lot of staff that have to fill in for people when people are gone because we can't find someone and filled the job and

142then ultimately too we want to cut down on those contracted services that we're paying an outside company to do and not have that person available and a higher quality person available all day long to do that work so just as an overview um I don't know exactly how to approach this but what I did um was start with this the pay grades you probably saw those there's 59 60 61 63 60 okay so basically all of those have now been funneled into fewer um grades of pay in a hierarchy now I also know I could not do what I did in Rutherford and basically pay for the job only with no recognition on what people had as far as your experience in the system but when we looked at that old pay table what we

143saw was is many of the the the different pay grades and years going through the pay grades were very inconsistent some were a few cents some were a dollar some were and they were kind of all over the place so I tried to bring reel those in a little bit and then make it easy to understand so that even though we're recognizing your's experience we're trying to make a more meaning ful increase at at fewer increments and still fully recognize all the years of service that our our folks have contributed to the system so um these breaks on these tiers line up with longevity and local supplement tiers so those except wouldn't you know I've looked at this a million times and I I told I told April right before the meeting I said I'm

144going to blame executive cabinet for not catching my typo in the top section so under tier five that should could say 15 to 19 years not 15 to 20 years I looked at this so many times and not seen that so I apologize but um like I say those line up completely with the longevity brakes and the the local supplement brakes and so what I've done in each each each section on each tier is I've highlighted in the peach what the actual hourly rate would be which is what was normally in the schedule and then I've added a line for longevity and local supplement based on your years experience so for example we'll look at custodians this would suggest that instead of a $15 an hour base pay for custodians that would start at 1625

145and that is part of the problem we can't get people under the door anymore for $15 an hour there is virtually no one out there paying that for almost anything I mean we can have these folks come right out of high school and walk in chick not even out of high school walking Chick-fil-A and they're going to make $118 an hour so I mean our folks work hard every day and so what the goal was is to try to reinforce and up the beginning part of the schedule and then do what we could to recognize years of experience as we move across so if you look at just custodians as an example if um they got hired today that 1625 would have a local supp at $1.79 so that beginning custodian pay is really $18

146an hour so we would already have had to increase that by the 3% so so that it is more than a 3% increase on some of these lower parts of the scale more so than the middle and then the high part of the scale at the end for trying to get the contract staff reduced so um also we ended um I think the current schedule might go up to 30 years but we yes it went up to 30 but we did 25 plus at the end because that is exactly with those uh long ity and local supplement um years and it also syncs up with the teacher schedule that way because that is the last step for them as well um I think what I'd like to do is Skip down just a little bit

147and explain The Oddities if you might say that that they are in the schedule so uh tsas should only be paid on the first level of of the scale but somehow over time one of those things over time they got basically paid like a bus driver but they don't require a license and they don't do the same job so what this does if you look at that section in Peach in the beginning is what an entry level TSA would make today which is basically paralleled to a bus driver because they're on the same pay grade but we don't want to take anything away from those tsas that are dedicated current employees so we have a section there where we cover providing them the same compensation they've been receiving and basically grandfathering them in because we

148don't want to take anything away from the people that we currently have in force but we want to try to mitigate that cost where it kind of got out of sync for the new hires and that way we can start transitioning those folks off as our folks retire um another category like that like I mentioned earlier and you'll see it in nc5 instruction is are um General Ed versus our EC instructional assistance so like I said there was only a % difference in the grades that they were applied but they were receiving a stiping so the other thing about Fair labor standards Act is is not only do they need to be paid an hourly rate of pay but that hourly rate of pay needs to get overtime if they work overtime so by applying

149the uh stien rate based on the number of hours they work that would give them an extra $3 an hour if you're an EC teacher assistant versus a general ed teacher assistant and then if they work overtime they get overtime on that and and that's the way it's supposed to be based on the fair labor standards act um what we didn't have good recognition of that I tried to fix here is like from nc1 to nc5 you'll see the regular custodian versus the lead custodian we had some lead custodians making the same or less than a regular custodian it just didn't make a lot of sense in the scenario as you go through so what I did here is make a at least a 50 cents an hour difference from a regular custodian to to

150a lead custodian and then move that out across the years um another position we're having an extreme amount of turnover uh with this year especially um that that hurts my soul is is bookkeepers um we are we were we had a lot of folks starting as um bookkeepers who have a lot of responsibility and responsible for a lot of money um making barely over the $15 an hour minimum some of them just barely over $16 so we have increased that and that is part of the priority that the state put in that moves them up a little bit from where they were um and then from there we also have a uh added SE added a little bit more for central office abil uh central office responsibilities and then the specialists in the central office

151would go up from there so that's kind of the hierarchy there um and then like I say I've added a dash M um to each of the main categories so like you could follow through from 5 7 10 you know which the maintenance levels are to see that with each level of those we increased a couple of dollars an hour to the point that like for example our plumber situation the plumber would now start at $30 an hour if we can get them to come to work here and that this is something we can still continue to look at if we find out it's you know 25 would have worked maybe we adjust something later if we figure out 40 is what's going to work work we can adjust that later what I tried to

152do in breaking out these areas like they are and not just having like say one nc5 that had every kind of person that should make that wage in one category is that way our office folks are you know grouped together our maintenance folks are grouped together so that if we need to adjust any particular area at some time we have a lot more flexibility to do that without having to move people that don't necessarily need to be moved or moving too many people people are not enough people um let's see what else did I want to say um then the other difference would be um School nutrition like I say we already had to up that beginning page just a little bit and the other I feel like it's a significant increase but a very

153warranted increase is our school nutrition managers what we found out at Rutherford and Chartwells can attest to this um we lose those folks as managers ready to go back to being just an employee because for a quarter or 50 cents an hour they're actually managing a group of people in a federal program and doing inventory and all that kind of stuff and they don't feel like those few cents are worth doing all the extra work so they're either leaving all together or wanting to just take a regular worker job again and not stay managers so I um made sure that that started at $20 an hour and went up from there where it had been a base of 17750 um there were two categories of school nutrition managers they had their own salary schedule if

154you go back out on the website and look they had a one and a two one for smaller schools and two for bigger schools but now that we actually have the support of Chartwells and they have more people that work in those cafeterias and we've increased the pay I think one one level for a manager um will be sufficient and that way we raise them all to be uniform and if they go between schools there won't be a difference um trying to see um then like I say you move through the whole schedule and at the very end there's a small group of positions that uh like I say Mr Whiteside helped me work on um for technology and that um actually was self-funded um he was able to reduce a half a position in

155his department so that group of people will get adjusted to better closer to Market rates at no cost on that section and then the um therapist and all we have very few of those folks so we may have to work on that a little bit more as we go along but that'll be a good starting point on those um I'm going to go back for just a minute to the bus drivers um bus drivers obviously um have some not only special um cons considerations amongst themselves but because we have dual employees so that is the most difficult section that I've tried to work on here and honestly I am still running some of the numbers on that and all I want to say at the moment is that we will assure all of those folks

156are at minimum getting 3% more or will be held harmless because we do not want any detrimental effect on our bus drivers but at the same time back to the other kind of unusual section I started in this schedule we've got to do something because we have not harmed new people coming in there was only a perceived harm for the folks that had to change from bunk them and come here to get that $700 month stien so I've also applied that to their hourly rate of pay and you can see that in that nc5 section um so that is the equivalent of if they work 30 hours a week or more $6.50 an hour uh the concern comes from the Dual employees that their whole day is not driving buses but the other factor in

157this just like it was for the um EC assistance is that now almost 100% of those folks get overtime so even though that rate may not come out exactly on the surface to the whole $700 at First Look I think with the overtime we will come up with equivalent and or more pay for those folks but Amanda and April have worked on a list for me to go over and I'm going to run their specific situations and before we have the meetings in the town hall we're going to have a separate one for the bus drivers and then others for everybody else so that they can come in and ask questions and take a look at this and we can talk through everything make sure everybody understands I'm going to have actually each individual bus

158driver's um information calculated separately and we will assure them that there will be no no negative impact to their pay in the coming year by adjusting it this way but that also will let us treat the new bus drivers just a little bit differently and get them on a regular schedule that fits in the schedule with everybody else across the district so I know that was a lot um and I would be happy to answer any questions either tonight or if you think of some after you leave tonight when you have more time to look at this hey I got one question maybe I missed it somewhere all how does this compare to your salary uh employees I mean this is for hourly employees right right I can't I mean did I miss something did

159you cross them or this is just hourly no only thing we had to change for dpi's um reorganization was hourly all all noncertified administrators and other staff get the 3% increase just like the state passed and then certified staff are paid off those State Certified schedules just like always and that will be 3% plus their bump whatever that happens to be this year I would just like to say how much I appreciate how big this project is how complicated it is and the attention that you've given to it it's really wonderful thank you heid so much I don't have any questions right now I this is just a huge huge undertaking that you didn't ask for welcome those things we don't ask for um thank you yeah I appreciate it too and what I love

160about this is It's infinitely easier for me to track than that excuse me I was going to use an exploitive the darn chart that had um million teeny boxes and the grid right so this is really easier to see so I'm two two things one I gather that you still expect your bus drivers to work overtime a certain amount to make up for what they wouldn't get in the $700 difference I mean well the Dual employees the way their jobs are structured the existing dual employees that's another thing we need to try to not structure the jobs that way in the future right our current solid group of dual employees um they will earn overtime they they earn lots of overtime every week and we think that this structure will not impact them at all

161negatively so that's what I'm just going to go in and double check and make sure right okay right okay and that's something I think yeah sounds really complicated well I think they're going to have to understand that as we continue to decrease students that those routes and all are always subject to change and I hate it it's the nature of the Beast kind of like a school nutrition employee asked me when day they said well now that you have remote days you've cut my working days and I said what you know at first it was kind of like what no we have the same student days we've always had but guess what school nutrition employees don't usually work on day students aren't here so we have a remote day that's not a work day for

162them right so it's not a work day for a bus driver so you know things like that sometimes you know in the big picture we go it's good you know we can count that day kids are home working we don't always think about the full implication of that on others so um I guess the only other question I have and I I don't know this just always jumps out at me is that our instructional assistants just work so hard and it's really you know seeing others in other administrative positions that are assistant or whatever I I it's it's this is hard um to quantify and say that someone who's in a class room managing in some cases some of the most challenging situations that occur across our district every day um are so low on

163this scale and yet I understand that anyway I I throw that out there just as a sort of G I wish it could be different but I trust that um they're still as you've said they're still getting their 3% increase well actually they went from 1508 last year and their new starting pay would be 1625 so we were able to give them a good little bit I would stay like you say that that's still well short of where we need to be but as kind of like we were talking about with the activity buses earlier as we continue to right siize you know what we need to look at is what our priority is and if we can right siize the other areas where they need to be then perhaps we can address this again

164and and re adjust this and make it better in future years but I mean it's just hard seeing some of the folks that are getting so much more and and because they have they come in with education and skills I guess or whatever that demand that to be able to be hired for us to fill those positions um well and one of the ways we can fix a plumber though is because we have one right we can fix yeah I hear you but we have 225 teacher assistant so even a quarter an hour is very impactful because there's 225 employees that are affected so yeah I appreciate that and I it still kind of it still kind of crushes me when I see these numbers for them but thank you I I appreciate the work

165honestly it's it's great I'll be interested to hear how this goes as we as we presumably roll it out I wanted to uh Echo Amy's Point um that you know for I um for custodians I appreciate that we're working on how do we get those positions up to a certain point um but we're looking at like IAS based on this structure not until an IIA has worked in our district for 20 years would they be making a living wage right so yeah and I see I see the look in your face right yeah so um so I appreciate how that you said like that commitment of like let's re reevaluate as we we go on as we start to WR sze I also wanted just invite like I appreciate that with our bus drivers for

166example um that we're going to be having these conversations individually um and just want to invite um as you're having those individual conversations um I Heard the word perceived harm there was actual harm during that process and so as we're as we're having those conversations that um that that that language could be really harmful again that if that if we're coming from a place of power saying that this is that there was harm that was perceived like it was actual harm and so how those conversations can will need to be very delicate um because here's yet another change coming for our bus drivers so yeah I got one question does the uh salary have to get that 3% pay raise I mean it I mean do they have to receive it I mean do you

167do we do the district has to give it well technically what the law says is All State paid employees have to get it but I don't think any of us in this room want to single out the state paid employees and just give them the raise and not all the locally paid and federally paid employees the same thing that that's what the law actually says but I know no one that that applies it that way so it has to be given I mean it couldn't be like maybe a bus driver get 5% and salary get 1% it's still equal up to that's it's that's not good is it um well I mean in making these changes some people will get different amounts than others but it's got to be at least 3% and then we

168have to we have to um Implement those State salary schedules for certified staff those are required and then you pay a local supplement on top of all of that which again gives kind of almost like a double raise to everybody because you get x% on the current salary plus the 3% so I don't know if I answered your question I'm sorry I'm curious Jesse if what's on your mind is if we were to do a little looking at the highest paid positions and the lowest paid and what's the Gap how how far apart and are we okay with that do you are you okay with that like is that what's on your mind that are there ways to I sure should I be okay if somebody's making 13 40 12 30,000 a year and I'm

169making about maybe 50 to 60,000 a year no I'm not okay with that I don't think nobody is yeah that's when we get into conversations between all hourly right right yeah so I appreciate you bringing that up Jesse anything else thanks again Heidi um we've got some information items and other stuff coming up I'm going to ask just the room do we need a break I'm looking at what else is coming up we want to the other stuff is like information stuff or like but we need a break pretty soon yeah I'm gonna ask bgie like how much do you think we have it's really going to depend on how in depth the board wants to go in onto these contracts M us um it's like now we get time for a break I guess

170that's my question or if you know I know the cell phone policy is probably going to be a longer conversation and discussion um but you know right we get okay why we do contracts and M us we'll keep going um and then we'll see about after that okay so contracts andus Dr de okay so you have a list of all the uh contracts and and M us um you'll notice that there are some that you're probably like I thought we had just approved that but keep in mind we're going into the 24 25 school year and so are on a fiscal year and so that's why you're probably like why is the Howard's Plumbing back on there and that's why because it's for the new school year um you'll see our SRO contract is on

171there along with our School nurses um and just continuation of of our um partnership with mayck and the Asheville Police Department I really appreciated the executive summaries yeah so I have a question you said that so the one that we approved at the June meeting for sro's was this is this is different so I'm going to let April speak to that one and then because I was just confused as to why that was back on we had to in the June meeting we had to amend last year um contract in a local agreement because we were able to add two more sro's and we did not have that in the original agreement we didn't catch it until the end of the year so this is this year's 24 25's inter local agreement oh okay just

172okay so we are um waiting on the vocational rehab mou but we wanted to get it on this work session so that you would be able to have that um for the board meeting on Monday um we'll try to get that to you on Friday so you can look at that before Monday's uh board meeting and uh Holly Suter has included a an executive summary on that and explanation as to why that we haven't gotten thatou before today's work session yeah in case it wasn't because it got drowned out the executive summaries on these thank you for doing yeah any questions about mes or contracts I just had a real quick one for the mayck positions are those roughly similar last year and can you just remind me how United ways Community Schools feeds into

173that so um the mayck partnership that provides our School nurses for our schools and then are you talking about the United Way after school program like was my understanding that Ash middle and asille higher Community Schools and there's additional Services provided by mayc and others I think really the heart of my question is are these the same mayc Services we've always provided Sarah it is um the community health centers that are at Asheville middle and Asheville high are part of the community um network but those are separate entities those are part of another funding source so we have school nurses in addition to that's what I thought and so this piece that's not Community Schools that's the is this the same as usual it is exactly how it was last year yes ma'am yeah and

174to be clear those aren't mayck um one is ashel Mountain Community Health centers and one is Blue Ridge Community Health yeah yeah and that and thatou for appalache Mountain Community Health Center is on the um on the contract list as information only do we have anou for the Health Service the equivalent health services at AMS yes that covers um that should cover I don't have the link to that but that covers that's Blue Ridge right that's who does that's the provider of AMS is Blue Blue Ridge yes but we well it just comes is on a different schedule maybe like um do you know it's on a different I mean we're working on it okay any other questions about those contracts and mes okay do you want to go on to policies for first read

175what you think you want to take a break okay what's up I okay why we why we take a break and then okay so we'll take a five minute break for e e e [Laughter] all right uh we are we're back and we are into policies all right Dr de okay let's start with the lwh hanging fruit we're going to go down to school finance office and stop there before we move into cell phone um so I want to apologize for the incorrect parental involvement policy getting on the last agenda not taking into consideration the PBR changes and so we have a system in place now and I I want to assure you that won't happen again um but this uh parent involvement policy does reflect the PBR changes that you made as a board

176back in the winter and uh with the current updates from the the state that does not go against what you have in your original policy we have made some changes to the discretionary admission policy um and we um we made those changes to talk about uh to to clarify and what it is to be in good standing and have also we we met with Campbell Shatley and talked about a furber release for enrollment for out of District students that we would add to our enrollment process to make sure that we have a clear picture of students who are coming out of District who are coming to us from out of District about where they are with their academics their attendance and also with their with their discipline in order to give us a better picture

177thank you Kim can I ask a question yes hey does a parent know when a policy has been changed well I mean I know they can read the policies right but do they know when a policy been changed a little you know just like we getting it do they know it so parents do have access to the D if they log into diligence and now uh as part of our um cougar call on Fridays uh we give them a preview of what's going to be on the agend agenda for the work session and then after the work session after the board meeting we provide a summary that goes out to all of our stakeholders about what has been approved at that board meeting and what policy has been changed okay and then we um Lisa

178has been sending out after they're approved they go out to all of the ashel C School staff with links to the approved policies so we're communicating that in the cougar call as well as and a separate email that goes out to all staff and then 4240 the child abuse and related threats to child safety and then the school finance officer we had these on uh last month and then decided to table them and then they're just back for first read I have a question about the cell phone policy okay so that's the next one I just know if we were I like no I was like let's go to I was like let's go to school finance officer to lwh hanging fruit and then we'll talk about cell phone policy so if you don't have

179any more questions about um those policies we can move on to the cell phone policy is that good M any additional questions on the other policies okay so cell phone policy and cell phone policy is one that we started talking about in June um Vice chair Ry drafted a policy for Board review and discussion tonight so this one has not been reviewed by attorneys it hasn't been input on that this is right now just in a very first read stage um provided to us by Vice chair Ray and I will note um that I did send it to our attorneys as soon as they so they have a copy of it um but they haven't nothing's happened with it on that and I'm sorry who my first question was who participated in drafting this policy

180so no one but me okay got it I will um what I will tell you is that the bones of this policy came from doing some research and finding one that I really liked which was the model policy in Ohio that governor dwine and his office and their Public Department of Education put out to their school schs and you know why I happened upon that one I don't know but I really appreciated the Simplicity of it and the um Freedom that it gives the schools to design the procedures and the staff the procedures that would hopefully um implement the policy um I also appreciated the the statement about the research or whatever so I I basically nobody participated in it and have at it um this was just my first stab at something that felt

181active voice um fairly concise as concise as I felt comfortable making it but um it was it's just a proposal so did you use any of the current policy that we already have within our po you didn't take anything from that not a bit because I didn't think it was very helpful okay I found that policy to be outdated poorly written and really long and not so no I didn't take it I just I started over I think that the place where we found ourselves in 2011 with technology was so drastically different than what we know now about the use of technology and cell phones in schools and how they impact our students and our the students mental health that that whole policy was drafted with the understanding and with the framework of oh cell

182phone use can be really helpful in school and so they just it what flowed from that was very different from the um point of view that I think most experts now have about and what I've heard mostly out frankly from our our Educators um and our parents I've heard a lot from parents and Educators who feel like um the it's a it's a very there we may have a policy on a school individual policy in a school not to have cell phones but but there's still a lot of cell phones and it is it is um not consistently enforced at any school that I'm aware of that I should say middle and high I think it was probably maybe Montford had the best success in enforcing it but it seems like it was um not

183enforced easily and I my objective here was to give our school-based administrators our principals and assistant principles a really clear line that the board was drawing so that they had cover when they needed to put into place a pol a procedure or a school-based policy that would be pretty clear and enforceable for from the teachers perspective and so that was anyway that's propos I like what you wrote I mean when I read over it it's it's concise it's it's not like a lawyer um I'm dis missing I take great exception to that there are some of us lawyers who can write concisely no it was it was concise I like it it it is it it answers it checks a lot of the boxes for me uh personally um but uh I guess what has

184to happen other than us talking about it a couple of times and making sure that you look over it right so to kind of set the stage for you this is the first time obviously any of you really had a chance to see this so as board attorney I wouldn't recommend that this really be considered a first reading I think you need time to consider this and then have a a first reading since this is the first time that you've looked at this particular policy or thought through it um your options kind of working from the big picture down are to do nothing and leave your current policy in place uh it would be to look at adopting some version of this policy or this policy as it is written or to delegate this policy

185back to the superintendent to meet with the principles to talk about it further I think Miss Ray has already said her intention was if the board wants to set a firm line then the task of the administration would be to implement that and to figure out the best way to implement it but another approach would be to give this back to the administration and say see what the principles think about it kick the tires on it talk about it this is the number one Topic in the United States of America right now in public education number one all the list serves I'm on everything this is a constant topic of discussion I just had a session with another school board just this week looking at the same topic and the statistics are very straightforward teachers

186say it's very hard to enforce a cell phone ban for not using cell phones during school um parents by and large a lot of them say they want electronic access to their child during the school day and you're going to get a lot of push back from parents saying no my child should be able to look at their phone during class change or at lunch or other things because of family Dynamics and that's the expectation we have in 2024 is that our student is reachable electronically that is well documented and something school districts are struggling with throughout the country and then there are procedural practical issues like take Ashville high school if you're going to have a bag system where students check in their phone in a secure bag or something of that nature who's

187going to police that who's going to do it where's your Manpower what about students that come late or leave early what about emerc gencies and uh I'll let those principal speak for themselves but across the United States principles and other administrators are not thrilled about being in charge of $1,500 devices it really doesn't make them happy to know that they are in control of those and have some kind of a responsibility so very complicated issue and then another issue that's not legal but is a societal issue is that a lot of the social science out there right now is these students go home and have UNF access to their device all day and all night and nobody polies it so then the one place they come to that says you have to turn in your

188phone there's a lot of concern about how students are going to react to being literally physically separated from that device for the entire school day and it's just something to think about uh that's not a legal issue but your board members your policy Setters so I just will tell you that everybody is struggling with this and I hear this a lot with board meetings where the initial reaction is well just not only ban them but just take them away from students all day long let's just take them away so we don't have to deal with it but then all these other issues come up that I think you got to think through as you have this policy discussion so this is a perfect time to have it but I don't want anyone to feel like

189you have to make any and Miss Ray didn't intend that you try to make any decisions on anything tonight I think she wanted to start the conversation about would it be better to not only say you can't use them but you can't have access to them during the school day so you're in there with everybody else on this topic right now I have a question for Maggie Dr Maggie what can what can you do to speak to the parents to make sure that they understand that we are going to have a cell phone policy and if your kid get caught with that cell phone out this is what I mean you know this is the discipline portion that's going to happen so what can we do to make sure that the parents are 100% and

190understand that this is going to happen and you know and parents has to agree with us at least 80% and it it really will be you know working with the principles to support their communication and their um education training with their parents on hey here's the inform informing their parents sharing that we can send out as many district Communications but it really is going to be because as all Pol most policies are implemented at the school level so it's how do we support our principles with implementation the processes that we could put in place clear communication um parent sign off whether they acknowledge that yes we said we saw and we read the discipline policy regarding cell phones we understand that this is the school you know policy and procedure um so it's just it's

191about working with our principles to make sure that they've had the support they needed to communicate it effectively and hold opportunities for parents to come in and talk about it okay second question uh we do give students at least 10 days to enroll in school do we not I I mean is there something that we uh a student has 10 days in order to come to I mean to start class well I mean we I mean if a kid Miss I think what you're thinking about a couple things is one that we do we take an enrollment count you know after 10 days but then there's also you're right after a certain number of absences by law the parent has to be notified okay now with this new cell phone we're going to put in

192this year correct well you're discussing oh no okay okay okay okay disc this is discussion but when we discuss and put into place are we going to have a grace period like 10 days so that the parents and the student know that on this 11th day it's done so the principles were put on notice I said just be prepared you know I anticipate the board as they're looking at this cell phone no cell phones during school start talking with your staff about what would uh P like what would your response be when students have their phones out when they're not supposed to so the schools have been working with their teachers to develop what does that discipline policy look like at their schools I think as soon as we you know it's a it's not

193like you come to school day one you know the first day and we're going to you know lay you know lay the hammer down so it is a training it is an education it is like hey this is the warning we've told you here's the cell phone you've got to make sure that you've informed everyone they understand it and they're ready to you know at least rationalize why the policies in place let me give you one other quick one to think about yes you've told everybody they can't use cell phones when some kids their parents have the resources to buy them an Apple Watch and they'll be able to tell text with their parents while the student sitting next to them who can't afford an Apple Watch can't text and do you have the same

194rule that applies to things like apple watches so just think through these things do we want to go to this I'm also like this is not that different from the AMS policy last year so I'm just mindful that a policy is only as valuable as how it's enforced and so I have curiosity about carts and horses with this initiative like with how we want to move into the hottest Topic in the United States this is not like a small problem we've uncovered and we just want to nip it in the bud with a policy this is huge this is so huge I sent out not not to invite conversation I want my attorney to hear me say that but I shared and said please do not respond to me a really interesting sege podcast about

195this topic about a yeah kids actually could really benefit from like 6 hours a day of break from this technology how you go about doing that the how of it is not straightforward and so I'd like to know from the people who would have to implement this and we learned the last time we talked about this it looks one way in elementary schools looks very different in middle and high school setting things but what what tool what I want to do is offer a tool to our Educators not an albatross to our Educators so that's what's on my mind is H how which which which order of things because I would like for kids in Ashville City Schools to have a tech break from their cell phones and just engage in learning without the distraction

196and the addiction because this there's a lot of overlap with sort of what addiction looks like and how youth right now engage with cell phones that's like I I I'd like us to create those learning environments I just want to do it in a way that we actually create them I I want to jump in to to say it's it's the learning environment and it's the communication it's also they're being used to plan fights and altercations at school they're being used to record horrible violence at school so so it's not only that they're being distracted by them they're used as tools to encourage har or create harm that sorry that said I I totally do I agree let's he um okay so I would 100% agree with what you said a policy is one thing

197implementation is complex it is complex at any school a school like Blair's where there's you know students come in one of two entrances and they're kind of contained is additionally even more complex on a high school campus that is effectively a college campus we've got students coming and going and going to abtech and changing not just classes but entire buildings around so you know we've been having this conversation most of the summer about what what are the options what does this look like the one thing I'm very nervous about I do not want to sit here and think that Derek's voice speaks for everyone because when we talk about how complex this is our students are going to feel one type of way uh I won't say one type of way there there I've had

198enough conversations with students where there is actually some conversation amongst some of our students Abbott had a great um debate this year about cell phone use so I think students are starting to wake up to this but the addiction thing is very real um when you come and if you would like to come and work lunch duty with us you will see students just walk by the entire time in the class change up and downstairs with a phone like this and never look up that's that's heartbreaking as a as a father cuz I I try to be an administrator from a from a parent point of view like that is absolutely heartbreaking to watch our students do that um so I think students have a really we have to understand that they would have a

199really massive withdrawal and reaction if they were you know just totally taken away and at the same time I think about implementing it if if you acknowledge that is addiction at its core you also can't necessarily leave it in the pocket right you wouldn't take a heroin attic and say Here's a needle and some heroin you hold on to it and you know we'll hope for the best because if addiction is really that's what you're dealing with if it's in their pocket they're going to pull it out and use it as soon as the teacher turns around they're going to raise their hand say I need to go to the bathroom and they be in the bathroom so like we are struggling with this we have been struggling with it um exactly how you'll implement

200it and what somebody said the newest glitziest phones if you if it's broken stolen whatever it's $1,500 to replace so it's it is terrifying that that it's I mean if you take up a class room of cell phones and say they average you know just $500 at 30 kids in a classroom you you have a gold mine that you're say there holding um so that part makes us all nervous um I think I would speak for most of my teachers and I think they would really Rejoice I think with a hard hard line I think our sta our students are going to be somewhere in the middle our administrators I think will be fine with whatever you decide but we will be the ones ultimately implementing it and know that that that may be the

201Lion Share of our work for a while um whatever that is I mean we Maggie was in my office earlier last week and we were talking about the options from everything from the pouches I mean that takes it out of their hand or that I guess it leaves it in their hand but it's um bound and they can't access it for the whole day you got to figure out how to do that in the morning you got to figure out how to do that in the evening but it is locked up so you just have it's hard at the beginning it's hard at the end it's also crazy expensive I got a quote two years ago was $50,000 for our high school two years ago so there's there's that piece then there's the piece of

202well we'll have a policy and we're going to keep it in your hand you know in your pocket I don't know how successful that would be either because exactly what we talking about the addiction issu so those are kind of two ends of it and then there's a myriad of options in the middle that you know for classrooms to put them in you know calculator bags but then they're open you know I could walk by and take somebody else's phone and walk right out the door there's things where students these little lockers where students could lock them up uh we had some of those with some mix success on the high school campus kind of of the pilot last year the lock the keys got lost there's other ones that are the teacher just locks

203them all up at the beginning of the class and then gives them back at the end of the class so we've been going through all of these options and trying to figure out what would best fit on our campus um we're mostly just kind of in a holding pattern now to see what does happen I will say if there's a decision to get made we're closing in on the end of the summer this is not I would say something that can be decided October 5th and then we're going to implement it it's either decide and pull the plug this summer and get it going for the beginning of the year or it gets kicked to August whatever that would be 25 it is this is such a massive thing that we're all struggling with it's

204not something to do mid semester or even mid year um I know that's not a lot of clarity but it is something that we've really we've been grappling with and you know I some teachers will well most teachers will say they would prefer not to have cell phones in class some on the flip side let the kids use you know when they're typing the paper they'll let them listen to music or or whatever that could be done different ways you can accomplish that but it is I love hearing Chris say that it's the hottest Topic in education because if you pull the hundred and 60 teachers or staff I have on campus and the almost 1,600 students you would probably get 5 600 different responses exactly what the right measure is so I I will

205give you my feelings I'll give you what we've talked about what I'm not comfortable doing is sitting here telling you I speak for 160 staff um and and certainly not for 100 for 1,600 students either um but it is complex at a absolute minimum I don't have much to add I think it's just to reiterate the complexity of it all um and ultimately it's about the enforcement of um because part of the thing we struggle with at ashel middle school and it's just different but you have teaming structures and how different teams hold kids accountable to the same policy um and so if the policy is not clear then the teams can be a little bit more ambiguous about how they're enforcing that and then that creates division amongst your staff or the possibility of

206division amongst your staff so at the very least like a clear policy at the top and then us working towards some type of way to implement that policy and hold people accountable to it is to me like at the very least number one um on our school supply list that we sent home two weeks ago I mean I put earbuds compatible with Chromebook because I mean our goal is to move forward with cell phones our way so um the part of the reason we brought this today or this time is because the when we were talking about it in the spring it was clear that if if we wanted to do something we needed to try to do it before school starts or I I wasn't sure I was kind of thinking we could do

207it midy year but maybe not I don't know um in terms of actually implementing I think the schools I know the middle school's already working on a handbook that kind of assumes that there are no cell phones um that might be harder it's I think it would be harder for the high school campus I'll just say as far as the cost goes $50,000 and maybe it's 100 now is nothing compared to what we pay for technology in these schools and if it's a if it's a technology that could help our administrators if it if it it turns out to be helpful technology then that's a worthy investment to me um I think that when it is all in the implementation and I think that's why this this policy is written to be sort of a

208broad like hey this is the this is the policy but how it is implemented is going to totally depend on on the schools but at least it gives a the teachers and the administrators if a teacher is not enforcing the policy then it gives them the meat the backbone to be able to say you're not enforcing the policy um because it's clear but anyway sorry mik sorry BL Mike from a teacher standpoint um implementation of it's just different than anything else we deal with because of how much they are worth um and so if a teacher is not enforcing the policy what are the mechanisms that we're providing so that they can do that safely so they're not going to be liable for you know taking a phone Etc um even for kids at our

209school that have like a a plan to like turn it into the front office upon arrival I mean they're kind of locked in a drawer but is it 100% the safest um measure probably not so it's just the the monetary value of the phones just makes it different than basically anything else we deal with Amy I'm going to maybe this is a way to close this out I don't want to forall conversation but I appreciate your commitment to the issue I have some hesitancy about us implementing a policy from the top down without seeking information from the people on the ground who will have to enforce it I would probably be inclined to go with what I think was Chris's option three which is to say to Maggie here's something we're talking about can she

210spend some time with princip principls and teachers who are we're not going to enforce this policy they are I'm just sharing with you that's probably where I am on this um and I just want to say also um Derek got my attention with I don't although I think this is a really important policy I think there's a lot of other things we want from our principles and administrators that are really important about student growth and I don't this to me would not be the most important thing and so I just am offering that as perspective that I want to be careful when we say to the administrators in the building is this the most important thing we want you to spend all your time and resources on I'm probably not there because I think there's

211some other things we ought to be spending some time and resources on but I realized that wasn't the conversation you were trying to initiate just Sharon anything else so um yes so Sarah l uplifted um Chris's suggestion of taking what um Amy than you am what you have written um and kind of using that as a template to have that conversation or further conversations because I know this won not be the first that you've had with principles um about what you know if if this were the template for a policy how that could be effective for them and their schools how does that sound to the board I would I would be fine with that is there a motion that needs to be made or can that can just be by consensus I'm fine with

212that I would still go with a policy because I think it's important to give the I as I understand it what they want is Clarity and I'm hearing that and this is clear that said whatever you guys want to do um you know I just worry that the longer that we kick this can down the road when we know it's educationally better for our students at the end of the day that's the best choice for the students is like not having distractions and access to something that can harm other people use is we know is used and it is an addiction and so I you know I don't know the answer to that like but I know that if it's available it's then nothing nothing short a Banning it works right like whether Banning it

213works or not is an issue I don't know because no policy is 100% proof but if uh if the decision is to give it to Maggie to say go ahead and do whatever you guys think you should do then that's fine but we don't provide cover now for our principles I I would well one of the things though we it's not that we don't have a policy because we do have a cell phone policy allow it may be poorly written it may be there may be gaps in it but we have a policy we just haven't enforced it some places have others haven't and I think that I love like I said I really I'm with you I like what you wrote so we have a policy but by giving it to Maggie and to

214Administration to start to work on implementation or fine-tuning or whatever we do have something that we can fall back on until such time as this gets ready for the board to make a decision um I so I'm not saying not to implement anything or I mean we have something let's at least you know start with the bones of what we have to implement what we have um because again it worked at uh at at Northstar it worked at at Hall Fletcher there were places that were instituting it and using it we just had as a district as a whole did a piss poor job of doing it so let's let's work on that but at the same time give the administration the time to fine-tune because I like I said I'm all about let's just

215do it I I that's normally Rebecca knows we've had this discussion I'm about Let's Do It um but until the board as a whole can come to a good consensus let's give it to the administration to to to fine tune but that's but like I said I'm with you I understand it's it's a problem that definitely needs to be addressed yeah our our current policy to be fair doesn't ban cell phones at all and it actually encourages their use so what the reason that the policies that mford Northstar put into place and Hall Fletcher or whomever and Asheville Middle School tried last year was the that that was their own choice to to make the choices on the part of the administrators that that's what they they wanted classrooms and school environments to be free

216from cell phones at least during class I don't think any of them well I don't know I don't know whether they that meant at any time Bell to Bell um but the current policy we will want to change eventually because it actually encourages the use of cell phones so yeah I mean I guess what I had to ask is to me asking Maggie to work with their principles on you know this being a framework for how that could be could work within their schools doesn't preclude us from also saying can this then be worked into some kind with Chris's help and and with Lisa like can this be worked into something that could eventually become a first read those two things aren't mutually exclusive right I mean so I mean the two can can be

217working in concert going down the same same train track correct correct right yeah so I'd like to offer up that I heard derck Edwards say something that I think is important which is that he has observed our students waking up to this that's my observation as well that I think that I think there's a place for students in how we find our way forward in this that would be take longer but would ultimately put us I mean I keep coming back to that this isn't a small thing this is a huge huge issue with like that nobody has figured out and we could there's researchers there's all kinds of information and stuff I've seen it says involve students involve parents like that's how you're going to get to something that's what implementation is going to

218look like again if if what we figure is that the we're not putting cart before the horse I'm open to that but that I do think this is a topic where if for this to go as well as possible and our students to actually get what we want for them that there's a place for them in figuring out how how this looks and what happens and I know that would take a long time I um going like you know our current policy 4318 and I and I hear you that you want like like a strong ban but the sentence does read and I know we talked about this last time therefore students are permitted to possess such devices on school property so long as the devices are not activated used displayed or visible during the

219instructional day or other otherwise directed by school rules or School personnel and then in the second paragraph it does you know reference the code of cond code of student conduct which indicates like that's really where the school expectation would live is in that student code of conduct and so I mean that's where the principles would have the autonomy to to put that like in clear writing and what the expectations are in that student code of conduct without having to create another policy but having a stiff expectation a strong expectation in that code of conduct I like the idea of Dr Maggie I want us to get to what where your policy is talking about but this road that we're going down starting with today uh with our retreat we're just not operating as a team

220a whole team a whole problem solving team through courageous conversations and this is a topic that's a courageous conversation because it could either really go badly because of poor planning and how we implement it but I do think after today and a couple of the exercises that we Dr Maggie LED today on what is central office position when it comes to student achievement what is the principal's role when it comes to student achievement and whose job is it this topic is so layered that if we don't understand what the board's role is in this which is writing the policy but we haven't had feedback from the students it's just a different beast when you're talking about the high school and I want everyone to be all in it to get to where you are so

221that so that it's not topped down we're in this together and allow Dr Maggie to start those courageous conversations and have them with students so that we do put a policy in place that leads to what you're saying I think there's so many other components that we haven't given our students and staff a opportunity especially at the high school um I would just like to have her sorry Dr Maggie Dr Maggie us because we're on a pathway that I think is good and we're hearing each other for the first time does that make sense I think what you're talking about is highly needed but it's layer and we want to do it the right way to get to what you're talking about Dr Ferman do you feel like you have enough to go on yes

222I do I'm good yep um Chris is going to talk a little bit more about the Title Nine these are on there for review um there are some changes that have been made these are not on there as first read and so I'm going to let Chris speak to you about the current updates on uh Title 9 and I guess pending court cases as well sure that'd be good so let me tell the board what I can tell you in Open Session obviously if you've got any legal questions about the um implementation of the new regs on the Asheville City Schools or issues with the Asheville City Schools please save those for closed session because that's where we do attorney client advice but what I can tell you and tell the public is that there

223are multiple lawsuits across the United States right now that call into question the new regulations for Title 9 that were implemented by the current Administration and there is a specific federal case in Kansas in which the federal judge in that particular case ruled that any school districts that had current or prospective members of moms for Liberty that had students in those schools would be part of an injunction on the new title 9 regulations and the group The National level group of moms for Liberty has been asked to make court filings as to where they have membership to my knowledge to date the Asheville City schools has not been included in the North Carolina list as far as that's concerned so there's no strict legal prohibition right now now to implementing the two t the new

224title 9 regulations in the ash City Schools but what I want to make clear to everybody is more holistically the title n regulations are just that they're an administrative regulation to enforce title n and they're procedural in nature and substantive in nature the majority of the title n regulations are procedural in nature how we investigate claims and again take some of the contentious issues such as family status transgender students take those out of the equation right now a lot of what Title 9 just talks about is that if a male student is accused of sexually harassing a female student how's that going to be investigated who investigates it what's the process how does all that work so that's what Title 9 is kind of focused on I think it is clear that the focus nationally

225on challenging those regulations has to do with the expanded definition in those regulations regarding gender identity sexual orientation but specifically gender identity we are in North Carolina the law is different in North Carolina than it is in Alabama or Texas or Tennessee or New Jersey we have a federal district level court case that extends Title 9 protection to transgender students so that was not done by a Administration that was not done by the Biden Administration that is a federal court case out of the state of Virginia that the Supreme Court of the United States did not review nor has the Supreme Court of the United States reviewed cases from the 11th circuit cases involving Alabama Louisiana now that there are federal cases about the implementation of the Title Nine Rags I think it will get

226heard by the United States Supreme Court so the one thing for everyone to take a collective breath for just a second is the regs don't really impact North Carolina that much to begin with because we have court cases that extend Protections in certain circumstances and really as far as your Administration goes and in reviewing bullying harassment discrimination investigating those things we in the state of North Carolina have a legal obligation to do those things regardless of the debate over the new Rex so that's the point I really wanted to make clear is that whether or not a school system is subject to the injunction in a very real sense doesn't make a huge substantive difference because there's already a legal obligation from court cases to protect students that have certain transgender rights in certain circumstances

227so you've got time to review these consider these one of the things that we're going to do and this is in conversation uh while we wanted you to take the time and do this the way that that you really want to do it is for a lot of clients we're looking at potentially an interum type policy while these court cases work their way through the system so we want you to see that we want you to see what that looks like and we'll get that to you as well but if I had a recommendation to you right now it's just read through these policy changes and kind of familiar yourself but know that as far as protecting students students investigating issues following through on those issues that's still going to happen whether these policy changes

228are in place or not the other thing I'll make you feel real good about is the new regs allow some more streamlined due process well the old regs which your old policy is based on provides really broader protections to students that are accused and students that are victims they try to streamline the process a little bit in the new reg so while you're implementing your current policies you're actually in some ways providing more due process to students than than you have to so you're not violating anything you're not in violation of the law this is not like parents Bill of Rights there's not some deadline out there about policy changes there are deadlines out there about how the federal government is going to implement it but the federal government's been enjoined in a lot of

229places the Administration has from implementing but again in North Carolina we've got court cases and those Court cases take precedent over anything that any presidential Administration any Department of Education would do the court cases come first Mr Carter so so then these are listed on the agenda's first read They're All listed all as first read you know and and I love to break down minor changes and substantive changes um technically can we pull them so that they don't come on to next week's agenda right there's two ways I understand your question there's two ways to deal with that procedurally one is nothing prevents the chair and superintendent with your consensus to just put them back on the next work session as an additional first read you can have as many readings as you want or

230you could have a motion to table them that that's up to you but the chair and the superintendent control the agenda and they could put it they could put them back on for an additional first reading if that's the consensus of the board and if everyone's okay with that there's no need for a formal motion to table and you wouldn't have to vote on that either just if someone doesn't like that idea please speak up otherwise I think that's a good idea to give you all some more time to digest because there's a lot here and I know you haven't had time to really think through it and you may have some legal questions that we can answer in just a little while when we get into Clos session and they are on there just

231as Title Nine for review okay great so not technically intended to be First Street not intended to be First Street excellent that's helpful thank you anything else for Chris that's it okay anything else on below there where you youve got your um what was it looking at oh yeah the resented policies all of that stuff everything under Everything is totle Everything changes along with their ascended policies all of those sections go together cool thank you okay all right anything else from the board before before we go into close session so then I'll um ask for a motion oh yeah actually yeah let me do future meetings you know uh so yeah so future meetings uh next Monday is our regular board meeting uh here in the Board Room uh that's at 5:00 P PM Monday

232August 12th and then we'll uh then students will be back in school and that first day of school is is 6 thank you um that's August 26 and then we'll start up again in a in September with our next work session which is Monday September 9th um and with that I will entertain a motion for the board to enter into Clos session pursuant to and I'll let Chris take it from here actually you can say as printed in the agenda as printed in the agenda it easy oh great second it's been moved in seconded all in favor I I I and then uh Liza will we we will need you to vote as well she on if you're still on she's on she's off okay okay