2-25-2025 Appoquinimink School Board Meeting

001e e e 25th 2025 EP quinic school board meeting uh the board went into executive session at 5:30 on motion of Miss DT second by Dr Graham to discuss certain legal and Personnel issues we are now out of executive session and ready to start our regular meeting so with that uh we'll start our meeting the way we always do with the Pledge of Allegiance iedge Alle to United States of America stand indivisible andice for all all right thank you um tonight on the agenda we H uh have some reports we'll have some board comments there's no old business we have a number of items for new business at the end of the meeting we'll have our Personnel report as normal and then we'll establish new meeting dates Dr burough are there any adjustments to the

002agenda as uh posted online there are no adjustments the agenda is posted online okay so with that we will skip down to reports item 7A the high school course catalog good evening everybody I am Nick Hoover and I'm the director of secondary curriculum instruction and assessment um I am uh joined by Mr tro he is on Zoom tonight um we're going to talk about a few things in this uh first report um so you have a a packet of things in front of you first we have our high school course catalog we have our Middle School course catalog and um we also have have our profile of a graduate so we're going to talk about all of those there there's another flyer there that we'll kind of get to in a little bit so um

003first we're going to start off with our high school course catalog I do think that this is something that um as a district we are extremely proud of you've probably heard us talk about this for many years now um personally I think it's probably one of the best in the country if uh if not the best um many of you have gone through the high school course catalog so I'm not going to go into great detail but I do want to set the purpose that the high school course catalog is meant for our eighth grade students as they're preparing to go into high school so there are some things about you know what does a transition look like from middle school to high school obviously those are are two different levels right um obviously the

004big part of it is about you know scheduling and students selecting courses and getting prepared uh as they move into high school and there's a lot of information in there as students are thinking about uh college career what does it look like after we uh graduate high school um so you will see a lot of that information tonight I just want to give you a little bit of an update from previous or from last year so this year you're going to see 22 Pathways previously we had 24 I'll talk a little bit about that in in a second we are really proud to offer 32 AP course offerings and 42 AP exam opportunities why I think that's important is um AP is something that U those are courses that are are rigorous those are courses

005that should resemble what students will see in college um that's also something that districts across the country get raid on uh so AP courses I think are are very important and the fact that we offer 32 uh that's a wide range we have many many many students take AP throughout their High School career the last piece I wanted to highlight here is that we have five concentrations I'll explain what that is in a second we have sport management mathematics JC forensic science and jdg um so these are uh these are areas that may not be Pathways um but it also is something distinguished enough that students can get recognized for taking these courses for example forensic science only has two courses so those two courses don't add up to be a whole pathway but it

006allows students to take a pathway and then also take a concentration in forensic science if that's something that they're they're interested in so we see more concentrations this year than we have before so again these are the high school course catalog is for our eighth grade students as they prepare to move into high school it's really built for students to be able to have that course catalog over multiple years this is for this specific graduating class right so if you have a high School course catalog from three years ago that's not really good for our current eighth graders right lots of changes have happened so this is meant for this graduating the graduating class from our eth graders right so let's move into our Middle School course catalog because this is something relatively new we

007started this last year um several years ago we started to have a discussion around well we've got this beautiful high school course catalog we're preparing our high school students really our eighth grade students for high school and preparing them to graduate what would that look like if we had a middle school course catalog preparing our fifth graders to enter Middle School I'm a middle school person I I worked my entire career in middle school until coming over to the district office and although I'm sure some people would argue in the K to2 system the transition from fifth grade to sixth grade to me is one of the biggest ones it's completely different the setup is different the number of classes the number of teachers you know I I I often say when you say hey

008you've got French on your your schedule kids don't even know that they speak French in France right and in sixth grade sometimes so this is a big transition so we wanted to work on a course catalog for middle school students as they I'm sorry fifth grade students as they're preparing to go to middle school so what you're going to see there a couple of highlights number one um there's a lot of information in this catalog again Middle School course catalog that's preparing them for Middle School what two expect what are the courses you're going to see what are some things that are going to you know help you be successful in middle school again I think that's really important um although I believe the high school course catalog is also for families the Middle School

009course catalog is built for students and their families um so you're going to see that you're going to see the course offerings that we have something important that I want to highlight there is that those are course uh we're looking for preferences from students um meaning that we have all of our courses listed there but maybe all of those courses aren't offered at all of the middle schools okay so that's something that I wanted to make sure we put out in in public last piece I wanted to say about the Middle School course catalog is as we started this conversation several years ago it was Mr tro who actually went out and said listen in order for us to do a course catalog I think I can find a grant and find some money to

010be able to to do this so he went out found a grant we've um we've gotten that grant for multiple years now and so we're able to use that money to to put towards our our Middle School course catalog along with a couple of other things to bolster up our Middle School experience the the last piece that we're going to talk about is the high school I'm sorry is the profile of a graduate why did we put all three of these together it's because you should be able to see the through line right when you're ready you know what we're trying to look at is what are we looking for our graduates to know as they're moving on right that's the profile of a grad this is what we want our students leaving appoquinimink and

011having these skills as they leave well let's take a step back because those are for our graduates what are we looking for our eighth graders to enter into High School you've got the high school course catalog what are we looking for our fifth graders as they're moving into Middle School there's our Middle School course catalog so these really are all connected um and in order for in to me in order for them to be relevant they have to be connected I'm going to throw it over to uh Mr tro to talk a little bit about profile of grad thank you Mr Hoover um yes so with the uh profile graduate um we have for the first time actually placed this profile graduate in our high school course catalog because it really is it really does

012speak to everything that the high school course catalog is about but it's not just about high school course catalog it's also about the Middle School course catalog Elementary and um our uh prek and kindergarten centers as well so these kids are getting a um you an education from Apple quinic this speaks to that K12 system I wanted to just take everybody back because we did roll out and presented on the profile of a graduate um a couple of summers ago um and we had we had rolled that out um to the school board and more recently it's been going out to the public but if um if you're listening and and you're new to hearing about it or if you're new to the board and and uh wasn't there for that presentation I wanted to

013give you a brief history of how that came to be so this was actually a vision of our superintendent um Dr burrow had this Vision back um in 2018 we started this work um in 2018 2019 um and did get interrupted um in 2020 but it it it got back on track and we were able to complete this work so the profile is done as you see it it is in the course catalog it's also in some of our other communication tools that we have um and the whole idea here is to to make sure that we're speaking about it and we're living it so um for those of you that are unfamiliar with it it is found on appoc cc.com as well as on our district websites and our school websites as well so

014parents and prospective students and families can go on there and kind of see what does um a profile of an app quinic School District student look like well it defines really what Student Success is in our district it ensures that our graduates have a well-rounded skill set it includes things that are are like I said in our course catalog that those durable skills that they get our district beats um adaptability problem solving skills um and that's all in addition to the academic skills that they'll get in their core class as well as the technical skills they get in their pathway courses so it really is to ensure that students are prepared for the real world because it aligns with what the workforce and our postsecondary higher ed Partners expect they were all part of the

015build of this we've had um not only 50 plus um uh stakeholders on the steering committee but this has also gone out to surveys to our parents our families our students our teachers and administrators so um real quick on how we use it so this is used in the development of our new curriculum as well so if I'm writing a new pathway we're looking to make sure that that new pathway has the skills in it that we say um that our students will have and lastly if you can go to the next slide Steve the the next big piece to this is making sure that it's communicated throughout our community um so you will see that in our superintendent newsletter there are pieces that are communicated out um monthly through our principal newsletters and they're

016communicating that with their staff their students their families um there's another component where we're going to be pushing it out to our business partners out in the community even if they're not a a direct partner just getting out there like we do for the referendum and just talking about what our graduates have to offer so a lot more to come I just wanted to make sure that everyone our community our school board is aware that this is a living document that's aligned with our strategic plan um it's something that we're using and we want everyone to be familiar with with it talking about it um because this is really what um and who we are as EP quent thank you thanks Mike um one more thing I'm going to put you on the spot if

017if that's okay um Everybody also has a flyer to the workforce Readiness Fair um I I I don't think we were prepared to talk about that tonight however since there is a flyer and it connects directly to our high school course catalog our Middle School course catalog and the profile of graduate I wanted to see if you could take maybe two or three minutes to just kind of talk about that fair and uh and what that looks like yeah thank you for the opportunity because it really is a great event if um if you haven't been to it that includes anybody who's listening our school board um the workforce Readiness fair is really a culmination of of all of the um work-based learning things across the Continuum that our students have been getting since kindergarten

018tomorrow morning I'm going to I think it's at bch um there's our construction students are are going to be with our kindergarteners it's it's really a K12 thing that's happening and it culminates up through into middle school and then and culminates into a senior level immersion experience prior to that senior level immersion we are saying that we want them to be kind of stamped if you will as Workforce ready so they're ready we're not just throwing a student out there on internship so those students are going to go to this Workforce Readiness fair in their junior year we're going to take about a thousand students um to Delaware Tech uh and do Terry campus they have been gracious enough to host us and we're going to have um all three high schools there at one

019time and they're going to be uh they're we're going to deliver curriculum from our business partners the curriculum booklet um that I think you've received a couple of times before um that has the um Workforce tips in it the resume the networking the interviewing skills so instead of just us as a school district teaching that during the school day we value it so much that uh we want to take them off campus and have our industry Partners teach them that curriculum they're going to teach them how to shake hands they're going to teach them how to prepare for an interview um how to tie a tie things like that so it's kind of conference Style um we are looking for more people to attend both um just as a guest to pass through or if

020you're looking to get involved we we do need more business partners to help out with that so if anybody's interested anyone on the school board's interested uh please just shoot me an email and I'll get you the link that you can sign up so that's on March 12th um all morning it's it's from about 9:00 to to 1:00 um it's a great event we've been put this on for a number of years now this is our first time at Terry campus but and I'm really excited about it because we're able to couple that with a college tour at the same time so it's it gets better every year yeah thanks Mike I I think you did a nice job there of explaining that again through line that that's that's just one more step you know

021when you're talking about the profile of a grad it's not just some random thing over here Mike talked about how it's aligned to the Strategic plan how it's tied to the workforce ready it's tied to work based learning which is tied to the high school course catalog which is tied to the Middle School course catalog each one of those steps are really important and they're connected so um with that I think uh open it up to any questions any questions I don't have any questions but I do have a comment um having two kids that graduated one before the profile of a graduated of The Graduate was completed I can see the and then one that graduated in 2024 um I see the difference in the last one and how everything that's in on this

022profile of her graduate page she successfully does not all very well but mostly very well so she's very prepared she's a freshman in college and she is exactly what this what this is so um I'm I'm a testament of that from both both children the other one he's working on it but she is like solid she she's doing an amazing job at school and she always says Mom it's it's all the stuff that Miss mois sent back you know for their the forgot what you call the summatives um but everything here um she is excelling at so excellent thank you for that feedback I appreciate it and thank you also for being on that committee because it's it was many years uh in press and it and you know it takes a while to create

023something really good so yeah um I think similar to Mr Wht I just wanted to comment on this um the Middle School catalog in my little guy recently left Old State first year at cwell and I found this really helpful I think you actually explained it and went over it with me at the top of the school year so I think there's there's certainly value in this um obviously I look forward to being able to use the High School catalog in a few years but I think this product that you all have produced is of quality and it's very helpful because to your point earlier um that transition from fifth grade to sixth grade is pretty significant um totally caught me by surprise so um just in many facets but um I definitely see this

024as a value ad so thank you to you and the team for putting this together there's enough kind of happening and when you can reference something to kind of guide you accordingly um it's always very um helpful so thank you thank you for the feedback any other questions well I agree the course catalog is a model for Delaware and the country and everybody who's involved with it um deserves the appropriate praise it's really an amazing thing and um I remember first getting on the board we used to have parents sometimes complain they didn't have enough options for their kids now I think it's the opposite problem their kids don't have enough uh class class availability to take all the very excellent classes that are there um Shameless plug we created some opportunities during the summer

025because we have so many opportunities we did hear that from parents my kid can't take all the classes that they want so we actually have some offerings in the summer to help out with that too if you want to know more check out the website and I'll just again say and I want to have some further talks with you at some point I mean you know High School is a tremendous time you only go through it once you only have these opportunities sometime once in your life I was in a high school play or two I was never in a play again after that but I had the opportunity to do it and I learned a lot just from doing that and there's just dozens of courses like that that aren't necessarily in your career

026pathway they're not math they're not science they're not English but they're still worth taking whether it's photography or art or music um and so I wouldn't you know you've got 32 classes every kid can take 32 classes over their High School career and it's saddens me every time I talk to a parent or a student who you know doesn't take advantage of all 32 of those opportunities agreed all right well thank you thank you thank you oh thank you Mike didn't mean to uh leave you out there thank you for all the good work you do too uh next on the agenda we have strategic Plan update and I think it's our same speaker Dr Hoover me again so we're here to talk about the Strategic plan and uh we have a whole team who's

027going to do some some work here I'll just wait for our slides um so we're here to just give an update tonight um in I believe it was October we came and presented um a little bit uh or to talk a little bit about the Strategic plan we cover covered what our goals were we have five goals so um each of our leads took their goal kind of talked about what the goal is we talked about some of the the highlights that we have going on with that goal and then we also talked about some action steps things that we're working on so what we're doing tonight is we're going to just refresh everybody's memory uh about what each goal is and then give you an update on the action steps so again if we

028had three bullet points of action steps we were taking in October we're going to try to give you an update on each of those tonight so with that I'm going to pass that off to Mr pman all right so we'll start with uh goal one here and as you know a board member is is linked up to uh each one of the the goals so if I could I would ask Mr Abrams to just read the goal and then I could certainly take it from there so for goal one is to ensure the learning environment is rigorous relevant and engaging all right and then the strategies are to increase the frequency quality of student discourse in the classroom uh offer courses that provide rigorous instruction and access for all Learners and provide certification and work-based

029learning experiences before graduation so as we move along here you'll see the action steps and then the progress so Steve um so the first one practice Smarter Balance assessments were intentionally placed in the pacing guides for grades 3 to8 uh so those assessments are currently in there we're currently practicing those assessments and a lot of those assessments have to do with test taking and the types of questions that will be asked to get kids familiar with taking the actual test um so we promis they would be in there and they are currently in there and they're being implemented the second bullet point building out uh preap one and2 AP seminar English in high school uh to build on the Equitable Pathway to AB success for all Learners um I believe um they are currently in

030the course catalog that you have in front of you this evening so they have been placed in there um so that we've not only progressed we have finished that next slide so professional development and coaching grounded in the principles of instruction and focused on intentional planning and lesson design that meets the needs of diverse Learners that's that's a lot there um the principles of instruction are research based strategies that we have identified as a district and that we uh expect our teachers utilize in their planning we've talked a lot this fall into the winter about lesson planning and and sort of getting back to the fundamentals of planning and implementing those research-based strategies in our plan we use the October 2024 conference day at Odessa High School to provide plenty of opportunities for teachers to

031choose and sit on sit in on some of those workshops and also all of our buildings have coaches so we've been using our uh coaches our instructional coaches uh to work with teams and teachers on the lesson uh plan design um before are there any questions for me about go one one thing I do want to highlight connected to our previous presentation there's a lot of great work there and Mr Hoover talked about the through line one of those items that was talked about and it's almost I think eight years later it's become more decoration and people don't understand it are the Beats which were referred to that are hanging in the back of this room and every school in our district and there were a lot of meetings that took place where we had

032a lot of debate and discussion on the skills that we wanted our students to have upon graduation from our district so uh it was mentioned in the previous presentation but I can tell you it hasn't been lost in our discussions uh in lesson planning and what we're looking for uh in terms of good instruction so like I I I almost think we need to bring back attention to that again so it's not just uh wallpaper just one to thank you and mik taking the time to C prior to us getting here tonight I know there's a lot of time and effort what you guys put together I just I was going to thank you during board comments but I just want to make sure I said that thank you for all that time you thank

033you good evening I have goal two and Mr wit's going to share what that goal is so goal two foster a supportive environment for our staff and students priority strategies strengthen multi-tier system of support which stands for mtss strengthen mtss systems and processes strengthen mtss skills and knowledge and staff mental and emotional Wellness thank you wel so some of our action items um our first one was to continue working with schools to ensure appropriate interventions are in place for students based on needs so this is looking at a Continuum of services for students including academics but also social emotional and behavioral and so we've been really working hard we've been getting coaching support from our student service team we also have three Community Schools and they also partner with our schools to help help um

034teams have more training on what appropriate um interventions could be and then we also work with the Delaware mtss and PBS teams as well to help strengthen that implementation our other um action step on this slide is to reduce the number of chronically absent students in our school district so we actually launched a district campaign back in December it started off um districtwide and then it went out by schools it's also gone out in the superintendent message so we're trying to really get the word out to families about the importance of coming to school every day um doesn't help that we had a really bad flu season but we definitely are seeing the impact at schools on attendance um another great thing has been our social workers partner with our schools so they actually attend

035all of our building mtss meetings where they're talking about individual students and attendance as a part of that and then they partner with the schools to help Provide support supports to those families and that connection has definitely made a big impact with getting students to school more regularly and then our last action step was building Level Training um to help finish rolling out it's unified insights mtss intervention component so this is a data system that we use to help us better track what um what services we're providing for students um for intervention and so we have rolled that out especially at the elementary level they are using it with Fidelity we are able to track what intervention students are getting um our coaches are heavily trained on this and have helped lead that with our

036mtss teams it's just a much easier way for us to be able to see what support students are getting and are they working because that's the key we need to know if they they are getting the right intervention and we're seeing an impact on their learning from that um so we've made some really good Headway this year we also have a new um person coming into the student service department soon and they're going to be leading a lot of this work with mtss which we haven't really had like a main lead person to be able to help support this there's lots of different people doing it right now but it be very helpful to have one key person that will take a lot of this work especially for social emotional behaviors any questions for goal

037two what role would that person play like what's their so their role is coordinator of School counseling and student services it's a big it's a big name but so they're gonna be working with school counselors but also they're going to be doing a lot of work around mtss was that already on position or was that a add it so we actually had someone that vacated and moved moved to a different role within a school and so we had a vacancy and we repurposed it to make it a little more tailor to what is needed in our student service department thank you you're welcome good evening I'm going to talk about goal three Mr forston if you'd like to read that for us sure goal three provide high quality supports and opportunities to build staff capacity

038great and our strategies are to create a coordinated and differentiated professional learning plan for all staff to gather and use data on all professional learning opportunities and to build and sustain a framework for successful instructional coaching um our first action step was to continue to seek those opportunities for job embedded professional learning uh Mr pman was talking about those interim assessments that we use that are aligned directly to smarter balanced so our our elementary coaches um were provided with some professional learning and then they have turn keyed uh their learning with the staff and what makes it job embedded is this happens during our professional learning communities uh with our teachers in addition our secondary coaches uh worked on analyzing assessment data and once again it's job embedded they work with the teachers they TurnKey

039that into um our professional uh our professional learning um plc's our second action step is to review the professional learning feedback form so every time our staff engage in professional learning at the district level they complete a professional learning response form for us to give us feedback on the particular sessions that they attended um and what might we offer in the future and so the teaching and learning team reviews uh the professional learning surveys reviews those um to make uh determinations for next steps including already starting to plan for the 2526 school year and then lastly like our goal says we want to build the capacity so we're working to build capacity of our instructional coaches our lead teachers and our dep Department chairs uh so one example of some action we've taken is our

040elementary coaches and our lead teachers have received professional learning on a new writing resource it's a digital platform um this platform allows our students to have experience I es that mirror smarter balanced um that incorporate directly with our current curriculum offer novel study opportunities uh aligned to English language arts and social studies along with grammar practice we're building their capacity to understand the platform and then turn key uh that with our with our teachers um just was in a classroom the other day and saw it in action so our students and teachers are engaging and then lastly our secondary coaches have led instructional rounds with their Department chairs and they're really looking for Trends so that they can formulate some takeaways uh those rounds allowed for um fostering collaborative discussions on best practices informing professional

041development needs and ensuring a cohesive approach to teaching and learning any questions about goal three thank you good evening I oversee goal four um Mrs Michelle wall is with me on this goal so um I'll go ahead and read the goal for her so goal four is establish meaningful engagement and collaboration with the community our priority strategies include Implement school-based engagement teams activities articulate engagement process for district decisions and feedback grow and expand relationships with industry partners and administer the abic school district annual stakeholder survey action steps for goal four um one of the things that we know is that our schools and our various departments are doing a wonderful job with family and Community engagement so the first thing that we are working very diligently on is how we can collect data regarding those

042events and activities that they're hosting so one of our strategy teams is working to create a tool that will be used to collect that data for how many events were had what the focus area was who was attending those events how many families we have brought out so that's something that our team is working very hard on as a part of that we're also trying to determine best practice for that data collection so at the building level who is responsible for inputting what's happening who's arriving how are we monitoring that attendance level family engagement so there's the things that we're working on and um our last action action step is creating structure around our abmic annual stakeholder survey which will be coming out very soon so one of those is working on the timeline for

043when that goes out so that way families staff members know each year when it's distributed how long they have to take it we're also working with our schools for their internal processes for how staff take it how we get it out to more families our students also between certain grade levels take it so we're working to make sure that everyone understands the timeline and our expectations for percentage of um who takes it the other piece of that is working together to collaborate on the questions being asked to make sure we're Gathering the right information to be used for various goals throughout the Strategic plan any questions you mentioned the students that participate in the stakeholder survey what grades are they um it starts I believe in grade three and above TI okay thank you yeah

044I'll turn it over to Dr small thank you Danielle so I am the leader for goal number five and Dr Graham is my team member so Dr Graham if you could kick it off for us sure um our goal five is live our commitment to equity and accelerate achievement for all stakeholders thank you said so well priority strategies for goal five are provid proving rigorous tier one instruction for all students with a Continuum of services focused on inclusive practices improving current recruitment hiring and retention practices to more closely resemble the diverse student population of the school district and providing Equity training to staff members to increase transparency of Education efforts to the district community at large so some of the action steps that we are taking are um first continuing efforts to recruit and retain

045minority Educators and one of the items that we've just embarked on about a week and a half ago was the hosting a job fair we had about 250 individuals visit our do job fair and express interests in the appic school district um so a successful event we are revitalizing our educators of color Network and educators of color and allies Network to ensure that we are making strides with regard to our current staff members that are a part of our school district already we're updating our diversity and recruitment plan to ensure that we have a strategy that's current um our Recruitment and Retention task force is working to amplify the voices of the and the perspective of all of our Educators in our school district um we're hosting events and check-ins for International teachers um trying

046to make sure that the the individuals that are part of our school district that are from other countries and areas are comfortable and have a soft Landing when they arrive and are successful in their time that they're here with us and we're collaborating with the Department of Education from Delaware Department of Education excuse me focusing on educator recruitment self-study in order to make sure that we don't have any blind spots in the work that we're doing from the perspective of recruitment and retention our second action step is developing and interweaving principles of Equitable instruction and to every Educator's practice um we've been doing work with HB 198 which is the um house bill that works to make sure that there is African-American history and our history and social studies curriculum um we are making sure

047that we have an lens on equity and our district walkthroughs to ensure that all of our Learners are meeting um with success in the experiences that they have in our classrooms um we one of our future events is a capacity building training with New York University metro New York University metro culturally responsive and sustaining education program that will begin in the fall of 2025 and final slide is leveraging data digs um with our schools and our administrative cabinet team and essentially a data dig is a method of making sure that our individuals that are leading our schools are informed about what's happening in their schools from the perspective of data um we do the same thing from the perspective of our administrative cabinet team members to make sure at the district level we are informed

048and our um understanding of what's happening in our schools with our students so that we are data conscious and we are informed in our interactions when we are interacting and interfacing with our students with our staff members with our stakeholders of our community I have a question um the training through New York University will they be coming here or the staff going there I'm more than likely they will be coming here if there is travel that's involved but with the invention or with the Advent of Zoom we can do it uh virtually as opposed to in person in some cases um the face-to-face interaction may be more valuable than uh going through a computer screen but in times where it's efficient to do it that way we'll be doing it through Zoom thank you you're

049welcome so I don't have um a question I just wanted to make a comment about the equity walkthroughs sure um that the district will be launching and so I had an opportunity to participate in one I guess two Fridays ago at this point at bch um and it was very eye openening and I think one mistake that I just want to highlight or assumption um that is often made is that when we talk about Equity that we automatically default to race and yes that is a component of it but I would encourage the Educators and the leaders of the district that as these walkthroughs occur that we really look at this through the lens in addition to all other areas but certainly through the lens of special education um in that walkth through and I

050had I think I had opportunity to observe four different classrooms with um a leader from U ofd and then the local school leadership uh it was very eye openening in terms of what the students needed and just in the regular day naturally hopefully inherently intrinsically teachers are looking and evaluating what our student what our students need need kind of dayto day and that this doesn't feel like something extra like there was an actual tool you mentioned in here that they used and it was maybe four or five pages and some of the dialogue or some of the concern was that it would feel like another task and I kind of pushed back and challenged that thought in the moment because to me it just felt like this should be something that's naturally occurring um in

051our classes and so I would encourage you know our district our leaders um and our teachers to kind of look at it as this is something that should be naturally occurring and it shouldn't be viewed as an additional task because if we're really showing up and doing what we say which is doing what's best for students then this should feel very natural to you as opposed to kind of automatically defaulting to you have to do something special for your students of color or something along those lines and so I was very impressed um with the walkthrough and the content but it was very eye openening and you know if if I'm candid it was um it was thought-provoking but it kind of left me slightly discouraged by the possible um perception that this is just

052another task for the for our teachers to do and so I appreciate the work around that I look forward to the feedback and the next steps because like I said I had an opportunity to be exposed to it a little a few weeks ago and so I just wanted to make that comment that I don't view it the equity walkthroughs as something additional that we're trying to force our teachers to do but something that is inherent to who you are as a educator in our school district well said I would also add that it's sometimes said that discomfort is the beginning of a learning moment and sometimes it takes that discomfort to get to a point where you're feeling um inspired about the work that needs to occur absolutely the work doesn't ever get easier

053we get better at the work and when we get better at the work it becomes more autonomous so um I think the the thinking that I would conclude from that is the idea that it's hard at first um but it gets easier because we get better at the work we start to um get to a point where we're able to do it with less frequency for the sort of the mechanical implementation of it but the internalization of the work that we're doing because it comes from the natural tendency to to learn and grow and and want to do better with it absolutely absolutely thank you thank you for summarizing my thoughts I appreciate that I just wanted to make one comment as we wrap up here that um although you see our our five goal

054Leads Here each one of them have strategy leads and so those strategy leads there's probably four or five strategies for each one of these folks we have a strategy lead for each one some of them also have teams under them and eventually that has to filter into our school schols and into the classroom so this is not just a uh you know when we have our meetings it's not one or two or five of us there's a whole lot of us doing that work and ultimately it filters into the school um maybe my theme tonight is through line because the through line here is that it can't just happen in this room and then we go back and it doesn't touch the school then a strategic plan is useless so um there's a lot of

055work that's being done and I thank everybody for doing that any other questions all right well thank you very much and thanks to everyone who's working on this next on the agenda we have the superintendent report Dr burough good evening a little bit later in the month with our board meeting this month uh seems like so long ago that we had snow um and today the temperature was almost 60 so like it's uh welcome to Delaware uh this month we have National Career and Technical education month we also have 3rd through the 7th it was National School counseling week the 20th was a National Education support professional day and then the 21st was school bus driver appreciation day I want to note on the last two the educational support professional and school bus driver day

056there also is days in April um but that is during our spring break so we are recognizing them in February we currently have 34 full-time teaching openings and 22 full-time par professional openings I will note that those are at a low they've been at the last three years um so we're just very thankful for that as we look for ways to continue to get high quality staff into the district I want to give U hudos to our human resource department led by Dr small and our public information office led by Danielle proh Hudson um we did as was mentioned I just want to highlight this more we did have a job fair 3 weeks what was it sorry February 8 thank you and um at the job fair we initially had 170 people register we

057had 252 show up actually we out parked the parking lot at uh Crystal Run um so that was a that's a problem to have um so we know in the future that uh we're we'll be more prepared to address that um that need I mentioned HR department because their team did a a ton of work to organize this and put this all together also to all of our building administrators who and to our department leads who all had tables there um were there bright and early in the morning uh ready to roll and welcome our our job um applicants and then also to our public information office who uh mailed out and advertised and got our 252 people there and so I think that's Kudos total team effort um and as we look to continue

058to get highquality staff in the front of our students we are up 167 students from our September 30th count we do continue to grow um we continue to have needs as a district um we are currently uh meeting our bu building utilization committee is currently meeting as we look to make our next uh 10-year plan our current plan Runs Out in 2026 um and we've been working through that over the last year and a half and we'll continue to work through that as we plan for the future uh for our district I thank you everyone thank you for everyone that's here tonight and join us on Zoom any questions so Matt uh two quick questions you say we're up 167 students over the unit count day so what are we up what is our total

059now do you have that figure by any chance yes we're at 13,064 students and then just real quick if you can but maybe at our next one of our upcoming board meetings yes thank you Mr forson for reminding me I even had a note here and uh Miss skipped over that but we are doing a cell phone um pilot that started in January at app climic High School um there's a lot of research out there and a lot of things out in the community and in different states about the impact that cell phones and are having on our youth and so we're running a pilot now where um we had teachers volunteer almost 40 teachers volunteered at apic high school um and they take the kids phone or kids get a pouch they put their

060phones in a pouch During the period um and do not have access to their phones they can unlock them at the end of the period and go on to the next class getting a lot of positive feedback on that I do not have um quantitative data on that we will do a quantitative data presentation on that um from a survey that we'll be giving out um in March April time frame but I do have some qualitative um from the principal and from the building saying that they're seeing the teachers are saying there's much more student engagement um in the classroom because kids aren't worried about their phones and and they're also seeing uh less requests to go to the bathroom um to coordinate a meeting I guess I don't know um but they're saying there's

061less time uh for kids requesting to go to the bathroom so positive feedback this point I'm sure everyone's not super excited about it but the research is pretty clear on the benefits that it has for kids all right other questions all right well thank you for that report and we'll look forward to more information about the uh cell phone pilot programs uh next on the agenda we have the construction update construction upate that's what it says all right as you can see here we're starting to get a little better along the snow is is gone right right now they're starting to move in the front we're going to start running curb out in the front on Monday start pouring the curb here and as you'll see in a little bit in the uh in a

062loading dock is going to get poured start closing this area up the sidewalks will come in so we can start putting irrigation inside in this area here in the front we're down to the finish line here we're starting to rush towards it about two and a half months left before they turn it over let's Ste on the back side here you can start to see the building's all closing up the glass is coming in here it's coming in a lot of this place you're getting a lot of these this big glass really opening up a lot of light through the building glass on the front the gymnasiums all around waiting on a little bit of coping on top of the roof in various places letd as you can see there's a lot of glass throughout

063this whole building just kind of shines light all the way through and if you were to walk through it you'd see how impressive it was I think Norm got a look at it last week but it really brightens the building up this is look off the corner of the gym kind of coming up and know big tall window is coming in a lot of light into the gym as well this is some of that glass I was telling you about as you come through the front of the main entrance it it it really is impressive when you walk through you know how much it brightens up the whole area this the prenium around the uh stage area all the woods went in got protection here they're starting to run the rigging up in the top

064now they'll start bringing the seats down here as as time moves forward you know they're going to paint first then run it down and then the seats come in behind that you can see the gym is starting to roll out sound panels are up we have the scoreboard all of the equipment's in place right now they're grinding out getting ready to start the gym floor the gym floor material is on site acclimating and then they'll start once it gets used to the atmosphere they'll start putting down the gym floor lockers are in in both locker rooms you can see the ceilings are in and getting done we just have the device out and then they'll complete the whole ceiling area this is the art room this will have a hanging uh as you see like

065cord Reels real high ceiling a lot of light and if you're going you're doing your artwork and it's kind of a nice brace atmosphere to work in gymnasium this is the audit or the gym flooring that's in here acclimating right now this will start rolling out so we can complete the gym get everything done in that area this is your cafeteria you kind of can't see it it's at steps at different levels so this is a little little higher a little lower a little lower and it comes down over top of the learning stairs like this sound panels are in they're starting to complete the plin we're getting there all over our this will be all wood panels here it's painted black so you don't see behind it when the wood panels come up this

066is going to be the media center as you come in you have both sides you have the high Lantern lighting and and both lights this will be all glass in the front here as well when these doors come out of here epoxy floors and the science rooms are getting done all all this here is all complete we're just waiting on the operable Windows Another Science room you can see the cord reels that are in each science room we have them in the science rooms the art rooms the uh in in in the stem room it just makes it easier they can pull down and have cords run all over the place this is one of your band rooms you can see this is all complete sound panels are up they have the various types of

067uh sound panels these are reflectors that bounce sound around these are absorb sound or it's just an acoustic added area I think that one was it Steve any questions any questions for Keith hearing none thank you very much looks good we are of course on time and under budget right we are all right uh next on the agenda we have board comments and I'm gonna mix it up and do things a little differently tonight I'm going to go first um and I'm gonna say something and address something that I never thought I would have to say or do at a board meeting I'm going to talk about parents and first first off let me say that by and large the parents in our school district are fabulous um you know they're engaged they're respectful they're

068involved they ask good questions we get a lot of turnout at meetings we get a lot of Engagement but as we all know you know One Bad Apple can spoil The Bushel And yeah this is my 14th year on Schoolboard I mean over the years I look back and maybe every now and then there might be an isolated incident here and there but over the last year things really seem to have come off the rails and I don't know if it's covid or what exactly but we've had some very bad apples and things seem to be getting out of hand so we've had Parents assaulting each other at a school we've had a sporting event that had to be ended before the game was done because parents some parents were out of control we've had

069two instances of parents taking swings at students and most recently we had a family member show up at a fight with a baseball bat this was an adult family member I mean that's five instances and he can say well it's only five it's five too many and so none of this behavior is acceptable we all know that I don't have to say to anybody here oh what were the circumstances parents don't take swings at students they don't take swings at staff um they don't take swings at each other at least not when they're on school grounds um we're not having this kind of behavior tolerated none of it's acceptable parents know better and you know we're talking about parents so tonight I'm calling on our policy committee and those who put our policy together to

070come up with a parent policy I mean I can't believe I'm even saying that or making this recommendation but that's where we are I mean if you take a swing if you misbehave badly you're not coming on our grounds ever again under this policy or at least that's what I'd like to see now the devil's in the details and we'll take a look at it and maybe there'll be grades great gr aans but the simple fact is if you misbehave we are not going to let you back on school grounds no sporting events no concerts no plays no graduation if you violate our parent policy that I'd like to see it is zero tolerance for this sort of stuff also as part of the policy I want to see charges referred to the AG's office

071in every instance we're just not going to tolerate this anymore me I shouldn't be having to say this I can't believe I am parents know better but for those who don't we're not letting you on our school property there will be a policy there'll be a process but my goodness I mean enough is enough parents teachers staff Schoolboard members all of us we lead by example we teach by example our students are always watching what we do and they're learning from that and the message we have to send is that behavior is totally completely entirely unacceptable so that's my board comments for this evening um and I I think I you know I'd like the policy committee that we meet again in two weeks and we have it's going to take a little while maybe

072to draft something and and maybe there's examples from other jurisdictions I don't know I don't care we could be the first as far as I'm concerned but we just can't tolerate this kind of behavior and parents need to know that there's going to be consequences if it ever happens again so there are lot don't get me wrong there's a lot of good things that happened this past it's been six weeks since our last school board meeting I went to uh see what I think it's operation soap box with uh Dr Graham and we saw some sixth and seventh graders give uh some speeches without notes and you know they were very poised and did excellent jobs considering I'll say how young they were um there's a lot of good things going on in our schools

073but unfortunately it only takes one bad apple to spoil The Bushel so I do want to see uh a parent policy put in place for this sort of thing so that's my comment for this month and and U I'll turn it over now to Dr Graham um surprisingly I actually don't have any comments thank you all right then I'll turn it over to miss dwit like to say um congratulations to all the building leaders who were um congratulated by their schools um for teacher of the year I saw a couple of those on Facebook so congrat congratulations to those building leaders um also congratulations to the CWS um basketball team the boys basketball team they scored a um Championship it was a great game um and that's it thank you all right thank you Mr

074Abrams uh I'll just pick up on your comments Mr foron um while we do have some community members that in parents that can go too far I also do believe the strength of our district relies in our community support and I just want to thank everyone who's working quietly behind the scenes on committees that help make this District better I'd also like to thank Mr Hopkins for taking me out last week to building sites I got a chance to look at reading and the Summit Campus and while there's not much at the Summit Campus uh appears we're doing a lot of digging up holes checking dirt there something that we all learned from Fair viiew looks good and the size of the campus is amazing everything is going to fit there it's it's much smaller

075than Fairview but I can't wait for it to get done and then in regards to the pictures from Reading we saw tonight the inside of that building looks absolutely fantastic the the size and scope what you see on pictures doesn't really translate to when you're in person the the glassw work alone opening up the whole school inside I think that's just a game Cher for the school being able to see through you know natural sunlight and I think that's going to help I'd also like to recognize Josh cork for his assistance while out there from waiting turn want to thank the legislators who came out Thursday for our uh breakfast were we able to discuss issues that are affecting Appo and the state as far as education I know they had busy days down in

076Dober but they spent their time with us in the morning so I just want to thank them for attending and also want to take a moment just to um thank the community for their support on a very hot topic of referendum I know for the last three years our HR department in this district has battled 60 plus openings a year which puts a tremendous strain on all the resources in the building from teachers capacity to teach and just everything in general with their generous support of our last referendum we've been able to drop that number in half hopefully in the next year or so we'll actually be at a able to fill SP spots and not always be on the hold so again I know times are tough I just want to thank the community

077for that and my last thought is just I want to thank an individual when I joined this board in 2009 this person was on the financial advisory committee both both family members Mr griminger and Mrs griminger do a lot for our district but miss griminger finally retired from the financial advisory committee I think after 24 years of service I just want to thank her for her time and dedication to the district that's all I have all right thank you very much um there is no old business we move on to new business item a we have before us the January 14 2025 Board of Education meeting minutes for approval the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve the January 14 2025 Board of Education meeting minutes second motion by m

078Dr Graham second by Miss dwit to approve the January 14 2025 Board of Education meeting minutes as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next before us we have the January 28th uh 20125 board Workshop meeting minutes for approval the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve January 28 2025 board Workshop meeting minutes second motion by Dr Graham second by Miss dwit to approved the January 28 2025 board Workshop meeting minutes as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next we have the 2025 26 Calendar for its first reading there is I think a second reading after this

079if I remember correctly and people are not corrects at me okay yep I'm back one more time I think this is it we're going to talk uh tonight for our first reading of our calendar for the 25 26 school year um couple things before we get into that um again I want to both um thank our committee members as well as just kind of highlight we have um lots of different groups covered here we have our teachers we have our building leaders we have our district leaders um you can see here we have folks that cover the Arts Transportation curriculum uh special education lots of different groups are are represented here um and that's really important um to to really get that uh feedback and as we're talking about you know different dates and different

080days off and different PD days it's really important to hear from everybody we also have our our board members um they representing as well so we really appreciate that um as I mentioned last time we we do have guiding values and although I don't love reading off of slides I do think this is important um because again and sometimes when there's conflict we have to come back to these values and I think it's important that we hear these values each time so number one we do what is best for students we value instructional time for consistency we value maintaining an equitable distribution of instructional time we value parent engagement conferences for Progress monitoring we value time for families we value lifelong learning for staff we value the negotiated agreement and we value every employee category

081and we really do have to think about all of those values as we are getting into um our calendar so after we presented um in January we opened up um the survey for comments we received over 300 comments I think I said it last year that last year we had 200 comments that was like 180 more than we've ever received before well this year we got 300 comments so I feel like we're trending in the right right direction and I will say of the 300 comments there were tons and tons of positive feedback about um in some cases about the whole calendar in some cases people were very specific about that winter vacation um in fact a lot of positives about that winter vacation um so you know but there was a lot of positives

082there was a few comments that we had to um discuss with the group and again what we do is we collect all that that uh all those comments we share it with the team we make sure that everybody gets a chance to read those and have some some discussion then we we discuss okay are there any changes to the calendar that we presented what are those changes let's have some some discussion and then you know we come up with our our um our dates and that's what we're presenting tonight so I just wanted to make sure that uh we talked about that and that's what you're going to hear from Dr feathers right good evening again all right so when we were here last time uh we presented you with the calendar and like Mr

083Hoover said we um convened as a committee again and made some revisions along the way so I'll just take you through each of the months thanks Steve all right so you will see August here and this is how we presented in January so we're not recommending any changes in September we made one slight adjustment to the first day of prek uh it was came up as a suggestion our three-year-olds our am three-year-olds only come on Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday they don't attend on Fridays to have a start day of a Thursday and then a long weekend is a little bit of a challenge especially when they're coming to school for the first time so the committee thought it was best if we bring them in on Monday the 8th in October um we had said

084that we were looking for our PSAT dates and we did find that for October 15th so we noted that there and uh since we've updated this this calendar um we also noted that we needed to identify the state professional development day and that is October the 10th we'll note that for our next round it was already marked as a professional learning day it'll just be highlighted as the state Day November the committee did not recommend any changes and December the winter vacation that Mr Hoover mentioned the committee did not recommend any changes January you'll see on the 28th and 29th we simply crossed out High School exam days that is a past practice not a current practice so it's something that we no longer needed on the calendar so it's been removed February no changes

085were recommended March we noted that we had to identif ify the SAT date and we did for March the 18th so we added that to the calendar and as we move through the next couple of months there are no changes recommended for April or May June July August or September questions from the board I just have one I just want to thank everybody for all their work too I want to thank all the parents who responded and to say they don't that we do not read the comments we do so I'm just going to ask and again sitting here doing this for for all the time that we've done it there was a question that popped up I thought was unique as to why we actually have weather contingency dates listed on the calendar at

086the end of the year so I don't know if you wanted to address that I mean I understand but somebody's asking why are we doing that if we're still doing async and virtual reality and does that really impact them that was like somebody's comment I read I forgot the market to identify the individual sure yeah um that's a that's a good question um the calendar committee does not determine what we do for our weather days right so the calendar committee isn't the group that says we're going to do asynchronous or or virtual or you know any of that so we were asked um couple of months ago to you know if we ever change what those snow days look like let's build the weather contingency days in the calendar we used to have weather I

087mean honestly prior to covid we had weather contingency days built in so those are days that if we need them those are days that are already labeled on the calendar that we can take back and use as school days those are that's a big if right if it's a year we have no snow then we're we're still off on those days right if it's it's a day we have a lot or if it's a year we have a lot of snow and and we're not doing virtual days and maybe we're only doing snow days those are days that we can then use um for student days or teacher days whatever whatever we need thank you yeah thank you so we got 300 and some comments I haven't gone I have to admit I haven't gone

088through all of them in detail although I've read at least half of them but I mean is there any one or two themes that I'll say stand out to you and the rest of the committee uh in terms of uh something that a lot of folks are commenting on sure the the big theme um really in general was very positive about the entire calendar the second big theme um was very specifically positive about that the extended winter break um those were the two big ones um after that we had a couple of themes some of them were more questions than um than comments but you know and and maybe it it's worth us explaining because there were some questions about you know why do we have to have this PD de these were from parents

089you know why are the students off on this day why don't just have them go to school and you know it's a good reminder that students go to school for a certain number of hours most of our students was 1,60 hours for our seniors it's 1,32 so sure we could take that PD day and make it a school day that just means there 's going to be another day somewhere else where students are in school or out of school teachers go to school for days 188 days right so no matter which way you cut it you could start on August 1st or you could start on September 1st we go to you know teachers work 188 days students go 1,60 hours so there were some more questions about about that um I would say those

090were the the only themes that I can really think of all right well well that's helpful thank you mhm anyone else any questions is the time for um I'll say responding to the survey done so no nope yep it's we're so we're we're back open for comments um uh so we'll open up the comments again receive those and then again we will meet with our team to review those comments remind me the end this Friday okay closes this Friday at 4 so we'll get some more comments and then we will meet with our team review those comments you know make any possible changes and then we'll make our last reading second reading um at the March board meeting right and it's unrelated to I'm going to say the calendar to committee work but I will

091I've said before and I'll just say again because why not um I do not like using uh zoom and asynchronous stuff on starting on the second snow day I just don't if we learn one thing heard that if we learn one thing during covid it's that Zoom is not as effective as being in class and uh it just seems to me we ought to you know we're in the business of teaching but we also ought to learn from our own experience and so for the life of me I don't know why we think that should be done I know others have different views but um and that's not something that affects your work but I did see that there were a a fair number of comments I thought commenting most of them saying they didn't

092like Zoom but a couple saying they did is my experience so if you haven't commented yet or you want to comment again if you're out there watching I'd be interested certainly in that sort of feedback thank you so I can't let it go without giving a comment on this yeah but you're a Cowboys fan so you're not happy about the Super Bowl either so I've been going around doing listening tours um and what a listening tour is I go around to each of the buildings and I listen to their their what they're most proud of challenges they're having possible solutions and then how the district office can support each uh staff member better and so one of the topics that does come up is about um synchronous days or Zoom days on snow days um

093so there's there's two options here like we can do synchronous days or we add days on to the end of the school year when I present to the staff when they bring up this challenge of it and it is a challenge I understand that um teachers also have kids and things like that at home on those days so it is a challenge to do that the impact of those days as compared to the impact of days in at the end of June and as soon as I say okay we're gonna add days to the end of June then it's like whoa no no no no we uh we prefer to keep the zoom days and I think what we have learned and I won't disagree with you that Zoom is not as as impactful as

094these um in front of teachers in the school building but I will argue days after Memorial Day um where kids are disconnected and the teachers are starting to become disconnected and having other thoughts are probably not as impactful so it comes a balance like what are you going to do is a Zoom Day more impactful or is a day on June 21st 22nd more impactful and I think that's a challenge and I I mean we don't I guess we don't have research to show which day is more impactful and what you would prefer but I will say when I start talking about adding on dates the end of this school year overwhelming it's just like no no no don't do that so and the next Point teachers have to do 188 days kids have to

095do 1,60 hours could always start earlier but I'll just leave it with that there were a few comments I saw about starting earlier all right well that debate will have to continue to another time next on the agenda we have Choice applications for approval here to um get you guys to vote for the slau so Choice opened up on Monday November 4th um at 8: am and then closed on January 8th at 11:59 um kindergarten is open until the first day of school or until um we are at capacity next slide Steve um an application requires a report card attendance and discipline from the last two years next slide um the crer the criteria criteria is returning students who continue to meet the school requirements siblings of students already enrolled in the school who will

096be returning to the school the following Academic Year employees children um students living in app quinic and then students outside of the district next Slide the D denial request is um schools are at 85% students who have been suspended or expelled from the District of residents and students that have been absent for more than 15 days next slide please on the suspension question is it a current suspension or is it if you have a suspension in you like the last two years in your history it's within the last two years and it's mostly for fighting okay um denial oh number of applications we received um 1,242 this year we're inviting 1,035 and then it has the returning students siblings employees and our immersion um and then our withdraw on applications are students that either did

097not put everything on the application report card attendance and discipline or we did withdraw because of um attendance discipline and grades as well and then um duration of an enrollment is once you've um applied you're there from kindergarten to e8th grade for immersion and then 1 to five 6 to8 or 9 to 12 um once a student accepts into the program um we would like you to stay for at least two years and if you fail to meet our um academic requirements we can dismiss you right can you go back a slide I I just need I think I need Clarity around that withdrawn so you layered withdrawn and disqualified into the same bucket correct okay and tell me tell me the split what what's the so usually it's parents that don't do all the

098requirements by January 8th so they didn't attach attendance disciplinary grades or we dismiss because of attendance disciplinary grades and we notifi those parents already so they did not go in the lottery okay what about people that don't come back would they be included in that number just because they just chose a private school the the withdrawal applications are just students that did not recruit complete the by January 8th or we withdrew them before the lottery well how I mean but if we add 1,035 and 282 these numbers will not add up because they could have multiple spots so they could be regular Ed they could be emerging these numbers will not add up for you okay oh I think that's where I was going okay but the number of the actual number of students is

0991,35 correct of invited students and the number the actual number of applications was 1242 this iside out so I juster correct in and out yeah and I just wanted to point out for those viewing uh in our home audience um when you said that once accepted a student will be enrolled in that choice goal until completion the idea is once you get into a school you don't have to keep applying every year to no just when you go from from one school to right so from elementary to Middle right so if you get in a Crystal Run for example in first grade you know you can be there through fifth grade correct and you don't have to reapply every year right but we can dismiss any time for attendance disciplinary oh sure sure and are

100those kids who I'll say kind of carry over are they included in this uh 1 35 number for students invited correct okay so that even though they kind of had an automatic P You're Still Counting them correct yeah okay so sticking with that that Crystal Run example that Mr foreston just said so you specifically track Choice students for those three initial metrics that you mentioned for Behavior attendance and I forget the other metric you specifically track those students every kid that's choice we will H that um each Building looks at that and in may we decide if we're going to resend their choice for the first year interesting okay so you need a unless anybody has any more questions anybody just one question oh oh I'm sorry I took you back a slide I think

101you were to I'm not sure if she's done yet no I don't think she's Oh Oh I thought that was no so I want to let you know that once you guys decide on it tonight then the emails will start going out tomorrow sometime just so parents are aware because parents are anxious for this um to be announced okay um and then just know that parents have told March 21st to accept or reject the um invitations we do have weit list we do not give out weit list numbers I will be in touch with you if you come off the wait list and Norm did you have a question just uh you had mentioned referenced the kindergarten for the choice enrollment ends on the first day of school or win a capacity so obviously i'

102I've not seen that number post anywhere are we anywhere near capacity numbers are really well this year um okay um so we might have a few spots after the lottery goes out tomorrow um the notifications um kindergarten is kind of full because we don't really know that until summertime but if spots become available I'll invite kids because the kindergarten application is open currently so if if somebody's already applied their name will still sit there and as an opening comes they'll just pick them up yeah they have to go Okay Ice enough they had to go through the process again thank you yeah any other questions all right so at this point you need us you need a motion uh to approve uh the extending of the choice offers consistent with your report yes okay so

103the chair will entertain a motion Mr President go ahead go Mr President I move that we approve the choice applications as presented now second thank you motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve the choice applications as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries thank you very much next on the agenda we have the transportation update and recommendation for approval Miss Macintosh good evening everybody happy to be back I'm going to update you on our current numbers and then I have an ask at the end all right so our current situation um for our district buses we have 4 45 on the road 44 has been pre previously approved we retained one contract back in December because

104they were short a driver from one of our contractors as a district we have 56 Drive 56 drivers including our spares and our trip drivers 26 bus ades 60 total buses including our spare buses and just as a reminder our spares can remain on the road even though they've aged out and not on contract as long as they pass our DMV inspection our contractor buses um are currently running 61 they have three routes um uncovered uh the routes are receiving poor service meaning late to school in the morning staying late in the afternoon things of that nature um and they do not have any current trainees or prospects unfortunately um total between district and contractor were running 107 so recommendation I ask for your approval tonight to add three additional buses for the school year

105beyond the 44 previously approved um expected delivery is not going to be until the fall of 25 and doe has already approved these three units so couple questions please so our contractors have 61 buses on the road and we have 45 buses on the road but if I'm doing the math rate that only adds up to 106 not 107 are we can you go back as slide am is my math wrong Shing heads uh yeah okay my apologies for that error thank you for catching it well I just didn't know so do we have 107 or 106 or no it's it would be 106 because we we're not running more than 45 right now as a district okay and so you want to take us from 45 to 48 or 48 that is correct and

106we have 56 drivers including spares and trip drivers we have 45 buses so we've got 11 spare bus drivers on any one day oh only I can I interrupt only five on any one day five spare drivers the trip drivers are part-time um they work occasionally for our evening or early mornings and so I mean I say here's The $64,000 Question how is it that we're able to have I'll say extra drivers and the private companies don't I think the answer is going to be compensation and so then the followup question is what's the difference in the compensation that is a big part of it yes and we were're not in it to make money obviously right so and the contractors are so they do pay their drivers significantly less they're about seven eight dollars

107less per hour than we are um doe obviously puts um a good amount of money per contract for a bus contract and the uh the contractors do not they don't even start at what doe provides in that contract if that makes sense so they provide $25 per hour for every bus driver doe does the state and um one of our contractors specifically they started 18 bucks and what are we start at 2650 well we still operate within the same parameters they do their buses oh absolutely we're still getting everything the same correct and so the next question I mean we are operating on a surplus not in a deficit because that'd be the first question they would say our ability to overpay is at at the expense of our taxpayers but we're not operating in

108a deficit to do this no yeah yeah and we're quite comparable to the other districts yeah we really did our homework and especially um over the years when increases have happened and things of that nature so when you look at it on the district end we're we're very comparable to the other districts and I I might say lower to be honest I mean it's the same all the way around the board when you talk about the up north um but the contractors they're just they're just not meeting it so how long before we have our full bus fleet I'm Ser I'm I'm just because I can tell you that I know there was a lot of consternation whether we should get into this and do this can tell you the the complaints from parents since

109us stepping up to the plate has dropped tremendously thank you so I don't with the the cost is we're heading in the right direction and parents I'm sure love being on time I know there's issues daily that's going to happen but still on a day-to-day basis from an operation standpoint this group your group has done a fantastic job thank you for that you might not hear that enough but you really have thank you all right so you need us to or you're asking us to approve three additional buses now again this says beyond the 44 previously approved but you I think you said beyond the 45 that you have now well so no how about we do the 44 I'm sorry that it's not clear I'll make sure next time I come then I'll be

110a little clearer so we 44 was approved but we added one in December so I included the one that we added in December in the three oh okay okay so really it's just two more beyond the 45 that we have now correct okay correct got it all right so we've heard the presentation does anybody else El have any other questions hearing none the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve the recommendation revised as two additional buses right no we need the three additional buses right you just said two more beyond the 45 well no you only previous number that was approved was 44 I added uh one in December which makes it 45 but you didn't approve that I had to add it so you needed to approve three yes

111ma'am let me start again I apologize all good uh Mr President I move that we approve the recommendation of three additional buses uh for uh beyond the 44 that were previously approved to be delivered in September um 2025 second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abram to approve adding three additional buses beyond the 44 that were previously approved by the board with expected delivery in September or October of 2025 any questions comments or discussion on the motion my only question is what do we do before these new buses arrive do we have spares that we can use we do yes sir all right so with uh any further questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries okay thank you very much

112you're doing a great job thank you next on the agenda we have the monthly financial report for approval Mr lus so the financial advisory committee met on February 4th to review the December revenue and expenditure report and they recommend approval of that Mr President I'll make a motion to approve the monthly financial report for December as presented with the approval of the financial advisory committee is there a second oh second I'm sorry no problem all right so moved by Mr Abrams doc second by Dr Graham to approve the monthly financial report for December as recommended by the financial as presented and as recommended by the financial advisory committee any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next we have in front

113of us the internal accounts report for approval Mr lus so the financial advisory committee also reviewed the December internal accounts report and recommended approval of that report as well Mr President I'll make a motion to approve the internal counts report for December with the approval the financial advisory committee as presented is there a second second a motion by Mr Abram second by Dr Graham to improve the internal accounts report for December 2024 as presented and as recommended by the financial advisory committee any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing not all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next we have the fiscal year 2025 final budget for approval Mr L yes so we have quick presentation to kind of go through the final budget yep um as we do

114typically with the final budget we're going to talk about the carryover balance uh brief revenue and expenditure summar just changes variances to what happened since pre preliminary budget and and then to leave you with a couple of financial concerns areas to just keep an eye on moving forward so when we did the preliminary budget um at the end of last year we just Eed it out with a little over almost 4.2 million so a lot of discussions last year as we were going through referendum trying to make sure we met the state's minimum of one month's local Sal in the bank at the end of SE um June which we did and then with the preliminary budget we said that we were expecting to be 8,760 um at the end of this fiscal year the

115current projection we have is that we're going to be at the end of June a little better than what we said back in July so we were looking at an 8.3 million carryover at the end of this fiscal year I I have a chart up there that's very difficult to see I apologize one of the concerns that we have with Revenue that we're receiving with the local tax revenue is that because of the reassessment project with the county we're not getting the tax collections as regularly as we would last year so for example the Target store that went up back in the fall we still haven't received the property taxes that school districts do for that property and so that's happening um obviously with a lot of home uh people closing on homes and the

116property taxes that would come to us to restro aren't happening so I left off the September and October because of so let me just explain again for our viewing audience what's going on we're in a reassessment at the county level and ordinarily you know your tax bill comes it's technically it's due January uh July 1st of each year you typically get it sometime in July you have to pay it before the end of September but then as property gets built during the course of the tax year for example the target got built last fall ordinarily they would get what's called a supplemental Bill and they would have to start paying taxes as of December 31st in other words if you don't get your certificate of occupancy till after July 1 you're not supposed to get

117a free year of not paying any taxes you you start paying at the beginning of the next quarter so when the target got its Co some of us were fairly excited about that because it meant a couple $1,000 in tax revenue for the district except in talking with the county they told us oh gee we're so busy with the reassessment this year we're not doing any supplemental assessments during the course of the year and so ordinarily Target would already be paying and so would a bunch of other new houses and a bunch of other new stores that opened since last July 1st but the county just felt it was too busy with the reassessment process to do any supplemental assessments and they weren't very apologetic about it either when we talked to them um so

118when Mr Loftus says we're not seeing this normal additional Revenue we'd expect during the course of the year that's what he's referring to the county because of reassessment didn't do any kind of supplemental assessments during the last during this tax year so discussions continue between us and the other school districts and the county regarding what's what's kind of going on then with that money because you would assume for example and I I don't mean to pick on target but that's a big one um you would assume there'd be a pro-rated portion of that year that they had been in business that we would be receiving that property tax revenue is it coming to us at some point in the future after reassessment um we've been assured that they're going to be build next year so

119that is good with that's that should be an obvious um but the point of the chart is just to kind of show that one of the challenges we have this year is that the first bar in each one of those months is last year's Revenue collection and the second bar is this year's Revenue collection so you can see in every instance we have a higher tax rate this year too in every instance it's lower than it was last year am I okay to move on yeah on the plus side we have about a million dollars in additional State funds largely stemming to from a um mental health grant that the state the state provided school districts this year and then local funds interest so conversely right on the property tax collection side we just talked

120about that issue we're seeing not as much of it on a month-by-month basis however due to interest rates the interest um that we're getting on the local funds that we currently have in the bank is extremely helpful um this year and then on the expenditure side of things uh local salary is with a lot of the things that we put in the contract um in terms of stiens and things like that slightly higher than what we had anticipated U so we're keeping an eye on that um also things like summer school which we'll talk about a little bit more in a minute higher expense than what we had anticipated um and we did get a grant for Resident teacher support but so that's kind of an offset we got State money for it we also

121are paying some money for that too on the expenditure side of things so that's kind of a wash um but those are some the big bucket items that we're seeing on both the revenue and the expenditure side of things next slide so we do have the reassessment that starting next month would be the time where we could start talking about the reassessment and what those numbers look like um what the what the timeline looks like um kind of how the the next several months will play out as we take a look at the um the change from last year's assessment to this year's assessment taking a look at the um what the rate would adjust to there's um also continued District growth we had a drop this year in students as of the September 30th

122count however we've seen an increase in students since then so a lot of times when that happens and it's aect special education need that means we're having to supply additional teachers for autis classrooms additional 101 paas things like that which is a strain on the district um additional growth I would say in here we went through a referendum we cut some things in the December referendum um after that wasn't successful we came back in April those things that we cut in a lot of cases were inflationary sorts of things we've got more students we've got more schools and the cost of everything right like even down to the cost of Windex and cleaners for our custodians those prices have increased over the several years yet we don't really have a metric in place in our

123budget to account for those additional costs so we're trying to make things work um but we're we're having to make difficult decisions in some cases and not necessarily just our problem but a nationwide teacher shortage so quality if teachers coming out of colleges is is just a challenge that everybody's facing it's more of a challenge in our district because in a typical year and not that this year was typical but in a typical year when we're adding 300 students you're talking about adding 20 or 30 additional teachers as opposed to a district that's relatively flat or losing students in which they're not increasing teachers they're just keeping the teachers that they've got um so so that makes it more of a challenge with appin next slide so we talked about inflation so I'm not going

124to talk about that additionally summer school I would say that was a small program prior to covid and we were able to kind of make it work um as we're becoming a bigger and bigger district and during covid it made a lot of sense for us to do stuff in summer to get kids engaged with their peers to get them out of the house to get them working on projects doing different things camps enrichment programs things like that the issue back then was is that hey whatever it costs whatever we can do to engage kids we've got over12 Million worth of Esser funds federal government covid funds that we could use to say hey we can solve whatever type of money problem we've got in terms of summer school well we don't have those funds

125anymore and we have a lot of kids that are engaged in those summer programs so we just need to be very mindful as we move into this summer um about how we're going to approach that um so we're currently working through that with our budgets and and determining the best way we can handle that it's important work but we also have to have a source of funding in order to handle that um already mentioned teacher shortage so the last bullet just other areas need support we cut Performing Arts um budget to kind of refurbish some of the things they needed with theaters and instruments and uniforms and things like that still an issue um the furniture um issue we've got aging Furnitures desks and things like that that are falling apart in some of our

126schools we have no budget in our anywhere there's no line that says we've got2 $300,000 to be able to sustain or to to replace things as they're kind of falling apart so we're we're really it it does add a bit of a challenge to that um smartboards computers things like that that are increasing when we went to referendum the thing that we added for it was we funded 75% of the one toone devices that students were using so it's it does make it very challenging because smartboards aren't getting cheaper computers aren't getting cheaper we're also increasing the number of classrooms increasing the number of teachers that need these things and um the replacement cycle is starting to get further and further out uh so those are just some of the things that we're concerned about

127that we're discussing um as we kind of go from month to month in terms of making our dollar stretch um other than that if there's any questions that anyone has on the budget itself I think there might have been one mistake in the budget that was sent to you all in that there's a slight difference in the budget on the carryover page that was a result of there was an adjustment that was made at the last minute where we added additional Revenue to the interest um for local salaries or for the local property tax the interest we receiving there um so I'll make sure that a revised version is sent out but it's a on line thing that should be adjusted um other than that I'm happy to answer any questions you might have on

128the budget so my do we I'm sorry I can you give me based on what you just said because it sounds like you made a change what is the total I'll say operating expense for this fiscal year the total operating expense for all in like all like Debt Service and tuition tax or just operating exclude uh Capital exclude um exclude special ed 232 mil 240,000 $232 m240 th000 okay that's the category that we classify as general operating right so that includes salaries um it curriculum schools budgets nutrition Transportation all that kind of stuff okay so that means we are spending if I I just divide the operating by the number of students we have which is 13,064 at $7,777 per kid that's that's the number I was kind of looking for okay which is still

129lower than any other District in Newcastle County um all right thank you Mr President are you ready to entertain a motion I would welcome a motion Dr Graham um I move that we approve the FY 2025 uh final budget as presented second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve the 2025 fiscal year uh fiscal year budget as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by say I I any opposed motion carries thank you um next on the agenda we have overnight field trips for approval the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve uh overnight trips uh spec inclusive of trip ID 9926 in June 2025 agw students to Japan for educational experience and tour trip ID 9617 in July

130202 25 MH MHS students to Italy and France for an Arts and Cultural experience and lastly trip ID 9674 in June 2025 um Odessa High students to Costa Rica for a cultural and education um experience second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve trip IDs 9926 9617 and 9674 as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next we have the Summit Campus middle and high school education specification for approval Mr Hopkins yes I've submitted the uh the education specification for Summit Campus M high school for approval I'm have Meen rosanski and Scott uh L to present on that if there's anything you guys would like to ask questions about from what I'd presented to you if

131that Steve you can bring that up so we have a few new board members since the last time we've gone through this so if you want to just talk about the process like this is the first step and then the steps that will follow just so they're aware of it yeah this is the first step is this gets submitted down to doe this is the criteria of what the building will be be built off of we held a lot of programming meetings where we brought in staff and went through what the needs would be for the school what type of classrooms you know the the student count comes off of that and we end up with a square footage at the end of it and we base our building off of that whole programming process

132so then after that we go through the next phase will be the SD documents which will start to see come up probably in April which is the first schematic design of the building you'll start to see a little bit of what it's going to look like based off of this education specification and then we'll start to whittle it down to get a little more further along into a more refined building you'll see DD documents which is design development that's when it started probably about 60% done at that point and then the next set you'll see be the construction documents and at that point you're 95 to 100% complete of what's going to go on the street so this is the first step that gets submitted down to doe they approve and we need board approval

133from for this to send down to doe and this is the beginning process so it'll come besides this three other times in front of the board this is for the edpc yes this is the what starts it off this what starts our design based off of that based off of the programming meetings that starts our design and then the next is SD which is probably 30% drawings your next set will come at 60% which is DD design development then you'll get your construction set 95 100% so this is just for the audience this is all words there's not pictures involved in this there's none there's not much and in the next steps you get a little more pictures and it gets more and more detailed as we go so you'll start to see that the

134very next thing up is the design development for the site so you'll start to see a little bit of what we're going to do out there you'll you'll start to get an idea but this is just the first step in the process so I'll just ask two questions I think I know what the answers are and I'm going to be disappointed but I'll ask my questions anyway um I continue to find it hard to believe that we don't put Lockers in high schools I would that be something that would be part of these specifications or do can we kick that can down the road there is no Lockers in the Carters yeah I save square footage by bringing it in which saves money Richard yeah yeah yeah but I I don't understand I just don't

135understand what kids are thinking they did they just don't use them and it's like that all over I mean you ask any school district they just don't use the lockers they carry a book bag and a i that's it I understand I just well I understand that's what they tell us and I understand the kids don't use them I don't understand why not and then my second question especially for the high school I mean we're going to have football we're gonna have basketball we're going to have sporting events but I think my understanding is that there are no showers in the locker room that's correct so sweaty football players sweaty basketball players sweaty kids after gym class go to class without having taken a shower they don't use them I know I continue to be

136disappointed by that and nobody would have wanted to have sat next to me after I took Jim but agreed uh such is life I would still make a plea that we have some small set of showers in both locker rooms because the worm will turn someday and then we'll regret not having done it all right those are my two questions with that I'm seeking approval for the education specification as presented the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve uh the specification as presented thank you second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve the Summit Campus middle and high school education specifications for approval as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed okay the

137rest you didn't say I very loudly but I'm going to assume you say I uh motion carries um next on the agenda we have the Summit Campus Middle and High School design development civil documents for approval yes we're seeking approval of the design development documents for the Civil drawings uh this is a rendering it is not the actual documents I put the documents in your board folder but this will give you an overview here this is the Ted Williams with uh Landmark engineering he'll the walk you through the drawing a little bit so this drawing here is based upon the initial concept for the site that was presented to the board previously as part of the referendum package it has been refined slightly to address all the programming needs for the district as it relates

138to athletic fields parking facilities and any additional outdoor type activities uh one thing I'd like to point out is that I think at the referendum level there was a separate uh Stadium track facility in the back of the site and this plan now is showing that the football stadium SL soccer stadium in the front there with the Fieldhouse we also have the running track around it very similar to uh adessa High School um we've worked closely with the architectural team on this and also the construction managers and particularly as it relates to how we're going to uh phase this project for the grading of the site and we're asking for the DD approval so this can go to MB we can go to the next step for approvals of construction documents which will be coming

139to you uh the latter part of June most likely with the intent to start earthwork moving on the site in July are there any questions for Mr Williams all right well hearing none the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve Summit Campus Middle and High School design development civil documents second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve the summit camp middle and high school design development civil documents as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed motion carries thank you Mr Williams all right Mr Hopkins you're still up for Construction contract uh I have one contract for approval that was submitted it was for the demolition of the Lewis reading Middle School uh

140that came in under budget and we're seeking approval for that contract uh okay any questions Mr ABS no no I'm just curious how much under budget did we come in probably a million all right um any other questions hearing none the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve the Construction contract related to the demolition of reading middle school as presented second motion by Dr Graham second by uh Mr Abrams to approve the construction contracts for the demolition Construction contract for the demolition of Lewis reading middle school as presented any further questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries next we have change orders for approval Mr Hopkins yes we have change orders for Lewis reading that that

141presented and submitted for approval couple of ones look at there's a 50 or 49,000 ad for cameras it was just uh cameras went up since we bid the job and that's just the difference in the price for what we have there's another $117,000 for additional charges for the scaffold we had to go a little longer we wanted but uh I'm seeking approval for the uh for the change orders as submit and with these change orders I presume that we are still on time and still on budget we are okay the chair will entertain well does anybody else have any questions I just have one I know it really doesn't apply to this project but each time we build a new school put up cameras what's the lifespan or the how often do we have to

142go back and I guess adjust whatever they consider to be streaming or how long is it that a school that we built five years ago that becomes obsolete that we have to invest more well that's kind of like what Steve and and Ry know we all wait till the last minute for all technology you know and hoping you got your prices in the right spot because you get outdated so quickly then we started the design process three years ago if we locked in and bul just at that time we'd be outdated by three years right so like any technology you're looking for about five years and then you're starting to get outdated per but but that's about your time frame which is why we wait till the end to First Sol which is we and

143this one is OD I mean we've done it every time we've never gotten it's this bad I asked today and I'm still not still don't know why and they didn't even mark it up they just straight out yeah all right right well we appreciate them not marking it up so thank you yeah no it is I I mean it when I say thank you all right so with that we have the change orders for approval in front of us the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I move that we approve the change orders as presented second motion by Dr Graham second by Mr Abrams to approve the change orders as presented and as recommended by Mr Hopkins any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I

144I any opposed motion carries thank you next on the agenda we have the Personnel report for approval Dr small good evening again the Personnel report for the February board meeting has been presented for your approval we are requesting approval of that document okay the chair will entertain a motion Mr President I'll make a motion to approve the Personnel report as presented second second motion by Mr Abrams second by Miss dwit to approve the Personnel report as presented any questions comments or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed all right so Mr Dr Bros we you just pull the board absolutely Mr abam I Mr Whit I Dr Graham nay Mr Mr forston I motion carries three to one okay thank you uh next on the agenda

145we have the establishment of meeting dates the financial advisory committee will meet at 6 pm on Tuesday March 4th which is only a week away in the finance conference room at the Tony martio building we will be back in two weeks here at 7 o'clock and with that we are adjourned thank you all for attending