001good evening everyone thank you for coming to our November board meeting we are going to call the meeting to order uh could we all stand we're going to have the Pledge of Allegiance by Miss Smith cuz third grade class from Isaac Dixon I pledge of allegiance to the flood to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation's under god with liberty and justice for all thank you very much now I'd like to ask for an approval of the agenda get early access to wayfair's Black Friday sale save on seasonal Decor from 30 washable rugs all right we need to go have a Black Friday sale now um all right well we're done with the meeting tonight thank you what's our policy on Advertising um I would I moved
002to approve the agenda and unless that happened during the advertisement uh no it didn't so it's been moved do I have a second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right next we have our good news with Dylan Huffman hello board Dr Cosby for um our good news tonight I guess I'm supposed to do this aren't I there we go we're going to start with a the Asheville City Schools Middle School football team they are now the French Broad Middle School Conference tournament champions [Applause] the students from Asheville middle school and Montford North Star Academy outscored the combined conference 296-6 through conference play and we have some of the players the coach some principals here with us if they want to join us up here we have athletic
003director TJ Wright with us y'all are in Middle School [Laughter] good evening I'd like to say I'm very proud of this team guys for all their hard work and the commitment to football and Asheville City Schools I'm very excited to see their continued success and hard work at Asheville High I'd like to thank my staff Mike zabioski Rod Conley Jacob USA geda and Raymond McDade these guys committed many hours to our student athletes I just wanted to express my gratitude to my staff for being mentors and coaches I would also like to thank my Administration Asheville Middle School principal Joe Landreth Mofford North Star principal Shannon Baggett and my athletic director T.J Wright I'd like to thank TJ for all his hard work TJ's commitment to the success of success of Athletics has been great
004it's easier it works very hard to accommodate his coaches and make things as smooth as possible thank you coach last of all I'm thankful thankful to coach for Asheville middle school and for Asheville City Schools thank you thank you [Applause] can we get everybody to take a picture over here with the board principal Landreth that includes you too please you stand in the middle yes thanks guys thank you now when do these boys get to the high school coach when did they go to high school yeah coach oh they're eight they're eighth graders yes these are eighth graders okay um you know this only obviously is just a few of my guys but this is this is the leadership group that I had to be able to take turns being cabinets throughout the season um
005we had about 43 students on on the roster this year so congratulations that's an awesome record to be able to tell about our team so good job thank you thank you [Applause] all righty and next we would also like to recognize the Asheville high school and silsa students for their performance of Dracula which sold out all three nights of their performance all right we do have uh Miss Hillier and some of the um cast members here with us this production was in collaboration with the strings class at Asheville high in silsa under Franklin keel foreign thank you thank you so much for honoring this program and I'm excited to be part of a growing program that um just work collaboratively collaboratively with the strings Orchestra we had over 60 kids involved in this production both
006on stage behind the stage and the strings actually played from the catwalk it was pretty cool and eerie and it was a great new production it was also we were the first High School ever to produce Kate Hamill's version or adaptation of Dracula and it was a really strong production and I'm super proud of all of these kids so thank you thanks for honoring us that's awesome thank you [Applause] is Laurie thanks y'all thank y'all excited for our good news oh okay that's plenty of good news all right next on our agenda we have Anderson Smith and wike uh to give us our audit and I'm going to ask Shannon denninson to come up uh to present and all the board members you should have a copy of the audit in front of you chairman
007board members Dr Cosby good evening I'm glad to be here tonight to to be able to present to you your fiscal year 22 audit so this is looking back to last year um and I'm going to go over a couple of the slides or a couple of the pages I will let you know what page I'm talking about and if you have any questions feel free to stop me or feel free to follow up afterwards um the first letter is a separate letter outside of the bound copies and that's a letter that we're required to present basically uh stating that management was very helpful in in getting us anything that we had no problems with anything that we requested uh and you know we work across the district with various different directors all of them
008were very cooperative and got us everything we needed as we asked as soon as they were able to and we had no issues with cooperation looking at the bound copies the larger book that does not say compliance report on it it just says financial statements um looking at page one this is the independent Auditor's report this report gives is the report that gives our opinion on the financial statements of Asheville City schools and I'm pleased to announce that there was an unmodified opinion what that means it's a clean audit report we did not have to modify our opinion we believe that the financial statements are correctly stated so that's the best opinion you can get so congratulations flipping ahead to page 11 Pages 11 and 12 are going to be used primarily for cities and
009counties who are looking to take out debt they really aren't going to be relevant to a school district they are the first couple of exhibits so I like to mention that there are exhibits that we would recommend not managing off of um they include a couple of things that aren't quite as relevant to you guys as a school district the pages that you would manage off of from a financial statement are going to be exhibits three and four and that's Pages 13 and 14. and probably one of the the more important numbers on your financial statements is what was your general fund fund balance how did it how did it grow or Shrink and um your general fund balance is just over nine million dollars in total six and a half million dollars unassigned fund
010balance um could you repeat that please you have just over nine million dollars in general fund balance six and a half million is what's unassigned and that's really what you're able to um that you're able to spend now your fund balance did grow by about 3.4 million dollars last year however last year you guys received about seven and a half million dollars in extra covid essermani from the federal government that's not going to continue that's going to expire in 2024 you still have some to be able to utilize this year so while you had a growth and fund balance on the general side be mindful that there was a huge influx of money into the district that helped stimulate some of that extra growth um on on the local side as well and some of
011those things with that extra Co money that you got are going to be one-time expenditures some of them are going to be expenditures that you're going to want to be able to continue so as you continue I congratulate you on on what you were able to do um from a fund balance standpoint last year and and think that that's a wise decision because like I said this you know you you grew um you grew some but you had a huge influx of money that's not going to be sustainable so excuse me so so we're allowed to put Esser funds in the fund balance no you can't put ask our funds into fund balance but what you can do is you can you charge some indirect cost into some of the SR money that's able to
012help save you money um for some for administrative expenses um and there are certain expenses that you can move over into Sr money so it looks like it's saving out of local but some of it is still coming because of this influx of us our money does that make sense yeah yeah I just wanted to play yeah no you cannot do a direct transfer from Sr money into local yeah just wanted to clarify thank you correct thank you for clarifying that um starting on page 16. Pages 16 through 19 are going to be budgetary schedules and I'm pleased to announce the the budgets that you all passed that the the board fell within those budgets there are no exceptions to any expenditures going over budget so that was good news everything that you guys passed
013um nothing was outside of that looking ahead to Pages 20 through 22 is going to look specifically at Your Child Nutrition fund last year similar to the rest of the district where there was an influx of money the Child Nutrition department received additional money because not only were children able to eat free more children were eating there was generally a higher participation because of that the reimbursement rate was actually higher as well so for each meal the Child Nutrition department made more money per meal served last year than they will this year and in a traditional school year um but along with that you guys increased we recommend looking at cash when you're looking at a comparison to say okay well that's great how did the Child Nutrition program do um looking at page 22
014our recommendation for this for the Child Nutrition program based upon accounting rules is to look at um how the cash grew your cash grew by four hundred thousand dollars so that was that was a good amount of growth however like I said I would keep in mind the fact that um in in the future you can't expect the same results based upon the meal reimbursement rate from last year on page 26 it gets into the notes of the financial statements this is going to be a more uh written version of what you read describing some more of the numbers so feel free to read through that but I will have you if you want to flip to page 50. so along with the ask saramani and the extra coveted money that you all received I
015think everybody's seen there's been an increase in cost um classified salaries went up to a minimum of fifteen dollars an hour this year um 13 an hour last year in general at the cost of everything we see it personally we see it within the district is increasing one of the other things that's increasing is the retirement uh expense which you all have no control over but kind of got to fit it in in the budget and this is a schedule that kind of goes over if you look at the last number on each of the lines looking back at 2014 it was 8.69 percent and in 2022 was 16.38 that's the pension part so um for every every dollar paid of salary this is the percentage that you're required to pay for the pension um
016so the cost of that uh is going up so as you know you may have the same number of employees as pre-ester money when you come out of the extra money keep in mind that the cost of the same number of employees is going to be a fair amount higher not only because of wages but also because of the retirement expense and that continues to grow if so you see the jump from 21 to 22 was a pretty good sized jump here here in the more recent years 20 to 21 and 21 to 22 where you're looking at two percent roughly a year of an increase there the last pages that I want to talk about are in the other book the compliance so there are three more opinion letters and the first ones on
017page one of the compliance book and this is an opinion letter that describes the internal controls of the district so this is going to be determining if there was fraud within the district if there was something accidentally done would the accounting department catch it before it was actually an issue you know are there controls in place so that if a mistake was made if something you know were to happen that it that it would be caught and that's what you want um and we're pleased to report that we feel the internal controls are good that they have controls in place to be able to catch any problems issues there's a lot of money flowing through so having those controls in place are really important so pleased to report no no internal control issues you have
018a clean report on internal controls which is good as you can get the next report on page three discusses the audit require the requirements to be able to spend Federal money as you guys get Federal money similar to the Esra it comes with a whole bunch of rules of how you can spend it what you can do with it and so we look at that and please to report all federal funds were spent according to the federal laws as how they were able to be spent at another clean report foreign six we have a similar report for State as state funds come down again they come with lots of regulations as to how they've been they can be spent and another clean report that all federal and state funds have been spent according to how
019they are allowed to be spent we have no findings in our audit to report to you that would be of any concern or problem like I said it was it was a clean audit the team was great to work with this is my first year as the partner on the job here and Georgia and and staff and all the staff that we worked with in the district were were great to work with and um pleased to report all good news thank you any questions for Shannon comments thank you so much for all your hard work with this and thank you I appreciate you all the service let me make one comment if I can especially thanking our finance folks oh yeah they've done a marvelous job and I've been doing this 30 some years and
020this is a clean audit reports I've ever seen it's that good it's very unusual to get this clean thank you thank you so much all right next on our agenda we have our public comment and while I'm getting the uh the clipboard I will read over our uh public comment guidelines the Board of Education greatly appreciates your interest in the Asheville City Schools and we welcome your comments to the board please be mindful of the following guidelines one unless otherwise approved by the board a total time for public comments shall not exceed 30 minutes for in-person and 15 minutes for virtual speakers members of the public may speak for three minutes the time remaining is indicated by lights directly in front of you on the podium there multiple speakers from a group who are presenting
021on the same topic may choose to elect one speaker for the group if a single speaker is used by any group they shall be allocated five minutes instead of the three minutes to address the board if you're a group of chooses this option please identify everyone in the group when you sign up to speak if an unusually large number of people wish to speak the board may decide to a reduce the time allot it for each speaker and or B require the designation of a group spokesperson substitute speakers will not be permitted and speakers may not donate any portion of their time to another speaker please be respectful A disruption by any person or persons of a public meeting will not be tolerated and will result in removal from the meeting incorrect or misleading information
022presented by a speaker may be responded to at the direction of the chairperson public comment allows you to provide the Board of Education with your thoughts and or relevant information concerning this Asheville City Schools therefore board members will not normally respond to individuals who address the board except to request clarification in order to make a public comment individuals must be present to make their comments in person or they can do it virtually online confidential student and Personnel matters may not be discussed during public comments and the board does not accept Personnel complaints through public comment if you have a concern about an employee or a student matter please contact receive the superintendent sitting next to me after the meeting the board permits public comment on relevant issues relevant to and within the jurisdiction of the
023school district although an individual May identify themselves as a candidate for any public office no person may use public comment portion of our board meeting to actually campaign for or endorse a specific candidate running for public office persons are not limited from speaking on issues relevant to the official business of the school system for purposes of this policy active campaigning includes what is not limited to asking for support for a candidate running for public office and or stating what a candidate will do if elected to public office thank you for putting up with that commercial uh first on my list I have Mr Craig White and Mr White you will have uh three minutes thank you chair Carter board members Dr Cosby my name is Craig white I am the supportive schools director for the
024campaign for southern equality some of you may also know me from the racial Equity workshops that I've done with several Asheville City Schools I'm coming to you tonight because we've received word that there's an organization that has again turned its attention to North Carolina and possibly the city of Asheville this organization has been categorized as a hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2016. the legal branch of this organization according to its own website has been involved in many of the anti-lgbtq court cases of the past several years including opposing the freedom to marry pushing the exclusion and marginalization of transgender young people protecting the right to discriminate against lgbtq individuals in schools and other workplaces in schools they also seek to ban discussions of gender identity or gender diversity while protecting anti-transexual
025harassment as free speech in France Macedonia and Bulgaria this International Organization has filed briefs supporting a state mandated sterilization requirement for transgender individuals who seek legal recognition they have also gone to court opposing anti-racism training for educators in Albemarle County Virginia and they have repeatedly confronted the NAACP on cases related to women's rights this organization is the alliance defending Freedom or ADF based in Maricopa County Arizona activist branch of the ADF Works behind the scenes but I have seen their efforts in Wake County and Orange County North Carolina and Loudoun County Virginia their pattern is to send in two or more organizers who work with one section of the local Faith Community providing talking points and strategies to Target the local school board knowing that the local lgbtq community will then be drawn into the
026conflict locally everybody loses and the ADF moves on to the next School District I believe there is no place for the ADF in Asheville I am available to the school board to anyone who has had contact with the ADF to share what I know and to avoid such a conflict in our community nobody in this town is my enemy I will not hate or fear you I would love to talk with you I do not struggle against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers that seek to divide us I know that we can only build God's Beloved Community when we work together everybody in nobody out thank you thank you very much next I have Mr John Brigham and Mr Brigham you will have three minutes thank you when when I was in
027third grade the Pledge of Allegiance was standard operation as a third grader I don't know when that ended imagine the world of a middle school teacher if this teacher interacts with hundred odd young people every day I used to be a teacher it took me years to understand this but the Cornerstone of teaching is building relationships with the students the middle school teacher builds relationships with all of the students there may be nobody in this room that could do that work there may be nobody in this room that could do that work I'm not disrespecting the Asheville City Schools but I am poking fun at the whole system of Education in the United States are institutions regarding education are a mess in universities the best and brightest are not funneled into education students graduate from
028college with a certificate qualifying them to teach but many of them very quickly realize that they're never going to be able to do that students graduated students graduating teaching and then see that this is not something they will ever be able to do one of the options is to move immediately into Administration administration offices are full of persons that are not able to teach this is the dysfunction of our Educational Systems in the United States I want to quickly mention another issue again this is this is the big picture in education only in teaching are the most difficult assignments given to the newest least experienced professional a typical American High School the ninth the difficult ninth graders are funneled into one classroom and then that class is given to the new teacher the heavy lifting
029in any school is done by new teachers the senior teachers have a easier assignment they have the advanced classes and easier students they're making good money and even very good money and the retirement for teachers may be the very best senior teachers have a nice ride all holidays 10 weeks off every summer they do not want to change they paid their dues and they want to write it down this is education in America nowhere else in the world is education handled with such total dysfunction the public does not know this we are having trouble hiring and then keeping teachers subsidized housing for teachers is not the solution this is absolutely putting teachers on welfare Section 8 housing is government subsidy of private housing subsidized housing for teachers is not similar it is exactly the same
030exactly at one time Society built monuments to slave owners this was an attempt to solidify a dysfunctional aspect of our society subsidized housing for teachers is the same let's build housing for the C second right citizens yes that will work we started with ninth grade teachers you know a funny thing about 9th grade teachers they love their job you know they absolutely love it I would propose that the money issue is not a first priority and importantly we have little control over this concentrated on what we do have control over subsidized housing for teachers is an abomination thank you Mr Brigham next I have uh superintendent Ronald Gates Mr Gates you will have three minutes good evening board chairman and Dr Cosby thank you for this opportunity I believe in your email you have received
031a letter from the interdenominational minister alliance also the Baptist Minister Union and in the vicinity I am a local Ambassador for the alliance defending freedom I came before you on October the 10th as I had did before the Buncombe County School Board that was well received as I submitted the same information it would receive respectfully and professionally even to their response of contacting us and sharing their curriculum during my submittal of requests here to the board Mr O'Connor disrespectfully unprofessionally ripped up my submittal before my public I'm sorry you cannot do that you cannot you cannot do that that's not allowed I I'm sorry oh they bought not that is not that is not the purpose of public comment and Mr Gates I will ask that you refrain from bigotry and hate speech that is
032not hate speech I'm just sharing what took place I understand that but that is not what this is this is not the form for that we have already discussed that if you have nothing else to say that is in direct response to the school district then I'll ask you to yield your time so you saying I cannot express what actually took place here at the board School at the board meeting all out a board member in that fashion so as the board member disrespectfully ripped up this submittal that was given I just asked you not to do that didn't I say you said no name I just I we're not going to go there right now so with this said you know with the North Carolina School grading that has dropped some uh worst in
03320 years uh seven points we should be focusing on Reading Writing mathematic and history true history instead of sexual immorality or indoctrination or CRT as I shared you know the submittal of the information it was submitted before the board respectfully and the individual that took took time to rip up that information is not known as you reflected as Miss I would say mister if you if the blood was drawn it would be h x Y which is a male thank you well we thank you too thank you very much I've got your taxpayer now that is voted here thank you very much thank you everyone for your respect in this situation do we have anyone online to do public comment we do not thank God for that sorry um next we have our consent items
034on the consent agenda are there any questions on any of the items on our consent agenda no no I know that we had uh received there was some information that had been asked about the field trip and that information was shared from Ms Parks I wanted to make sure everyone did get that um and as you will see on our agenda the um audit is listed there as well so anyone have any questions about any of the consent agenda items what was the information shared by Miss parks uh Miss Parks had shared uh we had she had wanted uh some more demographic information and I think uh and we got that uh Sanford had asked for that um and Miss uh Jones had emailed out to everybody okay so it was just more demographic information
035about uh potential numbers about what the cost would be and that sort of thing any other any questions concerns anyone have any aspirin all right uh can I have a motion to approve our consent items so I moved all right it's been moved do I have a second do what seconds again okay do I have a second from anyone or for the consent items Peyton use your mic please second all right it's been moved and seconded any questions all right all in favor say aye aye any opposed nay ton what was your vote okay so we have three eyes and two Nays okay next we have our Personnel report number four can I have a motion to approve Personnel report number four so moved all right it's been moved do I have a second second
036it's been moved in second all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed I abstained there are no extensions nay okay thank you yours is yes okay all right thank you Dr Cosby superintendent's report this will be much milder okay thank you just just a few areas to report to you on some things are going on and curriculum instruction the state evos data as you know that's the growth scores that we get from our test has now been released our cni team members are analyzing that data and planning to celebrate teachers who exceeded growth in Asheville City schools in 2122 and the evos data for 2122 was very strong in Asheville City Schools much stronger than pre-pandemic data for both students and staff 88 percent of Asheville City School teachers met or exceeded growth with
037students last school year that's an amazing person 88 percent of our teaching staff so that tells you the quality of work they're doing seeing our team members and school leaders have been working on the state required self-assessment of literacy instruction standards which is due to the statement December 15th this self-assessment details the current status of literacy instruction across core academics by grade spans and it lays the foundation for what needs to be done to prepare for 24-25 when literacy instruction standards have to be fully implemented in all grades and academic content areas and that that is a state requirement which we have to meet the CNR team is going to be providing coverage in elementary schools over the next few three months so the grade levels can have extended time to work together in fact
038they've been doing a good bit of coverage of classes during especially during the time when the covid and flu and stuff have been very prevalent but this will allow those School staffs to have time to really delve into this this information and the elementary principles have identified this as one of their top priorities for the year and the operations that area program that we have is called Vector it used to be known as public school works it's an online safety training and compliance management system it's now up and running in all Asheville City Schools and all staff members have been assigned training based on their position and their location and there are specific modules that each individual in the system will be dealing with based upon safety requirements for the job that they perform okay
039operations also want to thank all the families who've joined us across the district yesterday for Thanksgiving meal the Child Nutrition department did a wonderful job now preparing a fantastic meal we had a great turnout of parents who were joining their kids to have Thanksgiving and we also had central office staff serving males in all the schools and from what I heard from most of them they enjoyed doing it student services our school social workers are currently preparing for the holiday gift giving if anyone's interested in contributing to that effort all they need to do is call the school they're interested in helping and ask to speak to the social worker and they'll be put in contact with them and from the finance department the news that we sent out last week that all of our
040employees I think were tickled with uh thanks to the really hard work of our finance folks and being able to plan and put some things together we will be paying all the employees their December paycheck on December the 19th prior to the Christmas holiday and that's all I have is sure all right thank you for that report our announcements in future meetings on November 23rd next Wednesday is a annual leave day everyone can start their uh Thanksgiving holiday early holiday uh Thanksgiving holiday is Thursday and Friday November 24th and 25th there will be a special called work slash closed session meeting here in the boardroom on December 2nd at noon uh we then have a regular work slash closed session meeting on Monday December 5th at 5 pm here in the boardroom there is a
041late start for preschool Elementary and secondary students on Wednesday December 7th preschool starts at 9 30 a.m oh I'm sorry opens at 9 30 a.m elementary schools will start at 10 and secondary schools start at 10 30. and then we will have our swearing-in ceremony for new board members and our regular meeting that will be on Thursday December 15th here in the boardroom again at 5 PM I would like to congratulate our three of our four incoming board members thank you for being here thank you for for running Pepe thank you for your run this year as well we look forward to having you here on the board and I can't wait to get started on a new new time for the for the school district um again our schedule a meeting schedule can always
042be found on our website uh if there's any other questions or anything that needs to be brought to attention do you mind if I just very quickly recognize that this is the last regular meeting for um Miss Jackson and Miss Geithner or were you going to do that sorry no actually go ahead because uh Martha's already told me three times this is her last regular meeting and I said no this isn't your last meeting and she said no it's our last regular meeting so she was very but thank you for yes we um Martha and Shonda have given eight long hard years uh to this um to the board and to the district and we really uh truly appreciate it uh they taught me a lot when I came on in 2019 I've learned a
043lot ever since and I just I appreciate you bringing that forward so we will be formally recognizing them again at their last work slash closed session meeting on December 5th so you have to be here Shonda for that meeting um but uh no thank you both for what you've done and all the hard work [Applause] I also want to acknowledge that we today at our board meeting we had a board member misgendered during during public comment I want to acknowledge that and I want to say Mr O'Connor we support you um and thank you for serving here with us thank you all right uh if there is no further business can have a motion to adjourn so moved do I have a second second it's been moved in second and all in favor say aye
044aye any opposed all right thank you everyone good night