BOE Work Session 10/30/23

001good evening everyone uh board members I want to remind you to turn your uh microphones on at this time I'm going to call the October 30th 2023 Burke County Board of Education work session uh to order I'd like to make an motion to approve the agenda do I have a second second thank you Miss Shane all those in favor all right agenda is approved at this time I'm going to turn it over to Dr Mike Swan who's going to give us some updates and informational items great thank you madam chair members of the board good see everyone today um I know we're we're on the verge of some cool weather finally I for one am looking forward to some fall temperatures um do want to bring bring your attention um last Friday uh we had

002our more two Fridays ago I'm sorry we had our maid competition uh in conjunction with the city of morgon uh that is the morgon Arts design and Engineering uh and basically what it does it's our robotics clubs within the schools they go over and compete from 8 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon they have certain tasks that they have to complete um and pattent high school finished second place and East Berke Middle School finished third place in that competition so uh once again you guys will be getting those invites um to come out and it's a great competition to watch uh we had it at the comma this year in the years past we've had it on the lawn of the courthouse square but weather in the past has made it difficult

003uh tense coldness so um they they opted to move inside uh this year it was very successful also um we had our spelling be winner Mr Sam Elliot a sixth grader from eastberg Middle School uh so I name m sovich was there in attendance as well I so that was a great evening for our parents to recognize uh hard work of our students and we went through I want to say 34 rounds uh for spelling words so it it was phenomenal for our students to continue going on and on and on um with that so great spellers also Dr s princip pattent High School was named uh voted on by his colleagues of principle of the year so Dr s will go on to um compete at the Northwest Rea level uh and compete against

004seven other school districts here uh in Burke County as well as surrounding County so once again if he can makes it past that level he will move onto the state competition uh do Dr s does a phenomenal job at patent also um I sent out a joint recording with uh Sheriff Banks heinsman a couple weeks ago in in response to several threats that are schools were receiving uh this was received very well within the community uh and we got together it's always good to get to together with the sheriff and record messages where he and I are very much on the same page when it comes to things that NE that are affecting the school system uh so here again it was a message it was it was a neat opportunity to get with him

005and sit and record a back and forth message to our community uh and then we had Miss shuffler um she sent out a an infographic to our community as well so um and and fortunately we're we're doing very well with that uh as we move forward all right we've got a how to pay for college night coming up uh as a a parent of a recent college graduate um I did attend these events uh and a parent of an 8-year-old I will be planning to attend the future events as well um so uh basically what it does it allows you to go through the FASA how to fill out the FASA and that that is a challenging process uh if you've never done it uh and if you have young ones that get ready for

006it um but we want to be able to help our eles and that's in conjunction with work and Burke um so once again the old rock school will continue to advertise that November 16th from 5:30 to 7:30 uh so we will be in attendance there uh just walking around meeting and greeting parents as well um so once again if you guys are available I invite you to walk around as well also uh Mr wall had mentioned the $30 off the home internet um by participating in the CP or C program the community eligibility program we have free lunch and free lunch free lunch and free breakfast for all of our students so they also offer a $30 off home internet bill so there again uh directions will be sent to the home with your child

007so once again parents are if you don't receive that information please reach out to your school's principal and we'll get that information out to you also had the opportunity we had um Burke County Public Schools hosted chamber leadership for Burke education day uh and what the leadership Burke does it takes community members I participated in it probably about eight years ago and you go around to different business and industries within Burke County uh east and west and kind of explore we went to the dam and got a walk inside of the dam and see how they released everything how things the inner workings of things so we had the opportunity to tour Burke Middle College patent high school and Mountain View Elementary School with this this community uh folks uh and and they loved what

008we were doing within the school system uh very very intrigued with Mountain View Elementary School um patent High School uh they got a meet with our assistant our prin our new principal group that was meeting over at patent High School in the library that day so they had lunch with them we're able to call um break bread with our group over there so a great group of people also I'm excited to share that we Burke County received an $80,000 coding Grant uh we are one of 12 school districts in the state to receed the Grant and we had um Miss Moore Carol Moore from stem West in our on our campus today going over some of that that training with our staff right now uh so the robotics is we we utilize th those funds

009for our project lead the way uh for our robotics competition clubs uh all of that stuff so it's a great Grant to receive also I'd like to update the board on a media center update for regarding policy 3200r so as part of our implementation of the new board policies uh regarding the selection of Library resources um we've decided to temporarily spend the checkout of several library books while our professional staff completes the review using policy criteria we're committed to providing students and their parents with the best possible Library experience and this temporary suspension is a crucial step towards achieving that goal I do appreciate everyone's patience and the great work of our media Specialists uh so once again we'll move forward with that and I'll update the board um down the road uh in a

010month or so uh regarding what we've kind of found and uncovered with that that all right um for those of us uh that have been following the the Senate uh Senate Bill 68 update uh so we do have a new law um uh an overruling with a a a very old law a 30-year old law that directly affected Burke County Public Schools and the the lack of funding that we were receiving uh within our operating budget so Senate Bill 68 repeals The 40-Year-Old legislation that restricted funding streams for Burke County Public Schools under the previous law certain sales taxes in Berke County were restricted to school Capital so C capital projects would be buildings roads uh things like that not so much of our staff uh our daily operating budget we now have flexibility to

011use those funds on operations expenses such as supplements recruitment retention Athletics and other items uh that we can look at our local funding uh to upgrade uh so we're very happy with that I I do want to send a special thanks out to our board the County Commissioners uh representative Blackwell and uh Senator Daniel for their help in getting this pushed through as well uh this this was a long Endeavor that we started last spring uh we met multiple times uh between the two groups so we're happy to say that this this uh Senate Bill 68 has been repealed um and we should be receiving our $1.5 million from the county within the next couple weeks uh so you'll hear later in uh Mr Lawson's presentation uh what we kind of would like to plan

012with some of that one point 5 million moving forward and we also would like to look at adjustments for our bookkeepers and our data managers we realize that uh as with every position uh with the implementation of the uh minimum wage across the state to $15 an hour a lot of our pay tables became stagnant um so we're looking at increasing certain pay tables uh to kind of offset some of that balance as well so thanks to that we'll be able to do that madam chair those are my updates I'm going to turn it over to Mr Joel Welch at this time okay Dr Joel Welch I'm sorry either works fine thank you Dr Swan and uh Madam chair of board Dr Swan thank you so much for an opportunity to talk to you uh

013my only complaint is uh Dr Swan and I talked I only got like five to 10 minutes here and I got a lot to talk about because there's a lot of great stuff going on and um just want to say that you know we have a strong partnership with the school district and so the first thing that I wanted to address as all of you are are aware I think of the legislative change that changed the government structure of the college uh the school board has in the past appointed uh one board member per year that has changed they'll be appointed by the Senate and the house going forward and I want to assure you that a change in that governance does not change our relationship to the school district we are going to continue

014to work with you we're going to continue to partner you with you we're still going to listen to what you want and respond as needed because it's our people in this County that we're working together so however our governance is set up whoever is appointing our board members doesn't change the importance and the importance that we place on you and so I just wanted to say that uh clearly out there uh as it goes in so uh as we talk about this to just give you a little bit of some updates going on this just shows our enrollment over the last um several years and if you look at this we had a big jump uh 2016 you had a little bit of an increase and then 2019 fall um there I Sor sorry 2019

015fall uh we really picked up a lot of dual enrollment there up until that point we'd had some declining enrollment uh which was normal across the country um almost all community colleges have experienced this uh economy got better uh but as you look at this you've seen the last couple of years our our enrollment has started to Trend up we've had the largest dual enrollment uh this past fall that we've had of any fall uh which was really good if you look there over 600 students about 130 or so from Burke Middle College and about 537 CCP students uh that are there uh we're really excited we had about a 4% enrollment growth this past fall and going back about 10 years it was the first year that we've had an increase in traditional students

016not just dual enrollment students so normal students outside of um dual enrollment students coming to us adults high school graduates Etc so that was really uh very positive for us but that partnership and seeing students come to us is something that we continue to watch what that looks like is on this um 21% of the graduates of Burke County Public School came to us um and you'll see that that has gone up we were down to about 16% uh coming and and some of that was impacted by coid you saw some things there but we really want to see um as many of our students in this area the graduates coming to pick up an education uh I'm not worried about students who go to the university and so if it was 21% coming to

017us and 80% go U 79% going to the university that would be fine what we're concerned about is the students who don't go to work don't go to college aren't doing anything we really want to drive into that working in partnership with you um because you have worked our County invest in them people invest in them families so we want to see this continue to grow and be a strong partner uh that's about it represents about 181 students out of the 850 or so graduates that you had that is the most students coming to the college directly from high school since 2015 so we had some really good numbers this fall a lot of good work partnership between College Personnel School District Personnel talking to folks uh guidance counselors teachers uh our success coaches our

018career coaches Etc working together to get the word out um the other thing that I will mention here is we've been doing a traditional Pioneer preview uh School District worked really close closely with us last year to bust students over for that still didn't have great participation um getting parents to sign permission forms and things that you deal with with that so we're looking at that a little bit different this year uh we've got a team getting input from the school district how do we do this a little bit better uh so we're looking at a what we're calling a forward future where we take some of this out to the schools we're still going to do a Pioneer preview event but it's going to look somewhat different because we want to make sure that

019families students have information about the careers and where they can go what their opportunities are uh you can look at the data associate degree students earn more than just plain high school graduates bachelor's degree students earn more we want to get people the degrees with skills that will help them get jobs that build on life sustaining wages we want folks who are going to contribute to our community and we want to give them the skills to do that uh and that's the partnership really working together so really excited to see that number of high school graduates coming to us and we're going to continue to work that to have it grow uh the other update I want to give you is we had um a state grant that funded some career coaches we had four

020career coaches one for each of the high schools that work with students uh around dual enrollment what career do I choose how do I go to college just lots of support integrated in the high schools with the state this past year only f funded two uh so we were looking we're going to reduce that four to three but Dr Swan you hired one of our folks so and we had one that um went to another institution so we've got one right now which is concerning for our high schools we are going to hire two back we're in the process right now uh should have some job offers going back uh Dr Kristen Edwards Kristen Edwards is working with that great team working together Dr Swan and I worked about how we rep Suzanne who had

021done a fantastic job with this but I did want to just give you that update if you do hear that we are running with one we've got a plan to deal with spring registration it's going to be a little bit painful but we're going to get through it uh we've got a backup plan even after that but we'll have those two two replaced and we'll work with three working with Dr Edwards and how we support students in those same uh goals going forward so that's career coaches uh going with it the other thing that I wanted to mention here and I just put construction Rodeo up um this is something that just represents a great environment where we had high school students uh represented across four counties uh 10 high schools coming in to compete

022promoting trades this was a great event uh and we had folks right here from Burke County uh doing competition we're really excited that this will be on our campus next year uh we'll be able to show off our skill trade Solution Center and have students competing in that trades environment but again it it shows people what you can do and uh gives them an opportunity to look at non-traditional paths uh I am I've got all kinds of degrees I'm all about higher education but there are different ways to go about it and we don't want any student to feel like they can't pursue good solid education and skills to get jobs so this is something that we'll continue to work with uh and we're really excited to to build off of that um coming up

023in the future we have our emergency Services Training Center that will be built out by the Kataba River we're relocating our fire science that's behind our campus and behind the School of Science and Math over to the river which will allow us to have uh Swiftwater training if anybody would like to write us a check for $25 million we can finish out our facility um but the state has funded 15 million which we're doing the first fire part we'll have a multi-story burn Tower uh again and that's partners with classes we're running with the school district uh we'll provide a res sources that work with this we'll get the funding for the uh Swift water which will again just expand opportunities uh and training so really excited about that uh and then this coming April

024is our 60th anniversary as a college uh in this community and just great place to be in Berke County we're really excited to celebrate 60 years to think about all the alumni that have come through the college the difference that is being made in this community uh and we have just started this year an associate degree Path U and a certificate for Teacher education uh so if someone has a degree uh as my own daughter had a degree in history not a teaching degree um there's a path to actually pick up a teaching certificate through uh Western pedmont Community College working with the school district on that great partnership and we've got a path that we're working through that will allow students to move through because we want people to get their education here stay

025here grow here uh and be be part of our community so we're really excited about that and what Dr Welch did not mention was his daughter teaches for us as well we're very happy to have her on Bo oh yes uh I'm proud of my my daughter but I'm bias so I'll leave that alone well she's doing a good job God bless you I say so I say prayer for y'all sometimes she's a she's she is a interesting individual um another thing that we we did this past year is something we called Pioneer Pride which was a new student orientation event and we had uh almost 70 students uh come through with that we're looking for ways to engage students as they make that transition to keep them to build on the good work that

026the school districts done and really push them on forward so that's something that we're doing a little bit different this year and then I'll mention here uh we just were announced just in the past three weeks we've gotten a $2 million title three grant that will redo our advising system uh fund success coaching for us and help us as far as how we really advise students build on their careers uh and then we've got another $500,000 Grant from Dogwood Health Trust that is building on apprenticeship we'll have an apprenticeship coordinator so we've got about $25 million in Grants all of that built on how we advise students and how we help them move through which will link directly to our career coaches that are in the high schools and how we make that transition and

027then the last part of this just want to give you a few numbers um 2023 graduates of Burke County Public School 111 of them out of the 180 received $109,000 in long leaf commitment um it's based on expected family contribution which is a FASA term it's it called EFC which is changing this year by the way so I'm not sure exactly how that number is going to work out going forward but the legislature has funded this and so for students who meet essentially some need requirements which is was about 60% of the students who came to us got their tuition funded at the college this year we want to promote this more because a lot of the students who are not coming are not going to college we have funds available to help them so

028that's $109,000 that Berke County public school graduates received coming to Western PMA that's pretty good uh return and then I'll show that we had 34 associate degree graduates with their High School diplomas this past year uh which is amazing with that uh that associate degree in terms of a university is worth about $440,000 so each of those families who had a student and these uh most of these were Burke County public school but not every single one but they were pretty close um each one of these families saved $40,000 if a student transferring on to a university it's a really great way to get your education we had aund 1,68 dual enrolled students duplicate count some students took classes across multiple semesters that ends up being about 710 individual students uh across the year from

029Burke County Public School took a dual enroll class with us the data that we've gotten is that 45% of the graduating class took at least one class that's one out of two students took at least one class with the college that's 11,000 I'm not sure why my it looked great on my screen screen by the way apologize that's okay but um 11,941 credit hours that high school students took Burke County Public School students took with Western pedmont Community College that is incredible value for the average number of credit hours a student took is worth about $3,000 if you look at what it cost to go to a university okay and that's looking at it like app state which is about $210 a credit hour the 40,000 is what I just mentioned if you really look

030at $20,000 cost for App State uh if you're a parent you're thinking app State's not that cheap but just looking at their pure numbers um if you have an associate degree and you knock that out that's what you say um my own daughter who completed an associate degree went to a private university we saved a little over $60,000 by earning an associate degree through dual enrollment um excellent way to go to college an excellent way to bring value and build value in our community another student um changed his major uh which if you've had children you know they like to change their Majors was still able to graduate in four years instead of taking five or six because of dual enrollment and then that last number is a big number more than $2 million if

031you look at that 11,900 credit hours you look at the cost of a university education Burke County Public School student students high school students in Burke County are saving a value of more than $2 million through dual enrollment where we wave the tuition that they do not have to pay that is an incredible value that we working together provide our students so I wanted you to see that I think a lot of times people do not realize the value that goes into dual enrollment and what it means to have students be able to take college classes for no tuition while they're in high school it's a good value to the community it's a good value to the state it's a great value for families and we're excited that we're able to partner with such great

032folks uh and really appreciate Dr Swan we text We call we have challenges when we work together everything's not always perfect but we have a great communication and we're able to say hey what about this or how do we do that and I've never called and said hey we've got a challenge here and her well there's nothing we can do it's always okay what do we do how do we do this what can we do there uh to make that work we're going to continue to have challenges we're going to continue to solve those challenges so we appreciate the partnership thank you so much for an opportunity I'm happy I probably took too long but I am happy to answer uh any questions that you may have about things that are going on with the

033college or with our partnership well Dr Welch I'll tell you from a parent point of view um my daughter got her Associates and it has helped us tremendously while she's a app and I just want to thank you and the Western peont Community College for all that you've done for my daughter and for all the other students who've had the opportunity to get ahead and help their families out it means a lot great partnership thank you all right thank you Dr wel thank you Joel thank you Mr Casey Rogers evening Madam chair board uh good evening glad to be here tonight uh at the the last work session there was some discussion about some updates on realignment um clicker yeah so that's what I'm here to do tonight provide you guys with just a a

034few items as it relates to the High School Athletic Association in realign so real quickly I thought I would just kind of go back so that everybody's on the same page and talk about what exactly uh realignment is so realignment is a process that has occurred every four years where the High School Athletic Association breaks down schools and they break them down into classifications and conference affiliation for competition in the High School Athletic Association uh since 1960 there's been four classifications in 59 there was three in 60 they moved to four classifications so for the last 63 years they've there's been four classifications during that time there's been right around 150 public high schools that have been added across the state since 1960 in that Inception of the four classification model uh again like I

035said realignment has occurred every four years and it's been on different criteria for the majority of that time it was solely on ADM and it it was a 25% model throughout those four classifications so schools one through X number 25% of that was 1 a then 2 a 3A 4 a uh most recently they added uh which was not this past realignment the realignment before is when they added a formula that factored in ADM free and reduced lunch and Wells Fargo points fast forward four years they're back to only realigning off of ADM and and the Wells Fargo points are did you win a state playoff a state region a trophy it factors in conference success in all sports so not just the major sports or Revenue producing sports it's conference I mean School Success

036throughout each conference uh so last June we talked about this just wanted to review these the seven classification model again we've only had four for the last uh 63 years seven classification model was approved uh pending the state board approval they did approve that we'll get into that in just a second uh realignment will begin at the 2526 school year um as of now 64 teams is going to be the cut off so with the increase in classifications there's no percentage now it'll be 1 through 64 is 1A 65 through the next 63 will be 2A and so forth 4 32 member schools as of this past year now again that's not just public schools because there are a few charter schools and and private schools that are part of the membership now and typically

037draft one has always occurred in the fall of 2024 usually there are three additional drafts so that was going back to June here's where we're at now Senate Bill 452 uh was revised uh and they over they revised the oversight of the high school inter Scholastic Athletics so basically what happened on September 22nd legislator met and in the we hours of the morning the High School Athletic Association was blindsided there was some late additions to the Senate bill that basically took away additional power for them cuz three years ago they had the memo of understanding when the State Board got into High School athletics and again in a week hours of the morning that change so basically where we're at now is the State Board of Education is about that close to governing what goes

038on in High School athletics um as it relates to again student participation rules when it comes to eligibility there are some going to be some changes coming to eligibility penalty and appeal rules administrative and gameplay rules fees administering organization rules Etc so they're and and again this is in that Senate Bill 452 and this bill will become effective next year and I've got the new mou there for the memo of understanding it will have to be addressed because the old one is no longer effective because of this bill so long story short Senate Bill 452 has drastically change the way realignment will happen um how will this affect us in the next realignment don't know I can tell you right now they approved those seven classifications they're already talking about because of the rapid increase

039of schools why not go ahead and make it eight classifications whether that happens or not with room to grow to the next 64 we don't know um again this is not the High School athletic association's baby right now this is the state board making some of these decisions conferences versus regions at our High School athletic Association region 7 meeting there was some discussion of whether we do away with conferences and you have Regional play Regional play would be smaller than conferences but it would allow folks in the same region to play and then you open up non-conference uh games so you would have an increase in non-conference games conferences still on the table there's even talk of football only conferences so for better choice words football would be classified based off of the schools that

040cuz there's probably of those 430 or so Public Schools there's probably 50 or 60 that don't have high school football so that would take those numbers they would create high school I mean conferences based on football everybody else would fall under the classification of another model um I'll be honest with you there is some real skepticism of whether this time next year or even two years when this realignment comes the governance and existence of the high SCH it may no longer happen um and what I think could happen is the state board is going to take over and if they do then they'll come up with their version of The High School Athletic Association I mean that's a very real possibility so at this point we have more questions than answers um we just can't

041predict what's going to happen with the state board and how they are going to move forward with the High School Athletic Association High School athletic does have the support of the NF which is the national Federation of high school sports they've got the support of the coaches association they've got support of the athletic Directors Association they've got support of all kinds of folks across the state but that support right now doesn't mean a whole lot so long story short realignment is still going to happen in two years there's no change to that but where we end up over the next 6 to 8 months will be determined by how things work out between the State Board of Education and the High School Athletic Association I might be the voice in the valley but the State

042High School Athletic Association has nobody to blame but themselves because this was an organization that you could not penetrate time and again when we appealed to have to keep from kids driving two and three hours to an athletic event because they in our opinion were misplaced um and you couldn't get an appeal you couldn't even get your phone phone calls returned so I mean you know I'm I'm maybe I'm crying crocodile tears I mean I'm I'm just not and I know a lot of people disagree with me I'm not so sure this is a bad thing I really am not I I think it's one of those things that there's good and bad in both I think I definitely think uh there's certain instances that it will hold to High School athletic station if it

043stays more accountable and I think that's what you're adding to I think uh there's other areas that will uh put some folks who haven't been in High School athletics in the history of their career and positions to make decisions for students and I think that could be counterproductive so I I definitely see the the good uh and bad of both entities being involved here and I understand that it's all the the the adage usually is always follow the money and as I recall from an athletic update Mr Campbell I think I attended um at a law conference I believe some of the information I gleaned from that was that the North Carolina High School Athletic Association had the largest financial Kitty over 45 to 50 million I think from fines just fines and I think

044the next close I forget the next closest state to us but I mean we were like and they're just they're sitting on this money for what reason and and that was one of the things they didn't want to be transparent about what was happening with the money and the general assembly asked them we'd like to see some of your books and they said no not going to show them to you so that's there you go when when our good friends and Raley do what they're supposed to do and they make laws and that's what they did so I say I mean there's and I'm not poo pooing at all what you're saying not at all I you know I think you have to be very careful that that you have folks that may not know

045entirely right what they're doing to make rules and unfor for that's not unheard of in state government but um at any rate I'm I'm I'm just not so sure this is a bad thing and wheny you and I discuss this time again yes well you know when you've got four high schools in a county and all four of them are a different conference and I emailed I wrote letters and I couldn't get anybody to contact me back and especially Pat and I was worried about but especially drawn the the distances they have to to drive in its unsafe conditions at times it's just really unfair they really didn't listen to what they do they did what they wanted to do and that's how they always operated and you knew if it didn't get changed by

046the second appeal that you Wen going to get it everybody knew that and I I do think that that seven possibly eight classification model should shrink that that should that should alleviate us having four high schools and four different conferences I I think that's a good thing I think it was I saw I read something that they it took them 13 years to go from three classifications to four and it's taking 63 to go to four to whatever classification models next so you know the increase in schools should drastically shrink each classification which should help us in the long term now when are they going to have those first meetings for realignment in in October typically that happens yeah that time typically that happens uh in the fall of next year okay that's when the

047first draft has come out in previous Cycles all right well you keep us updated absolutely do do athletic directors like yourself have any input into this have you do they contact you on anything well the High School Athletic Association has a they have a board um but that board is represented by eight different regions and those like in our region we've got 13 counties so you've got cwell Kataba Hickory City Schools we go up into Ash waga County and they've got representatives there but their representatives come from a principal a superintendent an athletic director a coach so they try and get four or five different folks from each region but again each Region's 13 different counties that's a high I want to ask you about this too Casey why gotcha and I I can't think

048of the the acronym for it but the uh nchsaa directors passed that high school students could receive money name image and likeness that's it right there can you talk to us about that while we got you that's part of um amateurism and the High School Athletic Association had a rule for amateurism the lack of an agreement right now between the state board and the High School Athletic Association right now there is no pending or law- abiding nil agreement so again that's kind of that's an area that right now correct as of right now you're supposed to continue to follow the amateurism rule that was established a good thing cuz that was stupid I couldn't Ian I'm going be honest why would any directors of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association think anything good would

049come out of letting high school athletes accept money yeah open you talking about opening up Pandora's Box I mean I think that's another reason why sen the Senate bill came through I mean that was stupid I mean who does that I mean I'm with Seth I mean they did it to themselves right oh I'm happy well thank you any anybody got any questions thank you Mr thank you guys thank you Casey just keep updating us I will thank you so much Miss Simpson dual language middle school expansion it okay Madam chair and board um thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you all tonight about our dual language program at Mountain View Elementary I'm happy to report that we are fully um grade level full from grades K to five with our

050dual language program we currently have 241 students enrolled we have two home rooms for each GR level and as I've shared with you in the past this is a two-way program and what that means is half of our students enrolled are native Spanish speakers which is the target language for our program and half our native English speakers our students serve as models for each other the language allocation is 5050 so our students for example one home room will spend the morning learning content in Spanish and then they would flip flop change classes and spend the afternoon learning content in English we uh partner with participate learning they're a company based in Chapel Hill they search the world over for certified teachers that they recruit and bring into the US on an educational visa and they

051serve in our communities um we selected Spanish as the target language because Spanish is a reflection of our own community of all of our 26 language that are represented um from our families in Burk County Spanish is the largest representation other than English and so I'd like to talk with you tonight on how we are doing in dual language and we're going to look at our inte grade test results from last spring and so if you'll look with me in our top row of data all students in Mountain View in third grade on the reading EOG 38% were proficient but if you look at the Dual language students in third grade 50% of our students were proficient on the EOG so we have about a 12o differential to the good for our dual language kiddos

052let's look at math results for third grade all students in third grade at Mountain View 58% were proficient on the end of grade math test and that's compared to 75% of our students who are in dual language third grade so nearly 7 points to the good so we are certainly seeing a positive impact with our dual language program on Mountain View let's take a look at fourth grade results and fourth grade we had 45% of all students at Mountain View proficient on the reading EOG and that's compared to 61% of our fourth grade dual language students at Mountain View so uh 15 points to the good there and in math at Mountain View 59 almost 60% were proficient all fourth graders at Mountain View compared to 75 5% of our dual language fourth graders so

053a little over 15 points to the good so we're really pleased at the positive impact our program is showing on our students performance um I know of no other program that is more robust to close achievement gaps than dual language and so dual language was originally designed two-way programs for the purpose of improving English for English Learners because research shows that uh cognitive development slows for students who are not educated in their native language and so it's uh research has shown that and so that's the original impetus for dual language so we wanted to look at how our dual language English Learners are performing Visa V all English Learners at Mountain View so for third grade um we had uh just a slight increase in our reading EOG for our dual language kiddos and for

054math we have we're slightly under there so still working on that and for fourth grade our dual language students um who are English Learners at Mountain View uh exceeded their English learner counterparts at Mountain View by almost 13 points and for math um just a little bit three points so um we are pleased with these results and continueing to roll up our sleeves and work with closing the achievement gap for our English English Learners so another um metric that we want to look at is Spanish language development how are we doing with our kiddos learning Spanish eogs are all administered in English so what metrics do we look at for Spanish language development and our students take what is known as the Apple test they take it our dual language students take it uh toward

055the end of second grade it measures listening and speaking skills for our second graders and the Target threshold that's been set by ncdpi for second graders is to score at least at novice high or above uh on their Spanish language skills and if you'll notice in the blue and the green if you add those up top and it's the second most column to the right that's our performance for dual language um we have about 73% of our kids who are scoring at or above novice high level and the far right column is the performance stats for all students who are participate learning schools so we are exceeding the performance um of all particip iate learning dual language program schools so we've been really pleased with that as well and so looking ahead to dual language

056as I shared with you we are fully through K through five so what are our fifth graders who are in dual language going to do next year what will their education look like and so we wanted to expand our program at Walter Johnson and there's a reason for that it's a good fit Walter Johnson's population 57% of their students are native Spanish speakers they're either English Learners or they're students whose home language is Spanish or a Central American dialect but they are fully English proficient so 57% of the total population at Walter Johnson speaks Spanish as a native language so we felt like that was a Nob brainer as our school where we would want to um house our dual language program for middle school and so with Middle School planning we have found uh

057in many many conversations with participate and other schools across the state who have dual language programs it is difficult to staff those Middle School dual language programs uh participate finds that they can find teachers who are secondary certified in World languages but they have a terrible time finding teachers who are certified in content areas and also World languages and so um they've talked to us about one of the ways that they get around it is to hire a k6 certified teacher um Miss Craven's nodding her head we know those ins and outs of how we work around certification requirements and so uh participate says they can always find us a k6 certified teacher who of course is also bilingual as as well and so our plan for sixth grade we are looking at teaching science

058and social studies in Spanish parents like this idea because neither of these subjects are tested in the sixth grade so it helps keeps parents nerves down about their child learning in Spanish and we also plan to offer a yearlong elective of World Language SL Heritage language and this is optional for our students it science and social studies in Spanish would be required for our dual language students but the World Language or Heritage language elective is optional so our kids can have ban because many of our parents have told us that um not doing ban would be a deal breaker for them and so in trying to meet the needs of our families we felt like this was something we could offer optionally and if your child doesn't want to do ban you can take the

059World Language Heritage language course um as an elective and the reason I also add in the term Heritage language is we would backfill these elective classes with students who've not been in dual language but they're native language Spanish speakers so they have oral skills they just don't have literacy skills and this has worked very well at other participate middle school programs across the state and so then what would we do in seventh and eighth grade we would step back and only do World Language SL Heritage language in Spanish as an elect so what's the bonus for this well our kids learn not only growing their language proficiency but they're also growing Global competencies one of the three pillars of dual language programming is sociocultural competence the ability to move across different cultures seamlessly um this

060particular program that we're looking at for our Middle School kiddos will grow their Global language competencies as we all know the world is shrinking and we want our students to be competitive and so we would be looking at teaching our students global citizenship as well as language development in Spanish and and so we plan to use the concus curriculum this is a comprehensive curriculum developed by participate it's excellent they base it on the UN sustainable development goals it is project-based learning kids really enjoy it and here's the wonderful plus if a student takes dual language 6th 7th and eth they would exit middle school with two World Language high school credits which is a huge bonus thinking ahead to high school our dual language graduates from middle school would enter high school at Spanish 3

061possibly four if they're real High Flyers we would be assessing our students to determine which level and also we hope that they will move on to AP Spanish these students will be eligible for North Carolina seal of biliteracy on their diploma and so let me share a little bit about the seala by literacy with you all um the requirements that DPI has put in place for the seala by literacy is students should take through level four in English in high school with a minimum GPA of 2.5 um we think that's very very doable and then also students are required um one of three options they can take High School World language classes through level four which in all likelihood our students who are dual language will do they'll need a minimum GPA of 2.5 they

062could also demonstrate intermediate low or higher proficiency on the a standardized language test such as the Apple test that we're already using at the elementary school level right now or credit by demonstrated Mastery in World Language is another Pathway to get that seal of biliteracy so that is what I have for you for today are there any questions couple of comments um uh heelrest anything on the drawing board to create an immersion program with with our kids at Hillis at Hillis we currently have a pre dual language program at Hillcrest in just one classroom and um there are very few bilingual prek classes in the state and so we're really proud um dipping our toes in the water at Hillcrest and and you're absolutely right Mr Hunt we have over 50% of our students at

063Hillcrest are English language Learners and it's certainly a place where most of our students speak Spanish in their home so we we'll be expanding that at some point well we will certainly see well I would certainly hope so no I had forgotten it U and I guess the other thing too just to put a plug in for seated classes for Spanish three and AP online's good seed's better amen I would agree yeah amen I I coached my son in French online um as an eighth grader in the summer of eighth grade and it nearly killed me thank you thank you Miss simp okay next is Miss Sarah lroy on student services [Music] updates good evening good evening evening all right I'm GNA give you guys a few updates from student services tonight I wanted to

064start with some of the trainings that we've done for our staff in Burke County Schools um so far this year already so we've done deescalation training we've had restorative practices with the circles which you all are familiar with we've also had restorative mediation training we've had uh multiple school safety training for administrators and did a lot of uh scenarios for that we've had school discipline training we've had 504 training um just last week we had a special trauma training for our counselors that they had really wanted for a long time and it was very well received and then we've also had our mckenny vento um which is our homeless program training for counselors and social workers um I did this last year at the beginning of the year with y'all and just want to kind

065of recap what our Mental Health Services look like in Burke County Schools um you all are aware of our social and emotional learning programs that we have schoolwide for every student and those include second step for K5 and character strong for grades 6 through 12 we also have a counselor we're a social worker in every school and they deal with mental health situations every single day we're going to talk a little bit more about those in a minute um we also have school-based mental health providers in every school and I am proud to say we've added three new providers this year um so our current providers are CTS Health we have spark we have Focus we have Kataba Valley resource and interventions and we have Arrowwood counseling and Consulting and even with all of those

066we are still on a waiting list um our our most extreme kind of highest level of services that we provide as a school system are our day treatment programs our provider for those is focus and those locations um the elementary program is at Maul and the middle and high school program is at halberton I wanted to share with you a few of the numbers from last year of our data collection these are a few of the things um from the data we pulled from our counselors so last year during the school year our counselors in our school system did 238 suicide risk assessments last year in our school system our counselors and social workers did 309 DSS referrals and that doesn't include Administration or anybody else that may have made some of those um our

067counselors and social workers did 730 mediation sessions with students and our counselors and social workers made 708 mental health referrals for our students and that's both school-based and Community Based y'all have heard us talk a lot about bur recovery I feel like y'all are really in the know about that because we talk about that a lot we're using the same model as last year we have three counselors and they're doing a terrific job they're dividing the middle and high schools then they serve Elementary as needed um they're working one on-one with students about vaping we're still doing the skip program and we are also doing whole group educational presentations Miss lroy can I ask a quick question about um about our uh Burg recovery and how when I guess the details as far as you

068know you have a have a student they've been caught for vaping and then we were sending that referral over to Burke recovery how is that process working is it like I guess the notification is it simple is it quick is it easy to be able to get on their list to come to great question so we learned a little from last year after we added those positions um and we weren't as happy with the data as we would like to be so we've kind of fin T that system this year the the school staff does have a form they fill out and it goes to a spreadsheet so we all share that um so you can see it every day um the principles can see it the B recovery staff can see it so we

069know who's had had a vape what clinicians seen them what they've done what date all of that in real time so we can see it every day live okay thank you yes much better the data's the data's good and we just explained we need that data does so we can keep these programs going um and it it's much better we were doing an email system before and you know how many emails people get and it kind of gets lost in that so I think probably at first they're like oh it's another form but they can do it on the form or the spreadsheet we've tried to just make it real basic information so it's not super hard for them to fill out um I did want to mention our mcken vento students those are our

070students that are either homeless or they are unaccompanied that means that they might be you know living with a friend um last year we identified 119 of those students um nationally there's over 1.3 million homeless or unaccompanied youth um so that's that's a big uh part of student services also is working with these students working with their families our counselors spend a ton of time helping them with resources and housing um so lots of time spent on those students as well school safety y'all know I love to talk about school safety um we are working on a plan to increase some law enforcement coverage our stop the bleed training all employees have now been given the opportunity to train and we've had training on every campus um all campuses recently participated in the great ShakeOut

071which is our annual earthquake drill and our see something say something training has been completed in all middle and high schools and that's our tip line for students families and the community that's all I have unless you have some questions for me how do we identify homeless students that's a great question um when they enroll there is a form that they check some answers and if it's flagged the counselor follows up with them and and parents parents can self-report as well Mr Hunt if if I lose my home to a financial situation or uh separation or something like that then I can go it there's no time frame on being identified as homeless based on mcken vento and so and so we we tie these or attempt to try these kids and exent families into

072some kind of Community Resources be it faith-based or other community programs yes so in most of the families it's different I know Burke County as a whole the the homeless population is identified by basically people not with a shelter most I'd say 100% of our students have a roof over their head and they may be living with somebody so that's what constitutes them as homeless by definition through McKenna vento they're doubled up they're doubled up yeah living living in someone's base living on a couch and then she mentioned earlier the unaccompanied youth that's where okay I I may know my son's living with somebody else but they're not under my roof right now so they would still identify as unaccompanied Youth and with homeless students so for example if I was attending eastberg high school

073right now and became uh homeless and had to reside in the Freedom High School District my two options would be to enroll at Freedom High School or mckenny vento which is Burke County it's an un unfunded mandate from the from the government from the state we would transport you'd transport me to East barke High School so that could be either a bus we do private transportation a lot of times uh a gentleman out of Hickory has a company that we contract with quite often um now if it's a you get somebody from yansy County that comes in and says I want to go back to yansy high school but I live in uh Rutherford County or uh Rutherford um I'm sorry um George hildbrand District then that's where she makes the determination whether or not

074that's a feasible Transportation cost and years years past I'm sorry jumping in years past students that were identified received free lunch and free breakfast um but with our C program that's already identified so there's uh additional tutoring services available for students that are identified as mcken vento uh different opportunities for our students to get get them kind of some support thank you absolutely you know you think we got a problem and you if you you go through that list and you think what in the world is a school board looking at this list of thing what are we as a community having to look at a list like that why do we have to have a course on stop the bleed why do we have to have a course on stop the bleed why do

075we have to pump all this money into protecting kids that we could be paying teachers and things to make them safe in school and and and it's not just us and them until we say us together as a community we're not going to do anything about this stuff I don't care what they say and the answer is not political people think the answer is political it is not it's human and it's spiritual and there's got to be a bonding and the coming together well we address these things together we don't point fingers we do things together mhm and there's a reason that that's way and and when you meet the enemy he is really us all these things are come from this homes to the schools but we can't point fingers at each other we

076really got to come together as a community not divide this thing and do the right things for kids and and you know what and honestly whether you look at it or like it this thought or not but the leading cause of death in students from 19 down you know what it is gunshot gunshot it's gunshot wounds I bet if we counted the number of guns owned in this place by all of us here and there there'd be 10 times the number of guns as there are people sitting here yeah we can't talk about that so we got to get to a place in this country and where we come together and say we got a problem and solve it together not say well it's you and us and this we can do these things together

077but as you just look at the list you think wow homeless kids how many million in the country 1.3 God so it's not boards can't look at you and you can't look at boards we got big stuff we got to deal with and we can do it we can do it we can do it so I'm I'm the eternal optimist and I think we can get there but uh I think we can do it I think we can do it together as a community I just want to say that's all I Mr lroy you said that was 119 by mckin vento labeled last year last year how do we walk through and how often do we touch base with those kids to make sure that they have needs met as far as yeah that's a

078great question even simple supplies so once they're identified the counselor does follow them and check in and then you know we make sure they get Thanksgiving and Christmas and um really do a lot to reach out toiletries whatever they need yes and we and we can have funding for that um we also have used some money that Lisa Shell's had through her Grant to help with some of those things so we really I you would if I could sit down and tell you all the stories and how these counselors have gone out and helped them find housing and um I mean gas cards and we really do a lot to try to support them and and betting so you think so we had a program Mr Tim Barnes back one of our staff members teacher

079at Burke Middle College um secured grant funding to receive it's little portable CS basically so it's called one bed one head uh and a lot of times you don't realize sexual abuse happens when you're sleeping with somebody else as a child so that was we were trying to remove that aspect from hey I'm sleeping over at cousin's house um because I have no other place to go well you all can sleep in the bed together five kids in a bed so that's where that program kind of initiated several years ago so those resources we provide a lot of resources for the students systems doing a lot of good things they really are I thank you for thank you doc thanks sir thank you sir thank you sir thank you okay thank you Sarah some very

080good information all right at this time I'm going to turn it over to um Aon he's got some comments to make excuse me thank you madam chair this time we'll um have our public input on policies related to the uh Bill of Rights uh before we start that um like for everyone to listen the board will now hear comments and input directly related to the policy revisions before us dealing with the parents Bill of Rights in compliance with the new law we are seeking input from employees parents and community members regarding these policies please limit your comments to issues directly related to these policies and the parents Bill of Rights which are um policy 1310 4,000 and2 parent involvement policy 3210 uh parental inspection of and OB objection to educational materials policy 3540 Comprehensive Health

081education program policy 4335 criminal Behavior 4720 surveys of students 6120 the student health services and policy 7300 staff responsibilities as as all public comments we ask that you be respectful and understand that we're here to listen to you therefore the board will not respond to questions from speakers during these comments we appreciate your time and your input and each speaker will have Madam chair this time I'd like to motion that with our number of um speakers that we allow each to have four minutes okay so each speaker will have four minutes to um speak on the policies all right so eron is placed it to the board that e we have seven speakers at four minutes a piece that's his motion do I have a second second thank you all those in favor all right

082our first speaker will be Mr Dean Hart there microphone all right well it's good to see y'all again I think that y'all would hopefully you'll say it's good to see me um I'm here to speak about policy 3210 several things that um I wanted to share with you about first of all I want to thank uh you the school board members also the super endent assistant superintendent for allowing me to speak tonight uh I have talked with several of you and um you have uh stated that you were Believers and uh that's as far as we got with that um I haven't talked with all of you but I have with some of you and uh most of you actually and uh as a Believer then you should understand if you are a Believer I

083there's a lot of people say they're Believers and don't know who Jesus Christ is and that's going to be because you have a personal relationship with him that if you give me an opportunity I'll have to have four more than four minutes but U if you give me an opportunity I can share that with you here's what the Bible says this shouldn't offend you if if you are a Believer children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with promise that you may be well and with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth and ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture the Greek word for nurture is education and admonition of the Lord

084the Greek word for admonition uh speaks about exhorting or encouraging um you mentioned a little bit ago that this was a spiritual thing I believe it is I believe there's a lot of things that are going on that is U that we've stepped out of line we've gotten out of uh place we're not in Balance anymore with what God expects um that certainly goes along with parents Bill of Rights with 3210 um and this scripture tells us that we are responsible the parent um is responsible for telling and teaching our children bringing them up under the nurture and admonition of the Lord not you or anybody else not even the teacher now I appreciate our teachers my daughter-in-law has been a teacher um and we've got church members that are teachers so I have nothing

085against teachers but I do have uh something against those that would step in and try to um allow things that are uh undermining the teaching of not only the scripture but also undermining uh what um parents want parents certainly want uh to do in their children's lives what I mean by that is when you go and you start uh teach him one thing that goes against um what parents what their belief system is now some would argue with me on that and that's fine I don't have a problem with the argument anyway so uh but what I do want to you to realize is is that um in the work session and I'm I'm going to move from that because of my time um but I'll come back to it in the work session last

086month one of you stated that um uh to is was actually asked melan hyut what the educational level of those on the Committees of reviewing this information her answer was that everyone has a master's degree or hire and it uh it felt like to me that what you were saying was is that anybody that anybody that didn't have a master's degree or a certain amount of Education um they were pretty much to the place to where that they didn't have the moral ability or the education to be able to teach their students thus the parental rights that uh is being interfered with uh in this particular area so I want to say to you all that uh if our if they know what's best for our children then why are we having this conversation tonight

087obviously we don't feel that you know what's best for our children certainly with some of the policies that youve put out so uh the educational system here in Burke County uh has the idea that parents do not have the ability to know what's right uh with their children decare it's like declaring that we are nothing more than a bunch of deplorables hicks that have no education or ability to think for ourselves nor use their god-given ability and right to guide their own children in all matters of Life I'll come to a point on this since the dawn of time men and women have figured this out we have figured it out uh since Adam and Eve starting off they knew how to uh have children they knew how to have babies and they knew how

088to raise them up there was a lot of failures just like there is today and yes we should get better at that and people would uh uh look to the Lord and look for his guidance and things would get better however we know that's not going to happen we realize that because everybody is not a Believer everybody doesn't trust in What God Says in his scripture and even as a parent as a child of God I've certainly made my blunders I've certainly made my failures that doesn't give you or anyone else the right to take away what I believe I should do with my children and teaching them Mr so I would say thank you that's your that's okay thank you all right well I certainly appreciate the opportunity to be able to come well

089I'd like to tell you about my dad he I ra I was raised up in a in a bad situation but my mom and dad were good people and they took care of me and they help me and I'm cut off now but I'll go ahead and tell you that they helped me and I'm here today because they took of me and yall need to know that because of the home that I grew up in God help me do thank you Mr Hart minut next we'll have Eddie full bright first I'd like to thank the school board the superintendent and assistant superintendent uh as you know my name is Eddie Fullbright I was born at Val's General Hospital uh attended acard Elementary I graduated from hillbrand high school I was the last class from that

090before they formed East Berke I had 38 years with with Fortune 500 company in upper management I have two grandchildren that are attending Burke County Public Schools tonight I want to discuss policy 3210 Under The Heading of B parental objection to an structural material and I quote while input from the community may be sought the board believes professional educators are in the best position to determine whether a particular instructural material is appropriate for the age and maturity of the student and for the subject matter being taught and I do appreciate the gentleman back here who spoke just a few minutes ago on our society and what's taking place and I want to say that probably no one in this meeting tonight approved these books that are in our school system you probably inherited those and

091uh you didn't have that responsibility but you do have the responsibility and the opportunity to remove them and that's what we're asking for we uh in Berke County and I heard this at the last uh meeting where we were allowed to speak I went out into the Hall to get a drink of water and I heard someone say oh they're from winers Grove Baptist Church they're at the end of the county they're probably not even from uh Burke County and you are right a lot of us are not we're from Kataba County we're from cwell County we're from mdal County we're from Cleveland County I don't think we have anybody here from wilksboro but we have a strategic plan we don't want to implement this strategic plan uh we have businessmen that realize they cannot

092do a whole lot about Washington DC but we can uh make some difference here in Burke County and you may not remember me you may not not remember my name however our goal is to make sure that every resident of Burke County knows who you are and what you stand for so you have the time and the opportunity to do the right thing make the right decision and move forward and so we can work together uh there is a group that uh is very active in mdow County they're active in cwell county and we're going to be active in Burke County and uh that'll be talked about in a minute thank you very much for your time and consideration thank you thank you Mr FBR Miss Becky bidy I'm proud that Eddie's my friend that's

093the first thing I'd like to say but I'm talking about 3210 section A and C and under section c I would like to say that it says that the books should the review should stand for five years I think that they should be reviewed once a quarter that should be changed to if we do that once a quarter then that can be um looked upon way more often and taken care of a lot more often than five years and in section A it says that or I'm sorry section c the parental objection to supplemental materials any objection from a parent will go to the media and Technology advisory committee and it states while input from the community is appreciated professional educators are in the best position to determine whether a particular supplementary material is appropriate

094for the age and maturity of the students why is anybody else better suited to know what is best for our children than their parents it should be the parents determination of anybody of anything that's ingested in their bodies whether it be their ears their eyes their noses anything that's goes into their bodies just because they may be at school for a little while a day doesn't mean that you make the decision for them and there should be parent or if they don't have a parent the parents Guardian on that mtac committee why is it everybody else on that committee besides a parent it list everybody on that mtac Committee in section A it tells that who or C I'm sorry it tells that um who all is in that committee but it's not apparent it

095lets everybody and the president but a parent because the parents are not welcome anywhere in the school I mean we might be able to come talk a few minutes at a meeting but we're not W it anywhere else but we're saying we want to be involved thank you Miss bidy Mr Eric holifield thank you for the opportunity to address the board this evening I am Eric holifield I am speaking on behalf of CPR Christian Perspective representatives and I want to address tonight policy 3210 while input from the community may be sought the board believes professional educators are in the best position to determine whether a uh particular instructional matter is appropriate for the age and maturity of students and for the subject matter being taught bertke County Citizens are like the citizens that we work

096with across North Carolina and even outside of North Carolina they do not partner they do not co-parent with an elected board they don't now when they will not in the future policy code 2000 States the board recognizes and Trust uh let me back up the board recognizes the trust and accountability it owes citizens staff and parents and the students in the matter of which it transacts the business of the school system policy code 5000 States the board encourages the community to be involved in the school system and to assist the school system in the goal of providing every student with the opportunity to uh receive a sound base basic education last year CPR we we published our first Christian voter guides next month in December we'll be releasing next year's voter guides questions to the

097public we will be asking Board of uh education candidates if they support sexually explicit books being accessible to students in libraries and or classrooms one superintendent in Western North Carolina has referred to CPR as The Awakening of a sleeping giant our preference is to stand with our elected officials we realize you're in a challenging seat with difficult decisions decisions at hand we want and desire to stand shoulder toosh shoulder with you but if need be we will stand in opposition one must remember the values of the people in the area in which we live let us not forget this is the Bible Belt of our great nation we the people of our great country we the people of North Carolina and we the people of our local counties are at our wits in with either

098not being heard by elected representatives or elected representatives not upholding their promises we may not have the opportunity to address our representatives in DC or Raleigh but we can surely make our way to a local meeting and let our Representatives know where we stand on local topics such as this one of the amazing things that we've seen in the past couple of years as CPR is the merging of Christians churches and organizations uniting together and taking a stand they're standing for children in public schools and it's a stand worth stake worth taking we will not back down nor quit nor go away so the request the request is for the Burke County Board of Education and he superintendent to listen to the citizens of Burke County we've all seen National headlines concerning the types of

099books being addressed here today and then last month and then months prior countless Studies have determined that exposure of this type of content as such an early age is detrimental to their development plus this content is just morally wrong our group is committed to Bringing national awareness when necessary our question is why not amend the policies if the policies prohibit a quick removal of these books an excuse is the SC is the skin of a reason stretched over a lie don't let an amendable policy be the excuse that stretched over a lie thank you for your attention thank you Mr hfield next we'll have Mr Paul all deal can everybody hear okay it's kind of hard to hear the rest of them back there it's kind of muffled thank you Schoolboard members thank you superintendent

100Dr Mike Swan assistant superintendent Dr Karen Alton for allowing us to take a few minutes tonight to speak we don't take it lightly we know this is a work session and it usually is a just observing only so we appreciate the opportunity first I want to start off by commenting our school board members and our superintendent and assistant superintendent and the hard work that they've been doing to adhere to the policies that has set forth I also want to thank them for their efforts and successfully removing some of the books that has been in question the last meeting the books that are pornographic nature that have been discussed uh you folks have uh been removing those and I appreciate it I want to give you credit where credits due so thank you for your hard

101work I appreciate the school board and uh both superintendents as far as policy I have some concerns of a few different policies but one I'll speak of specifically I want to address policy 3540 Under The Heading of Comprehensive Health education program paragraph two and I quote instruction on gender identity sexual activity or sexuality will not be included in the health education program in kindergarten through fourth grade see also policy sl42 heading parental involvement when I go to policy code 1310 402 under capital F number four it reads and I quote student Support Services training developed or provided by by the school system to school Personnel will adhere to Student Services guidelines standards and Frameworks established by the Department of Public Instruction number five instruction on gender identity sexual activity and sexuality instruction on gender identity

102sexual activity and sexuality will not be included in the curriculum provided in kindergarten through fourth grade regardless of whatever the information is provided by school Personnel or third parties for purpose of this sub sub uh subsection curriculum includes the standard course of study and support materials locally developed curriculum supplemental instruction and textbooks and other supplementary materials but does not include responses to student initiated questions I just quoted to you your policy my concern that I would like to communicate to you tonight as board members and superintendent and assistant superintendent is that after we quoted your policy that the instructional material and curriculum and I quote supplemental materials in quote will not involve sexual activity gender identity or sexuality from kindergarten through fourth grade but yet I hold in my hand tonight a copy of a

103book called Jillian is a mermaid found in Hillcrest Elementary School Jillian is a boy who who's infatuated by mermaids and decides he wants to be one and begins to dress up like a girl his mother begins to help him a lot of pictures are involved and although there's no profanity of pornographic material it is promoting things that your average parent would not want their kids to be involved in as crossdressing and transgendering tendencies in an elementary age child my point tonight is not to try to put you in an uncomfortable setting but I want you to understand how policy is only as good as people that enforce it we need policy but we should not let policy alone dictate our practices and our welfare of our children we have to sometimes cross the lines and

104the boundaries of policy to protect those around us if we're going to let policy dictate and govern every move that we make then we probably need policy to be Rewritten in familyfriendly style driven with the mindset of the majority of the ber County people and not the big cities like New York Washington DC Baltimore Maryland and California this is just an example not of one but several policy breaches that we have discovered over the past few weeks and we will make known to you in the days ahead that uh uh in a different setting once again I want to thank the board and the superintendant for all their hard work I want to encourage you to continue on continue to try to get some of these things removed but also to continue to change policy

105and I know you'll do that as it's brought to your attention and I appreciate the opportunity tonight to come and bring some of these policy breaches out to you and uh maybe in the days ahead we can bring some more to you and maybe be a part of that so thank you again for your time thank you Mr deal Mr William Ramirez hello everyone and uh uh thank you for allowing me to have the opportunity to speak uh I also go to winklers Grove Baptist Church uh I'm not from Burke County from Gaston County but I am a grandparent and I um I'm concerned about what's happening here in Burke County it may or may not be happening in Gaston County but I will I will uh I will look into that more as we

106go along so so first off um I would like to address uh policy 3210 uh subsection B and uh it's been read before but I'll read it again while input from the community may be sought that's us the board believes professional educators are in the best position on not best position you're in a good position right the parents are actually in the best position as I recall uh when I when my wife and I were conceiving our two children y'all weren't there okay y y'all weren't that was a that was a decision between me and my wife and I love her to death and I love them kids to death right all of us do all right so you're not in the best position you're in a good position and I thank God that you've

107got some education about how to educate our children all right but you all don't know everything you're not the best uh I can point to the guy who's the best and that's the the guy who wrote the Bible God you know that basic instructions before leaving Earth that guy he knows the best all right keep that in mind please and I'd also like to remind you that um one of one of the things I learned from a a dear friend of mine who passed away a couple years ago Mr Perry first uh supervisor I ever had 40 years ago he said if you're going to take my money you're going to take my advice now we do pay our money property taxes that's what pays your salaries and pays for the schools and the buildings

108and all that and we accept that but we don't accept that you don't accept what we have to say about that so we want again as Pastor deal said and the gentleman from CPR we want to work with you we don't want to work against you we want the best for our children we we want to set them up for Success not for failure all right so we we ought to have a say in that and we want you to we want you to listen to what we have to say over the years I graduated for I graduated high school 40 years ago 1980 and we've gotten so far away from the three Rs Reading Writing and arithmetic that's what school's about not this transgender business not this pornography business it's really not even about

109it's it's really not even about baseball football basketball or wrestling or volleyball or any of them other things it's about an education right that's secondary that's gravy as as we call it or as I call it right that's on top of all that but I'm here to encourage you I don't want to you know I know you're sometimes you feel like you're in the complain Department I get that I was in I was I was in a a supervisory position too uh I've just now recently retired so I get that I mean you got to take that right but that comes with that comes with the uh um that comes with the with the job uh Mr hemry he pointed out you know we got we got spiritual trouble in this country right because we

110have all these problems and we don't expect the school to solve them problems right we need you to educate the kids or educate our children and we're entrusting you with that so that's all I wanted to say to address directly to the school board but now I want to address just one simple fact to everybody else the parents grandparents cousins ankles uncles aunts nephews all that it's a two-way street we need to hold our boards accountable and and recognize when they're doing a good job let them know they're doing a good job it goes both ways right and and that includes myself and in like I said I'm from Gaston County so just thank you uh so much for allowing us to have a couple minutes of your time and once again I want to

111encourage you to do the right thing and God bless you thank you thank you Mr Ramirez Mr Jamie W call I thank you for allowing me to speak tonight and I want to thank you all for all the work you've been putting into on these books I appreciate it I I appreciate all the work has been done on it uh but one of the main purposes for the North Carolina parents bill of RS is not only to allow parents to have more involvement in their children education but also the community and it states quote governing bodies of public schools unit shall in consolation with parents teachers administrators and Community Partners developed and adopt policies to promote parental involvement and empowerment in the school in the public school unit so the issue that I want to

112address is also 3210 and the need for more parent and Community involvement 321b has already been said um input from the community may be solt is what the policy says from um but if Community is going to become more involved that's going to have to be removed now according to fallet right now and I know sometimes that's not right but drawn high school has 66 copies of a book titled Eleanor and Par Mar this number of copies if that's correct indicates that this title either is being used has being used or is intended to be used as a supplementary material in in the classroom so without going on to explicit details of this book and the pornography the stuff that's in it let me just say this it uses the f word alone 62 times

113among other profanities now most would call that excessive so I'm sure that many of us in this room made up of parents in the community we don't agree with the professional educator who decided that this material is appropriate or the age or the maturity of the students and by the way that book is also in a middle school eastberg middle school but also I have I have read through the parents Bill of Rights a few times but I haven't read anything that restricts parents or the community in their involvement in fact in it's the exact opposite our own policy states 321c that a request for reconsideration of library books form for parents may be submitted to the principle regarding the availability of supplementary materials at their child or children's school so meaning the way I

114interpret it unless you have a child enrolled at that school you can't challenge a book such as Elanor and park but we as parents in and Community stakeholders we should have the opportunity and the ride to shape the future of our children and our grandchildren in schools how can we do it if we're restricted to the materials that we can challenge North Carolina General statute says in in 115 c98 B1 a local Board of Education May establish a community media advisory committee to investigate and evaluate challenges from parents teachers and members of the public to textbooks and supplementary instructional materials on the grounds that they are educate educationally suitable unsuitable pervasively vulgar or inappropriate to the age maturity or grade level of the students lastly let me say this I appreciate the New Media policy

115that added measure to control what's being purchased and what's coming in from now on and we had dropped that affiliation with American l Library Association but however it's in my opinion that the media policy does not need just a few minor revisions be up to date with the parents Bill of Rights instead we need to totally gut it and all the rights restored back to the parents and to the stakeholders of this County thank you thank you Mr wof Madam chair that concludes our public comment section on the bill right okay Dr Swan can I ask you a question yes ma'am um you mentioned it but I don't know if people understood exactly what you meant by it um we have removed or you have mhm some of the books we have recommended um multitude

116of books that we're going to begin reviewing based on uh different criteria established by different resources uh for example booklet uh may use a rating system of four or five based on different levels so we'll begin using some of those different levels as well not just one resource we're going to use multiple resources and and kind of do a deeper dive uh as a gentleman mentioned earlier chances are we weren't in our positions when a lot of these books were acquired um so we will begin going that process um it's just it's going to take a little while because you're looking at thousands upon thousands of books to begin looking at so basically um you've how many have you pulled 16 currently pulled 16 books currently okay and you're going to temporarily pull many not

117pull just just kind of restrict checkout restrict checkout okay yes while you're reviewing while we're reviewing the books and have you thought thought about how you want to do that as far yes I've I've met with Dr Honeycut we met last week and come up with a plan uh herself and her M her inside mtac team her folks her media coordinators or itfs um not itfs I'm sorry uh will be will begin working at that Miss Debbie Dale uh is over the library books as well so she'll begin reviewing that process as well okay yeah all right so you're limiting checkout of a lot of a lot of books yes ma'am just to do a deep dive like you said in to see what all we have M I'm very appreciative of that Dr Swan

118I know the board I I know every one of us is very appreciative of you doing that and it's just like I can't remember who said it but this has been years in the Mak this board didn't create this Dr Swan didn't create this this has been going on for a long time and it's going to take time to dig through all of it it's there it's not a master list from one resource so what I'm asking is that you be patient with us because we are trying to do what's right and there is a difference between controversial material and pornographic material and the reason that we wrote this policy which I might add was long before the parents Bill of Rights and we actually put parents' rights into this new policy because we were

119asked to do that and some of the language in the parents Bill of Rights looks similar to some of the things we have in our on and you know our policy and we will be tweaking it we don't have a problem with that whatever we need to do to to go along with the the new law um but it's just going to take time and we've already put books behind the counter we've already asked for parental permission um and I think it's you know it's important that you know parents do have input and we we we felt that way we felt that way for a long time and what I'd like to add um if parents or community members do have certain books that they'd like us to review email me I'm very accessible uh

120instead of coming to a board meeting and for the shock value of it and introducing a book where no one's seen to give us an opportunity to review it prior to anything yeah right just communicate with Dr Swan or one of us and we'll get it to him or Dr Alton we that's what we've been doing and I want to make that very clear that this board and this superintendent has been working very hard to do what's right and we will continue to do that yes sir one more thing I'd like to add that I meant to at the end of the um uh comment section that if anyone had any questions or or something that came up um while you were hearing about the bill of rice that we didn't cover you didn't hear

121to uh feel free to uh contact Miss Linda Huffman emailer um with any of your concerns that you have on that that you want us to um to take a look at like I said if it was something that wasn't mentioned tonight sorry I meant to mention that earlier oh that's fine and we we thank you for your input I mean if it wasn't for our community coming to us we wouldn't have had the first policy that we work tirelessly on and we will continue to do so if we didn't have the community coming to us we wouldn't have a new vaping policy if we didn't have the community coming to us we wouldn't have a new cell phone policy if we didn't have the community coming to us we wouldn't have a new process

122and policy on photographers Athletics and Athletics because we don't want sexual predators taking pictures are being around our athletes and students this board's worked hard at this thing I think people don't realize how hard it has worked and the staff has Al have also and it's it's got to be something where we work together as Wendy says and uh much of this is inherited but we want to do the right thing too and this this model that we've put out is being used by other systems so it's really getting tweaked other PE other systems are looking at it and and it's a good thing it's a good thing thank you all okay Mr Lawson uh oh M Dr Dr Dr alt sorry about that that's okay I'm sorry Karen that's okay um so we do

123have the the policies related to the parents Bill of Rights before you this evening for the second reading um we will bring them back again for a third reading so you have time to digest and process some of the comments made tonight and we can make edits um moving forward so sounds there's anything you'd like for me to take a look at between now and then I'll be happy to or you can process and and send those to me later that' be good and if Miss Sims had a question we twe that yes we did M 3210 you might have seen that we did add the I think we put parents rights in part A for you thank you um and could we have it I mean I don't know if I'm ready to move

124them forward personally um to a third reading um but for reading the policy 3210 section B and C as written it seems to be more of a uh explanation how to guide how the process works um and so so for the the board believes professional educ educator statement I just it it it may be out of place I've read it right with taking that sentence out and it doesn't miss a beat so I would like to put pause I'm not ready personally to move that forward for a third reading until we have more we can have as many readings as you would like and Mr Kim May comment on this too but we can move to a third reading and if you're not ready to pass them we can always go to a fourth reading

125if we need to well I would I I like that as a matter of fact I would suggest that that maybe we just put the second reading on pause until such time as we have the minutes from the public comments that we've just had because I'd like to go back and read um with comments and then sit down and P back through the policies can we Karen can you refresh me on how the or who is involved and what what positions are involved in the mtac committee um I'm not sure if I Dr honey cut do you have that live and do we have do we have a policy on how it's selected how that committee is selected how the list the impact committee is selected or do we just turn that 3210 it just

126kind of spells out a general policy but it's not specific on what what kind of positions um are there right you know here again you know if it is just Educators you know maybe having a uh a parent representative on that committee believe that comes in round two Dr not at the school level that comes in round two if I choose to support that book then then it goes to another committee with outside community members with outside comment on that so where can we find I guess find that as far as what kind of people or what positions teachers administrator a Community member where that is on the process at the school level it is based on grade level and the principal our principal designate the media coordinator and then someone from the district either

127Miss Dale or myself serve on that committee they usually ask for a parent the parent sometimes is a teacher at the school because of the time that they meet um that's usually the way we've always done it but I am open to creating a list that has however yall want people represented maybe there maybe we could do that at that level uhhuh kind of like an appointment yes maybe from your PTO with that school okay and that be the representative of of a parent right and then the that way that it's an active involved parent who's who knows about day-to-day things and what's going on and someone that has a flexible schedule to be able to read the book because they have to read the books that are being challenged so that they can understanding

128on the appointment right and then at the district level depends on what's being challenged but usually there are people from the school where they may have the books like for example if it was eastburg high school there would be a representative from the high school there would be someone from the district usually um it's myself and several other people at the district level and we try to involve parents there too um with the parent at the district level I would prefer that we would uh maybe have the board choose a parent that's uh a way that it would be uh non it wouldn't be us so I think that would be a little bit better I think that's probably the best example of being nonpartisan on our part would be to have you guys choose

129the parent um but again we would have to have the parent that would be committed committing I like I like where this is going maybe we can get something kind of started in a in a formal yeah we'll start yes yeah and we'll continue to work on that and how and I think that's probably a good idea I mean because it's always been you just did it because you had very few uh challenges so now that things are changing then I think it's a good idea to have that and I'll be glad Dr Alton and Dr Swan and I work on some things and involve the board as well so if you have some input you know please share that with us and we'll we'll bring it in but I do think that at the

130district level there needs to be parent involvement and there needs to be a board member on it I mean quite honestly we we've had that before when we had the kite runner several years ago with uh Dr Burleson I know there were several board members that served on that as well as parents so uh I think that works out very well to have a board member on it as well and we try to involve students at the high school yeah because uh they know what they like to read and um that's what we you know we want to make sure it's happening I think the high school level students ought to be they ought to have a voice that there again would have to be like if it is a if it's controversial or explicit

131material that've and we've already we've done that before and that'd be kind of hard I guess as a committee of adults sitting and discussing that with a student on that committee so I'm not sure that that sometimes with the student on the committee basically what we ask is for the student to give us a a report our synopsis of what they thought of the book and how they felt like it addressed whatever issue like the hate you give we had a little we had a student that wrote a little piece about it so you know it's not really that's a controversial title A controversial book and they just did they had read it so we just asked for a synopsis of it so I mean and then maybe you don't want a student on it

132I think that depends on what you want to do as a board and how you want to move forward with it we have to depend on the materi yeah we have to depend on the material sorry I don't know about the the content of the book and the student I don't know um depending on what the book content was that we were looking at maybe but I do like the idea about the um parent in there from that school because I know a lot of schools PTO programs U PTA programs they're trying to get them more involved in doing stuff and I think that'd be a good ey way it's twofold thing that way I think it get it more involved in doing and as we're building this maybe label out those expectations of you

133know if if you're going to be the appointment you've got to be able to put the time into yeah what you're committing to I think that's the biggest key the board has to have we have to have uh teeth in it to make it work I don't think parents need to release names of who our committee members are personally I think that would have to be kind of that's a not yeah okay we'll definitely take some time and maybe formalize that process and lay it out a little more specifically before you go um I remember last work session we have we started or are we moving forward the discussion of what a reasonable amount of time is about that last week we're thinking what we say 30 days yes 30 days that's what're now we

134get a 2 page book of that's going to take longer it depends on the availability of the Noel whe she's got to find okay so um if you have if we have five copies here then we're okay because you know usually you you can get enough there and the public library I can usually get five or six copies from them but if we only have one or two copies and the public library only has one or two I've got to wait for the public library to get them Shi to us or I've got to contact Kataba or neighboring counties well I'm glad we came up with a time is that 30 days per book or like if three challenges in one day okay it's possible reason as you saw earlier you saw the student mental

135health that administrators working onily multiple other things and then the last question I have was again from last work session 3210 um where we were quoting the Ala are we going to cease doing that going forward I thought we took that out didn't we take that out yeah I think it was taken out wasn't it it's taken out of the reports that go out to people who challenge books response letters no and so that that's 3210 the last paragraph page three it says following the review a letter will be mailed to the complainant with a copy of the mtac report and so I'm just asking for that La a la will not Beed in the mtac report awesome thank you I don't have any other questions when can we have the feedback from the public

136hearing so we can read Linda she'll be working on that immediately tomorrow Lind Friday okay well I was just trying to get an idea of of time so we shouldn't expect maybe to deal with this next Monday either okay no all right and council's got some information to add to on that yeah the general assembly extended the de deadline for the policies the policies do not legally have to be in place until the first school day in January so your deadline is December you need to make final changes by the December board meeting and again too and I think it's good for the public to hear this too the changes that are in these policies most of them 95% of it is word for word from the parents Bill of Rights so you can certainly

137uh modify policies and we can discuss that but that's where the language comes from is the parents Bill of Rights and I just want to point out one more thing I think there might be some confusion about Parts B and C in 3210 just so you know the difference there Part B is about instructional materials and so that's the textbooks and the classroom books that teachers are using and then part C is supplementary materials and that's where library books teacher libraries those kinds of things commun just want that clarification so Mr Hunt probably logistically we could do a November the end of no November work session potentially for a second reading and then December regular meeting for the third reading okay just need to vote before the holiday break all righten we'll make that happen

138do okay thank you Dr Alton thank you board members all right Mr Lawson teacher supplements good evening members of the board good evening yeah okay uh I just want to say before I start with uh our proposal tonight that I know each of you pretty well some of you I've known for a very long time and some of you not for so long uh most of you are parents grandparents married to Educators or former Educators and I know you're good people and you take these matters seriously and I appreciate it uh don't envy the position you're in dealing with these situations well that said uh I'm able to do tonight something I don't have the opportunity to do very often and that that is to make an exciting uh proposal for increased spending uh and

139increased spending is and this item is I know a very very high priority for each of you it deals with certified supplements as you all are aware uh back in 20134 out of financial necessity Burke County Public Schools froze certified supplements at that time in 1314 certified supplements were 5 a half% of a teacher's annual certified pay that was 1314 we're still paying based on that 1314 pay table so what was a 52% supplement of annual salary has been diluted over the years to about 4% in 2017 18 and some of you were involved in the process again out of financial necessity we needed to take another step to try to control cost uh locally uh we adopted entirely new pay table and supplement structure for employees hired post June 30 2017 that system is

140still in place uh that system on average paid certified teachers 2% of their annual gross pay again making us less and less competitive with our neighbors in Recruitment and Retention uh and in a moment I'll get to the exciting news of okay where does the money come from to rest these supplements Spence is killing [Laughter] us all right this this first uh this first schedule that you see on the screen uh the top third of this schedule is certified supplements on folks that were hired before June 30 or before July 1st 2017 rather and you can see the different categories of certification which is a Bachelor Masters a national board column a national board with Masters and pych psych does not necessarily refer to psychologists but it refers to those degreed professionals such as OTS

141pts Etc the section below would be the new proposed pay again restoring supplements to what is five a half% of the 2023 [Music] supplement as you can see in the C column what that amounts to is an increase in that in that particular category of anywhere from 28 $281 to $653 annually moving over to the Master's column 230 to national board 260 to 499 with Masters 397 to 601 and the advanced degree 432 to 992 this would restore certified supplements again as I said to 5 a half% of current annual gross pay uh the price tag for the full implementation of all supplements to current levels would be one $485 million the next category we have would be the folks hired oh I'm sorry let me go back and make one other point certified persons

142are affected by this particular uh change next we have supplements paid to folks that were hired after June 30 of 2017 on the new pay table based on a flat dollar amount per category certified Masters national board national board Masters in site again that pay table when adopted was basically 2% of their annual gross salary based on current levels as you can see here the impact is $531 to $1,465 $8 103 to 1,704 694 to 1589 897 to 1761 and 960 to 1846 what also I found interesting about this is you see 367 folks are impacted by this that were hired post June 30 of 2017 so in the last six years we've hired 41% of our total certified staff yeah so a very very young staff and they're going to be impacted significantly by

143this change also there's a slide uh for for for refence I don't see it here I'm sorry apologize but uh of how we compare to the surrounding counties uh if you don't have that available I'll certainly share that with you I want I want the board to see the comparison of surrounding counties and where we were and where we potentially be yeah Miss Miss shuffer uh she takes out all these numbers I turn out and makes it pretty and presentable uh thank you Miss Chu uh as you can see Berke County now uh if if approved by you the board uh this will restore our supplements to 5 a half% uh Alexander County pays 6% currently Codwell has just increased this year uh there's to 4% for certified staff under 20 years and for 20

144plus 6% Kaba Hickory Newton which are all you know two City districts in one County so three systems are paying 8% as well as Davy ell 7.25 McDow County's at 3% Lincoln is at nine and Stokes wils and Yadkin are at 5% again price tags approximately $1.5 million so where did we suddenly have the kind of money to pay that well that's thanks to you all your new relationship and the olive branches that have been extended between the County Commissioners and the Board of Education the trust that you all now have in each other has enabled us abled our legislators with the aid and and and and support of Senator Daniel and representative Blackwell to repeal legislation dating all the way back to 1985 that Senate Bill 68 is Dr Swan referred to earlier that

145repealed legislation that restricted the way local sales tax funds could be utilized in Burke County making us unique in the state of North Carolina with the exception of one other County and that's bunam what that situation created though was a position that it's not I don't think that the County Commission didn't want to give us more money but the money they they had to deal with was restricted due to that special local legislation as to its use which resulted us out of 100 counties in the state of North Carolina being ranked 94th in spending locally now through your collaboration with the County Commissioners in cooperation that legislation's been appealed the money is now available to us locally to be able to support this initiative to restore certified supplements for teachers and I ask for your

146approval of this uh um recommendation uh at the next board meeting couple of questions I actually know the answers to these things but I'm going to ask you yes sir make you say it you think um Keith usually knows I know the answers these things because if I don't I'm going to call you before the meeting anyhow by the way um okay so so with this um with this money that has come about as a result of of our agreement with the County Commissioners and approved by the general assembly at this point um uh these supplements are recurring funds there not a one-time bonus this is recurring money tacked onto the salaries is that correct yes sir you are correct and then the next question would be when will our staff see these in the

147checks November in the November payroll with with your approval and then the county commission's approval of the additional 1.5 million dollar in funds at at their upcoming meetings uh it'll be fully funded and implemented and the the first uh increase you know it's paid twice a year November and June uh they'll receive their first half of the the newly reinstated supplements uh those were frozen initially uh because it was a variable expense it was out of our control because it was a percentage based calculation so when the state legislated wage increases that increased our burden locally on dollars that we didn't have to support the program uh and I'm happy to say again as a result of the relationship uh and the repeal of legislation back to 1985 we We Now can do this good

148deal that is a good deal good work board good work yeah good work I did really feel like that was a day in history that was made that we were all extremely proud to be part of absolutely that was a great meeting and Keith You've Been instrumental in all that you and Mr Epley and the County Commissioners and well I don't know about that but I appreci I appreciate that thank you and I'm I'm honored and privileged to be a small part of it anyway thank you thank you very much thank you make a motion to move that to the action for next week yes okay anybody second that second all right all in favor let's move that to all right thank you thank you board okay Personnel report anybody got questions for Mr reer

149remember to go by the number we okay we'll move that to action okay let's move let's move to round robin I'll start with Dr H Street have you got anything you'd like to for us to work on no no no I I think uh no I think some good things have been said and there's a movement in the right direction and board's really done some good things especially with this in recruiting of new teachers now and we see the pay increases and things and there's a lot of good things this board's doing in conjunction with the uh County Commissioners and uh it's a good thing it's it's a good Bond and we're working well together in the community right and I thank the board for that Tiana you got anything you want us to think

150about h the only thing that I'm coming up with is um sometime maybe in December January having an after action report of our football season um I know just looking at the patent lineup half the team was injured and on the bench uh this this season um and just wondering what could have caused that and if there's anything that we can do to kind of prevent that going forward um for our our athletes that are in that kind of physical contact for good I think we we got a concussion report I think Mr Rogers he presented a concussion report at the end of last season so we can kind of follow up with that and then some other injuries uh career ending or season end ending injuries as well I know some good orthopedists that

151might be able to um I think most of my questions and input I've already give back um I would like to maybe for our next work session maybe have some feedback back data on our Vape detectors and how that's going um and what means and who's I guess notified by The Vape detectors on that um I know some of our SRO have that on their their personal phones and not sure if we have a Burke County School device that we could give them I mean I know they have to all of our SRO have school paid devices is it a school device M okay yeah all right there's one that doesn't then it might be a new one that hasn't received it yet but we do pay for all SRO to have device up from

152my understanding I need a double check okay yeah all right I just hate to be blowing up somebody's phone and often times sometimes instead of paying a device we can kind of offset pay a a a small portion of that monthly bill so I I may be wrong I I know we did Lieutenant Clemens um device and I will definitely have to check on the other I appreciate that yeah yeah and just maybe some feedback data um what we're looking at and I know there's not going to be anything from last year as far as with the Vape detectors to compare it to but we might have something you know how we have our our spreadsheet referrals from the administrators to birth recovery maybe we can do some kind of comparison as far as last

153school year to this school year yes and just kind of see see how we're doing Miss lroy loves coming and talking to you guys I don't have anything Leslie sort of spoke about I wanted to sort of see some of the information from um our new Vape policy to see how effective it's been and how many kids were going to counseling so she did what I was going to ask so Aron Madam chair okay Mr Hunt um couple of things I I'd love to get an update not necessarily tonight but at our next Gathering about the band uniforms who's got them who's not ordered them who's come in and those sorts of things that's we committed a lot of money for that and we need to get on with it uh the other thing was

154I think at our last get together I rode uh Dr Acer like a rented mule uh regarding painting of the um driving track that we're fortunate to have one of what four or five I think in the in the state and uh Dr AER it looks wonderful and getting great comments back from the driver education teachers one of which happens to be my wife uh that's well well done thank you I can't tell you Mr Hunt that freedom has their band uniforms in all schools have placed an order um Freedom was the one the first one to get them um and that was probably a month ago so I'll double check I'll get you some updated information on that Miss Jane I I think tonight I would just like to thank the many people that

155have come to me in the community and thanked our board for the policies that we have written what we have done to improve our schools and safety and a lot of other areas um I've had a lot of people come to me at church and in different areas in the community that I'm in all the time so I would just really like to thank the people that have appreciated the work that this board has done and our diligence um with trying to protect and educate our children and how strongly were committed to that so I just want to thank all those folks thank you all right let's go to our Open Session and close session minutes budget revisions Personnel reports any those are all items for your November six yes okay s yes all right

156I believe we have a need to go into close session don't we all right persuant to North Carolina General statute 14338 do11 subsection A1 and6 for the purpose of considering confidential Personnel matters as further defi defined by North Carolina General statute 115 C- 319-321 and persuade it to subsection A3 to receive information protected by the attorney client privilege I make a motion to go into close session do we have a second second thank you Al those in favor all right thank you all for being here we're in close session that