Asheville City Board of Education Work Session - 4/4/22

001all right so sorry about that uh slight delay uh we're gonna get back to are we good we're good okay turn again of the meeting so let me uh repeat my same introductory comments for the benefit of public you might be viewing remotely and didn't have an opportunity to hear everything again the board this evening and its work session format is considering options related to the jones park property and what to do with that particular of what is now green space next to jones and elementary school and i think that as the board thinks through the options that are available and discusses them i think it's important to keep several things in mind from a legal perspective first and foremost school boards unlike cities and counties do not have express statutory authority to operate public

002parks parks and recreation is an amenity of city and county governments however under the community schools act and your policy 5030 you do have the ability to allow the general public and groups to use your existing school facilities including for recreational purposes in north carolina and in bunker county you do not receive any funding from the county or the city or the state for the use by the public of your school facilities so that's something to keep in mind as well anytime you allow outside groups to come in including the general public you do not have identified or separate funding for that to maintain those specifics and you can permit access to the general public however it's important to remember as i discussed these options especially from a legal standpoint that jones park is not

003is not factually a school facility it's not a playground that is attached to an elementary school for the last 20 something years given the generosity of the community there was a wonderful wooden playground structure there but it really was a community park so to speak that was available and i think even at the beginning of the life cycle of that facility there was even signage where it was a joint it was a joint facility operated and maintained by the city of nashville and the asheville city school board at that time as well so it's not really a school playground as much as it is that's on that same piece of property so what are your options well let's go through your options kind of in a continuum format so the first option is to do

004nothing the board of education could decide that that facility lived out its life it's now been demolished because it posed very real safety concerns and i think everyone understood that in fact it outlived its estimated life as a wooden park structure of several years if you did nothing it would just remain as aggressive and grass would grow there in your maintenance department would maintain the property the second option would be to transfer it to the city of asheville to actually operate it as a park and you could actually transfer the real property there are different ways to by which they could take possession of it and operate it as a park but so far that has not been an option that's available to you because the city has declined to add jones park officially uh

005to its into its inventory of parks in the city of asheville um get into the reasons for that but that makes that really not an option at this point at this point you've been told that that's not something that the city would be interested in option three would then be to look at donations and it really does not matter where those donations come from they can come directly to you from private individuals they can come to you from a group they can be given to the foundation and earmarked for the purpose of building a park facility or recreational facilities on that space at jen's elementary school to be open for the public's use so the source of those donations wouldn't matter if you accept the donations to rebuild that park structure then at that point

006it does become an asheville city schools facility for which you are practically liable you are financially liable and you are legally liable for everything that happens on that facility if you merely accept money and then operate this is the part that i think is important to keep in mind from a legal perspective is that the existing statutes the existing policies and case laws all refer to school recreational facilities that you're allowing others to come use well factually again jones park has operated as a community park not as a school playground in fact for i think everyone on the board knows this but for folks listening jones elementary school already has a playground for the kids so this park facility is you know hundreds of feet away or several hundred yards away from the school it's

007down the slope it's kind of separated from the elementary school and my understanding is that the elementary school itself makes very little make very little use of that area because they already have a playground in front of school so when we or my office muscles attorneys when we look at the liability issues the policy the statutes those really are applying to school facilities that you've opened up to others not to what is in fact indeed factor in public park so then that gives you your fourth option which would be to transform the maintenance liability operation and potentially ownership to a separate entity to operate a community park there is certainly nothing that prohibits the board from looking at a contractual arrangement be that at least be that a purchase and sale agreement that you might

008have to put out to upset them that you can make that contingent on someone operating a park so you can see you're not likely to get a notice that when that's a requirement the person coming in has to operate actually in public park facility what you would want to do though because again you don't want to transfer this to another entity and basically still be in position number three which is where all the liability and all the ultimate responsibility falls back to you if you merely entered into an agreement with an unincorporated association of individuals you really haven't effectively transferred any of those things the operational requirements the ownership requirements the legal liabilities if you merely do an agreement with an unaffiliated or widely associated group of individuals so what you would want to do

009is you would want to have potentially a lease agreement like you would in any other commercial context in which you would want that group to incorporate now whether or not they are a not-for-profit under the north carolina revenue according 501 c 3 which is what most people think of when we think about for profit that's a federal designation that would matter to them as far as their taxability and their tax status and some other things it wouldn't matter to you you just need them to be illegal you need them to incorporate so whether they're a 501c3 or not would not matter to you but you would need to incorporate you would want annual proof that they had funded reserves to do two things not only operate the part but for replacement of things that may

010be replacing their little life cycle so you would not only want them to be able to fund the immediate building of the park but you would want proof that in a bank account they have enough money to operate that part on an annual basis and they have enough money to be for that kind of time to do the the world is solved through insurance you would want proof of insurance uh haven't forgotten that a child would be injured out on that property but if a child or a member of the public or bridging you want that entity to have its own legal liability policy to recover that two more things and then i'll take a breath i'm happy to answer any questions you might have in my opinion you would want them to post notice

011of who they are and the operational control of the park is under their jurisdiction and not that of the actual city schools so that folks aren't calling you to ask about things or to to ask you to fix things or have other issues with the park area and you would want the immediate right to terminate if there was non-compliance with those lease terms that is the sticky wicket if you will that even if you terminate you still then decide have to decide what to do so let's say you did terminate well you are still getting a park facility back and that would be an issue for a future board that i don't have easy answers for it that would be kind of the worst case scenario is the group does not follow through on what

012the old promise doesn't have the funds to operationally maintain the park and the future national city board of education inherits the property back and always finds itself in the same position that you are right now again that compensation issues and that agreement could also say that the asheville city schools and jones elementary school in specific would have priority status prior to use of the park if the school decided he didn't want to use it that would certainly be added to any kind of police frame any questions okay so suppose they released this this property and the entity that took the lease somehow did not take care of the insurance issue and there was an accident would we then assume responsibility if they we would so there's no way that that's a really scary thing to

013do with kids we would want to make sure that the property remains on if we're just leasing we want to make sure it remains on our property liability policies because the underlying ownership would be with the board of education there are agreements that we can enter into that could provide some immunity protection but liability could and would fall back to the board if there was not a primary liability policy from the user of the property and it would depend on the facts and circumstances and that's why i said that i can tell you that there are there's case law in which school boards have immunity for failure to repair school facilities there's case law about entering into use of school facilities with private groups and statutory communities but this one's a little factually different um

014so you know i always want to point that out because you can read a sketch you can think you understand what the law is but statutes are interpreted by judges so case law is really where statutes get fared it out and said there are some liability issues you would want to a minimum cover through your own insurance policy and one thing i meant to mention is you could require a fund for demolition and that that's fun being maintained so that if something did happen there would be money for demolition but obviously if something happened five years into the 20-year life cycle in the park a future board would be inheriting a community that obviously would want the benefit of those facilities so would the board oversee that or with the entity that basis and assuming

015that the energy were to default on its obligations it of the board and you correct me if i'm speaking out of turn um even if they had that insurance in place they could still sue right past us if the injury was great enough to say a four million dollar loss they could come after us to make up that remainder is that correct that is correct just because someone has insurance doesn't mean that an injured party is limited in who they consider and certainly you consider the owner of a piece of property in addition to the lesson insurance is just how you're going to cover that potential legal liability it doesn't change who's liable right really the benefit is that once you purchase another insurance policy we get a whole other set of attorneys that somebody

016has to go through that's not chris and basically we're setting up a series of hurdles to protect the school board's financial state but it's not as simple as the insurance does not provide bulletproof coverage and i've seen that kind of snowball and with respect to question two if we were to transfer that to another public entity one thing that schools get within the state of north carolina that other public entities do not is we cannot restrict um or other public entities cannot restrict carrying a firearm on park policy and i did look up the safe schools acts as a thousand feet is how far that that school's in extends so we could be inviting some additional liabilities there um with respect to number four one thing that that stands out that's always been hard to

017capture um in leases like that is the playground safety audits which require that the playground safety equipment under a lawsuit by best practice should be audited on a daily and a monthly and yearly basis and if the person like if those audit logs are in place that's a completely different um liability threshold to get passed for a private entity than it is for schools that are correct and that's next that is something we would have to look into because you see a hyper nature of this on the one hand it's going to be operated as a school facility as a playground so all the laws that peyton is referring to all the requirements that apply to all of our playgrounds would continue to apply to this particular facility because it is still if releasing it

018is still school owned property being operated as a player so then can you we'd have to look into all of that can you effectively and some of you may ask for weren't these problems in existence previously sure they weren't but i don't know that anyone asked these questions now what 25 years ago i don't know what the whole playground was 25 years ago so yes we're pointing out things that you know some folks maybe you may say well what a problem five or ten years ago well there's a lot of things out there that aren't problems because no one asks the question you're now taking on a new responsibility as a new board so it's prudent for you to review all these things and those are issues that we would have to review thank you

019the gun issue is very disturbing to me as the person who manages the district uh there's so much trouble with that anyway in every city um but i want to go back to what you said to chris and i once and i'm gonna it may not be verbatim but it's the context is this the board's mission or the school district's mission no it's not and that's not an editorial government that's a that's a legal fact that again i started with is that the operation of a public park is a parks and recreation obligation of accounting interviews that changed my whole way of thinking it's not it's not your mission and there is no way around liability insurance maintenance costs future questions these are all i think it helps to think about when you allow folks

020to come on your playgrounds you are taking on a little bit of added cost you're taking on some added responsibilities and added legal liability because you want the public to be able to use those facilities you're maintaining this is a slightly different situation because it is removed factually from the school it doesn't really operate as one of your school facilities yet you would still be taking on some of those additional responsibilities not saying you can just bear things you need seriously instead of any other questions and let me address one last legal issue the way this board operates is through action and motions okay right now you just have green space that's magento in the musical the superintendent needed to demolish that for public safety and student safety and has done so so if this

021board takes no action if no one wants to add this to a future agenda it will simply remain green space and let me just make sure everybody understands that was the direction from an independent audit on the facility about the danger of the facility i didn't ride by one day and go i don't like that let's tear it down um that was based off of an audit that georgia and others had done that said that it was a danger to children that's correct yeah and that was i believe i was a professional engineer in the state of the audience yes you actually made that determination and that's how i'll add to that the age of those wooden playgrounds like that's that's something that's very having taken on through the safety process that's required today's playgrounds

022it's a completely different game and that would that's the ground probably would not satisfy today's safety standards if it was brand new and so that's something to think about and then not only that but every playground in asheville that was built during that time same time frame is also either been demolished or is slated and i will say that each of the board members for those who are listening we do have a package of information on what has been raised and potential costs and so forth for a new new structure so just want to make sure that everyone knows that you have that any other questions for questions okay if we decide to leave this as a green space do absolutely nothing we carry insurance live healthy insurance for that space we carry a lot

023we carry liability and property insurance on every square inch of all markets that's why you've never seen me standing in front of you expressing concerns about people using i appreciate peyton's uh peyton did this for a long time with falcon county as many people know so that's a great viewpoint to have on chris thank you for this and we will figure out what we're going to do next thank you thank you all right next uh we have our curriculum highlight uh with uh miss melissa head and sarah king good evening um thank you for this time i'm gonna just jump right in um as one of six chargings in my family and we need to make sure we keep the first things first that was a joke the first things are first today because we

024have some expert students here to highlight some of the curricular materials that we're talking about but before we turn it over to the kiddos i wanted to just give some background in the educational world we use this analogy ice which refers to instruction which is how students are being taught that is strategies activities and groupings of students and then curriculum is what is used to teach the students the materials the skills and the standards and on your printout there is a typo in the instruction box so just note that i made an error but it's been corrected on the presentation and then the environment is where the students are being taught that includes the school and classroom culture and the physical environment so ice for instruction curriculum and environment i tried to think of an

025analogy for these terms that i think we throw around a lot as educators but what are we really saying and the best i could come up with is a cooking analogy so in the world of cooking the instruction would be the techniques that you use the different things you know you don't put cold water on pasta anymore you know the different strategies and techniques you would apply in a kitchen the curriculum would be the ingredients both the types and the quality of the ingredients of what you're cooking and then the environment would be the physical space my home my oven is extra small so that factors into the quality and the quantity of what i can produce in my kitchen so just to kind of frame that in a real world analogy sometimes you'll hear

026ice dip with a d which is when we add in data to instruction curriculum environment and then some districts are moving toward ice l and the l is for the learner just for some additional context so in this image you see equity and cultural responsibility should really wrap around all of these pieces equity does not live in any one part specifically it should live throughout as well as cultural responsibility there's no curriculum at least that i'm aware of that it's going to hit all the check all the boxes for equity and culture responsibility and so in this district we are in a constant um work and reflection around our instruction and our curriculum and our environments and are they equitable how are they not equitable what are the things we can do to make them

027more equitable and the same is true around culture responsibility so we're going to dig in this evening to specifically curriculum what is being used to teach students and you may or may not know that we have in ashley city schools had a lack of strong core curriculum in key areas so core curriculum is what all students receive every single student across the board should receive the core curriculum and then we have supplemental and intensive curriculum that different groups of students receive on top of that course so the core is like your base cake recipe if you will like everybody is going to get this we're going to cook this cake and everybody's going to have this cake we do not have that core curriculum that is rigorous and effective in some really key areas and

028we really want to move toward a shared core curriculum in math ela which is english language arts or literacy science and social studies it is problematic that we don't have effective consistent core curriculum in these areas and the the curriculum team and in conversation with principals is doing a lot of analysis around when was the last time we had corporate in these areas what needs to be revisited so as you know we did a new math curriculum in the elementary starting two years ago so we do now have what the data is showing is a highly effective consistent rigorous math curriculum in k5 same with six eight math and then as you heard from ms parks previously we're moving forward with the shared 6-8 ela curriculum and we are also moving forward with the shared

029k-5 ela curriculum this is a visual that shows you in k-5 and currently we are using wisdom in grades 3-5 and in k2 our teachers are pulling from a variety of resources including the teachers college units of study we used that curriculum for many years national city schools it served some students well for a long time it did not serve all of our students and our data showed that and so we recognize that we need to pivot to a curriculum that benefits all kids and here's some rationale around why um i am now going to turn it over to sarah kane oh sorry does this look familiar to the scarborough rope when sarah did the letters presentation so the science of reading we're learning more and more about the research around reading um i think

030carly stein says it's the most researched area in education and so this is that scarborough road you saw the letters presentation that we're all going to become very familiar with in the next two years and it shows the breakdown of the different curriculum pieces and how they fit into the scarborough rope around the science reading all right enough for me the real stars are we have some vips tonight so we are excited to welcome from claxton elementary kelly mccarthy third grade teacher extraordinaire has brought some of her students to do an activity with you so i hope you enjoyed we're really honored [Applause] um thank you for having us uh we're gonna showcase one of our favorite routines from the curriculum and it is a notice and wonder and we always start out each module

031there's four modules total and there's always like an umbrella question the essential question and the first module we did this year was um about the c and the overarching question is why did people explore the sea and then the modules separated it into three distinct sections and they are um focused on like the focusing questions so for this section the focusing question were why do artists explore the city and we looked at different artwork and we also read poetry and different other kind of writing from artists and with this particular notice and wonder it um we were answering the question what is the central message of this woodblock print and just as writers make decisions about what words to use in their writing artists make decisions about what colors and different aspects of their art

032that they use in their uh artwork and so we what do we notice and wonder about the artwork and it's kind of the cycle right when we study an art work a piece of artwork and then we notice things and then that gives us a wonder and then we notice so it's kind of cyclical like that um and my friends we have carter and pepper and maxwell and ariana and aiden here um to they're going to come up with just in the middle of each one of you so they're going to help us yes [Music] now where this falls in the lessons is that they don't you don't know the name of the artwork don't know the artist right now you are in part like you're letting the inquiry part take over and curiosity so

033we will go to each [Music] yes [Music] um [Music] yes um all right friends let's take one more minute [Music] i know is [Music] is uh okay as they are coming back so in our classroom as you can imagine this routine really sparks some amazing conversations and um so they are able to share with each other with turning talk partners but also out to the class so um they're going to share their partner them and their partners notice a letter and place it on the charts yes [Music] it is um is yes oh it's okay it's all right um i wonder where they are going i wonder how far from home their homeland they are uh why the wave is so big and what is the waves central point um i noticed two boats i

034noticed two people or that there's people on the boats and that they are oh that there's mount fuji and they're paddling into the wave and i promise they're not this shy [Music] lower left corner i noticed the shape of the cloud is like the shape of the big wave i wonder why the people are laying down why the artists use such bold blue colors um i wonder if the artist was trying to imply in this lookout that the ocean was beautiful or that it's dangerous and i noticed that the artist made the way big wave in this woodwork print the focal point and it dropped my eyes i wonder is it is there a volcano in the background i knew this perfect i know i noticed clear skies but waves are scary so that concludes

035our notice and wonder routine thank you for having us that the painting was inspired or the painting inspired mangoes starry night so if you yeah if you look at them the waves and the squirrels match up so that's our trivia factory thank you so much i did put some bags of books in front of you not to distract you from the rest of the evening but we did want you to have an opportunity to see what some of the books those are just some of what come for each grade level and the different modules and melissa will talk about the rest i hope that in the future we can do more things with students like this because i gotta tell you this is the most fun i've had here in a long time i'm really

036glad you said that because we do too and we'd love to have um as we used to years ago have curriculum focuses and highlights and bring students in um i don't know the families have to stay longer than they have to but i i will put the students totally on the spot do any of you want to share anything about wisdom what i like about window wisdom is learning about new people drop white john creek stuff and galileo gambling [Applause] [Music] who looked at the sky at night and adventured the sea um right now in what wisdom we're studying space and we are learning about the apollo 11 mission with the movement and i like it because i and a lot of us haven't heard much about that so we're learning a lot of new

037things about them thank you so just to wrap things up wooden wisdom is very heavily it's very content heavy so students are learning how to read and write and think critically while they're also learning about the world around them not just the world but space and so it is it is hard it's it's rigorous it is um it's not an easy curriculum to teach especially in the first year and it's the the tasks are challenging but the results are tremendous and while we don't have a ton of qualitative data we do know that after two years of witnessing at jones elementary the school exceeded expectations and growth with the state and there was a decrease in the achievement gap in addition our students with disabilities performed higher than previously and it was the only school

038in the district to come off the state list for students with disabilities in the area of reading so we do have some quantitative data we have a lot of qualitative and anecdotal data our wisdom coach kelly matkins met with us earlier today and she said that she has had elderly students tell their parents they don't want to go to their doctor's appointment because they don't want to miss wisdom that there are students in the exceptional children's program who have asked for their schedules to be changed so that they can be in class for written wisdom um we hear from families how impressed they are with the quality of the critical thing these are third grade kids and they're you y'all are so smart and you have a great teacher and the curriculum isn't going to

039be the fix to everything but it is very very important it's the ingredients right like it is so important that we have a very high quality core curriculum teachers are telling us although it's hard to teach when they see the gains and the growth of students it makes it all worth it and we're seeing that growth with all students and just again it's you've got the cost it's not a cheap curriculum um in in my opinion in melissa's opinion core curriculum especially for our youngest learners is not an area that we should scrimp it is not where we want to go by the used car right the materials we use and the quality of those materials especially with our youngest learners in my professional opinion is an area that we need to invest in heavily

040and i went to the doctor freeman in georgia i don't know a couple months ago and i said we're doing this analysis of our core curriculum and we have a lot of room to go we're gonna need to spend probably five to six hundred thousand dollars for the upcoming year and then um you know look at subsequent years so for this for the k2 curriculum for whitman wisdom to roll that out next year um we're looking at a total cost of 202 000 no i'm sorry that's for k5 for everything but essentially the percent of the total budget for all of the ela curriculum what lore presented as well as this is about four point four percent of the total acs budget point four percent and if you look at what we need to get

041in front of this curricular issue across the board we're looking at about 0.8 of the total budget so for this k2 ela written wisdom we're looking at approximately 45 per student per year for six years it's a six year investment so i just want to give some context too i know there can be sticker shock but i would argue that our students are worth well more than 47.45 a year for their literacy in the younger grades and we do get textbook funds from the state we got approximately 140 000 this year and we're mandated to spend um essers funds on learning loss which can also help cover this cost so um that is what we have for you there's principals and mrs mccarthy's here there's parents here we want to ask any questions but our

042recommendation is to move forward with written wisdom k5 and have a consistent core literacy curriculum across all of the asheville city schools elementary schools i just want to say that as a retired old lady high school english teacher i thank you i mean this is what we need going forward the investment in our children is phenomenal and thank you all for this work because this is awesome you guys are fantastic i had more fun up here tonight than i've ever had so thank you so much i appreciate it anyone have any other questions or your comments um the great thing about this is for six years i mean we're covering our we're covering it for six years so this isn't something that we have to come back to every year and ask for more money

043every year but also like you said getting that k5 core curriculum together is going to be work wonders for our schools so we do need to take a vote on this and james in full transparency there are some recurring costs annually but i build those costs into the 45 per student per year so that's been built in to that approximation and i also want to add that once we show up and have consistent effective core curriculum in our key content areas this these costs won't be so exorbitant [Music] thank you they won't be so big over time but we we need to get in front of this issue and we see it in our data we still have to work on the other pieces we have to work on the we have to work instructional

044equity we have to work on racial equity this isn't going to fix all of that but having solid core curriculum in place is a fundamental task of a school district could i ask mary i don't want to be on the spot but um how do you feel about this curriculum and um from a principal perspective it's great to have the curriculum but you know we have to have some accountability in making sure that you know it's presented and teachers also have the ability to be creative within the context of this also i mean what is your opinion as the leader of the school um i so i this is my seventh year at national city schools my sixth year at claxton and i have a second grader and a fourth grader at claxton in my

045fourth grader um it's been interesting to watch as a parent and as a principal like the the back side of you know teaching the curriculum and then what the students are actually getting so a few observations that i've made is that our kids are doing way more writing than they've ever done since i've been a classic which to me translates to some really deep thinking and learning our teachers have said that kids are super engaged because the topics are really engaging everything i learned about teaching this curriculum reinforces you have a big idea you get kids inspired you give them you know a way to learn background knowledge and then you build up the skills around it so kids stay engaged and they want to keep learning they want to keep doing it they're reading

046novels together they're writing about author's point of view i just see a lot of evidence that our kids are growing i do know that any time we have a brand new curriculum it is really hard on our teachers because they have to study it they have to learn it but we've all done this long enough to know that the more we do it the more we practice it the easier it will get and we'll get to add our own art into it as we teach it is what i foresee so it does i'm looking at this one man too i've never heard somebody his age mention john cousteau during my childhood i wonder how many adults actually remember josh cousteau but here's a young man um in months because we in the space module i

047don't know that all of you are going to read this entire packet through but i did include a comprehensive reviewer's guide for written wisdom it breaks down each component of literacy and language development and how written wisdom addresses that component i figured the martha geigers in the room might enjoy something like that but there is um this is not a we just decided this was a good fit for us this is a well researched and documented curriculum that a lot of districts around us are also moving to so that we can have opportunities to collaborate with the districts around us someone said can you because at the very beginning we've talked about how each level by the way that the terminator bothers me i wish we could switch what's the equity piece in this curriculum

048like how do we know that we're centering like students with this curriculum so the the major most important equity piece is that all of our students in grades k2 will be exposed to rigorous instruction and reading and writing so serena hammond who many of you know does a lot of work around culturally responsive teaching she says the number one educational equity issue is the literacy of all students and we know from our data that what we have been doing is not resulting in equitable outcomes for all students in the area of literacy so that's number one first and foremost and there's a really important part about equity and education around what students access the best teachers the best curriculum et cetera et cetera et cetera in terms of representation in centering black and brown students

049again i don't know that every any curriculum is going to check all the boxes but we will be going through the modules as we have with grades three five to look at that representation and when when it isn't as centered as we want it to be then we can pull in um strategies and resources that do that so i think for example at jones there was some discussion about pulling in from 1619 project to ensure that that representation and the centering of black brown students is there i think it's important to have representation i think it's most essential that all of our kids are growing and i mean clearly there's some very critical thinkers here who i think would challenge middle and high school students with their level of problem-solving and thinking can i ask

050is there any parent right enough to tell us what you think about it so i'm carter's dad my name is antoine fletcher science communicator for the national park service so we do a lot of wood and wonder at home so i know this and things like that and this we do curriculum you know uh education with the national park service so we've been doing this for a while and it really sticks with them um and we get our telescope out sometimes as well and he just asked me about it so the things that he's learned in school we're doing at home as well and then we're doing on the national level too so it really works out um and we were just talking about this the other day in the national park service over that

051watson washington call so i think it's really resonating with the kids here thank you sir any of the other principals wanted to chime anything in we've had a lot of conversations all the elementary principles are in support of this move and we've had a lot of discussion around it any other questions comments so i think what we need to do then is the emotion would be to uh approve the purchase of the win wisdom curriculum for grades eight and five so okay so the motion yes [Music] i move that we adopt the curriculum for the the attorney to tell me the rest of the words item on the agenda can we reiterate why that is and why it's not waiting so much it was actually we would like to get the materials ordered so we

052can get them in the hands of teachers to start doing some training um before they go home i just wanted to make sure that we rented it to the record with that second all right it's been moved and seconded uh all in favor aye aye in the opposed all right [Music] thank you thank you and thank you parents for for bringing your kids and being a part of this and especially students um like the skype as a former teacher i love seeing students out here teaching me um and then i i love i mean i think it's really been weird that they'd like to say it again like the faculty and parents here who can be involved in this and to hear parent voices um it feels good you know like we here we've been

053up here now you know through the pandemic for two years and it's been lots of narratives that aren't the most positive and so they see students up here you know leading community with us through this activity their parents speak your teachers speak that's just powerful so thank you all right thank you for that all right so next i have miss laura parks with uh calendar updates and uh we are going to be taking action on this as well this works good evening um i have a couple more calendar updates for you all one is for this school year and one is for next school year i believe you have printouts of both the recommendations the first recommendation for this school year is that we changed the last day of school june 7th to an early

054release day we currently have 12 and a half banked hours in our calendar and so this would change our total banked hours for the remainder of the school year to 10 hours you'll also see noted in the kind of neon blue color in january you'll see some days that are marked as remote days for inclement weather we do still have two additional days that we could use this school year um should inclement weather rise between now and the end of the school year so it would be ten banked hours plus two additional revenues that we could use any questions for this change okay and then um the change for next school year does not um this is more of an informational change it's not a change in the state's mind to our school calendar for

055next school year but the work days in october we have a required work day that was previously scheduled on october 14th and a parent-teacher conference day on october 13th and due to the training dates for letters that have been confirmed with the state we need to flip those two days so the required work day would be on the thursday october 13th and then parent-teacher conference day on the 14th and that unfortunately was one of our alternate days that we have requested with the state but that is when they have a trainer available so we don't have to do anything with the 2223 calendar tonight but we do need to approve the 2122 correct calendar change okay so do i have a motion to make that change or do we have any questions all right lord

056the the half day uh earlier is that where is that coming from so the recommendation um did actually the request came from administrative school administration and so we discussed it with our school principals at our last admin meeting and it was anything the best recommendation from all school administrators we will be it is technically a day that is in our school testing window it is typically a makeup day and all of our planned required testing will have taken place before that and we can still administer a test on our early release day so we have enough time in the day to still administer taste testing okay any other questions for laura [Music] just to procedural question where jessica at this meeting is approving the 21 22 yes updates and we'll be approving the nation's on

057the next agenda yeah i i all right thank you next i have mr ian nelson to talk about our summer testing plan uh giving you more than freeman um so i'm here to give you an update on um what formerly was summer retesting so one of the many consequences of kobit is that you've got to have this for every year so the basic lay of the land is the state allows for students to retake eog or eoc after the conclusion of the school year one of the stipulations is that additional instruction is required between the first test and the second test that additional instruction also has to happen after they've been scared so um this year since we haven't done it over years we've left it up to each schools our secondary schools chose not

058to participate where elementary schools have chosen to participate so the plan is um for the week of june 13th um on the 13th to the 14th is when the additional structure will happen for students and the 15th and 16th is where the retesting will happen um the plan right now this will this will be flexible depending on how many folks you can get to work would be to have two teachers and one instructional assistant per school in order to provide that instruction and to administer the test after the fact the estimated cost and again this will depend on how many students we get how many votes sign up to do it is between nine and ten thousand dollars um and i am required to contribute information and then hopefully uh get better freedman's signature and

059uh jared carter's injury my understanding is not a voting item any questions for ian all right thank you very much i'll actually not take that back i do have a question you have it it's in our notebook this is for grades which grades so this is this would just be elementary show the grades three four five as those those the grades the administrative eogs [Music] any other questions all right thank you next we have her senate bill 654 we get to talk about pace conference again so welcome people doctor and dr freeman yes sir thank you for giving this opportunity to give you a quick update on the week of march the 6th we had one child test positive recovered a we could watch the 23rd we had five students not a total number and

060last week we had five students and one teacher so our numbers still remain low and much lower transmission rate than our kelly and our recommendation is to please keep the face coverings optional any questions for april all right thank we will you looking closely at the return of spring parade for the board's information i can't remember which one of you asked me we do have an ample supply of tests available for staffing students and also our numbers they those still seem like they were the same when we were wearing masks so uh almost and unless but that very first week the week i was panicking about right we had one student we are however getting a lot of negative test results because colds and flus and stomach bugs and all those things are being shared

061gotcha all right thank you very much all right next we have our updated capital lottery approval with georgia harvey and also a procedural our procedures code federal rent administration procurement procedure good evening um i'd like to give a little background to the public school building capital fund lottery money this was requested in for the 315 and um and it was a it went to board was approved it went to duncan county and dpi group in march of 2021 previous assistant superintendent requested that the application be amended to include other schools than just aps and in your packet you will see that gpi did approve on may 28th the amendment we have requested buckingham county to do a reimbursement for some of the schools other than aps and um they're requiring us to bring it back

062to the board we need board approval for the amendment and waiting on reimbursement so my ask is that you approved the amendment that included um lucy herring jones claiston ledger in montford as an amendment to the original application any questions we will [Music] the second item is the um board policy 8305p federal grant administration procurement procedures and looking at this with our attorney i'm requesting that we change the limits and i believe those i don't have a page number it starts under specific procurement um procedures a contracts for purchase of goods changing it from ten thousand to thirty thousand and then subsequent changes for uh different limits primarily one reason is for our micro purchases it's set at 10 000 now that means any federal funds we use over 10 000 we have to write

063dpi get an approval before we spend it it's very time consuming and most least have gone to the 30 000 for that and this mirrors exactly what bunch of counting is doing so we're asking for approval of that any questions for jordan yeah so on the upper i'm not too concerned with changing the lower threshold that makes a lot of sense to me um on raising that upper threshold march race from 9000 to 250 000. does that preclude board review on those items or is that just dpi no anything over 90 000 awards still has to occur okay just wanted to clarify that thank you any other questions jordan all right so first we will uh can have a motion to approve the updated capital lottery fund letter is it a letter that we have

064to sign application allocation application application can we just go through one more time before we move into motion on that i know that there's been a lot of public discussion about actual primary school and just what's going on there like one last time so everybody understands this was different this is different lottery fund yeah i'm sorry thank you all right second all right has been moving a second all in favor say aye any opposed all right uh can i have a motion to approve the procedure chain uh a procedure co-change for the federal grant administration procurement procedures thank you i don't want to say that again do i have a sentence do i have a second i'll second all right it's been moved in a second all in favor say hi hi you need a

065post all right thank you georgia for that and you also have um information on our contracts and mousse yes my section is the contracts we're seeking we have information on our contract for mh works for a new roof and women's at aps the contracts below that are for information only and um questions so can you tell us what the image i know christie's here the image works that is for uh the new roof a new roof and new windows at abs that is doing the what this this is yes come on up christian i know there were a couple of questions about this i just want to make sure that we get some good clarification okay so we know that we are going to eventually go back into that building at actual primary schools school

066building but this is to make sure that the roof doesn't fall in and that we have good windows we got to keep the water out of the facility we plan to keep the facility we at least have to address the envelope of the building okay will that window design allow for opening and closing windows in the current classrooms i mean any other questions about this and this is for the design this is the design process okay i know it's like the worst time to ask this question but what do you think is in the realm of possibility for full construction costs um i mean the facility itself was 9 million and what we're seeing with inflation right now i i would say our roof itself is going to be around seven to eight hundred thousand

067i don't know about windows you're looking at maybelline estimate hey sorry 800 000 million for the windows if we're lucky they may be a little less but i don't think we're going to be i don't think anybody's going to be lucky things are going on with inflation uh and this is to maintain the integrity of the facility this was started before aps was closed if i'm not mistaken yeah so this is lottery funds these funds were allocated to design um some of the actual primaries so moving forward i met and what we came up with was we will just design the windows and roof at this time any other questions from georgia or christie thank you all right next we have budget amendments oh no no i'm sorry dr dickerson with the other side the

068mountain members of the board dr freeman you have two mlus for your information versus the appalachian mountain community health centers which will provide school-based health services at the high school and at southside national high school and social and the second is your next chapter counseling pllc which is another student-based therapy agency sort of like family press which we already have but um as far as the location that's yet to be determined but those are the two people that we have today thank you to mrs for her leadership and uh rounding up these agencies for more support for the district when do they start now immediately okay all right so we have the high school we have appalachian community health now in the community and then we have blue ridge community health that's going to be

069at the middle school correct that's correct it's great that we can take advantage of the fqhcs that we have in the area federal qualified health centers this is a great opportunity absolutely all right thank you thank you any other questions for dr david all right i've got georgia back with our budget amendments your information should include three pages of summary and on the fourth starts with the first specific budget amendment if we're one this is state funds this includes a transfer of our state textbook money to um regular textbook money that means the purchases don't have to come through the state warehouse it includes a transfer of cte months of employment salary to instructional supplies and equipment 0.29 is an additional amount that we received in that purpose code and then 085 additional amount of

070receipt amendment of 402 this was our second installment received on our 21st century grant which is summer student activities tomorrow and budget amendment 0.403 this is federal funds and these are additional funds in ec program area [Music] excuse me we had a poll from reserve to cover those expenditures so the unbudgeted reserve um we did we had that budgeted in this fund we took it out of that and put it into specific purpose codes and object codes that you'll see in the increased side any other questions on the budget amendment all right and i'm assuming we save more money than trying to go through this state warehouse for the textbooks so what happens is the state gives us x amount of dollars in state textbook money um they have textbooks at the state warehouse if

071we choose to buy outside of that we have to move the money to a different prc we still use it for textbooks it just they've not come from the state warehouse for example the ones that you approved earlier we could use some of that money for that george i have a question it's not on here but i've gotten questions about when the staff will get their attendance um for the bus drivers the bus drivers and those i guess the staff that worked have been working the two two and three um the first um the third quarter that should be at the end of this month the end of april that was the bus attendance bonus any other questions for georgia all right thank you next uh i have miss tania crochet with our student releases

072to london county canadian board members as you can see we have quite a few releases from asheville city to buncombe county we only have one new one that's the kindergartner so these are repeat so they've been attending buncombe county school and several several of you have emailed me about a presentation on where we are as far as enrollment um and i've also received several requests for specific data so i'm gonna do a detail if you don't mind and get everything um in a presentation for next month to address all of your questions yes any questions thank you i'm glad that you survived uh it was a breeze all right well i can tell about the look on your face that you're lying to me all right next i have dr decker with the career update

073mr carter the board dr freeman i am pleased to say that the career fair was a success um we had 90 individuals who have attended we had a 71 attendance rate for the barbecue of the folks who signed up um we hired what's interesting is 20 of the folks who came to the barbecue which was optional on that friday we ended up ended up making offers um so we're looking at 21 individuals that we've extended offers to we secure two custodians i think christie i was able to get two custodians out of the career fair um and i attribute a lot of this success to the support of ashley michelle and dylan wls covered it three times we had a full page i had the urban news um social media boost on facebook were helpful

074about express i was in the weekly curriculum and instruction emails and then a phone call an email went out to all families so um but i'll tell you what the most the most important piece and key to the success of this was the principles giving up two days to come and like really rally behind this that's a lot of you know when we make sacrifices monday through friday and then to kind of get up for friday nights and pretty much a whole day of saturday so i can't say enough about the commitment of the principles and the most touching piece was friday night at the at the barbecue i had asked once again nine teachers to come and give up their friday evening and they were willing to do it six of those were beginning

075teachers and you would never have known it and i asked them to come and share their why and one of my biggest regrets from the career fairs i wish i had taped them speaking and i wish that i could like share it with you because it was so i mean like to the feedback we got from the participants the next day that were at the barbecue they were like that's what saw me on national city schools hearing their lie and hearing them speak from their heart and why they show up every day to teach our children um they are like that sold me on this community so i can't say enough about robin miller normal halls shawn grinner mike leggett gabby worth chelsea fisher dan coleman jacob labor and kat taylor so a huge shout

076out to those teachers we're going to have a pop-up career fair on wednesday june the 15th from three to six here in the boardroom we are we are still in need of custodians bus drivers school nutrition staff um and so hopefully you know we'll work collaboratively to push that information out and hopefully have a strong turnout for that so we can feel some of those support stuff rules because those are just as critical as those teaching positions to make sure that our schools function every day um and um thank you for your support thank you and i i'd like to suggest that you know those teachers who did their why and that was such a big that was a great sell this one let's see if we can get them to do a little video

077of that but let's also look at some of our other classified staff as what their whys are maybe that could be a good draw for people to come come here as well so um so thank you for that thanks for all y'all's hard work and ashley michelle and dylan thank you all it was all over news 13 we kept seeing it it was great uh to see some positives about our district and and how hard our people are working so thank you all right dr dickerson i've got you back up here for our policy reads so the administration is presenting policies 7430 7430p and 6402 for final read and consent anyone have any questions about any of those policies for the second reads sorry dr dickerson um on the policy code 7430 um one clarification

078that has come up with well in between paragraphs one and two there's a straight period it's like hanging and then also with using a third party substitute um one of the things that has become an issue and maybe it would be a good point of information is how the rest of the um employment procedures and grievances don't necessarily apply to those substitutes and so my question would be um would this be a good place to go ahead and spell that out so people understand that expectation from the beginning i think there might have been that was my only question any other questions or comments on 7430 7430p or 6402 so mark do we have teacher assistance cover classrooms that they're not regularly assigned to and if so why are they not compensated for that because

079it just says if is the classroom here usually assigned so we've had we've made we have in the past i know at the high school in particular used to compensate ies to fill in positions this is we're kind of leaving it from a school-based standpoint um again we're increasing our substitute substances in the system um it's hard answer it's a hard question to answer at this point but i know they are making efforts to um look into possibly looking at compensation but right now we're just we haven't been i don't know if i'm answering your question but no we don't currently no but i know there's been some um things made there's some things been done in the past that i think we need to probably consider moving forth if the issue of filling positions

080become a bigger issue in the future so that's the best way i can answer that question at this point um with increasing our subs hopefully that will dwindle down having conversations with principals i think you know becoming a little creative of how we can compensate maybe not monetarily but other ways um you know that's it's a really really um difficult question um so if we ask an ia to cover a class for a whole day for a whole day yes they do get paid for a whole day but if you're talking about less than two hours no see these are these are the things that i think the board needs to understand that if they're paid to cover a whole day they get more money yes if they're asked to step in for an hour

081or an hour and a half they're paid their regular salary because they're not leaving that class for a whole day correct correct um did we compensate them before for those two hours maybe years before but not since i've been here down is i just wanted to get clarity on because if they're there a whole day and i guess my next question would be what is the time frame by which they get a whole day so it would have to be again more than four hours or five hours and do they understand that can we specify that to them if not i think we need to if we need to send something out publicly we can do that but that is the understanding you know since we've been here since i've been here um so if

082they come into class for four hours they're not compensated for that if they're not if they're covering in four or four hours up to four hours so would we hire a substitute for four hours half half a day and help me out half a day half days well i mean it would go to my thinking that if they were working half a day they would get i mean i think we just working with principals need to know what is that step in time versus what is that takeover time um and we need clarity so everybody knows that going in so and we have principles here what is the step in time is that an hour and a half or two hours y'all are going to talk come up here please and we don't have to

083answer this today we can answer it tomorrow but i think this has to be very clear to people so we all understand so maybe that's something we work on tomorrow to get out to make sure well and also we need to make sure i i would rather us hold 74 30 until we are perfectly sure i apologize but i think there needs to be some clarity on this yeah because if we would pay a substitute teacher i don't know why we wouldn't pay our ias um brother four hours i don't understand because if someone's not a regular substitute i'm sure the uh i think it's situational among schools because it depends on the situation i you know again an hour or two it is my understanding that they do not get paid but if we're

084talking four hours and it depends on the situation i don't know if we have situations like that well i think if we define it and we do then we define it carrie no does the answer no yes karen come up here you know no no she does come on can we turn the camera on curious this year we are paying them if they are working the full day or over four hours but if it's four hours or less they are not compensated for that time thank you kid is that over and above their regular salary are they getting subpay is that what you're doing okay and and to clarify that if i may that the reason for this provision is the law says that if you pull an instructional assistant to substitute they they get

085a regular teacher pay so it's not the difference in a subpay they actually get more than some pay they are getting what a beginning teacher makes so that's the reason for the provision so we definitely all right we're going to pull 7430 off of here until we can figure out all the projects and another thing is the ess edition you know there's there's that parameter as well so we have some some ias coloring as subs but we also have to take in content take in consideration that we have another third-party agency involved and that kind of um that has to be understood that from a district perspective you know we have to consider that and how they do things as well so but that law does not apply to ess does it so it wouldn't

086apply because right it's a third price right so it's only our people that we employ if we put in those positions okay and i guess mark what you're saying is that we would first try to fill that position with an ess position right okay and we're building and we're trying to get to the point where we won't have to depend on instructional systems so i know the angst and and the the feelings out there and i appreciate it i think we all appreciate those who are feeling these positions so four hours or less well less than four hours as you're saying um and it depends on the situation and i think the principles for the most part they are managing that the best they can and in situations where teachers teacher has to leave or

087come in late you know we have to kind of try and try things out so that's the best way i can answer that thank you did that answer your question all right so any other questions about those secondary things so we'll go to the policy bursaries policy 2310 public comment and campaigning school assignment at 4130p our discretionary admissions about a district student so for all these policies there is language added um so for 2310 you have um you know you guys ready but just for the public to know board permits public comment and on issues related to and within the jurisdiction of the school district no person may use the public comment portion of the board meeting to activity campaign campaign for or endorse a specific candidate running for public office and for this purpose

088of the policy active campaign campaign includes but is not limited to stating that a person is a candidate for public office asking for support for a candidate running for public office and or stating what a candidate will do if elected to public office and my question is what happens if that doesn't hurt [Music] so um as with this policy in general you know you have folks sometimes who say things that they shouldn't say right and that's when you as usually the board chair will say that's in violation of our policy we're asking and we're reminding you not to do this and at some point you can turn my call i don't decide to but generally you would you would having it in your policy is meant to have a deterrent effect and hopefully you would

089not have that problem but then the board always has the ability to stop the public conflict thank you you said you had some questions about this one um the only well question in the statement um so i think i've already discussed this with with members of the board but um in the reading of the policy um in that last sentence i'd really like to advocate that we just strike um stating that a person is a candidate for public office um just that one clause and leaving the rest intact um just because i believe that's such a brief statement and i think especially with us entering our first um elected school board i do want to see people um be able to come and if they have a comment disclose that to us so that it

090doesn't seem like they're getting the opportunity to do that on the spot um and i'd like parents to uh to get some recognition of the field i i don't want this to become [Music] a campaign stop and i definitely see the need for that but i don't think that that in and of itself is there a reason that i can think to stop someone from talking and and if i can point out also about this this provision is not required by law so it's up to the board you don't have to have this some school districts have just written it as a request and that may not have as much term effect as you would want but can you leave it as it is and then just take out the last sentences as payment has

091suggested any other questions on this so i feel like i need to go over somebody so the public knows what what these policies are school assignment real quickly just to hide with this added language to this is the definition of parent biological parent of the student or legal guardian on individual fitting a statutory affidavit exception step parents and individuals cohabitating with a parent do not uh satisfy this definition unless they adopt a child or take a child or obtain a court order demonstrating legal custody or guardianship and to qualify as a parent individual must be primary uh caretaker of the child and will be the person whom the school will contact if need be and for 4130p discretionary mission of our district students adding the language to policy the initial admission of out of state

092well i'm sorry out of district students the following factors will be considered determining whether any student is a good is in good standing or admission to acs including the children of acs staff members and the application of this policy is may without regard to the disability status of a student thus a student with a disability may be denied admission due to the resource capacity which includes adequate staffing to serve the needs of the specific child so i think it was important for me to kind of spell that out so the public will know until the board will be well informed so if a child stays with someone who is not their biological parent they have to have a court order or some type of legal guardianship from the court stating that their child's caretaker i

093see that as kind of a barrier for especially families of color because a lot of us have aunties and uncles or whatever that we stay with and the courts are not necessarily looked at as a place that we go to seek refuge that we see as a positive plate so if there's something that we can add to that or come around mr shea there is and that is the affidavit if a parent is fixed within a criteria um and i can't remember what the criteria is cynthia for the affidavit like homeless or unable to care for a child they can sign the affidavit get it notarized that dr dickerson is making educational educational decisions for my child but it has to be notarized and it has to fit within um the five areas of criteria

094so there is an out but we've had um a lot of adults uh that are living in our district that are not the decision makers for their child and it has us in some legal um stuff so we just needed very clear language um and for our staff that are out of district and have kids so that we're creating a more equitable system for everyone do we like do we have a notary on staff so there was a parent that yes tish is a notary in the um enrollment and i and she makes it happen thank you any other questions um can we go back to not if we go back to 64. so sorry i feel like this is a meeting that things are moving very quickly as a carolina fan i understand so

095i think i'm just running the process um and these are first reads so first these are first weeks that we're not doing anything with this in the next meeting so these are first reads yeah all right so but that's your question don't let that stop um yeah i guess i just i want to um advocate for believing in that sentence about um actively stating that someone said you know it's right for problems so i mean i don't know what that means for a century but just so you want to leave it in i think it's important that that is a part of that policy because you feel like it's it opens up opportunity for um we're making a campaign stuff and someone's rewarding some speech okay could i ask one more question on that since

096this is not included by general statutes what type of liability do we open ourselves up to um if we gabble somebody down for doing so is there a precedent for us to limit that type of speech within our meetings because someone coming to a school board meeting and talking about their own political campaign if you have not created a forum for that you do have an ability to set some reasonable limits on what someone says and as long as you give them notice you have other restrictions like you say to folks you know you can't come to this board meeting and talk about another child and you can't come to the board meeting and talk about personnel it's kind of along the same lines as that i do not know there's not a specific case

097that um addresses this issue i think this is a practice that many school systems are following so if you're not in unsafe care for applying a doctoral response thank you so if this was read when james does his reading before people do public comment then that would be notification and that will recover us yes okay any other questions i did want to point out to you about policies um that the administration and they wanted to have this acted on at your next meeting because it's that time of the year where this information is going out so they can update the information so the next meeting then we would wave second reading yes so we're looking at 41.50 and 4130p to vote on the 18th at our next week can we demarcate that on the agenda

098um as being an exception just so people yeah next time yeah yeah if we just put it on that i just want to have a record keeping me really good for that oh no that's good we'll make sure it is definitely covered uh any other questions dr dickerson nathan all right thank you very much thank you all right dr freeman our summer schedule for acs staff update we're going to continue it as it has been done historically to do four 10-hour days here starting after graduation and to my knowledge ending around the first of august that's just for information any other questions any questions for dream all right next i have uh georgia harvey with our budget updates so uh so that those listening know and watching um the board has asked ms harvey and

099dr freeman to bring potential saving options for our budget um as we go through our budget process so these are potential saving options nothing has been voted on i think it's going to be voted on this evening you may hear some things that give you cause to raise an eyebrow if you have any questions i ask that you reach out to the board to myself mr chair or any other board member but also feel free to reach out to dr freeman and mrs harper all right i've done my disclaimer hello again as chairman carter said i'm here to give potential saving options these are um presented to you as a board we're of course um dr fredman and i look to the board for direction on where to go with this when you say about

100salaries move from bcs to acs dual employees that mean they can just clock in at their regular custodian or iap i'm sorry yes i'm gonna i'm gonna go through the microphone okay i would like to make a statement before we begin we're not just looking at next year for budget savings um this is planning for uh sustainability and future budgets and um i'd like to state that we should live within our revenues we receive and not rely on our fund balance for our yearly cost first thing i'd like to cover is what's going to affect our local budget next year in planning the state um has a increase in our retirement rate from 22 89 to 24 19. it's a increase of 1.3 hospitalization rate is going up 378 and of course these are all

101per person our salary increases and they have a direct increase on local supplements also non-certified staff state says the higher of fifteen dollars per hour or two and a half percent central office and administrative staff two and a half percent increase principal salary schedule reflects a two and a half percent increase and the teacher salary schedule reflects a average of 1.3 georgia that non-turnpike staff uh higher per hour that's from the budget that was just passed by the state when does they went to 13 at the beginning this is as of july 1. so this we're going to offend july 1. okay okay unless the state moves and changes that so um these increases we estimate to be a 1.3 billion dollar hit to our local budget next year or an increase 1.3 million cost

102of goods and services we anticipate will project 12 increase and charter school enrollment and increase of a projected increase of two percent since we're talking about our local budget i just wanted to give you this information um compared to years 2017 through and then year-to-date this year for example last year salaries and benefits out of our local local funds 17 million that equates to about 71 percent okay now we get into the areas for potential savings and again i'm presenting options i'm not i'm not making any decisions [Music] um but i am looking for you to make decisions so um i'm going to go through each one of these a little more specific reduction through attrition bus salaries classified non-examinate hourly duplication of services and staff to reduce local supplement stage schedule change reduce temporary

103contracts and facilities and utilities consolidate and reduce could you explain the pay schedule change for the local supplements i'm sorry that's okay those are just your highlights yes okay now we're getting into the meeting right so to start off a reduction through attrition which includes no layoffs uh of course you know that employees retire or resign local savings can be obtained through reduction of staff by increasing class size consolidated facilities and or not rehiring specific positions i have to say that we pulled information from dpi for all of the school units in north carolina cashflow city schools ranks in the top five for the amount of locally paid staff we're at um i believe around 36 there's only one higher than us i think that was 38 but that's two percent so the reduction of

104staff through attrition i'm going to give you some figures that you don't have on there we currently as a we pulled figures in march 77 teachers are locally paid that's a cost of five million dollars to our local budget 25 ias are locally paid that's a cost of one million dollars to our local budget if we were to cut back through attrition eight teachers that would be around six hundred thousand dollars eight ias would be about 450. so 600 000 if we did not build eight there's many other positions i just pulled this too they're the highest the next area staff bus salaries moving it from buncombe county schools to asheville city schools and this uh affects our dual employees um we are in conversations with dpi in buncombe county schools about our transportation funds

105it is lumped for our salaries it is lumped with bunker county schools they hire and pay the bus drivers for actual city schools so with this dual employees would be paid through one school system actual city schools which would mean we would more accurately pay them there would be less overlapping time no duplication of holiday pay local supplement things like that um right now buncombe county school sets the bus pay rate if it were handled by us hiring and paying them the bus drivers then we could work with the state um salary range ourselves and i know sean if you have a question about that okay so currently buncombe county pays for their time and holiday pay and all that yes so how is it costing so um if we're not currently paying for it

106if you lumped it together how would that save us money we have found very often there is an overlapping time which they clock with pumpkin county and us we are working on reducing that factor um it's what does this doesn't does this interweave also with the 32 hours versus 40 hours in some cases so she'll get to that also and i think we i mean i don't want to hurt feelings but we've got to be very specific in talking about what the issues are or we can't solve them so and that was just georgia going to be very frank um with what the issues are so i want to give you some more information on dual employee pay in a few minutes classified non-exempt our recommendation is that they're paid hourly staff were paid for

107actual hours worked the following slides are going to provide more detail our child nutrition staff is currently paid hourly so they work and then they get paid they're not paid in advance all of our other classified areas not exempt are paid in advance of hours worked and in some cases which i'm going to discuss paid for hours that are never worked and i i want to clarify that that's not that is a system issue not an employee issue employees aren't doing this as a unified pull the wool over your eye this is what's been going on for years here right it's evidently been done this way for many years so this slide shows teacher assistants are only required to work 30 cent and a half yet we pay them for 40. dual employed teacher assistants

108and bus drivers work 30 hours they're paid for 40 and they get an additional bus supplement monthly custodians are required for 37 and a half they're paid for 40 custodian dual employed that are also bus drivers 30 hours they're paid for 40 and they receive the extra bus supplement monthly all other classified staff 37 and a half hours and they're paid for 40. now i would like to say there are employees out there classified employees non-exempt that will work for you but we have had situations and sometimes we need someone to work 40 hours but everybody else is working 37 and a half so they they ask why they are why they're being picked on i guess i'm going to give you some examples of course the names are not real names but these are

109real situations so classified staff and when i talk about classified we include clerical maintenance custodians teacher assistance technology there's other titles but um this is the majority of them individual works 37 and a half hours they're paid for 40. jack has 20 plus years he's a 10 month he's currently paid 32 hundred dollars and 99 cents a month based on the 40 hour work week if you break that down that's 1861 an hour hours actually worked if you were getting paid that way in a year this person has a current loss to us in funds of and 3070.72 cents that includes our supplement benefits if you consider 38 locally paid classified staff in this area that would equate to about 116 688 below budget considering that going forward if we could use that 116 668

110because our employees only are working 37 and a half and get paid for 37 and a half that would equate to three additional people or a reduction i'm sorry georgia where does the 38 come from [Music] that's the number we pulled that was in this category so and this is kind of jumping ahead of these next slides but um if we made this change we'd be looking at the sum total of these savings no we did not include all areas in this yes and of course this doesn't include an increase for next year this is currently gotcha great question though um the next one jane doe 37 and a half paid for 40 5 years 11 or 12 month employee currently paid 33.99 63 a month working again 37.5 current loss in a year for

111this one employee is 36 94 57. essentially they're getting paid for a month they're not working for 61 locally paid classified staff in this area 225 369 and that would pay for approximately four classified staff in this area the third example 30 out of john doe works 30 hours paid 40. this one is a dual employee works for asheville city schools and is a bunch of county school bus driver for us 10 years 10 month employee is currently paid 25 76 19 a month they work 30 hours a week for us but they're paid a full 40. if they at this monthly pay rate it would be 4 98 14.98 a month 14.98 an hour the current loss for one employee this is not ninety three thirty three eighty six for 20 locally paid classified

112dual employees at this rate the loss of 186 677 that's equivalent to five classified staff in this category before you go forward anyone have any questions about any of the examples that we just looked at so where does london county pay i could like our business for this for john doe you're saying that's twenty five hundred dollars a month from asheville city schools local funds what's accounting county is paying for their bus driving time so that's that's above and beyond what we do and of course typically you would have someone classified as extends if there was a belief that they may work above or below to overall average that 40 hours a week we're not seeing people go above so an exempt employee has to meet um wage and wage and labor guidelines um they

113have to exceed a certain amount and pay and have some type of supervisory there's a number of qualifications they have to be for us to determine them exempt but we wouldn't what my question was like typically you you classify someone as as exempt when there's a benefit to both the employee and the employer but it doesn't sound like we're getting that benefit because they're not working above 40 hours a week they're not a sound rate employee yeah correct they are not salary but we pay them like their salary now if they work over 40 if their actual hours clocked or over 40 then of course they are comp time over time so this is not what one would think that was a typical salary to play more of a correct hybrid model right any other

114question i just want to make sure that we were clear on those examples before we move forward asheville city schools school system is by far one of the few that pay classified non-exempt in advance defined in advance so we pay them their salary prior to their work hours then we go back and adjust for um absences leave time things like that and again this is the thank you again this is the hodgepodge of layering that's happening in this system i don't want to i don't want these folks just to think it's about them this is i mean you pull back the layers of the onion and it gets stinkier and stinkier in terms of it's just like i don't i've never seen anything quite like it does everybody not just our classified does everybody talk

115in and out do we get to see you know the hours work for everybody um except employees generally do not clock in and out because we expect them to get their job done in at least 40 but the majority of the exempt employees like teachers they put in more hours you know being classified according to their time clock no some do there are a few that do but the majority do not they work for 37 and a half or less and if they're working off the clock we have huge liabilities i mean massive no but they should not be working off the clock you know if someone comes in they need to clock they need to be compensated for the time but they also have to be accounted for as well because if they were

116to get hurt and we don't know that you're here or you're somewhere else and that's a liability issue been massive lawsuits about people coming in and not clocking in and working well you know a library assistance where they'll come in an hour early there was a huge lawsuit years ago with librarian assistants who came in an hour early because they were just early birds and they did work and then they plugged in an hour later and there were millions of dollars that were paid back by schools i mean hundreds of millions which was a lot of money 12 years ago in our meetings with our school treasurers and i've talked individually with some principles to make sure that there was an understanding that we don't ask people to work for free that are classified non-examined

117so of course paying paying classified and non-exempt staff for hours if they're not work does affect your local budget it even affects those that are paid for state and federal funds because we're paying a higher rate for work not done which goes plays into our local supplement benefit cost we have had advanced pay for some classified folks and then left two days after they started we've already paid them well actually two or three days um but most of all i think it's important to recognize that work hours are not equitable for all classified non-exempt employees georgia with this one um not indicating the direction that we're going with it but can you talk through the time frame under which this would be implemented and how many people would be impacted by this shift from paying

118advance to hourly pay in terms of how it impacts their team don't pay so um my suggestion would be this starts july 1 with the new year our um classified non-exempt folks would it switches from an advanced pay to work and then get paid so instead of a check in august it would be in september but instead of not getting a check in june now they get a check in may but not in june but they would get a check in june the next year but this would give us an opportunity to switch it in the gap for summer and not have people who have people come back under this expectation rather than in the middle of their big cycle yes we i i would never i think georgia would either recommend that this is

119done any other time but in the fiscal year changeover this is not something you should do mid-year absolutely not it would be a nightmare no absolutely i guess my point is like this this is the time to do a large number of these changes because then we're not trying to come up with additional programs to try to people with people to help people bridge that gap um which i would expect us to do so i think just really we're not very eliminate times frame to make some exchanges well i i think that's very important that we work with folks that they you know that they have cost and debt and other things that they have to get through but i'm just going to say from a district perspective um the board needs to give us

120really specific directives so that we're not waiting until the spring of 23 to make these changes that we need to make because i'm not sure waiting in spring of 23 this district will survive i sound like a broken record i'm very nervous about this you know i ask around if we don't have the money to fulfill the supplement in 23 or 24 where we get money from nobody answers me nobody says you know we're gonna get it from the county commissioners which i i think we are is the state gonna come in i mean you don't even know where we're getting the money and just because we have two or three million dollars just because we might have three or four million dollars in reserves is nothing the way it's going to go out of

121here to make the expenses you have to have curriculum but what you're doing is you're you know you're you're you're correcting some of the past issues like the layering of how everybody is paid differently and all these multitude of different things it's like a house that was built on very oddly and um i'm just thinking from [Music] my perspective this is we've got to do some of this stuff 23 waiting for a new board is not going to fix this so if you start july one i mean when the new fiscal year starts do the people when they come back in august they'll get paid for those couple weeks uh september actually the um there might be two days in that pay period for the end of august but they're since they are paid after

122they work the days their first regular check would be in september all right let's just start and pay for an instructional assistant [Music] i can look that up and give it to you in just a moment we get a survey around our region for paid we do have a higher classified pay scale overall in our region regional lease we also have a higher cost of leaving church and i asked that question because if they're making 12 13 an hour we're already struggling for staff what do you think is going to continue to happen what's the benefit to homework for our district well i think one of the benefits that i keep hearing is and we've talked about this before we we pay all of our employees as a supplement and not every district around us

123does that let me tell you when you're living paycheck to paycheck throughout the year you're hoping to make it to get to that supplement so i'm talking about the day-to-day thing it's great to have that supplement for those people making 12 or 13 dollars an hour they're still having to work two and three jobs just to maintain purity and they're not staying here you can go to mcdonald's and make eighteen dollars an hour and you're still gonna come out making the same amount of money that you made with that supplement and you're gonna have more more of a quality of life and time to spend with your family as opposed to trying to figure out how to piece together two and three jobs just so you can make it i i agree i know it's

124not our fault your fault about the book over and over but we have to think of some creative ways to do things different because it looks like oftentimes that our lower paid staff is penalized and we're looking at their hours and this is just what it looks like i'm not saying it's what you're doing or not doing what it looks like we're looking at their hours and their time through a magnifying glass and those people who are exempt basically get to come and go as they please and i don't know who works what hours or whatnot but that's just what it looks and feels like to those people who are not making congratulations i think you're right and i think it is going to be a huge morale issue um and it does seem like

125we're picking on a group of people but as we go through it might seem less because i'm just going to be really frank and i'm not trying to hurt people's feelings but you know i told a group yesterday the day before we have to stop thinking about individuals and how does this district survive because i'm going to tell you i've been a superintendent for 17 years people like me some people don't like me but uh we're not gonna have the money i mean it's just everybody in here does a house budget if you run out of money you run out of money and it's not just going to be this that we have to fix you know we're going to have to reduce all positions that's the only way besides the footprint that we're going

126to be able to save money and people are going to get angry and upset change means you're taking something away from people but we either do it or this district will go to the wayside plain and simple people can say i'm fear-mongering whatever you want to do we have met with our county commissioners in the last week or two we've met with the city we're getting no money am i correcting this you are correct we have had we did have a meeting with the city uh they did not have any additional funds for this year and we did meet with the county and the county sent us a nice little letter and we sent them a nice little letter back and we're going to see what happens when it comes to our budget but we

127gene is right [Music] and and i i hear you shonda uh and i understand it uh because i've we've all been there i mean i i remember i mean well i still love the paycheck at times um so i completely understand but also i've never had a job where i worked 37 and a half hours and got paid for it so um and yes i'm sure i'm going to hurt some people's feelings and i'm sure people are not going to be happy with me they're not usually happy with me anyway but there are some things that we need to do now as we go into this new school year in the 22-23 we have got to have a budget that's going to be sustainable and we're going to have to make hard decisions no one

128up here wants to hurt anyone of any of our staff nobody wants to do that but we need to make sure that we are doing what we need to do in order to still have a place for staff to come to so i mean the question that i constantly ask the people that i work with dave what is best for the school district what is best for the district what is best for the school district which in turn is what is best for the children it can't be about individuals it has to be about the collective nature of what we do which is to keep the school district open and there is no promises that the school district can stay open you know and one of the things that our county commissioners and others have

129said is why are we going to give you more money if you can't fix the problems you've got i think that that would be something i would say somebody wanted to borrow from me you know what are you doing to fix your own problems georgia yes to answer your question 21-7 is beginning pay and with the supplements 23 650. when does that equate to valerie hourly okay 13.75 40 hours and 37.5 that's at 40 hours 13.75 and that's the starting pay for the ia now does that does that pay range change if they have two years of college four year degree or is that just a base yes that would be coming in with their first year experience in the public school system i think you need to make a comment that that's their initial

130salary but as they stay in the system as they go forward is that something that i think don't really move much right and everything's included because offered portable wages with your retirement okay okay i think it's unfortunate that the city and the county commissioners aren't going to more still be getting short and i think we have to take some responsibility in that for the number of locally funded positions that we have to other positions where we're paying a lot more than that those funds need to be reallocated to support some of those that like guarantee most of those people are our staff of color and that's what we're doing to show our appreciation so the next one it's been a point of contention so i'm going to bring this up duplication of services and staff

131reduction one area has been the central office i would like to say that since spring of 2021 we have uh reduced salaries through our central office staff of a million dollars um we are continuing to look at reductions through attrition and we have a couple more that are retiring in july that likely will not be replaced other uh rejection with duplication of services and staff it's a touchy subject school administration the state funds us for 12.5 positions that's principals and assistant principals we employ 10 principals and 13 assistant principals that's with the one vacancy we have open so our unfunded school administrator salaries they're paid locally which is 1.2 million understand that that i know how important administrators are in school this is an option in georgia went the last few slides are we able

132to get any estimate about how fast we would realize that attrition based on projected retirements or anything along those lines like um it's difficult to make well it's not i mean obviously this is something that we should do um our examiner is part of our strategies going forward but i want to make it clear whether this is a viable strategy for budget year does that make sense because i feel like we might not be getting cost savings within the timeline that would really help us pull up right now are you talking about the classified non-exist style no when we're talking about um attrition like for because i'm sorry this slide yeah so pediatrician will be a benefit in the next is that going to get us where we need to be or are there other

133places we need to reduce faster than nutrition is that yeah obviously we need to do this so that we're not in this position five years from now but does this help us substantially in 23. she's having an immediate impact to our budget but how many people do you think are going and how much money will we save when they go right okay i 15 bucks you need to do it you don't need to i mean we need to move in that direction and i'm being facetious if it's 75 000 or if it's 750 000 you shouldn't wait i i don't know how to implore you folks you cannot wait based on the way our reserves being used oh absolutely i don't think we should meet but i also don't think we should do this and

134have people think it's gonna put anything in the basket we need to put anything in right now i think the conversation should be ongoing for a long time every every meeting we should be talking about this budget and where we are with the budget but until you guys give us directions we can't make it you've got to tell us what areas to work in and then through as management we can do that yeah i don't understand that but you have you all are the ones who look at the budget and i'm not talking about these slides but you look at the physical numbers every single day for georgetown and so we're you know the the decisions that the board has to make the students need to say to school administration you know are based on

135what you're presenting to us so to say we have to decide yes you're right when we write the agenda every single week there needs to be really deep deep dives and george i appreciate this but like where's the spreadsheet where's the huge spreadsheet that says this is what we're spending this is what we've budgeted in years past this is what budget a will look like if we do all of these things this is what budget b will look like and looking at those numbers comparably so that i mean this is again this is helpful to know that you know through attrition at some point we're going to move on 1.2 billion dollars whether it's the next year or in the course of the next five years um but what like if we did all this

136now today what would top line salaries be what would bottom line salaries be what would top-line income from the state be bottom line these are the things like so when when gene and you say we've got to make these decisions we need to have the facts i do but the boards i have worked with have given us the raw stripes and left it up to management but if you want to do the raw i mean if you want to do the getting two of the nuances that's fine just let us know but this is not usually the board sets policy governs they fire and hire superintendent they are the eyes and ears of the community to bring them back to the superintendent but they don't usually the boards i board with don't get into the

137weeds they go okay we want you to look where can we reduce that from a um employee standpoint and then that's when we do the work and do figuring out you guys don't the boards i've worked with haven't gotten into that and i sort of think that's gonna the time frame of that george is gonna be almost impossible for us to do it but that's something you guys you tell us what you want to do and we'll do it i understand gene um and i'm not saying that we need to go line by line but um but we've heard or i have heard since joining this board almost every meeting we're in a financial crisis and so the more hands on deck with the more detail i think is it is the most helpful that's

138what i'm saying i'm not saying you have to go live but um but i appreciate the more information you have so i totally agree with you this should be a conversation every single meeting that we continue to do so based on what we have now gene what would be your recommendation in terms of where we should start that we look at all these areas ask george to bring back specifics so i would like to say that my direction was to bring you solutions i'll be more than glad to prepare a deep dive but again like dr friend said a deep dive in every single area every single wine item is extensive i need further direction i had about 40 more slides tonight but i figured y'all wanted to go to the ball game um i

139can give you a lot of comparisons i can give you savings but i have to have direction um you've got other stuff on here i i want to hear the rest of it um and i have some information um shawna you mentioned our classified staff 28 is of color 72 percent is not again duplication of staff specialized programs a reduction in specialized staff by half an example again it's not very popular but the state funds us for approximately three aig staff that's what we use for that with that money we of course pay the rest with local funds that is one example of a specialized staff support staff an option is take your buildings that are under capacity combine schools for example instead of two middle schools one middle school instead of two high schools

140one high school combining schools has an instant reduction of up to nine staff members and i listed those there those nine staff members a minimum of a half a million depending on what step they're at local supplements an option of the two options i'm going to go with the second one first to the right you'll see examples of schools that responded we are one of the highest in the state for local settlement very many of our lease do not pay classified folks a supplement we pay all of ours the same depending on their years of service so a recommendation would be to move all staff to a fat rate of 12 percent in local supplement second option grandfather those that are currently employed and let them stay with their current scale all new staff go

141to a flat rate of the second option the second part is moving our employees to monthly pay a benefit for our employees would be that the they would not have a flat tax of 22 percent if they were paid monthly so they take a they take home more and the biggest thing is they get to manage their own money you take that that local supplement put it in the bank earn interest you can work with your bank have it go into a savings and not even see it until you're ready to pull it out the other one is moved to two times a year july and november paid in december december through june paid at may or june how does if we move to twice a year what does that do budget-wise uh well we

142pay out half of it in december again it is taxed at the higher tax rate flat tax rate 22 for an individual um are we taxed at a different rate we don't we would still pay the same fico and all that right when you when you get a lump sum like that no i'm not done for us as the district folks you know you've got to go yeah your federal and state taxes that's what i'm talking about right so this this thing you're leaving levels as is giving these different options don't really save us the district money as well for that so um if you do monthly because i want to be very clear if you do it monthly the supplement is based on that monthly salary if you do it in may and there

143are raises for example this year we're paying it on a higher rate for that whole year correct georgia right so for me this is minimal savings temporary contracts look at reduction in that that includes temporary contracts individuals and extended contracts tutors additional duty stipends coaches school-based specialists non-certified instructors curriculum development stagings there's a whole list of things i could do very give you um we spend uh close to a million point three in this area now that's not contracts for serps other outside services like a hearing impaired person that would not um that's helping one-on-one with the student this is existing existing staff that's working mostly so could you bring us a breakdown on that area sure what would you like well you said that just out of curiosity how many what ties yeah and

144what funds they come from if they're stated or if they're not these are all looking at them sorry utilities and facilities consolidate facilities reduce costs the reduction in cost i wanted to bring up the child nutrition we are seeking competitive bidding for a uh outsourcing service management it's a long process um our child nutrition is supposed to stand on its own not lose money it can make money but it's not supposed to lose money we have to supplement those costs from our local funds and we have done that for more than three years again like i said we're seeking we're going through the process of developing an rfp so that we can put this out to forbid to see what we get of course that would be the direction of the board but in no

145way have we ever said that our staff would be uh lost of jobs this is the outsourcing of the service management and could you bring us what that cost is looking like right now and i know that's not going to be a immediate you know we signed subcontract with someone and we automatically are just getting tons and tons of money back but uh what we're spending now would be helpful okay also looking at reduction costs we have worked this year for protective bidding and various areas with maintenance this is not all-inclusive for example our waste management we did complete a competitive bidding and um was able to get better services and a reduction in price um so we continue to do that it's all good and then um reduction in cost in these other areas

146you know the areas that you see we've contracted with these for example our insurance and liability we put that out for bid last year and we were able to reduce our costs to now the hvac slash filters nobody have has their money for those so we haven't used some extra money for that we are um uh mr is looking at um our contract is up with the company we've got we're looking at the next steps that's you know as with all of these things all right when we're looking at consolidating facilities um one thing that strikes me is the initial cost um particularly with respect to architects and engineers and in that consolidation any kind of rearranging that needs to occur um would we be able to to understand what potential cost and cost benefits

147of consolidation are and how quickly we would be able to realize those savings so i may clarify for example my example is the middle school so if we consolidate the middle schools into one current school then we would not need um architectural or design cost no i mean the actual consolidation would require architect and design costs most likely to figure out how to do that or planning and so forth yeah nothing would change yeah okay no there's nothing would just be like 16 it would it would just be a physical move and the principles would be working with where the classrooms go so we don't anticipate any costs at all with consolidation or i think if it were the middle school your calls would be looming and the labor within that with aps and it's

148moving and whatever we're going to do in terms of moving from a rented facility to a facility that we own um but the roof and the windows which you know need to be done if that building is to be maintained was done was brought up before aps was scheduled to be closed so um but that's a good question whenever we do make a move and there's only a few moves that you can make to consult that uh if you you know i know that i'm going to get four changes to get emails um if you consolidated sales in the high school um that wouldn't be a cost factor other than rearranging schedules and there are only and if you consolidated i don't know if you could based on the numbers paul fletcher and lucy hearing

149but there are minimal cost in all those with the few areas that we could consolidate but uh yeah i understand this question though because it's always a cost right so um so thinking about what we said earlier about you know giving ideas to y'all are you able to come to bring back to us let's say and like gene i'm sure i'm getting emails about this um if you even give us what if we if we maintained asheville middle and mod for north star what's the cost of that next year and what if we consolidated what would be the cost of that and include what you know what you know an anticipation of what cost you would incur by that consolidation but also let's say you would go by combining staff etc that would include also

150the um the configuration of the building but you're also talking about we can eliminate duplicate services sure right you know that's what i'm saying that that's where the segments are really going to come in so i mean we could do that but you know i also want to remind everyone sitting here this is not an overnight process when we do something like this this is this we wouldn't be looking at this until 23 24. so uh just making that no and also i have a problem and i'll you know i've said this before [Music] north carolina is a screwed up state without some of our laws um the moment we are not in that building in some form or fashion a charter school gives off access to that and i don't know how that works

151i don't know if we all of a sudden the district just starts to explode do we kick people out of the school i don't know what happens do we ever get that building back so you know for me uh i hate giving a building i would never want to do that but you know on one person but yeah i'm not saying that's the signal to move but just so we might have some options and see some see what the cost savings are i mean i'm gonna say this is nothing to look at but that would be helpful for me but again it would have to be 23 24 because the process that this has to go through would not be able to happen for this coming school year so it was important is we got

152to realize that these were suggestions that were brought to us there has not been any kind of a decision made people are simply trying to come up with ways in which we might be able to save some money so for all the people who are having a heart attack right now and i in the hopes that understand can find ways to make some changes changes will have to be made um people need to be aware of the fact that there will be changes made and they will not be fun and it will be difficult however nothing has been decided as of right now and we're looking at what we can do in order to maintain the most wonderful system that we can possibly have for our kids because it is about the kids so that's

153where we are so in the meeting with the city and the county the county manager asked that there be a plan going forward one two three years we're meeting with the county finance team and management management the end of the month so well i need some direction well we're gonna i'm just gonna do it out there now we're gonna look at the calendar and we're gonna schedule another meeting for us to go over the budget and the budget alone because obviously there's a lot here and this isn't something that we can just do with everything else going on so can i just ask one question on these slides that you handed out um the spreadsheet the fy 2023 budget planning um and that first column the fy 2022 year to year-to-date um it appears that

154we might be on pace to spend less than 21 salaries or am i just jumping about that it does not include local supplements okay um and just a larger question do we have we don't publish a line item budget externally anywhere do we no it's extensive is that something that we can do um because i think the biggest thing as this whole list of things that we just went through we're gonna have to defend every one of these decisions and i i feel like especially with it being a school board election year i'd like to throw as much data out there as a school board member in hopes that i could generate some community conversation or feedback to come to us before we get in these sessions and and help um the community feel like

155they're able to have a conversation that they can articulate um we're going to be called to the mat no matter what we do we're in a bad spot so i just want to be able to defend it with transparency accountability and data well as i said at the beginning of this this was thing these are things that we asked uh georgia to bring us and as martha's so eloquently put it nothing has been decided nothing please don't crucify me over facebook tonight please we we have not made any decisions but please know that these are hard decisions this is i i would trade places with anyone in this room right now uh rather than have to make the decisions that we have to do but we're doing this for the betterment of our district and

156for our students so uh does anyone have any questions or any other questions thank you we will get that i know everyone's digesting this right now so you will get more information okay all right thank you now we're going to go into our closed session pursuant to pursuant to gs 1.3 that's 318.11 for the following purposes under subsection a1 to discuss privilege or confidential personnel information and understand section 83 to discuss manners protected by the client you have a motion [Music] all right and we're gonna take a five minute