Asheville City Board of Education May Work Session - 5/8/23

001good evening um welcome to Asheville City Schools school board work session for tonight May 8th 2023. um I first before we want to get started just want to acknowledge that for some folks in our in our district today it's been it's been a tough day um we've had some um some some challenges with some of our staff and in the community it's been been a day of some law so I just want to hold that space for a moment for for us and for those who are part of our staff and their families and I just want to thank our staff for everything they do for us every day that they come in and um and our front and center with our students every day and we just are grateful for that uh with that

002I will um call this meeting to order we do have a quorum so I will now ask for a motion to begin any opposed all right [Music] um so I guess next we need to adopt today's agenda so I'll ask for a motion for that as well and to adopt the agenda good move and seconded all in favor aye any opposed okay um so we've got a nice busy day today um lots to cover we will start with just a quick superintendent search update and we had what was it two weeks ago now um over two weeks ago now we had our finalist interviews with four finalists that were very um really strong I mean the candidates we had um I just I can't express how tough a decision was to work to to sit

003down and spend a few hours with each candidate it was it was about what two and a half hours for each candidate two and a half to three hours per each candidate um kind of sitting as we are now with the candidate kind of right in front of us which is I'm sure intimidating kind of being in a hot seat with us all right here as a panel um but um but really fruitful conversations to hear the the real passion that these candidates have for the schools the districts they're in now for students that they've been with the ideas that they shared with us there was a part of me I think you know we're taking down notes and thinking okay if this person isn't the person can we kind of steal this idea um

004but uh you know through all of that we did come up with our preferred candidates and so we are now in that process I wish I could say more but because of confidentiality I can't and I also want to acknowledge kind of the process that this goes through in terms of for example putting out a contract and just going through the contact negotiations and I certainly don't want to jinx it but we feel very close and we feel very hopeful and we're really excited that we hope in the next however many days it's going to be that we can then start to schedule a time to announce this person to our community and and get get working on the next chapter of Asheville City Schools and saying that I also want to acknowledge Dr Cosby

005and and your time here I know this is not your last work session with us but we're getting close to the end of your tenure and we're so grateful for what you've brought to to the district it's actually been really helpful for me as I've sat through these interviews to think about how you conduct yourself in this district and how you um really have done a great job of teaching us as a board and think about how we can reciprocate that with whoever's coming in and make it really kind of a mutual thing so so grateful for that I'm grateful for my board numbers for being there and I mean we've had some long nights some extended days and just the the real Dedication that y'all have had to this process I feel really confident

006that this Preferred Choice all the details be worked out and again that we can announce fairly soon who that person is so anybody else want to share anything more about that what the process has been um I happen to personally know that you've spent a an inordinate amount of time on this process and I really appreciate your leadership and I will say that I think that all of the final candidates but particularly our preferred candidate the focus on Equity was real it is genuine it is moving forward and that would have been true of probably anybody that we selected in that final group but we listened carefully to the feedback that we got and I can say and feel really excited to say that we were faithful to the process yeah thanks Amy appreciate that

007um you as well have put in countless hours so um and then finally we do want to thank our um our search Team Summit search Solutions um we're hopeful that when we can announce um our new superintendent that at least one of them taught orbassy will be up here to celebrate with us and we can thank them in person um one thing I'm going to do a little segue here one thing that we I really appreciated in listening to these candidates um was their ideas about how to engage community in support of our our staff and support especially in our in our students and so it's with great pleasure that tonight we get to talk directly with and hear from the United Way and what the United Way is doing in our schools and so

008with that I'm going to turn it over to executive director of United Way at Buncombe County in Nashville Dan Leroy thank you well thank you so much George and thank you all so much for allowing us to be here today uh my name is Dan Leroy I'm the president CEO at United Way of national Buncombe County I'm lucky to have two of my colleagues here Steve Martinez who's our uh community school coordinator at Asheville middle school and Joseph Jameson who's Network help me out with your title director of network transformation for United for youth and as I look around this room tonight it occurs to me that there are a lot of people in this room who could probably give this presentation better than I could who have been a part of this work longer

009than I have but I really do appreciate the opportunity to speak with you a little bit about some of the work that we're doing in partnership with Asheville City schools and many other partners um both for Community Schools and a little bit about United for youth as well uh mainly though I want to try to keep my part of this short because I'd like for us to after I give kind of a short level setting overview really to get into the the future the possibilities um I think more than anything else if you take anything from this presentation I'd like for you to take this concept that Community Schools and United for youth are not United Way programs they are impact strategies that have been co-created by many many partners some of whom are in

010this room and so the key question for us is how do we really lean into this infrastructure that we've built together to elevate the success of our students to support our families and really strengthen our community so with that I'm gonna do a little bit of level setting here very quickly so we are the oldest United Way in the state of North Carolina we've been around for a hundred years 102 in fact and throughout that history we've really been known as a convener we we try to bring people and partners and resources together to tackle the toughest challenges that no single organization can tackle alone uh really in service to this vision for United and resilient Community where everyone belongs and everyone thrives so fast forward 80 some years uh 2010 our United Way like

011many United ways across the country were asking themselves what would it look like for us to really focus on a particular initiative that we think is really going to move the needle in our community and so we brought together a whole bunch of different stakeholders maybe some of you were in the room certainly Asheville City Schools was well represented and we came to this place of of really saying that education was going to be what we really wanted to focus on and particularly we're looking at the middle school level this was an area where there was tremendous need there was a gap in Opportunities and services and so we decided with our community that that's where we were going to go and middle school Success was born and somewhere along the way the folks who

012are leading this Middle School Success work realized that it was already happening in other communities across the country and it had a name and it was called Community Schools and there were hundreds of schools across the country that were practicing this particular model for how communities can come around our public schools in a way that supports students it's Equity centered and so we shifted and became Community Schools and now fast forward today we've got seven schools two in Asheville five in Buncombe County Schools um three of those schools now have uh fully operational school-based Health Centers we have a fourth schedule to open up in Fall of 2023 and it's our goal to expand to two additional schools uh at the start of not this next school year but the school year after that and

013this work is achieving results we've been tracking this many of you are aware of a system called learning circle and the early warning response system prior to the pandemic we were seeing some real Traction in this strategy we had seen a 10 growth or increase in the number of students in our community schools who were on track for graduation looking at attendance behavior and their core course grades and for bypoc students that gain was actually 15 percent so this is an equity centered strategy so we're looking at disaggregating data and really understanding how these strategies are working for different populations of students so what makes a community school a community school we often talk about the four pillars this is sort of the simplest way to explain uh what are the key features of this

014work integrated student supports expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities active family and Community engagement and collaborative leadership and practices I for one I have a background in ecology is it's helpful for me to think about this in the context of ecosystems and so for me a community school is really an ecosystem of Partners both inside and outside of the school that are committed to a shared goal of improving outcomes for students supporting families strengthening the community and so this the more of these Partnerships that exist the stronger they are the more diverse they are the better the outcomes are for students within that Community School so in our case we've got two Community Schools at AMS and Asheville high silsa and you can see here just some of the partners really rich Partnerships that

015are involved very actively in this community school work at AMS and Asheville High Sosa and there's a lot more that didn't fit on the slide but what I want to do just as a launch point for this discussion is to talk about each of these pillars briefly and just give you a sense of some of the things that are already happening in these schools that might also give us an opportunity to think about what might be possible within the context of these pillars going forward and so I want to start with integrated student supports and I'm not going to read through all this but I just want to give you a little bit of a snapshot of the kinds of things that we're talking about for each of these pillars so I mentioned school-based Health

016Centers we've got some and when I say we here again I'm not talking about United Way I'm talking about the collective network of Partnerships that are working together in this in this model so we've got these Partnerships with with RHA with mayhec with helpmate that are that are supporting mental and Behavioral Health students and restorative practices you can see just in restorative practices a number of schools at ACS alone that have been involved in this work raise your hand if you've been a part of a restorative practices training okay so well represented uh within this room so 184 staff from ACS have been trained 51 students have been trained in this work and this represents an investment of over fifty thousand dollars on on um and this is ongoing school-based Health Centers you can begin

017to see this is a newer strategy you can begin to see the impact that it's having uh this is just that actual middle I don't have the data for Appalachian Mountains school-based Health Center at Asheville high silsa but they're having great success as well and we're working closely with them so we're really proud of this return rate so in the past you know if a student was sick and they wanted to get if they needed care and at any time they would have to leave the school often they wouldn't come back and so we have a 97 return rate um for that and that that Center by the way is managed by Blue Ridge health looking at expanded and enriched learning um this is gives you an idea of like how how we can really

018Leverage The the school building in the school Community to serve students Beyond just the you know the time between the bells right and so we've got after school programs we got summer programs project-based learning to enrich the way that education is happening and you can see here a number of Partners really are involved in this work some of these Partners receive funding from Yahweh many of them don't but they're all engaged in this collaborative work with us family and Community engagement uh the the centerpiece of this strategy as it relates to United Way's work is uh cougar Community nights otherwise known as homework diners these are opportunities for us to help build a engagement and a sense of community in those schools you can see here the number of schools that have been represented this

019is just ACS so at the two Community Schools there were students from nine different Asheville City Schools represented so it's not just the students from those schools you can see the number of nights that we've we've done just this year how many students were involved in that and then the return rate how many students are coming back again and again I'll also mention the United free block party it's a newer engagement strategy but one that we're really excited about and we'll have an opportunity to do that for the second time in August of this year collaborative leadership the biggest part of this from my point of view is that there are two full-time coordinators Steve being one of them who show up to work uh 80 of their of their time at the school and

020their purpose is to connect that school to Community Resources and Partnerships that represents a significant investment uh part of what they do too is they're organizing these resource teams that are bringing these Partners together to really think about you know what are the biggest opportunities what are the biggest assets at those schools what are the biggest challenges and then how do we how do we find the right resources to address those particular challenges for partners it's a win-win as well because a lot of these partners are looking for ways to to Really access the students and the families right that need the kinds of supports that they're providing and so it becomes a win-win in that regard and then finally learning circle which I mentioned so when you look at all these things together you

021know again this is just a bit of a snapshot for some of the work that's happening in those schools but below the line here is is some of the things that we've been talking about or working on or things that we've done in the past that we'd like to try to do again just to give a sense of what some of the possibilities might be I'm going to give you an example some of you were at The Forum that we hosted at the collider in the fall right we had these national leaders here with us brought the whole Community together to talk about this model well Michael Dempsey was in the room from Lenore rhyme he approached me afterwards he said gosh you know I'm not really sure if this is how it's supposed to

022work but we're starting this this new clinical training program for you know mental health and our students really need to have practical learning experiences and we can't find enough opportunities for them well I'd had conversations with folks in our with her school-based health centers that they can't find enough folks to actually meet the demand and so we brought these Partners together they're now in the planning process for how we can bring more of those students to give practical internship opportunities in the school-based health centers that's really how this is supposed to work so I'm going to skip through this again to to give us a little bit more time for discussion but you can see that there's lots of possibilities we're really scratching the surface here thank you before I I pivot here I want

023to just talk a little bit about United for youth as well I think the focus for today is really on Community Schools but you know when you when you think about these ecosystems we've got the the community schools here at AMS but then we also have five Community Schools at Buncombe County school and they're part of this network together they're not working in isolation it's one of the things I think we're really proud of is that we're working with both districts and there's a lot of things that we're all doing together and learning from each other but when you when you add this greater Network this greater ecosystem of early childhood education right for partners that are doing uh post-secondary work what we call the Cradle to Career pipeline bring all those together in Us

024in the same ecosystem then you're really talking about United for Youth and that's that's kind of how those things are different and so United for youth is is really all about that larger cross-sector multi-general multi-generational ecosystem that's founded on this principle that equity and educational Excellence are inseparable we've talked a lot about this bold Community goal by 2035 all Asheville City and Buncombe County students will graduate from high school ready and fully prepared to pursue their goals and dreams and we know why this is so important maybe mentioned Equity it's at every single meeting it's it's at the center of the conversations that y'all are having this is this is something that's easy to talk about and very very difficult to do right and so you know I was uh I was listening into the

025conversation that y'all had a couple meetings ago about the budget and just like having so much uh sympathy for you all agonizing this really difficult decisions where you have really you're asked to stretch the limited resources that you have to do every possible thing and it's really hard and so what this work is really all about is Collective impact how do we braid together the work that all these different partners are doing collaborate Better Together align our resources in a way that we can actually achieve those goals and not try to do it in each of our silos separately and so United for youth Community Schools is really part of this Collective impact framework again that is very specific it has a name it has a whole methodology and we are doing this work and

026so really I think what what opportunity exists for all of us that I'm excited to be able to work with you all on and to work with the new superintendent when when uh when that person is hired is to really think differently about collaboration to really think differently about how we approach these challenges so that we're not just thinking about how do we do it ourselves or with one partner or two partners but how do we do it as a collective because that's what's really going to allow our resources to go further and faster and ultimately get us to to where we're trying to be so with that I would love just to um go back and sit over there and uh open this up for discussion conversation and allow my colleagues to add anything

027that they that I may have missed but Dan thank you for that um and thank you for the work you know y'all are doing in our schools um yeah so for the board I want to open it up if you have any questions and we make this you know conversational and any thoughts that you have um one thing I'd like to kind of start with Dan is um would you um just thinking of going back to that Collective impact slide um thinking of United Way as kind of this backbone organization I'd love for you to kind of or y'all to talk more about what that looks like day to day in our schools for our students because I thought I was trying really hard to not make this too um United Way Centric but we

028do United Way does have a particular role in this work yeah thank you it's a it's a uh it's a strategy that we all own together and we all play unique roles in that strategy and the role of a backbone is is the role that that we play in this work somebody that needs to that who's whose sole purpose is to try to get all the partners to work well together that's really the concept of of a backbone or organization and so what that looks like for United Way is these five things so we we help to coordinate the work that's happening across the different Partnerships part of that is creating these working groups many of you are involved in in a lot of these working groups staff even board members are involved in some

029of these working groups we talked about restorative practices an example of a shared professional learning that we help to to sort of uh create or facilitate and bring resources into that Network volunteer recruitment you know that's one of the things that our United Way has done historically is recruit and deploy volunteers so we have we have a really powerful uh mechanism to be able to reach out into the community identify volunteers who want to do this particular work and then help to get them to the places where they're most needed and then finally investing and fundraising and so um I put some of the dollar amounts in there not because I wanted to show off in any way how much money the United Way is putting into this work but because I wanted to make

030the point that by us taking each of our resources and putting them into this work together we can do a lot more than if we're trying to tackle that alone and so we are we've shifted our investment strategy to align with this work a hundred percent so the dollars we go out and raise in the community are going to United for Youth and they're going to community schools and we're investing in those Partnerships um so our the fundraising that we are doing is for this purpose does that answer your question that's great thank you um hey Dan I had a question about um really just about the data of the restorative practices are those staff members who've been trained only at AMS and eight at Asheville middle and Asheville high in silsa or is that

031system-wide okay so Dan I'm sorry do you mind if people online thank you so yeah so there are more people have been trained from our Community Partnerships from Buncombe County Schools so that would be um staff not just from the two Community Schools but district-wide meetings we've all set through we hear often from teachers that that's a really important practice but what we also hear is some teachers say well these people know how to do it and these people don't um and I'm just glad to know you're a resource throughout the district yeah and I'll add it's uh it's not just Educators too so I know Ams for instance had some of their administrative staff come through the trainings because really it requires the whole school environment to to go through it and ACS is

032one of the districts that has really committed uh all their staff going through the training um and is unique across the country in that well I'm glad you're doing that work and this is part is directed to the board again I think some of us heard this conversation about the reset rooms particularly and these rooms are throughout the district and the perception that we're hearing is some of the reset rooms are effectively using restorative practice and others or not so we may just be mindful of that and again the good resource of United Way thanks you know um related to that although I had something else I was going to ask and I'll still ask it but related to that restorative practices question one of the things that I'm struck by as a parent um

033is that I'm not sure parents are very well educated on what restorative practices means what how that you know as a person whose child has been For Better or Worse victimized at school or treated you know had something negative happen to them um and then as a parent you don't get any information right about what's happened and why um and that's because of privacy concerns and all that but I guess part of the I hear a lot of complaints from parents about things like that and I would be um curious about whether or not we could use the United Way or maybe our trained staff to educate our parents and our students frankly um more about I sound really loud so I'm going to back that up um no surprise there anyway that's something I

034would be curious about now the other question I was going to ask you is you know in doing this work and exploring with the budget and other things two areas that I feel like are of immediate concern in Asheville City schools and I think everywhere our mental health and your the leninore Ryan possibility sounds like a good um possibility there but we have Esser funds that we have used and those are going to go away to fund some of those positions and we need far more than we have um and then the second area is Pre-K right because our if our students come in and they are already two or three years behind um we it's very difficult to to help shrink that opportunity gap for them um and I'm curious about I guess one

035how those two areas mental health and Pre-K fit in you you mentioned them and I also love that you mentioned post-secondary that's awesome and exciting how do you coordinate with a school system to make sure that your funneling those those you know that you're identifying the needs and able to provide the resources foreign well first let me let me address the first point you brought out about RP because I think um what you mentioned before that Curiosity around parent education is exactly the kind of thinking that that for me is like well how do we leverage this thing that we have that we've built together so you've been to our you know homework diners um and and that's an example where we say can we do a can we do a homework Diner that is

036focused on this you know and that's that's the kind of thing that we try to do is is like lean into the existing infrastructure right to to try to achieve these goals as they appear um as far as you know your question about Early Child education um I mean I don't have a great answer for you but what I can do is kind of offer the framework and how it's supposed to work and so a lot of what we're trying to do right now as it relates to United for youth is build out the the governance leadership decision making model to be able to look at uh the the data gather information from community members directly and use that information to set priorities and goals and then make decisions about allocating resources and so we're

037not there yet But ultimately that what we're trying to do is create the infrastructure that so as a community we can pull those different kinds of information together about what are the most urgent needs what are some of the strategies that are out there that are working in other communities what are some of the strategies here that are working in this community that just need more resources and then make decisions collectively about how we can invest in those particular strategies I know that there you know the early childhood education conversation has been going on longer than this conversation about United for Youth and that there's a lot of energy already there's already a network that's working on some of that work we what we try to do is fold that into the United for youth

038Network right so that it's happening in alignment staff directory that would help us if we have questions about a particular or an idea about a need finding out what you all have already learned because I feel like you're a you're a resource for us and I'd be curious to know who's working on what I think as a follow-up I'd like to like I was listening to your question and you know I think we Amy's raised up two big priorities of ours um but also in thinking about the reality of collective impact and backbone organizations and you know it's there's identifying needs and that's here and then like you're saying there's the looking at what's out there and the power to me of this is breaking down those silos sometimes it's almost like I think it's

039hard to imagine how siled things can be like I think a lay person might think things are more coordinated than they actually are and you kind of are shocked to find out there's good wonderful people with wonderful intentions operating side by side without realizing what they could be doing together and so certainly from our perspective we'll tell you mental health needs are huge we we want to find any way we can to leverage anything we can to get more of that in our schools I don't think you're shocked by that um and then same with Pre-K right we want children showing up to Asheville City Schools really ready um to learn are there areas where you've you have been doing that analysis you were just describing Dan where you're aware of where the needs and

040the resources might be closest sort of that Lenora Rhine conversation like where there's ripeness for that that it might not be to give us exactly what we should you know we want Pre-K for every kid and we want mental health providers for everyone who needs them but what else is happening that we could know about where there's alignment I'd love to know like maybe I hate when people say this but like what's the low-hanging fruit that you're aware of because I think when we build and we create success even if it's not exactly the thing we were hoping for it builds on itself yeah a little bit yeah so I think uh you lifted up the Lenora Ryan example and I think that's a a really great highlight of what we're talking about when we're

041talking about Collective impact um the Harvard redesign lab released uh what it means to be a backbone leader report recently and they talk about a lot of intangible competencies as well some of that is is humility some of that is relationship building and and creating spaces where folks can be around a table together because that analysis has been done right like as a parent of a two and four year old I know that that analysis about the state of pre-K in our community is done but the folks who are doing that work aren't often invited to the tables to sit with folks who are making decisions about K-12 about post-secondary and so to answer George's question earlier what it looks like day to day we have our monthly Network check-ins where recently we've started to

042have representation from early childhood from Christine Avery from read to succeed Buncombe partnership for children who are coming and having conversations with University folks with school-based folks with out of school time based folks and and working on how we can create Pathways of support how we can get young student tutors how we can get more culturally competent and relevant mental health for students in the schools things like that so it's really about creating that space for those conversations to happen for those light bulbs like the Lenoir Ryan example to go off and if I could just add a little bit thank you Dan and your team for all you're doing and supporting our students and families in Nashville city schools you guys have been a great asset um Amy to answer your question a little

043bit about uh parents not being familiar with restorative practices we started that initiative last year trying to educate parents and then um well at the beginning of the school year and so things happen and we hadn't been able to follow through me assuming this position and currently as the restorative practices coordinated for the district so we hadn't been able to follow through with it all but we did start by working with Claxton parents upon the request of Administrators and so um outside of us most definitely supporting and sending individuals to be trained through United Way We also asked for City Schools also does provide a quick um three 90-minute sessions on restorative practices for those individuals and staff who aren't able to attend a full two-day train so we are in the process and we

044are working on that that's on our radar to educate more parents and to even go out in the community uh we met with um Stevens Lee um staff and they're willing to open up so we can go into the communities and do that as well so it's in it's in the works we're working on it but we understand there is a need I'm curious to know um kind of Rebecca's comment made me think about you know we we've got lots of Community Support providers you know all is the backbone working here here and here sometimes as as you mentioned Rebecca sometimes two agencies might be doing similar work and not recognizing that um so at the risk of abusing an overused expression there are probably lots of unknown unknowns so but I'm curious like in

045your work have you run across barriers that you didn't think you would find in terms of being better able to support our students our staff in our schools that we as a board can help eliminate has anything come up you're like wait a minute that's whether it's you know an mou is an easy answer but something other barriers that might have come up that you didn't even know were out there that we can help um as a board and if the answer is no that's fine too but I have a feeling it's not covet Maybe I mean it's been it's I mean that was unknown before um no I mean I think the biggest challenge the biggest challenges have been um the same challenges that y'all have been experiencing um are because our work has

046become so aligned with with y'all's work um we're all struggling to adapt to the incredible challenges over the last you know three years in particular so um I think that you know your your the team from Asheville City schools have been you know phenomenal in terms of really buying into this work and I think we all learned on some level with the pandemic that um this this infrastructure that I'm talking about that we've built together was really really important for the resilience of our schools when covet happened right and it's you know it's it's sometimes hard to sort of get folks you know to to come and talk about some of these sort of like you know new strategies or building new you know committees or whatever it is when they're dealing with the crises

047that are happening in the schools and in the classroom and with parents and at home and all those different things so I think really it's just the capacity challenges that that exist across the board this stuff takes time it takes engagement from from you know staff and leaders to to really do it well and people are maxed out all the time and so that's that's kind of what we're up against um it's not so much that we're getting resistance um I mean in some places there's you know there's that kind of thing but we've had really tremendous leadership from you know from the principals the schools and of course you know the teachers and support staff at those schools all the way through and up to uh you know central office to add to that

048sort of building that public awareness I think is one thing that the board could really do um that that seems to be a barrier for some folks in sort of like knowing that mental health is a challenge or that Pre-K or kindergarten Readiness and Pre-K access are challenges and feeling like these are insurmountable and we have to figure this out as a board or as an organization versus sort of engendering everyone with the understanding of what United Faith is and what community schools are and how they can help to address those issues and sort of just building up that public support and awareness um and I think too sort of back to the restorative practices piece for what the the board can do I facilitate some of those trainings for our Educators and often teachers

049are like I'm using this strategy or there are several of us who are using this strategy but we don't feel like the support is there or that uh just the training is there for everyone from leadership that's something that they often say and so I don't know that the people on the ground know that you all are aware of what restorative practices is and how it impacts their classrooms and I think they could really use a deeper sort of understanding and awareness that you all support this as well yeah the only other thing that I would add is I mean obviously the role that you all play with respect to the superintendent and the selection process and you know I've talked to several you at different times about the importance of bringing somebody on who

050really believes in this type of approach of of these Community Partnerships and and helping to hold you know the the leadership accountable for that kind of um that way of operating I think is going to be really important going forward and you know us as partners and all the partners we need to be accountable as well and there are ways that you know if if we're not showing up in the ways that that we can be right and this work isn't isn't moving forward with the way that we know it can then we we should have a conversation about that you know because we're we're committed to this being successful and um part of that is how we are holding each other accountable as partners in this work I have a really super quick question

051about the health center at Asheville Middle School is it for students and staff or is it just student based they're going to make you talk yeah it's for it's for the community so the um the students and their families so it's the parents and others yeah absolutely yeah that's the the community school model we really want the the schools to be that Hub of resource for the surrounding community so and just a follow-up question are there any plans for a Health Center at the high school I mean we have two at the hospital yeah it's an Appalachian Mountains Appalachian mountain is the is the um the fqhc that is in the the high school and so they're they're in both right now and and we're really excited about the way that Blue Ridge and Appalachian

052Mountain have been able to work together because they're they're serving a lot of the same families I have a question that's in another Direction I'm just looking at that last slide of like what is a backbone and looking through these bullets and um come coming to the last two which I feel like we haven't talked about as much which is volunteer Recruitment and I'm not even go to the next one because it's money but I'm landing on volunteer Recruitment and kind of I've been aware of the Brave thing you've done at United Way like um I'm part of organizations that are no longer going to get funding from you and the way you've communicated about it has made me feel excited even as I'm supporting organizations that are no longer going to get your funding

053because you're showing up for Youth and you're doing it in a targeted concerted way but I also think of United ways like in general as being these like places where people volunteer people know like I can get into my community and do a work day like maybe these are like old-timey tropes but are there things happening around leveraging people and volunteers to make things happen for Community Schools and what could that look like or what is that looking like yes there are some things happening um it's this is one of the challenges that we're having as an organization that's been around for 100 years doing things a certain way um is it takes time for us to actually make the changes on our end to catch up with the vision for where we're headed and

054so there are some great things that are happening in the schools as it relates to volunteer engagement I'll name one example um the do the right thing uh competition I think is a great example where you know we've been Partners uh with you all in that project and we got the word uh pretty pretty late in the game that there just weren't enough people to to read and review all the all the submissions and so we put a call out to our volunteers and I'm told I think we had a hundred 100 100 volunteers came out of that process and were able to support you know that work so I think part of it is is you know we've got some some really great tools and leveraging those tools to be able to be nimble

055and you know go out and and meet those needs that appear when they do but I think uh more where the direction that we need to be headed is really to work very closely with the partners some of them are utilizing um our support as a backbone Organization for recruit recruitment of volunteers and deployment and some are not and in some cases you know there there are partners that don't have the capacity to manage large number of volunteers but large number of volunteers would really support their work and so what we're trying to figure out is is how do we sort of segment the types of volunteer support resources that we provide as an organization at different levels to be able to really support the the most urgent needs in that Network as it relates

056to to volunteers so it's it's just a process and we're not where we're where we want to be yet where we have that alignment just like you mentioned around our our sort of Grants program for lack of a better word our community Investments you know we're in the process of Shifting those to become fully aligned with this strategy it's the same thing with volunteer engagement and it takes time but that's that's a great example Rebecca too where if there are things where you think or anyone in addition thinks gosh we could really use you know an army of volunteers for this particular thing um that's that's a resource that we can provide we've done it around some of the the holiday um you know presents kind of gathering and wrapping and distributing those things but

057there's countless examples of ways that that we could be really kind of leveraging that capacity that we have as a backbone organization better is there anything else from the board questions or comments for Dan and his team I'm excited to see how um how we collaborate more extensively and um especially as we get a new superintendent on board and hopefully have a um you know really start to kind of beat the bushes and see what's out there and how we can mobilize what you the the very powerful force that United Way has always been in communities toward this one you know sort of collective set of goals that are aligned in the purpose I appreciate it foreign I use this opportunity to to mention something that I've only mentioned to a couple of board members

058and Dr Cosby started this as well this idea that perhaps in August with our work session in August when we've got a new board I'm sorry a new superintendent coming on before the start of the school year perhaps bringing the United Way Back along with other of our community support providers to give a real kind of ground a kind of laying the groundwork for what the year looks like in our schools for our community support providers what they're doing what support they need and can what support we can give them as a board it's also an opportunity for the superintendent uh you know obviously from day one we want that superintendent to be reaching out but it's hard to reach out to everybody in that first month that could be an opportunity for the superintendent

059to also be in the same room with all of these community supported providers so I just want to throw that out there as a possibility for our August work session that we kind of focus on on more conversation with the Onaway and others who are who are doing this for us in our schools yeah so Dan thank you Joseph and and I'm sorry Steve I know like every day I have to ask you so Joseph Steve and Dan thank you so much for being here thanks for your work uh we really appreciate what you're doing in our schools yeah thank you we really appreciate the opportunity to be here and thanks so much for your partnership and to all the folks who are in the room who are really important partners with us every day

060okay up next on the agenda is our student releases to Buncombe County um and Melissa is in the stead of Tanya Boucher good afternoon since miss perichet last presented to you we've had four releases to Buncombe County schools these are all Elementary School students three of the four are continued placements they're already enrolled in Buncombe County schools and one is a new release a kindergarten family for work proximity three females one male all white any questions thank you thanks Melissa yeah yes that will be on the consent agenda for next Monday um next um board protocol responding to Communications this is something that has come up just in recent times especially around our budget conversations and all that and I think it's just an important conversation to have in a public way so that public

061also understands how as a board we want to um it's not policy as much as his procedure how we want to act as a board when we're getting especially email Communications to all of us or to an individual that kind of thing so Rebecca you've been kind of heading up to protocols conversation so I'm putting it on you to if you want to start us off that's funny everything I was going to say to start us off is what George just said um no I'm just mostly joking I think we we as a group wanted to have a conversation and conversations like this we have publicly we don't do them without if we're all going to talk about something we do it in this forum so this is something that we realized we needed to

062have a conversation about listen to each other and come up with a norm we are taking seriously that the idea that we learned from the state School Board Association about our norms and our practices matter and we want to be transparent about them and so we did thank you George is referencing something that's come up in our conversations about when we're communicating via email what kinds of norms feel relevant feel appropriate and but are not creating bottlenecks or problems for us and one Norm that has been um generally accepted is that emails to all of us get a single response and not that others can't contribute but that there is a response from the chair and I think we may not there may be drawbacks to that that we want to name and hold and

063think if they're a different kind of Norm we want to have so that's what we're looking to discuss right now um and I'll just say um as point of reference when I came on the board um there were there were emails coming to everyone and I started responding as somebody who's not on board leadership and um you know it's not that I was reprimanded for but just told like you know what we should be doing is having the board chair respond and I guess James you can back me up on this but that was as a result of in previous board iterations there wasn't a lot of communication coming back from the board responding so just that was a norm put in place to make sure that there was response from the board James is

064that that yeah I mean that's a kind way of saying it um there there were the same thing happened to me when I first came on the board uh there was an email that came out to all of us and I waited for three days to see if there was going to be a response and there was never a response so I responded and you know I was told oh the chairs responds and I said is the chair going to respond um so uh one of the things that I did when I became chair was I just made sure that every email was responded to and all the board members were copied on it but it's always been the practice as well that if an individual board member gets an individual email from someone that

065that person is more than uh they can they can definitely respond I think that is probably where some of this is coming into play normally if someone's responding if someone's emailing all of the board members the chair would be responding for the board as a whole but if an individual still had something they wanted to say you know it never stopped anyone from responding individually just not because as the chair you're you're you're you're responding as the chairperson so I think I may be part of the reason is we're having this conversation tonight [Laughter] sorry um and it's because I felt sometimes I have felt as though when I get emails from people and then I don't feel like I can really respond personally to them that feels like a violation of what I said

066I would do during The Campaign which was be responsive and so um I I guess I was a little confused because I was under the impression that part of our Norm was if I got an individual email I was supposed to share it with everybody and then there was still going to be one response and so um either way I have to say that like I and I don't I frankly don't always feel like my response to an individual's stakeholder should have to be shared with the entire board not because I'm saying anything terrible but just because you know I may have a relationship with that person or you know I just don't necessarily want to make it a whole board conversation and I and sometimes it's just a matter of I feel like I

067can answer their question quickly and efficiently and then save everybody else a whole email so I'm I'm the reason maybe that because I'm I asked do what exactly are we doing in these in and how do we do it um I I will say that I think George um I've only been on the board when you've been chair but I think your responses have been very good and so this doesn't come from any criticism of substance no I'm just saying like literally that it doesn't come from any critique of substance it comes from feeling a little bit like um I want to be able to have conversations with stakeholders when they email us I'd like to be able to just email them back and have my own response but I I maybe that's not the

068way it should go so so I'm sorry Amy to clarify what you're saying is if if you know someone from the community you know whoever might be emails you directly of course yeah I think you should respond it's been my habit just to just uh CC everyone on the board um just in terms of keeping everybody um abreast of what's going on but I but I agree with you if someone emails me individually um I I have no problem with this idea that yes if you think it's just going to be a one-on-one conversation to continue doing that and I think but I but again I think in a public place to be able to say that to community this is what's going to happen you know if if whoever emails me directly without including

069the board members I could choose to CC everybody just you know in case it's something that the whole Board needs to know about or I can choose to respond directly and I'm I'm I think that's a great Norm I think the other thing comes when some Community emails the entire board right and um and what do we want that that Norm to be is it always on me to respond and I'm happy to do it but I also recognize that we're seven people with with different opinions and so I don't always feel comfortable I mean in general I feel comfortable responding but I also recognize that I might not be you know I'm trying to speak for everybody but I don't want to always be speaking for everybody if that makes sense yeah generalizing yeah

070well and you know that was that was something that I have done is like respond when we were all an email I think it was right around the budget where there was a particular flurry of emails um and I just I wanted to ensure that this person was responded to in a timely manner and I don't think that I said anything out of turn but um yeah I agree that it's you know I think it's important to have our that shared accountability with our community about what the expectation is okay I must be doing something wrong because when I get emails I will reply are you a robot and I get no response back so but if I would if they would respond back to me I would say hey why don't you meet me

071I like to see people face to face I'm not I don't want to put nothing on paper that will come back to me if I respond to a question but the questions that I have received and looked at the emails like oh no no but I do say are you a robot and send it out and nobody come back the second time so I don't know what I'm doing wrong all right so next time maybe I will respond to it and see what happens all right but if you're doing but I'm just wait if someone say well uh the chairman Jesse Warren never respond back to him you say hey they say no not a robot and I will respond back to him I will I will acceptable if I use that method yeah I

072don't know I just I I guess I'm just a little yeah I was confused and I was thinking we were supposed to share all of our even individual emails so I'm glad to know that that's not an expectation but even when they they email the whole board um I feel like if if if we want to say everybody I know that I personally want to respond to every email that we get if I have the capacity even if it's addressed to all of us and even if you've given a really good response I just don't want anybody to think that they have emailed our group and I just sort of was like George will respond to me for me and not give them my time and my energy of actually listening to each individual and

073that may mean I respond with an email I'm naming a phone call or whatever so in that situation do we want to copy each other on all of those or how do y'all what do you think well Amy I was gonna say I'm glad you brought this up because I know there was a point where I've received emails that one of you has added all of us and made a reference I think I was like I'm going to steal Sarah's language where it says per the protocols that we follow I'm seeing the rest of the board when I give this response to you and so I think what I'm hearing is that each of us must use our best judgment in deciding when when someone reaches out to us individually when that's something that I've

074I've at times cc'd Dr Cosby on my response because it's not a me question it is a bottom of the clock and and I've you know a new board member made someone uncomfortable and then had to reassure that person that wasn't being mean by adding Dr Cosby to the email um but but I think that what we're trying to do is hold ourselves accountable that we don't hold information in secret what we do with information is use it for the best interest of our kids and our school district so there's these guiding principles that we follow about when to add everybody I'm going to tell you something that everybody should know I'm telling you right because I've seen that happen but then there are times where either because of volume I don't know exactly what

075but there are reasons when instead the answer could just be I'm just going to respond to you and we just have to use judgment for that and then when emails come to all of us I think at this point I am in favor of the response coming from the chair first and in the event the response from the chair doesn't sit well with me that I can say George I think I think that's not right or I think there's more to it or something along those lines because I and I'm not saying I'm demanding this but I think my inclination is to say that that is a way of communicating with people about what's going on in our district that can be predictable for folks and for us but create space for us to have

076other opinions about what's going on I just want to be clear that it's not even when I disagree it's not at all George may have said the exact perfect response but I still want to respond and say I I hear you I see you I acknowledge your concerns and by the way do you want to talk or do you have anything else you want to say um and I don't know if it makes sense to include that kind of thing with everybody um and copy that that's just a that's just my my inclination is that when I tell people that I'm going to be available to them as a school board member and then I get on the board and I don't feel like I have the freedom to respond unless I disagree or unless

077I want to clarify something it makes me feel like I'm not as responsive as I promised I would be I think that's I appreciate you said Amy it makes me think about um our responsibility as a board for complying with open meeting laws as well so so what I'm hearing is or what what what you know kind of trying to synthesize all this is keeping it a norm when when we get as a board an email to all of us that is that I'm gonna to I'm going to respond for the board and then each of you if you feel like you need to respond do it individually because first of all I mean one it's it's a promise that you've made on the companion Trail and also it's just it's what we should do

078to our with our constituents and then third it it avoids us violating any open meeting laws by having conversations via the email so um and then so then what I would say on top of that is and this is for my accountability to say that as as board chair um and and I'm hoping this changes once this new superintendent here we're not having meetings every week or you know interviews three days in a row and all that kind of stuff that I'll have more time to respond but kind of giving myself you know a day or or 48 hours to respond if you all haven't seen that then then call me you know call me and say George you know there was this email you might not have seen it I haven't seen a response

079I want to respond individually but you know love for you to give your initial response first I think that's a that's a fair Norm to me I mean does anybody feel like that I mean and I'm not going to say are you a robot you can do that I'm just going to say thank you for your email because I guess the person who raised the concern like that's great with me thank you you are the only person and it's also it's good like this like again it's not a policy it was just a norm that had been put in place James had had you know had had felt it I'd felt it and it was just this is a good way for us to kind of make sure the community knows I appreciate I appreciate

080where we got to because I think it created Clarity I had lost and now now we know where we're going and so does to all the people in this room you're welcome for doing this publicly great uh anything else on that all right um so next recommendation resolution for state prc071 oh my turn to Cosby and I would say to you on what you're just talking about is perfect acceptable if someone's going to be a weight chair is going to be aware of something to assign a week or two to someone else to respond I have seen boards just rotate it totally that way that's something you can do based on need the next item deals with the recommendation to you which includes a resolution dealing with approval was called prc071 supplemental funds for Teacher

081compensation a couple of years ago the state of North Carolina decided to help some school systems in primarily tier one and tier 2 counties where they did not have funding enough available to pay supplements for teachers So based upon the wealth of the county they made a certain amount of money available for each each teacher the way you qualified was based upon the property evaluation in the county and it was basically all counties who were below 40 40 billion dollars evaluation so which cut out most of the large counties cut out Buncombe County and so on a year ago they changed that and they upped that amount and made Buncombe County National City eligible for that funding so this this year is the first year that we have been eligible for it and it was

082a little wild effort happened before we knew it had happened because they didn't just call us and say now you're eligible for this it's just suddenly showed up on a PRC code you know so we had to start checking and looking at it and found out that indeed was the case so we we're getting this year 293 thousand sixty dollars and it can only be paid to teachers and uh School support Personnel instructional support Personnel who are actually assigned by code to a school there could be a couple of exceptions to that if you had a principal or an assistant principal who have been paid on a teacher salary schedule they would be eligible but we don't have any like that so they're not so it's limited to those folks and it's about 372 folks

083and our plan which is in this resolution if you approve it next board meeting is that it would be divided equally among those 372 on a pro-rounded basis if they're 100 to get a full share for 80 percent they were getting 80 share and they would get it if they were employed as of May the first leave us before May one they're out of luck if they join us after May 1 they're out of luck if they're employed May 1 they'd better and we would pay that supplement along with the regular supplement we pay into May payroll and it comes out after and the law requires that matching benefits also come out of that and after that's done it would equal approximately 596 dollars and 10 cents for a full share for those 372 who

084are full-time folks we also have nine other teachers who are in the pre-k program and the legislation specifically says if they are not eligible for this funding but I would hate to pay everybody else and not them we do have adequate funds from Child Care stabilization grants that we can use to pay those other nine and that's what we would propose that we do and that's basically what the resolution says I'm not going to read it all to you I'm sure you already have read it but that's what this is about questions I do have two first question um the 596.10 is that taxable or yes that's taxable so they probably won't get into more than about two weeks it'll be less than that be less than that second thing here is there are we

085could we see a list of the people that's getting it or is up to it's pretty much every teacher and instructional support position and school system okay if they're assigned to school instructional support like media counselors social workers if they're in one of those positions in School Employees of May 1 they'll get it they're good okay just have a quick follow-up question and it doesn't matter if their paycheck is solely from the state versus local funds if they're a certified teacher and our system there is correct we can pay regardless of whether they're regular paycheck is from and just this is the first time we've gotten this money so to a certain extent we're setting precedent because we would expect to get it next year also I would expect that we would yes yeah fine

086in favor of it no classified Personnel or else thank you then through the the stabilization Grant funds that are paying for the the preschool positions how are you differentiating the preschool positions is it it's the preschool would be the teachers who are yes to teach us the non-teachers got assistance do we have any staff who are certified who aren't assigned to a school who might float between schools and therefore are considered like central office or yes hey Mike we have some certified staff that serve the district but they do have a single School assignment for payroll so no there's no one none of our certified would be left out of this the wave okay not better meet the right qualifications as a teacher or an instructional support okay yeah but no central office and no

087classified and that's the state law we have no options about any other questions I just would want to clarify you know um this will be on as a item for our next board meeting but a way to communicate this out and make sure that we as a district communicating this out recognizing that we are now creating a uh you know we are differentiating between classified and certified staff and recognizing our classified staff work equally hard as I certified the fact that the state is because giving us money with these parameters and you know I know that doesn't um make it any more just but at least to make it a softer Landing for those who are those of our classified staff well we'll get our communication and spell out what the state requirements are okay

088next item uh at the last meeting you asked us to do a survey of our employees as to how they would how they favored receiving the payment of their supplement and the two options were once a year in May or monthly and you you can see the results the the winner or whatever by nose is almost like a Kentucky Derby was is monthly 50.8 percent of the respondents chose monthly 49.2 percent chose once a year we had 561 responses which is a really good response rate so if this is for you what you do with it is up to you is there is there a further breakdown of sorry no a certified versus classified staff or other ways to break down this I don't know how it broke out we didn't we didn't have we

089didn't have them we asked the exact question you asked us to we didn't ask them to identify what their positions that's the question no matter how you do a survey after the facts almost like why didn't you ask that how many staff do we have how many staff received this survey approximately six sixty approximately 660 around we got 561 responses it's over 90 percent yeah yeah exactly okay well thank you for doing that that's a food for thought for us yes well you know I mean you can always go what the vote is we can certainly yeah I want to open it up you know before we move on to the next thing did anybody here want to same thing seems to me that the results were close we have a result and we also

090have at least as a board at least for my purposes I personally have been inclined to go with a monthly supplement just because it seems to better reflect pay um month to month and so although this is not a resounding victory for monthly I wonder if we should at least talk about whether we would be inclined to um recommend that change or yeah the only thing I was gonna that I was carrying some curiosity about with this is we've passed several times and George has told us that several times now that while we can't have people opt there is a option through at least a bank whether it's the bank that most of our staff use okay to do to set up and so like with these results like I'm I'm wondering if there's capacity

091for um a financial literacy type day where folks could come in sit down with somebody from that bank and say this is what I make now I'd like to continue to make this now whatever my increase is going to be can it go like so that if what they want is to keep getting what they get now with you know with a small increase for salary increase but not feel the like now it's all on me to save the money to take you know the way I used to that we could make it easier to access that support and that service I love that and I wonder if we can't just I mean we have meetings everybody has meetings at these schools and that the right there's faculty meetings there's staff meetings there's so that

092might be a good place to offer that you know to have each principal offer um that kind of day and then one for central office and um other to your point that as a as a messaging the messaging is not you know the messaging is gentle and the messaging is if what you prefer is to keep it the way it is we have a way to make that happen for you and we've set this time up where you can set that up if what you want if you're in the 40 49 percent well and just to be clear it's not exactly that because it's a the the once a year in May is a lump sum what the banks would do is take a 10-month paycheck and make it a 12-month paycheck so it's not

093like the banks would then give out a lump sum in May right I mean right they get it it's their money so it's their money they would it would be with generally like the State Employees Credit Union they have a um an account like a summer account so every month for the 10 months they take money out the individual would have to choose how much and it goes into that account they can get it out early if they want or they can wait until May or June and take it out that's that is an individual's personal uh I appreciate that Georgia because we've asked you can they get 12 months instead of 10 like we've we've gone around but you're no it's not that it creates a 12-month paycheck it literally just is a separate

094account that is not it's liquid it's theirs it's like there used to be a state law that said that you can get paid over 12 months instead of 10 if you ought and it was just done within house that law changed about four or five years ago correct and for some reason they they've stopped allowing that so so now it goes to a credit union or whatever financial institution they would want to use yeah so I have a question I'm sorry go ahead what I'd like to say is you know that's my money that I would in my personal opinion I would rather get that monthly so that I can put it into a savings get interest on it rather than the state hold it now we don't get interest on it Asheville City Schools

095the state holds the money until we order it so um therefore as an individual I can receive that money have it put into a savings account I earned my own interest on it and then I can request it at you know what I want to is it possible to maybe begin another school year try it again to see what the results are once again I mean the NBA plays seven games all right is it possible that we can just have that survey one more time just you need to make some decision to start July because the supplements are paid starting in July to it's a fun survey if you do it monthly my I think what if this is something we want to consider as a board I would really recommend that as opposed to

096making an effective July 1 2023 that we would say a year from now July July 2024 is when it's going to take effect that gives a year for us as a district to communicate with our staff because we've seen you know when we when we tried doing something different what was it last year and we did it fairly quickly I mean it was it was a tough I don't want to say tough pill to swallow because that puts it on the employees it's like a lot of information to take up and in in the matter of a couple months this you know this kind of phases it in um and so it gives employees time for as example I mean it's so funny Rebecca you brought that up because I was having the exact same

097conversation with somebody last night about this like having CQ come in and give um to work individually with staff to set up days to kind of explain how this can work as opposed to saying we're going to do this July 1 CQ get in there right away and help them do this let's say this is it again if we're going to do it next year we do it and that gives us a year to help our to give resources to our staff to make sure that it's not an Abrupt change that's what I would recommend construction I'm in favor of that um I mean we can't you know this is a work session so we can't take a vote on this right now anyway but it is you know there's things for us to mull

098over um you know if that's what comes up in other budget conversations or whatever then that's that's um we can we can add that um I do want to just so we can see how close this was 285 people requested monthly 276 people or staff requested once a year so a difference of nine staff members I mean that's how close this was so you're right there if there is an answer but it was an extremely close answer yeah so yeah anyway you asked for the information and you haven't yes thank you any anything else about that from the board thank you thank you thank you for doing that all right the next item is information on our budget presentation it'll be made tomorrow to the board of County Commissioners when we had the meeting between

099the board chairs and myself putting together again the beginning of the agenda for this they indicated they'd like to see this before it went to the commissioner so so you're going to get a little shortened version I'm not going to go through every single thing I might say the Commissioners about it at least you'll have the information uh that meeting is tomorrow morning it will be it begins around nine o'clock the educational presentations great part of it at the East Asheville Library that's where it's located uh Buncombe Ashley Tech will go first we will go second and the county will go third depending on how long it goes and what kind of questions we get away but may be there all morning whatever but I would love you're certainly welcome to be there and I

100would appreciate it if you can make it if you can't that's certainly understandable also without we would do several things with this one try to give them a really good picture of what Nashville city schools is doing and what it looks like and I do want to say to you this presentation was a team effort while I did the initial outline of what I wanted to put in it a lot of folks helped with in April Georgia Ian and Matt and Dylan and Melissa so it was a team effort and everyone had different assignments and we we actually finished it about a day and a half before we thought before what our goal was so it really really went great and I appreciate all her help but the next slide out is still in what

101we look like as far as student demographics we're 61.7 percent White and 38 percent other and you can see the breakdown on the other our other largest one being our black population which is 19 percent if you look at staff demographics you'll see that we're 80 White and uh second largest is black which is 17 percent and that's 17 is close to the 19 percent of what students are however if you looked at the the breakdown of that it would be much more classified than it would be instructional staff and that's certainly important thing because I'm sure we're making as much effort as anyone that I know of but the availability of minority staff is just very very slim it's just not there next we want to get into some of the things that we're

102being successful and being recognized for us in school system 21-22 graduation rate for Asheville City Schools was 93.5 percent one of the best in the state and if you want to go back and some folks out so I'll throw it all kind of his history dates because I lived them and the first one I did not live in 1900 in the United States 10 percent of folks graduated from high school 10 percent by the 1950s we'd got that and up to 50 percent and by the mid 80s we'd gotten it up to about 60 percent and then there was a study that came out while President Reagan was in office called the nation at risk and what he said was that our schools were so bad if they were a foreign country would declare war

103on them and that started a real effort at doing a number of things one was increasing the graduation rate and it has increased tremendously since then about 60 percent up to in our case now over 90 93 percent so that's a great success but what's really significant for us is the subgroups and want you to really to really look at those and we've given you the comparison here between Asheville City schools and the state all of our students 93.5 the state is 86.4 so we're significantly above the state at the graduation rate uh and our black population we were 87.2 percent of our students graduating Statewide is 83.4 percent and this is based on four years this means students who come in as freshmen for graduating four years later if they didn't graduate then they

104gradually have to stay over and graduate in summer school they're what's called a five-year cohort but this is the four-year cohort so if our black students who enter ninth grade 87.2 percent of them are graduating our Hispanic students over 95 percent of them graduated state is 80.2 percent are multi-racial two or more that's the only area that we're below State numbers and it's very close we're at 82.8 percent the state is 83.5 percent our white students in excess of 95 graduate for the state that's 89.9 percent these next two two ones are almost they're absolutely amazing our economically disadvantaged students 86.2 percent in our Nashville city schools graduate Statewide it's 66.9 okay and our students with disabilities 90 percent of our students with disabilities graduate Statewide is 71 percent somebody's doing a good job earlier

105this year there was a Rank and it came out from a group called Niche nichi.com Nichi is a company that works with millions of families Across the Nation in relocation each year and they help them identify school systems to move to they help them identify universities to go to and they do extensive surveys and and research from those folks as well as looking at U.S Department of Education statistics they ranked Asheville City Schools as the fifth best school district in North Carolina out of 115 school systems the top five were Capital Carrboro Polk County Union County Watauga County and Asheville City and I've had the pleasure of being superintendent in three of those okay and I didn't cause them to be in the top five I showed up later but so that's great recognition the

106same same group just uh that's enough we're also blessed to have the western region principal of the year and rafika Cobb we're very very proud of her and her achievements the state presentations will be made next week and I'll be going down to Raleigh I think Thursday next week and on Friday morning the Wells Fargo principal year will be announced we might well have the state principal of the year so we're proud of that students attending North Carolina Governor's School summer program this coming summer we had 10 high school students accepted in this program in most cases for most high schools it would be one or two students so this is a significant number we get two I think on that one is it one guaranteed to we get one guaranteed per system and we've

107got 10. and nature also did another additional ranking just recently and Asheville high school was named the 15th best high school in North Carolina for athletic programs that's looking at the overall programs records championships involvement participation all of those those pieces of it there are only two high schools in Western North Carolina that were part of that recognition actual high school and Reynolds High School other highlights the high school our girls and boys indoor track teams or both Conference champions our girls basketball team was co-conference champions at the middle school a wrestling team or Conference champions football team was Conference champions there undefeated and one of the really outstanding programs is our Band program all district and All-State band the Asheville City School bands placed more students into the district bands and All-State band than

108any District in Western North Carolina not any high school but any District from our program we had more than 80 students from Asheville City schools that made the old District Band most high school bands don't have 80 students you know seriously and they had nine students who made the All-State bands and we're very proud our Asheville high school and celsa culinary and Hospitality students won first place in state competition and they'll be going when do they go to Washington oh they were to go just got back our Asheville City Schools Middle School Battle of the books team our regional champions and they're the state competition our AVID program this is one of our really successful programs Avid stands for advancement the individual determination and this is designed for children from families who normally wouldn't might

109not graduate from high school and and most likely would not go to college this program begins at Asheville Middle School in sixth grade and they stay in the programs and all the way through to the senior year we have 311 students involved in this program this year and we have our largest graduating group ever 42 of these students graduate this year 76 percent of them will attend the four-year College University next year and most of the others are going to community colleges and if you look at the picture the young lady right in the middle of the front holding something down below or the white and blue blower she's going to UNC Chapel Hill on a full full year of college scholarship academic achievement our academic achievement overall is among the highest in North Carolina

110although we know that we do have certain areas that we have concerns and issues we know that when you look at our subgroups that we have three subgroups by race our black students our Hispanic students and our multi-racial students that we have gaps between their where their proficiency level is and where white students proficiency level is and I've shared shared some of that with you I've also shared some information with you recently that shows the high correlation between that and and poverty we looked at also we looked at it for some discipline referrals and I've chatted some with you and I'm going to talk more about it and you summed it up a while ago Amy when when these students come in and they're two or three years behind where they should be to start

111with that's a real challenge we we get information about student performance in two areas one in proficiency that's where they perform on a cut line that someone has established is where they should be at a certain grade level and the other is growth how much they grow over a Year's period of time now proficiency you need to understand this is an artificial number every state is different in every state it's set by the state legislature and until the No Child Left Behind Act came around the majority of states in the United States did not have a state to stand a course to study they did not have State Testing so after they began all that each state looked at it and decided where they would put the cut lines there are a number of states

112if our students were being tested we would be much much higher than where we are because they have lower standards there are some a few other states that have standards that are set very high but all of them are artificially set in North Carolina our standard proficiency standard has been changed about seven times since it started every time it's set and we start school systems gear up and they begin to meet it and numbers look really good the legislature says it must be too easy and they've raised it every time so that's what happens any educator will tell you a Proficiency in growth that growth is the most significant number but in our state grading system it only counts 20 percent of efficiency is 80 percent what I would suggest to you in the future

113is that you look in your strategic plan that you will be developing in your new superintendent and you developed a standard or a goals around growth and that you focus on growth because the best teachers will grow kids maybe a year some will get them a year and two months maybe a year and three months but if you start out with a student who's two years behind to start with and they grow a year and two months every year they'll be in the 8th grade or ninth grade before you get into proficiency okay so you need to set step by step how much you want to try to achieve over a period of time and focus on that growth and make it positive and get away from looking at something it's just going to be

114negative okay that's my suggestion for you new superintendent may have different ideas but that's that's what I would suggest so what I'm talking about primarily in this chip and I'll explain this to the Commissioners in the morning also but what we put in here is a combination of looking at both proficients and proficiency information but with a bigger focus on growth this next chart accountability highlights for 2122 and you do need to know that there was some time during covid that there were no tests being given and every school system in North Carolina the first year they test out the Kobe the scores were way below where they were the last year before coming second year which was last year of testing almost everybody increased and we've increased significantly in Asheville City Schools also but

115if you look at some specific things from that Lucy s herrings overall growth score was the fourth highest among elementary schools in the western region Lucy Herring and IRB Jones had the second and the fifth highest math growth of all the elementary schools in the western region Lucy Herring and RB Jones met or exceeded growth for every subgroup Asheville High Asheville middle Hall Fletcher Elementary Montford North Star Academy and Selsa met growth for every subgroup black students met growth at every school where data was available did you hear that one at every school across all schools overall proficiency rates increased from last year in 42 of the 59 EOG EOC tested areas the National City Schools ranked seventh in the state in act composite score that's the score to go college entrance some other important

116information on growth for you we use assessment system called m-class every school system in North Carolina uses it state pays for it and a significant number of systems Across the Nation uses so it gives us some information comparative to the state and some nationally I didn't put any nationally on here because I want to show you some state and what this does this measures especially K2 where we do not give State tests and third grade we do but we use it at the beginning of the year because we don't have previous data other than this third grade and if you look on the left hand side this is the beginning of the year so if you look at kindergarten at the beginning of the year our kindergarten receives 32 percent of them met the benchmark

11732 percent the state was 28 percent look at the middle of the year those kindergarten students now 57 percent of them now meet it in the states of 54. so we've gone and stay kept our distance among the state and you can see the growth over the year first grade at the beginning of the year 37 percent of them met proficiency the state was 38 at the middle of the Year we're up to 62 percent States is 54. second grade Asheville City Schools 52 the state 50. we've grown to 60 and stayed 55 and third grade we were 57 percent that's going up to 60 and the state basically stayed where they are so again more evidence of growth that we're getting with these students some information on salaries as you know two of the

118things we're trying to do is to raise our classified staff to living wage and to raise our supplement level for to help without doing that and also to help them supplement level with our certified folks especially our teaching salaries of being able to compete with other systems in North Carolina as well as systems across the southeast where we are competing and they're trying to hire the same folks we're trying to hire go ahead and hit that we live in a city where the cost of living is high and where the focus is more on accommodating tourism versus our own community we are asking for an affordable living wage the amount of work that we do and the amount of work that is pushed and expected of us does not match our pay even if the

1193.5 supplement increased proposal were fully funded many classified staff with Decades of service would still not earn a living wage and Asheville teachers would still not be paid even as much as teachers in other urban districts with substantially lower cost of living such as Forsyth County despite working 65 hours a week I can't afford my basic living expenses my house runs on gas and in March because I was over 300 behind on payments it was shut off I didn't have heat hot water and used to my stove I still fully showed up for these children because they deserve that they deserve it I buy snacks and food for children who often don't have enough to eat even though I can't afford to cook dinner for myself sometimes these extreme level of understaffing and financial stress

120on teachers impacts these children many of which have experienced trauma my husband Donald works 60 hours on his full-time job he then Works 20 more hours on a weekend job which totals 80 hours a week which is two full-time jobs he works that because at that time I worked I earned 14.99 an hour is what I earn right now so thank you I appreciate that increase but this Seventeen dollars in 63 cents does not afford US a decent life in Asheville this 17.63 does not pay my mortgage at the time that I spoke to you last year I had one daughter who had just finished at UNCC and I had a son who was in his last year well he since graduated in December we have bills we have student loans that are due now

121this does not this doesn't touch it speak to any of my custodian co-workers and they'll tell you about this crisis these other custodians work two to three jobs they're an everyday pain they experience regular car trouble that they can't pay for and whatever else impedes them from doing their job well and giving these kids what they deserve our kids can't wait we need to stop saying oh we'll do anything and we'll twist ourselves over backwards because it's a noble job it's a noble job I want to get paid for it too it's important and I think we should so I appreciate you all listening and and I'm just being honest I'm not trying to ruffle feathers but I kind of am trying to ruffle feathers you know what I'm saying so you know bless you

122for doing that again nothing but love for y'all and everyone else in this room but it's time to move forward and I'm done with excuses so I don't want to hear anyone in here tell me it's the state or it's the county I want someone to stand up and say I'm gonna fix this all right we live in this there you go thanks classified salary currently 15 beginning our goal is to take it to twenty dollars an hour next year some information on beginning teacher salaries in the Southeast folks we compete with all these other states significantly and we lost a number of teachers this year who we made offers to who turned us down because they could make more money at another southeastern state uh some of these states have state salary schedules and

123every system follows some have or somebody North Carolina where there's a state minimum and then local system supplement and the states where they're assembled in North Carolina I've tried to pick out a system that might be somewhat similar to us in nature okay okay so it's top Gwinnett County Georgia starting teacher pay this current year is 51 646 dollars Florida Statewide it's 48th and I also just met should I mentioned Georgia has just passed legislation that will increase their state pardon us two thousand more for next year Florida is 48 and they've had they have legislation pending right now that would increase that beginning salary at 55 000. Virginians 46 000 267. Louisiana 46 100. Mississippi 45 500. Greenville South Carolina because that's we compete significantly with them forty five thousand seventy five Lexington Kentucky

12444 000 106. Alabama we used to say thank God for Alabama forty three thousand three fifty eight the North Carolina averages forty thousand five fifty nine Asheville is forty thousand three Thirty and West Virginia thank God for West Virginia it's thirty nine thousand fifty five that's what we're competing against salaries in North Carolina and I tried to choose systems that had similar economic opportunities as does Buncombe County because this is not these are not the highest ones they're a couple of higher knees their County out on the coast starts at forty seven thousand New Hanover County forty four thousand seven hundred Guilford County forty four thousand two fifty Wake County forty three thousand six ninety Chatfield Carrboro 43 660. Charlotte Mecklenburg forty three thousand five ninety Durham County forty three thousand four fifty Forsyth County

125forty three thousand four hundred Orange County forty one thousand four forty same thing in Cabarrus County in Asheville City forty thousand three Thirty thank you we don't compete in North Carolina or in the southeast our funding request that's my board of education put this budget request together they had several challenges that they had to consider and look at one is trying to meet the living wage for classified employees a secularist trying to compete for teachers in the southeast United States thirds matching mandated salary State increases which are anticipated to be 4.25 percent plus a step magic mandated benefit increases and medical insurance and retirement costs reduction of State funding due to loss and average daily membership funding requirements for additional charter school and inflation the proposed staff supplement increase for zero to four years will

126go from nine percent to 16 percent five to nine years from nine and a half to sixteen and a half 10 to 19 from 10 to 17. and 20 plus from 16.5 to 23.5 and this is for all employees in Asheville City Schools not all school systems do it that way some pay no supplement whatsoever Declassified one of those being Wake County for example others will pay a lot a smaller amount some pay a flat dollar amount but we're one of the few this board has always believed that you want to should treat everyone the same budget adjustments uh also the board talked very seriously the fact that they needed to look at adjustments to show a sincere effort at doing some reductions before asking for additional funding they did in three areas School staff

127adjustments 233 thousand dollars central office staff adjustments 362 687 and other central office adjustments 535 700. so a total of one million one hundred thirty one thousand three hundred eighty seven dollars in reductions before asking for anything additional Lord also is willing to take part of the Heat to be able to meet doing what they're requesting and the board voted unanimously to ask you to approve an increase in the supplemental city tax to 12 cents from his current 10.62 cents per hundred that's an estimated yield of 1.7 million dollars and all that is done to try to meet the goals that the board has outlined for next year's budget in capital Revenue we're asking for this the same amount that you've been giving us articles 40 and 42 sales tax 3 million six hundred ninety

128five thousand seven fifty three and the board will use a little over 1.9 million fund balance for a total of 5.6 million but the requesting capital outlay is for the 3.6 billion and local current expense Revenue we expect from the sales tax 4.79 million the county allocation of 16.8 million that's the same amount this was given last year plus the additional 1.5 million for the salary increases that was promised over a two-year period of time and then the supplemental tax of 13 million 313 928 which includes the 1.7 million if you do not they do not approve the supplemental increases that would decrease 1.7 million so the total is 34 million nine hundred and thirty six thousand four fifty four and then this next sheet is the form that the county requires us to present

129our request on and you can look at the top the top half deals with salaries and benefits and you can see in the second column 20 the year 20 year 22 that total was 20 Level 23 million if you look to the far ride for 24 that salary benefits for go to a little over 30 million bottom half is dealing with other costs purchase Services supplies materials Capital transfers Charter School transfers those kind of things in 23 that was 11.9 Million you'll see in 24 that's the same the board held that the same to be able to do increases in the salaries and benefits so our total has gone from 34.9 million in revenues to request a 42.1 if you take away from that the 34.9 then I said on the shown on the previous

130slide and you take away the 2.4 million of fund balance usage you our board approved the request to the count is four million 765 639 dollars if the supplement increase is not approved that would increase by 1.7 million so the funding need again spelled out again 4.765 million and then thanks tremendously to the board for their school Community impact funding that they provide to both school systems this year for us after City Schools it was twelve thousand five hundred dollars and we use that for play safe models for elementary playgrounds and that will mulch about two of them thank you for listening Dr Cosby thank you and thank you Georgia thank you Melissa thank you everyone else is in the building April Dylan um for putting this together who did I miss I know you

131had mentioned others Matt um Ian um it's very comprehensive and I appreciate it I think it Paints the right picture of our district and um and as I mean I I I can tell you were listening not that you did not that didn't think you were but listening through all of our budget conversations and you have kind of you have hit all the highlights that we as a board have discussed we try to do that yeah so I've got some comments or questions but I'd also want to throw it out to anyone else it's too late to change anything I know that um so so what I so yeah I'm not gonna ask for any changes what I wanted to ask um just in conversations I've been having out in the community I've talked to

132some Commissioners recognizing that this is a big ask recognizing that from what I've heard Buncombe County is asking for a similar big ask they're asking for 34 million yeah um I I I can anticipate a couple questions coming up and I just want to you know maybe this is a chance for us to kind of talk about like what's what's the district response to some of these questions um I know that commissioner has been what Commissioners have been watching um all of our or lots of Commissioners have been launching all of our budget conversations and recognizing that prior to our vote Dr Cosby brought us some uh additional reductions that we decided to take off the table right some front-facing things so I can anticipate Commissioners may be asking what happened to those like why

133aren't the reductions that we're presenting as big as what was initially discussed and so I'm curious like what's the district's response my response will be that our board seriously considered it we went through a series of meetings and looking at a number of different options all over seriously considered the board's decision was and their wishes were not to cut any student-facing positions thank you that's exactly right I would think about also saying maybe be more specific we met with principals we met with um you know we met with the people what what and I would I would just say this our schools post covid are have been in crisis and we simply determined and decided that we could not afford student-facing cuts um and that was and I would go even further to say that

134citizens of Nashville city schools you know very long ago to tax themselves for additional services and these services are what they expect and they're willing to pay for them right yeah I think so I I just wouldn't understate the needs of students right now I think it's really important to be real clear about that thank you thank you for having that I think it's great I'll try to remember that in the morning if you don't it's okay way back Dr Cosby I have um something similar to what George was saying but different another thing that we've heard County Commissioners say is that this school system has a pretty um Stark disparity in outcomes among kids of different races and you did an excellent job of acknowledging that when you talked about scores one of the

135things I was struck by was we um are rightfully proud of our graduation rates but I think it would be another place to just let the County Commissioners know that we see two we still have a disparity there I think they want us to acknowledge this is a problem and that we're working on it and I think anything we can do to let them know we're not idiots is helpful we'll comment about some specific things that are being done um this is great so first of all big thanks um two a couple things I I was thinking about one is um I didn't see anywhere in where what we talked about where we talked about the cost of living in Asheville so we've compared how you know when you look at all those other districts

136school districts from other areas around the state we are the most expensive so it just might be worth um and and in that when you say we want to you you said at one point um want to meet the goals that the board has set the even more concrete way of saying that is we want to pay our staff a living wage and you know so just kind of I think them as concrete as we can get about why we're doing this it's helpful and this isn't a criticism at all and you may not remember it and it's fine if you don't but um I I I think that talking about how expensive and cost of living we want our teachers also to be able to live in the district um the other question I

137had and this is just um oh well one other thing and this comes from something George and I talked about earlier so he may be really mentioned it but one question that that has come up is why we have a higher percentage in our supplement for our veteran teachers so you might get that question um and I would just encourage you to think about a response I think we have them and but I know some school districts don't do that so you might get that question um and then last I'm just curious as we looked at that why only 13.7 million dollars so far in Staffing costs and we're in March and we're only three months away from our am I wrong like because you haven't paid out the big supplements that's it okay thank

138you because I was like okay we're only like three months from the end of or two months from two or three months from the end of the middle of this month will change that gotcha thank you thanks I'd like to just add how much I appreciate what this represents I can I know how much work went into this and the clarity of the message is something that I um I'm really really appreciative for what what you're doing is taking what we asked for and making making a case that we didn't even realize could be made and I'm I'm really grateful thank you I know something to say real quick I think the reason why we are asking for this for the amount it's for them to realize that if we can educate our kids it

139will keep them it will keep them off the streets it will give them an opportunity to go to college it will give them a better opportunity to survive in three to four years from now and we wouldn't have a lot of the trouble that we are having now did the thing on every one of us so somewhere somehow we're going to have to uh find a way and and the only way that we can right now is to educate our kids and the only way we can educate our kids is by funding the only way we can fund is by the city and by them to help us with the kids here in the city so if they want to ever want to stop most of the stuff that's going on today with our young

140kids the need to put in to our school system right now so that we can hopefully we can hopefully knock out a lot in years to come so that they'll be educated and they will not have other reasons to find a way to survive like drugs and everything on the streets I don't know how we can talk to them I would love to after all the budget is done I would love to let's get to them and and ask them what do they how do they see our kids in three to four years from now do they see them on the streets with guns robbing people or do they see them educated in some type of college in the military service or something because they have been educated uh I don't know that's my concern

141and that's the only reason why I think majority of us is on the board is so that our kids in this city can get proper support and the only way we're going to get it is by our city councilman and so so now let's see a County Commission I'm not talking about the city council sorry about that baby girl but it's important to remember the next step after this is June the 6th when public hearing on the budget and every one of you can be there and speak okay I just I wanted to just chime in and say like that I really appreciate all of the work that has gone into this presentation and you know I look at these numbers where it paints a picture that we're we're doing better than average and that's

142that's worth noting but it we've been doing better than average while we're in crisis and while our staff can't afford to live here and while we've been understaffed and we've experienced High turnover and that this budget request is a big attempt at making that right so that we can have Way Beyond better than average and true excellence I'll try to remember all that but I'm old my wife says I can't remember anything tomorrow well I I just I want to say thank you for being the guy who's going to sit there and say all this tomorrow okay thank you for doing that and this the presentation when you sent it to us last week to look over um I almost started to cry uh the this it's a great presentation and it's a great representation

143of our district um one thing I would love because you know how much I hate percentages can I get and I don't need it doesn't need to be on this but can we get the actual like what our graduation numbers were for 21-22 like the buy subgroup I would love to see what those actual numbers are so and that doesn't have to be any time like tomorrow or anything but no thank you for for all of this this is I feel very very good about this year's ask so and honestly if Buncombe County's ask is as high as it is and they even fund a portion of that ask we should get the percentage that we need I would think right Georgia no maybe you needed it we need I mean we need the full

144thing yeah I know we need the full thing but just also because I've had conversations with some of our commissioners as well and um I think it's going to be very interesting this year too so thank you I have a question and this may be completely I don't know but I would love for everyone to see this presentation and I obviously they can't we can't um have like I mean we could but I don't think we're going to get all our parents and our stakeholders into a room to watch it I'd love to have this distributed to them if that's at all feasible I would like for our parents and our prospective parents and our people who've decided to go to Charter Schools I would love for them to see this presentation because I think

145it reflects really well on us and I maybe we don't I don't know that we want to include the budget part in it but at least sort of a summary of what our achievements are it's just a thought it's on the agenda that went out so this is the agenda that everyone's got to see yeah but most people don't like open the agenda for our meetings I mean you'd be surprised well no I I anyway it's just a thought that um kind of like a blast of end of year let's celebrate our accomplishments just a thought it may not be a good one Dylan you'll put it don't feel like you have to put it in your after meeting thing that goes out to everyone right there we go it's not a requirement I just

146want you to kind of think about like kind of envisioning an end of year celebratory yeah all right thanks all right um well George is walking up um right Dr Cosby I am um it would be reminiscing me as poor chair to not be there so I will be there at that meeting and if I may sit next to you I would love to and if any question comes up that you'd rather me answer I'm happy to answer it so I don't have enough punishment and also Dr Cosby while she's pulling that up just a reminder it starts at 9 00 a.m tomorrow at East Asheville Library session actually starts at 8 30 but they'll do the fire departments and stuff right and the education piece around nine o'clock okay and it is at the

147East Nashville library three Avon Road yep so if it may be a seat seating I don't know how much seating I don't know I've never been in the buildings maybe hoove us to get there fairly early uh if it starts at 8 30. okay I think I'm ready so the budget amendments are quick tonight you've got the summary of budget amendments and then um I'm going to talk about the specific ones budget amendment 501 State funds we had some line item transfers some additional funding for State textbooks um three additional positions from DPI which was a correction a late correction in the year some refunds or um return of money to the state for um credentials and capitalized equipment for Adobe for CTE federal funds starting with 502 these are adjustments from the planning allotment

148to the actual allotment budget amendment 503 federal funds again adjustment from planning allotment to the actual allotment and then other specific Revenue fund eight uh budget amendment 504 this is a transfer of budget codes for um the funding we got for um previous Lottery funding for bleachers it's just correcting the code that we used it in questions on these are those two bleachers over at Asheville middle yes okay and also from Dr Cosby gave you the results of the local supplement survey I would like to say that we've been working with our payroll system we have not published the date for our local payroll because we had some glitches but we have now fixed those so our local supplement will be paid May 17th through direct deposit it ought to uh contracts and mou yes

149yes thank you contracts are from information only um these are pretty cut and dry the CTE contract with a chef to come in and work with students Kayla call that's a parent agreement for mileage they're um it's through EC and and mckinney-vento I'm sorry mckinney-vento swimming lessons for Claxton at the Jewish Community Center contracted EC teacher through Maxim Health Care Staffing Services now the next one we have native forms I apologize that was actually for the Asheville high school media design not the Asheville Middle School lighting and um Teresa Waddell again another mckinney-vento contract for a parent driving and then also to inform you we had a change order for Hall Fletcher roof it's for 22 000 Just for information George I have a question about the contract with the JCC for swimming lessons at

150Clarkson what's the amount of that contract it's a great question I did not write that was the one I didn't write down the amount to a ballpark you know is it I think it's around two dollars A student two dollars a student not very much is there um so this is something that collects in leadership negotiated with the JCC as a partner yes and then the contract comes through here and something that other schools could do as well correct and we have um I think we previously brought a Pre-K contract to you for JC for The JCC swimming we have about three during the year so three different schools do JCC swimming lessons three different yes groups okay thank you and Georgia that the McCain mckevento mileage those are for the parents who these children

151are riding our buses so correct any other questions all right thank you all right Dr Cosby I hope you guys recommend change in the 22-23 school calendar it's a very small one we've had a very mild year weather-wise and we've not used it's hardly any at all of the extra hours that we build in the state requires us to schedule to get in 1025 hours of construction we still have left if we just continue like we are we'd get in a thousand forty two and a half my recommendation is that we dismiss early on the last Disco uh I know students would love that and I know our teachers would love it even more as you imagine the last day I know the life again and then that would be immediately after lunch and it

152just goes it's just a couple hours when we're doing something we'd still meet all state requirements that's that recommendation to you okay any questions on that so that will be a consent item next week and next is next is the draft board meeting schedule for next year George so um April demon are you able to pull that up for me there it is thank you um so this is the draft board meeting schedule for next year um again following the basically the same schedule as this this year Monday first Monday of each month is work session the following Monday is our regular session regular meeting um you will notice there's one chain you know if if a Monday is a holiday it gets moved so that September 5th um January 18th and January 25th to

153be decided because that's usually when we do a board retreat we usually have our board retreat is in January so that's why those are TBD but these will be this calendar will be a consent item next week any questions about I have a question about April 9th I know this year the kids were in school on Monday and we met on Tuesday is that going to be the same that April 9th Tuesday is that a Tuesday again great question I got to pull up my calendar what day was that April 9th oh it's because it's a leap year I was like wait a minute that's did the children go to school on Monday of that week yes why do why do we hold that one on a Tuesday um I think it's tradition because of

154Easter Monday correct yep because that is a holiday for it's not a holiday for our children but it can be a holiday for other federal holiday the businesses and that kind of thing so we right am I right Laura that's a good point um is anybody else I don't know that this is the right time to say this but I'm going to be out of town on the August 7th on vacation anybody else is that does that matter I could call in I guess August 7th what you're gonna be out of town the next week yeah August 7th you mean yeah yeah I think that's um I think that's important for us to consider um and maybe as soon as we can announce our new supers start to figure out how we want to work

155August um you know we can figure out whether we want to do you know more of a retreat style in August and maybe make it a different day um and yeah if we need to reschedule we certainly can um we do need to get in you know a work session and a regular session in August but we can we can work that out I think that's no problem um and again this is a draft so we can you know it will be on consent item we can um you know if we choose to approve it we can certainly make adjustments and Jim if we need to that early the consent item is for the draft meeting schedule it's not a final acceptance well no no I mean yeah it would be if it would be

156approved and so if we need to make adjustments we can but if we if we vote for it and consent or action if we want to do that next next week it would be our calendar but if we need to make adjustments we can make adjustments yeah did I say that right now okay well we could also put it off until June as well if you wanted to look at calendars just pull it off and then look at it and then decide in June at the June board meeting we could do it then is that am I here and that's what we'd rather do is pull it for next week and and decide in June on this calendar that's fine with me okay yeah so we'll do that if we can make sure that it's

157pulled from next week we'll put it back on June okay um next Dr Cosby the 2023 testing success plan we have very soon now end of year testing coming up I have found over years experiences the more you can emphasize that to folks the better kids tend to do if you do it in the right kind of way if you really play it up as an opportunity to not not a as some folks have done in the past kind of scared and trying to scare folks with them make it a high high stakes kind of thing but more positive thing about this is a real chance to show really what you've learned and what you've done and everyone say the same kind of things we also found this very important to have everyone in the

158community feeling that testing is important and looking at things that might be going on the night before test you know in one of my previous jobs I when we started doing this we found out that we had kids playing Little League Baseball to 2 A.M in the morning before test and uh I'll tell you a story I probably shouldn't tell this one but I will we did things that we sent out notices to all the recreational leagues and and asked them not not to do anything and the board even officially approved the school facilities could not be used for any activities the nights before and the day before the first test would be given and one of the middle school principals called me and said I have a problem and I said tell me about

159it he said uh you know not supposed to do ball games and I said he said I've got a little league coach he said he's going to play ball tonight and he's president of league and he says he's going to do it and I said well see if you can schedule the time they file for us to meet together so I he did and I went out and met with him and this gentleman and explain to him what our effort was and basically what he said was our kids playing baseball is more important to him taking a test tomorrow and we've been doing this for the last 10 years we're going to do it tomorrow and I said to him how are you going to play baseball around those seven bus yellow buses I'm going

160to park on the baseball field and they didn't play so sometimes you have to establish the expectations you know but but a few things that we're going to work we're going to communicate early with families on multiple ways about emphasizing the importance of students being in attendance because you know there's a certain percentage we have to meet or it hurts the school's test results not just them being there but just an actual penalty that's imposed with a reduction in your your percentage scores if they're not certain percentages not also about getting a good night's sleep the night before and that's in schools to follow up with school specific messaging including test dates we want to coach staff on the positive Framing and Outlook at the end of your test not negative but positive outlook iframe

161importance of them we wanted to we're looking at providing incentives for attendance and being on time for tests establishing school and grade level goals I'm going to tell principals if it should set a certain level and tell the kids if you meet this level I'll shave my head things like that [Laughter] they're they're all kinds of these little motivational kinds of things that you can do but if they show up on time they get a ticket and a drawing for sale nothing negative towards kids who don't pass tests but participation is what we're looking for it and I'm taking it seriously we'll be doing some work I'm teaching some test taking strategies uh we will be providing free breakfast for students and I guess we might as well throw staff in there too because that's

162very little expense and then asking schools to limit I'm not gonna we don't have time to go out and do a big Community thing about limiting but asking schools to try to limit any any unnecessary activities the night before testing so this is nothing you have to approve it's just for your information but I want you to be aware of it with what we're doing Dr Cosby I appreciate you sharing it with us and I I love and however this gets shared the way there's some bullets and they're communicating with families to have the kinds of sub bullets you were talking about and what it means to frame end of year testing positively I think that many students are already experience it as pressure experiencing as an opportunity to fail and they feel pretty afraid

163and so the adults if the adults in the room could be more unified in their messaging of the kinds of words you just used I think that would go far that's happened because of the high stakes that we put on it and that's been it's actually hurt that rather than helping there's also always some folks who have just tested Jitters you know that's just natural for some folks and you have to deal with that differently but a positive message is better for most most all righty you ready for legislative information yes sir actually attached two items to the agenda the one of them attached today a little bit late but we didn't didn't get some of it until today but it's not as long as once you've seen previously because just kind of I want

164to make you focus on the things that happened recently so you'll be aware of those uh the first I'm going to look at is the one that's actually your second attachment it's a legislative bills meeting crossover this means these bills passed one chamber and can go to the others and it happened to all be houseboat you know all happen to be house bills one of them House Bill eight is a computer science graduation requirement this would add a course in computer science as a high school graduation requirement House Bill 86 is a school calendar flexibility Statewide bill that has passed the house that would change and allow you to start school no earlier than the Monday closest to August the 10th now this probably doesn't have a prayer of a chance in the Senate but

165it has passed the house so that's that's positive House Bill 187 is a kind of a bothersome bill it's called equality and education it's amazing how they stick these positive titles on bills this bill prohibits instruction on a number of topics related to civics government and civil rights the bill was introduced as a way to limit teaching ideas associated with critical race Theory such as systemic racism and white privilege for example this bill States Public School units shall not promote that an individual solely by virtue of his or her race or sex Bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex the bill does list a few exceptions to these prohibitions speech protected by the First Amendment would be allowed also Educators can utilize materials that include

166the history of an ethnic group as described in the state adopted textbooks and instructional materials these materials must include impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history and impartial instruction on the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on race ethnicity class nationality religion or geographic region so it would be permissible to discuss slavery but you could not say that it was bad because that would not be impartial okay at least I don't think it would be that that bill has strong support in legislation and we'll probably pass Bill 188 standards on Stephen conduct which is also a bothersome bill this adjusts the current School discipline policies to allow several types of conduct that currently is not eligible for long-term suspension to be eligible these would include such things this use of inappropriate or

167disrespectful language non-compliance with a staff directive dress code violations and minor physical altercations that don't involve weapons or an injury and it doesn't mean would have to it but it makes them permissible House Bill 219 Charter School omnimus makes a number of changes the big ones that you need to know about there would be no sharing of fund eight has been taken out now I would caution you if I could come back up on the Senate side or he come but could come back up in the Senate budget that's a policy so it's not dead but it's out of the house bill that's been Crossing crossover and it also another piece of it the counties can provide Capital outlay funding to Charter Schools that's it and there's several other pieces that I'm not going to

168go through all of those and House Bill 618 establishes a charter school review board which basically would converts the local current Charter School Advisory Board to Charter School review board and gives it the authority to make final decisions on whether to approve Charter School applications basically's taking the state board out of that role because they've been turning some down and the only role the State Board of Education would have would be a final authority to approve would be a limit to addressing Appeals and even those appeals if the State Board ruled against them then that would be appealable to the general assembly and then this other document these are bills that had action in the last week and most of them are the same ones you just saw with a few additions the first couple

169was House Bill 201 and 203 are adjusted technical amendments to some things they're really not very 618 a charter school review where I just mentioned House Bill 824's teacher licensure changes that's a pretty good one that would allow to Grand continue and professional license to a teacher who's licensed in another state and three years three years of experience School assignment zones only apply to Onslow County but it's an interesting one if the legislature would start setting attendance zones for a school system kind of bothers them I don't know if it'll go anywhere or not but it was acted on living donor protection act would provide paid leave for state employees Public School Employees and community in college employees who do an organ donation a pretty nice piece the second one on the next page Senate

170Bill 729 that's a bill that amends the anti-pension spiking contribution that y'all learned something about recently it doesn't do away with it but it does have some revisions in it that will change it somewhat one being that if the person had been in a would have moved to a position where the salary schedules have been in place for a long time didn't have any choice about what the salary schedule was it wouldn't apply so a little bit of a relief from that next page uh Senate Bill 364 discrimination Dickinson State work this amends the state Human Resources act to prohibit compelled speech when individualized six state government employment this basically will deal with universities and colleges for some of their upfront that people have to answer questions in a certain kind of way to show

171that they're committed certain kind of beliefs that would prohibit that House Bill 445 as chairman would make you anytime you move an open meeting state limited nature discussion that could occur in closed session House Bill 823 choose your school choose your future that is the expansion of the voucher program to 3132 it would be a total of 505 million dollars a year a big change immediately is that it makes private school students eligible for funding so it's the next effort to destroy public schools by removing parents well-to-do parents from public schools House Bill 487 would require flying the powmia mission action Flags house 799 would require Auditors to be approved by the state that's used I thought they already had to be House Bill 756 standard advisory commission but basically replace the State Board in

172setting the state standard course to study and then some some principal oyster changes it would require some things but most of them are negative kinds of things okay and then we have the your next section dealing with policies so Dr Dickerson is not here so I get to do this one too he is suffering from kidney stones and his schedule for uh a stamp replacement the 22nd of the month he was here most of the day but he just had to go home yeah so I do not know as much about all these he does but I have read every one of them in detail and read them a second time today just to make sure if you had questions that I could speak to them the first reading most of them are I think

173those of you several of you you two of you serve on the policy committee and you're familiar with it you can also speak too they're basically changes based upon State Law changes and those kind of things the other ones are second reading and you you've seen those those before they are primarily also just following the changes that are made to state law I have one question about the graduation requirements yes does each grade that these students see their graduation requirements on their report card I I know there could be somewhere but do they constantly look or know their requirements as they go from 9 to 12 I mean is there listed somewhere where they can constant in their parents and constant see them for the requirements for graduation I'll ask Laura to comment on that

174it's not on the report cards that students get they do start that advising for high school when they're in middle school and they do a they start their four-year plan in eighth grade and then every year they meet with counselors to go back over their graduation requirements and it's included so every time that students are enrolling and planning their courses for the next year they're talking about those graduation requirements as their as they're planning so they are aware of it and get our high school councils do a really good job of it but do the parents see them besides when they go to parents teacher conference we do um I can't remember yeah there's I wouldn't say officially we have a lot of parents who will Who will ask um you know for an unofficial

175copy of transcripts and things like that and our counselors provide them as needed but it's not part of our overall process that we're sending those are included in the handbook there they're in the course catalog are they posted on the board somewhere in the Counseling Center so that a parent can see them before they come in and ask questions about my kid didn't get this I mean is it posted somewhere yeah it's post it's posted on the website in several places and part of the student handbook as well hang on there right there Eric stop talking wait in even in a like a worst case scenario if I didn't pass a class in the fall semester the councils will catch that and deal with that between the break between fall and spring and get that

176student back in whatever graduation requirement they they may have you know kind of messed up with in the fall so they're aware of our Dr Costa's draw our counselors stay on top of those and communicate that with the student regularly it is posted for the parents to see though we can also up so every year when they do that advising the parents do receive what courses students have requested for the next year I think we could do more with including the progress with the four-year plan as part of that and so we can Circle back in Kim Derek and I can talk about that including that advising process is there a way for parents to see it in PowerSchool just a great just the grades okay not the plan okay anything else on policies good

177question Jessica okay all right so um I will ask for a motion to go into closed session pursuant two pursuant to North Carolina General statute 143 318 11 for the purposes of under subsection A1 a and A3 for the purposes of discussing privileged or confidential information and matters protected by the attorney-client privilege so move second time I'm sorry all uh any opposed all right we are in closed session we'll take a quick break too all right we are out of possession and Open Session I'll just give a few quick announcements um upcoming dates and things our next regular um board meeting is next Monday the 15th year in the boardroom at 5 pm um we've got Memorial holiday no school for students and staff on Monday May 29th we got our next work closed session

178um on Monday June 5th at 5 pm and then our final regular meeting of the school year on Monday June 12th at 5 pm here in the boardroom although we actually you haven't never mind it's not our last we have a special called work session closed session board meeting on Thursday June 29th time to be decided I guess that's our final one of the season that's the one that we uh yeah approved right that's for the budget yeah so um and with that uh thank you for tuning in um and I will ask for a motion to adjourn this meeting so move it's been moved and it has been seconded all in favor