001um two three four so ah so good evening everyone and it's going to be a long night i do believe um thank you all for coming today uh we do have one of our board members mr aaron johnson who's going to be with us via the telephone and so this will be a virtual meeting at this time i would like to make a motion to amend our agenda the first thing i would like to do is i would like to move closed session until after under v and v i would like to move it to between b and c there is a need to go into closed session before we um move forward after we get finished with the interviews is that if that's okay and then also we have a request to switch uh
002d and e but that would be okay to put wendy d and e just to reverse those in order all right would i get a second on that motion please a second all those in favor if you'd please uh say your name jane yes tiana yes wendy yes leslie yes aaron your response i haven't heard a thing oh all right aaron can you hear are you listening live right now can you hear me yes yes thank you and madam chair you have a majority in favor of that motion okay so since we're still working out mr johnson being able to hear it's not necessary to have his vote to approve the agenda so you can continue with your meeting okay thank you for the agendas approved thank you all from switching that up all right
003at this time if we would please pause for a moment of silence thank you at this time if you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the black of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you at this time we will begin our interviews for our open board seat our first interviewee is mr seth hunt and what we'll do is each of us and we can start with aaron since he's on the phone okay can you know mr johnson i can hear you yeah all right i'm going to move closer to the interviewee okay all right we have mr hunt with us he's our first um interviewee and i'm going to let you
004start the questions and then we'll move to jane and then tiana and myself and leslie and dr hemp street that's okay so you can begin i think you said you're ready to start and i'm going to ask the first question is that right yes sir okay um what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues well there are obviously multiple issues that the board's been dealing with i would i would um i think the biggest thing in light of everything that's been going on between masking and the discussion of crt the the books all of those sorts of things i think one issue that is gonna that is in the forefront well it's not really in the forefront
005it should be that's going to continue to be in the forefront that that would really impact the school system is to the board needs to i believe renew its focus on recruitment and retention of new and existing teachers when you look at everything else there's a myriad of issues that you're gonna you're gonna deal with they'll be dealt with they'll go away and other difficult issues will replace those but the one compelling issue that you're going to continue to have that could in fact your entire system if you're not paying attention and and really looking at some innovative strategies outside of just internal to recruit and retain we're sitting on a golden opportunity right now in recognition with the school of science and math that's coming in here you're gonna have potentially 300 teachers and
006i would guess or instructors and i'm guessing at least uh each one of those probably knows three or four teachers probably more do the math so that's that's that's really casting a a large net of attention to come to burke county we don't need to let that pass that's a golden opportunity to to seize upon when you look around the state brunswick county north carolina between covid and um and [Music] just people leaving resigning they're at a 40 percent vacancy rate you know can you imagine being in a 40 vacancy rate and with hr issues one thing i've learned over the years when you have an hr issue it's already too late you need to be on top of that because you just can't go out and pick teachers high quality teachers off the trees
007and i think everybody here knows that did that ask you a question mr johnson yes sir thank you seth um i'm a person that likes to know the folks that i'm going to be working with and you and i worked together for several months when you were on the board last year um and when i i have some questions because i'm confused about some dialogue that we had after the election last year and part of that dialogue during phone calls that we had and times that we saw each other like in the grocery store and so forth and we talked you mentioned to me that you were happy that you not that you lost the election but you were happy that you had more free time to yourself to do the things that were important
008to you to spend time at your farm and things like that my question would be i want to know if you're going to be committed to this board coming back if if you are selected are you going to be committed to the board because i have concerns that because you were stating before that you were glad that you weren't going to be serving on the board anymore that you had more time to do personal things i want to know if you come back are you definitely going to be committed to this board well the the direct answer is absolutely the um i think james the spirit in which i recall that the the few discussions that we had you got to understand it was also at a time um and which is actually another one
009of my my issues this board um in my opinion and i would be prepared to do this to even renew a dedication to put in even more time than we did because i can tell you the five years that i was on the board basically we came to one or two meetings a month had a nice meal voted with a majority and went home [Music] and if you look around things are changing the state school board association came out with with a new direction for school boards about a year and a half to two years ago and it basically indicated in that periodical that that that the the there is actually aggregated data that's been published one of the places that was posed by the university of iowa that shows a direct correlation between appropriate
010and more more appropriate involvement by school boards with higher student achievement which indicates if you're really sincere about doing what's best for the children which everybody claims we are i did you did i think everybody else did too then yeah you've got to be able to commit more time than than just to do that actually at the time you and i talked i was a bit frustrated actually was over christmas holidays as i recall so i was actually looking to get out of town and go down to my phone so but no i did it for five years and i'm ready to do it again i'm retired i have the time and i actually still not to get into my personal life too much which you and i had discussed a time or two i
011still have a best vested interest in this school system with a middle schooler and um so for lack of a better term i still have skin in the game well i have a two-fold question to that because i i again i wanted to know what your change of heart would be on that as far as the conversation that we had when that came along but also i understand that you recently changed you've been a lifelong democrat and you recently recently changed within the last few days to be republican that is why why was that change brought about was there a particular reason that brought that about yeah your ties and your career were literally from the democratic party and where the the career path that you took at broughton and the other at the at
012the riddle institute or the j iverson riddle developmental center and the school for the deaf those were positions that came directly from raleigh for you as you were a democrat what was your where is your change of heart on that well let's tell the whole story i obviously served under two republican governors along the way governor martin and governor mccrory from who i received the order of the longleaf pine award and as you know he's a republican governor too those are appointments uh i don't know exactly what you're driving at um yes i did switch parties and yes it was a very personal decision some i wouldn't mind talking about it some i don't especially want to talk about because i do i do view that as a very personal um sort of opinion you
013know i could say certain things that that perhaps i disagree with you over that occurred during the during the campaign that i thought were incredibly unfair but i'm not sure that's what we're here for is it well you're talking about education i want to have a better understanding of you seth that's why i ask the questions i'll be happy to talk to you anytime outside of the meeting about about that and and perhaps we cannot but i would look forward to continue talking about the role i would like to play in moving our school system forward thank you okay thank you mr hunt my question will be given all the issues that arise thank you you're welcome so given all the issues that arise currently we're talking about covid that's a big topic right now
014you know that we're dealing with book challenges things like that how can the board ensure that we stay focused on student achievement i think several several things certainly making a dedicated effort to create and continue a synergy with your superintendent you've got you've got a great superintendent that's dedicated to board involvement you've got a wonderful leadership group in the system too that that sees things the same way and i know prior to the time my term had expired dr swan you know had already began doing some things to to congeal the board so that it was certainly a much more open environment and that the information flow was much more free and you didn't have to justify necessarily every piece of information you wanted in order to make boards just a board decision it comes
015from um trust being able to talk with each other and not at one another you know usually when somebody's screaming at you nobody's listening you know certainly if you're the one screaming about you know you're not listening so i think it's just kind of you know it's it's a human dynamic ratchet ratchet the the pressure down a little bit and talk about what you claim you're interested in and that's the education for the kids we've got a good school system it seems this can be better and and the board based on that strategic plan that i've seen from the north carolina school board association is a very breathable workable document to redirects this particular school board as well into being the best it can not just so that we show a ranking you know rankings
016are nice and it gives you bragging rights that doesn't mean anything you do it for the right reason and that's to give these kids a world-class education which is what we're supposed to be doing and you know when you do that too you're gonna go you're gonna make great strides in dealing with this recruitment and retention issue of teachers and staff that i was just talking about too everybody wants to be associated with a winner especially school systems thank you thank you all right mr hunt my question is what do you perceive to be your greatest gift and how can that be brought to our board and make it a better board madam chair i'm a product of public education i'm an advocate of public education you know i was fortunate to make burke county
017my home back in 1995. um my son graduated here and i got her brag he's an attorney i used to tell mr campbell he was my favorite attorney not anymore chris is my second favorite but but no seeing you know i've spent my professional life and as and i've sent my cv to all of you managing large and complex organizations and regardless of what political flavor you are and who appoints you to these positions typically the governor in the seats not going to point somebody to these positions that can't do the job because in turn that would make them look bad so you know i've been i've been successful in doing that for over 30 years i know how to bring people together i know how to to work with people without micromanaging i guess
018the term you probably want to use is lead i've done that for a long time i feel comfortable doing that i'm the guy that asks the hard questions sometimes too and sometimes that really doesn't make you popular um i try to do it the nicest way possible sometimes it doesn't quite sound like that but i think it's those sorts of uh you know growing up in a small town you know each other not too different from morganton and burke county most everybody knows everybody and and i think it's an ability to be able to listen to people to understand to truly understand their needs and not just necessarily a certain group of people um you know we're here to represent everybody did that answer your question yes it did so thank you for coming thank
019you for your service and thank you for your interest in um coming back to the board we've had some personal questions and i'm going to give you a personal comment as far as your service on the board i can always say that regardless of whether i supported your vote and the way that it went you were always one to give me wise and told you know explain to me or explain to the public you had enough respect for the public to give them your lies on why you decided the way you did and it's already been um an example for me and um you know something that i have um already tried to start following so thank you for that thank you it was very kind i think you have to show it to people
020to do that you're elected especially something like this role i think you ordered people to explain to them why you vote the way you vote why you say the things you say yes sir uh as far as my question it's important for schools to um to foster good character and an attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their classrooms our schools how would you plan to support administrators and teachers to address in discipline in the classroom how would you do that as a board member well first of all as board members you certainly have i'm a big proponent uh if you're gonna say it you better be prepared to model it so that would be my first admonition not that no one's not doing
021that you know but model what you say um you know ms taylor that's that's a tough one this is kind of an age-old question i'm a firm believer too well you know my dad was a school principal for years mom was a teacher and if you got in trouble at school when you got home you got in trouble too and unfortunately somehow i think we've gotten away from some of that that that the discipline issue really begins at home now that's and i don't think that's a really naive statement to make but i think in reality too that doesn't always happen for whatever reason okay i think discipline issues in school are very individualistic sorts of things i think the board should be mindful to continue to support maybe even make a renewed effort to
022support site-based management and make sure that that our principals and our aps and our teachers continue to have the tools that they need and the and the background support that they need to support the decisions that they make so that they can sit there and teach all day like they should um simplistic way but i think i think if you make a renewed effort design a policy structure um and have your superintendent and your uh and your leadership group on board and make sure that your principals understand it uh i i can tell you just from years in in in leadership high-level managers sometimes on the chart below you are can frequently be looking over their shoulders you know well am i going to get this quit this decision question or am i going to
023get that decision question you know and at some point i'm not saying you never question anybody that's certainly not the answer but you do have to send forth the message from board and administration that you know we got you back and these issues need to be fixed and dealt with and we're going to support you understanding people are going to mess up and when they do you know you correct and you go on thank you mr hunt doctor uh assuming you get this this position and and in the main focus are the children are the kids and uh what would you do as a board member to see that every student in this system feels safe and valued safe and valued in a system ah dr ham street we're already doing quite a bit of
024that and and and hats off to our teachers and our staff um they do that i can tell you firsthand that and all of you probably know teachers bring home issues with kids all the time sometimes that can be a bit annoying but that's actually a good sign because that tells you you have folks that care and when you have people that care and that emulates back from the board downward you know if you if you show a real dedication and a caring attitude um it will trickle down the i'm always concerned about the one or the several or ever have many that fall through the cracks i get concerned about the ones that may have an ec plan those that are on 504s that may not be followed um that that may or may
025not be special needs but they have plans in place for for reasons those are the kids that concern me quite a bit about falling through cracks and we do have some of that i think what you have to do is just constant monitoring and oversight and again put that make sure that that is assigned back to your site-based managers and you've got other ways you can you can take the temperature of that this is the most appropriate way this is the most unfortunate way but phone calls that the board members get if you got problems with kids that may be falling through the cracks or you might have teachers that the parents feel may not be responsive you know and then of course you funnel that to the superintendent and so forth and that takes
026care of it um but certainly making making sure that you've got a structure in place where people are responsive uh to to the feedback they get not just let it blow past them but i answer that it's good it worked thanks thank you all right thank you mr hunt thank you so hi good evening hey how are y'all i'm good this is susan jones um miss jones mr johnson is actually in that phone right there okay okay i wondered who was dialing in yeah and he's going to start the questions okay okay are you ready can you hear me mr johnson you can go ahead and ask the first question okay thank you oh good evening that's a little bit of a two-part question sorry what are some of the major issues that you believe
027our school district is currently safe and how would you like the district to deal with those issues well the biggest issue i know we're facing right now is covid and i i honestly don't know how we deal with that issue aaron um i hope it'll be an issue that'll go away soon and then we won't have to deal with it anymore but right now i honestly think that that it's a situation in so many school districts where it's all it's just a trial and error it's does this work or does this work does this work or does this work let's try this and see if this works um i think that's a that's a huge issue um and like i said hopefully that will go away i think some of the other issues that we're
028dealing with is uh diversity and population and how we meet the needs of all the students in the school district not just not just diversity in race but in socioeconomic status we just have such a diverse population and everything doesn't work for all students so we've really got to do some some searching and not just look at meeting the midstream student we've got to look at all students all socioeconomic all academic levels just no student truly needs to be left behind and all students need to feel successful at their level in some way whether they're the top of their class whether they're at the bottom of their class they need to experience and feel success thank you anything else erin okay thank you susan thank you for coming this evening i've noticed in your information
029that you gave us that you have spent 30 years of experience in the public school education and you were an assistant principal a number of times seven yeah i think seven different schools i've been all over the county were you a principal at any of the schools that you were in as an educator or an assistant principal i didn't i was an assistant principal at several different schools and when the leap academy was founded in burke county i was the it wasn't called a principal position it was a director's position okay so i was the director over the leap academy and helped start that program we kind of started from scratch we started on july the third or fourth one year and had to have the school up and going and ready by the time
030school opened in august and that was hiring the teachers setting the curriculum the instruction um we had a turnaround time of about seven weeks to get everybody hired and we had to interview all the parents interview all the students so it was kind of a busy time in getting ready to get that program up and going and then i was at the central office for a short time assistant personnel director over licensure and certification and from there i went to i was the attendance administrator for the county and i worked with all the elementary schools and walter johnson on attendance so what part of your 30 years of your career would you say were the most important to you that you got the most fulfillment out of teaching in the exceptional children's program for seven
031years okay absolutely there's nothing that beats it that's the top of the list thank you hi miss jones my question is what should our school district burke county public schools do to better prepare our students as citizens outside of academics well i don't i don't think this is completely out of academics but i think we've got to focus more on vocational that that's still in the academics but we've got to pro to prepare them for real life situations that you know you you're not maybe you're not interested in in going to a four-year college maybe you're not you want to go straight into the workforce but you need some type of training there that's just huge now it's i'm at the i'm at western piedmont right now and we see that all the time that
032students they they don't know what they want to do or they they're not ready to go to a four-year college or their family maybe is not financially ready for them to go to a four-year college so even if it's not vocational technical we've got to be preparing them for the workforce whatever that workforce may be that they want to go into i mean all of those positions i don't care if it's hvac or electrician or or if it's working at your local tire store changing somebody's oil those positions are crucial and we've got to to provide kids the environment to establish those social skills that that just really seems to be lacking is you know how do you go into an interview of any type not just not just for a college or a university
033or for a white-collar job how do you go into any interview how do you maintain your your household in your budget and survival skills i mean in today's world that is just that's huge it's just preparing them for for day-to-day life surviving thank you okay hello miss jones here's my question what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make our board better i think my greatest gift wendy is serving people i am a people person i'm very involved in the community i volunteer a lot in the community i have a therapy dog that we volunteer in the local hospitals in the nursing homes and um in fact we were at quote grace hospital unc healthcare saturday afternoon for about three hours um not visiting patients but we
034were visiting health care workers and you just don't know what a tremendous impact that is when you walk into the covid unit and the healthcare workers tears start flowing down their face just because somebody came to visit them so i just i enjoy serving and i enjoy serving in the community and burke county public schools is a huge part of that community and that's where we need to be serving you know we need to be serving the students and the parents and the custodians and the cafeteria workers and we need to hear their voice we need to hear what they've got to say and not just sit somewhere off not knowing what their opinion is not listening to their opinion for them not to feel intimidation of being afraid to to speak up so i
035i think if you said what is my gift is serving and being there for other people being a listener to other people um helping people out in any way that i can you know if that if that's listening and that's all they need or if there's something else that they need and i can be a bridge to that resource of what they need then i want to be that bridge and i want to get them to the resource that they need to meet their needs thank you hey susan thank you for coming tonight i just want to thank you for not only serving burke county public schools and our children but also finding a way once you retire to turn around and use your talents to serve our community as well there thank you my
036question is i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character chord attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and our administrators is in discipline in their classrooms how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to to address in discipline within the school system i think leslie that and wendy can attest to this too over the 30 years and the changes that you've seen in the school system when you know when i first started you we've you very rarely heard of a discipline issue i mean it just wasn't there as much and i've always told people you know the school system is a reflection of society and we've got to convince parents and people in the community we need your help we can't
037do it on our own i don't care how many counselors we have how many social workers we have and as hard as those people are working we can't do it on our own if that's having more parent advisory committees more opportunities for parents to provide input for students they're the ones sitting in the classroom seeing the problems that are going on daily i think another thing that we're dealing with um and we've seen this come over the past at least 10 to 12 maybe 15 years we're dealing with a lot of drug babies unfortunately and that is a whole different aspect that you're dealing with and when teachers first went into the classrooms they weren't trained to handle that at all so at some level there is additional training i think that can be done
038there and that's going to have to be bringing in professionals that can say this is how you need to handle this situation versus handling this situation um that that's just a whole different ball game in itself and those students need help i mean some of their behaviors are because they're crying out for help they're not just behaving to get in trouble they're not just acting up so they can go sitting in school suspension they're crying out for help and in whatever ways we have to look at to help them but again i think we've got to enlist the support of the entire community because we can't the teachers can't do it on their own the principles assistant principles can't they cannot do it on their own um it's a community problem so it's got to
039have community to help solve the problem thank you very much yeah miss jones uh you kind of answered my questions that i've heard that but as a member of the board of education what would you do to assure that every student every student in this system feels safe and valued well as far as feeling safe for years probably i don't know 13 or 14 years i was on the safe schools committee for burke county public schools i was on the first safe schools committee for burke county public schools and the first meeting i think i may have mentioned this in my information the first meeting that we ever had in burke county public schools safe schools committee was on the day of columbine and i will never forget how ironic that was that we were
040sitting in a safe schools meeting that day and again i think that goes back to community too don [Music] because i think the the perception sometimes is that maybe the schools aren't here to help in those those areas you know we've got the resource officers um in the schools that does help i think the counselors the social workers you know and students feeling like that they can go to the counselor they can go to the social worker they can go to the principal or assistant principal to say hey this is the talk that's going on this is what's getting ready to happen i remember when we had probably one of these strongest safe schools committees in the state of north carolina and people came from all over to sit in on those meetings and to
041say oh my goodness y'all got this resource and y'all got this resource and how did y'all do this and where did you get the funding from and how did you get the grants and um but i think it getting the parents to open up and getting the students to open up to feel like that their opinion counts and what they have to say makes a difference we're dealing with so many things as far as school safety goes now that we would have never thought 30 years ago that we would that we would have been dealing with and i think we have to be vigilant in that in continuing to for new teachers especially you know what do we do in this emergency situation what do we do in this emergency situation how do we evacuate
042where do we evacuate too what's our plan um i think that's a big part in if the teachers feel comfortable in that i think that will carry over to the students in to some sense um and the resources that we've established with behavioral specialists over the years um just the the students feel like they have somebody out of anybody whether it may be a coach somebody they feel comfortable going to to talk to about any safety issues safety concerns that they might have to know that that somebody's going to listen to them yeah and i think that that's that's a good answer physically [Music] but valued as a person you know uh i understand the locked doors and officers but the value this child has is being what they are as a person right exactly
043and you know some of them unfortunately don't feel safe at home some of them the safest place they feel is at school and you can see that in the face especially a lot of elementary children when friday afternoon comes and they have to go home or the closer it gets near the end of school and they know they're going to be at home in the summertime and they're not going to have that adult that's become their buddy that they can talk to that buddy's not going to be there in the end of june and july and the first part of august so much of it centers back to the home [Music] and that home environment spills over into the schools thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening thank you for coming thank you with us
044thank you for having me um mr johnson's in the phone right there okay so uh we're going to let him start okay with the questions and do you hear me karen can you go up there and tell him we're ready yeah i got you okay you got me all right good good all right all right so you you can start all right what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues what are some major issues that i think the school district is dealing with and how do i think the district should be handling them yes um i think an ongoing issue that our schools face our district faces is keeping our kids safe and affirmed in the schools
045having our students feel confident and prepared and i think that that changes as administrations change as educators change as our student body changes um as our community changes and so i think that it would be important to sit with and have conversations with those groups our students our administration our educators and here specifically at this time you know what they feel like they're struggling with or need help and support with but i think that you know finding ways to ensure that our students at all grade levels are feel safe in their schools feel safe in their classrooms feel safe with each other and then figuring out exactly what that looks like for them and being able to address that as needed depending on what their responses are address that as needed depending on what okay
046thank you angela thank you for coming this evening um one of the accomplishments that you had i have to say congratulations on setting up a scholarship for high school seniors thank you for doing that that's an important aspect of their continuing education certainly i know you talked in the information that you provided us how you how would you strengthen career readiness in our schools today what would you do maybe different than what we're doing today or add to what we're doing um i think it's an add to situation i think engaging local business owners um in more ways i as a new business owner in town you know my business is three years old and i am just now learning as a business owner the kinds of things that i can do in connection um
047with the school systems to support internships and student workers and that kind of thing um so i think sharing that information in greater volume with other business owners and training business owners to help support our students whether it's technical education components that they're wanting or even our students that are wanting to go on to college because i think having internship experience in our local community can only help them prepare and be ready for whatever path they're going you know they're choosing after high school and so i think getting out in the community and um increasing business owners knowledge and participation and their willingness to support our students and so i do i think it's just an add-on and expansion of what we're already doing and getting our business owners more involved in that way okay
048thank you hello it's dr shores correct it is yesterday okay i will address you as such what differentiates you from the other candidates and or board members i think that individual experience is life experience that each of us brings as a candidate and each of you bring as a board member differentiates us for me um i have a doctorate and a master's degree in counseling and i think that that sets me apart from other candidates i think that that has equipped me with a passion and a heart for understanding students wanting to serve students for who they are and where they're at and finding ways to support students through the school board through you know what our schools are offering them i think that my experience in the community as a business owner coupled with
049that experience as a counselor i have taught our graduates of public schools as a university professor and so i think that culmination of experiences makes me unique from other candidates and allows me to bring unique perspective on what our our schools are offering to our students what we can continue to offer and what we where we can grow [Music] thank thank you okay my question is what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make our board better i think that my greatest gift is a love of people and an ability to be with another person in a conversation in a working relationship and hear them and work to really connect with them and understand them and i think that um i think that part of that gift
050is being able to see them and their potential as well even when they don't and help them find ways to to grow and to be their best self and i think that in working with other board members towards common goals in supporting our schools our administrators our educators and at the core of it the students i think that gift is really important because i think that every student and every family in our county needs to be heard and seen and feel like somebody a group of somebodies is there for them and working for their good commonly thank you dr shores for coming last week and speaking to us it's important that our community be a part of the decision making process so i appreciate you taking the time to come and speak and appreciate you
051stepping forward willing to make the sacrifices that it would take to be a board member i feel it's important for our schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their classrooms and schools how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in discipline within the school district i think that as a board anything that can support our the training that our educators and administrators receive that would allow them to hear their students understand where their students are coming from so that students in the classrooms in the schools feel safe feel heard feel appreciated feel valued i think that those character traits matter and connect very closely with discipline in the
052classroom so i think when a student feels safe and acknowledged and respected and valued and affirmed then they are paying attention because they feel welcomed and they feel like it's important to be there and it's important to pay attention to what's going on and so i think anything that we can do to help our school counselors to help our educators to help our administrators continue to to build their knowledge on how to meet our students in those places where they're at to give them those things in the classroom that that will improve discipline thank you very much well dr shores i think you answered my question because it's safety and the children are valued as persons individually and those things are taken into consideration so i kind of at the end of this thing i
053pretty well hear what everybody's had to say which is all good things and we certainly are hearing good answers but i think that is critical i my question was was how you as a board member would foster that value system and that they are each individual is special that's that's a tough one to do but that's a thing to do that they are valued and feel safe in that environment but i think you answered that in that last question so i won't hit you with another one okay thank you so much [Applause] hot seat good evening and thank you for being with us yes um mr johnson is in the phone right there and so he is going to be asking you your first question okay okay all right go ahead mr johnson all right
054what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues i think some of the biggest issues right now facing the the district is retention and keeping your teach school teachers keeping the morale as far as with those teachers with and making sure that they stay you have teachers typically they're lasting two and three years and burning out in the job and i think it's imperative that we do things to make sure that they stay happy they stay committed and they stay in the area also being able to attract new teachers when those that retire or leave the system and then obviously working as far as in the uh with your workforce and with the labor force that's needed right
055now as well does that help yes thank you mr hyde thank you for coming this evening um when i look at the information that you provided us you your education is very strong obviously but you also have noted that your involvement in the community and the finance committees from your educational background what would you say are your strongest what are your strengths that you bring to the school board from your academic side as well as your experience side okay as far as with my work i deal with i'm the vice president of accounting chief financial officer at mitchell community college so i am primarily responsible for how all the state dollars are spent i prepare the budget for the county as far as in preparation making for a plant and operations and maintenance of the
056facilities and things that go along with that with regard to housekeeping security maintenance and so forth uh and i also handled the federal funding especially particularly with all the cares money that we've had to spend uh with their with the higher education and arp and everything so i've been trying to get that taken care of before may or getting extension as far as being able to have those funds spent and committed [Music] and i feel like my experience with working with state and understanding budgets and also understanding prepare preparation for doing the county budget and presenting that to the county commissioners in iredell and also when i worked at maylen as well and then also as far as working with federal funding whether we receive it through our pell grants for college work study and
057then numerous other grants but also with our cares act money as well and i feel like that can be an asset hopefully to this board and understanding of that thank you hello mr hyde my question is what is the best way to address differences of opinion on the board or between the board and the administration i think you in my line of work i mean as far as i'm dealing with we have student issues complaints you have employee issues i'm over hr as far as with responsibility for that so really you have when you have employee issues you need to meet them and have them off head on and deal with them whatever they are talk them out try to communicate with one another do not try to uh you know go behind anyone's back
058as far as with this and that but you need to be able to be forthright and honest and try to work through your differences i mean not everyone's going to agree with about everything that they do and everyone is really trying to make the best decision possible with the information that they're given and so i feel like you just have to climb you know collaborate and be able to understand that you're here to be a body uh that's trying to serve the entire school system with the teachers the staff and the students and the parents inside to be the best advocate as well thank you [Music] okay mr hyde all right what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make our board better can you repeat that
059i sure can [Music] what is let me take this yeah there you go there you go what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make our board better i think for me being able to work and been fortunate enough to work with in higher education and being able to see students who come to us and from different backgrounds and in different avenues and then watching them and being able to provide the support through to our faculty and to our staff as far as to make sure that the students get the higher education the proper education that they need and being able to be the one to work with collaboratively in the different areas and making sure that they get the proper funding that they need and that
060their needs are addressed and met so that they can be successful in the classroom and then watching as students graduate uh you know walk the walk across the island get their diploma uh to see their success stories as well and being able to know that we play a small part in that even though i'm handling the money and i'm not in the classroom i feel like that there's still an integral part that in my areas of responsibility that we play in that whether it be maintaining and keeping the buildings clean and whether he properly heated and cooled and taken care of or handling their accounts for payment and so forth thank you mr hyde thank you for coming forward and being willing to make the sacrifices it takes to be a board member i appreciate
061your wife's sacrifices as well her being one of our bird county public school teachers and my question is i feel that it's important for schools to foster good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their classrooms and schools how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in discipline within the school district i think the principles it's not really a one-size-fits-all i mean each school is different and you need to trust in your leadership that that you have entrusted to be the head of that school system but they need to know that they're supported and that they are that you're going to support them and back them in decisions that they have to make and
062i feel like that's through collaboration and having a good conversation with them i think parents need to be involved as well in the situation in the matter it's critical because if if you are having disciplinary problems what are those issues that you run into i mean we're dealing as far as where we have monies as far as who cares with mental health that is an issue and so we have things that are set up where you have individuals having problems with discipline or whatever they can talk to counselors about that through that mental health funding that we have been able to provide for those students so i think it's really imperative being able to work with them and support them and know that they're being encouraged i think you've got to also look at your
063policies and your procedures to make sure that they're strengthened as well in that area thank you very much you're welcome mr hyde let me ask you this question if you were a member of this board and what would you do to assure that every student in this system feels valued safe valued valued safety can be a component of that but i'm talking about value i think it really boils down that you have to be able to make yourself available you have to be a you have to get out and communicate you have to be go to the schools you have to have policies and procedures that are that strengthen and encourage that as far as for the students and for the faculty and staff and helping them know that your goals and your success really
064in this county depends on a strong educational system and our goal is to make sure that when they graduate they can go on to four-year education they can go to western piedmont with a two-year education they can get cte and get credentials however and go into the workforce and so letting them know that each situation is different but treating them individually as far as helping them to know that whatever your circumstances and situation we're a school system that's going to help you go to where you need to go and how you can grow and help you be educate you enough to be able to do that thank you okay how do you thank you so much good evening thank you for being here with us yes good to be here yes so mr johnson is
065going to be speaking with you via the phone there right next to you and he's going to start the questions okay all right mr johnson you're ready what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues um well back when i was coaching football it's been since 2018 so um you know working in a different county and uh things like that and just working so much it's hard to be involved right now but um i'd say um from what i hear from nieces and friends and things that a lot of families i got in schools and schools was just uh they want to you know i guess it's more of a political thing but they're you know they're wanting
066the mass choice to be their decision and they're wanting all this um to be their decision but yet it's for the safety of the kids and you know a five-year-old i don't think really gets to make a decision much but um you know they're just wanting to see some changes on uh let's let the parents make uh the decision because you know i think it's i think it's all about um it's their kid anyway and um i know that's what you know my niece told me the other day she said uncle b i'm seven years old and i'm tired of wearing his mouth i can't breathe and i said well fortunately it's not just about you um i said so you know she's on that scissor man but you can't go off one kid but
067i just from what i've seen it's just been a rambunctious time with the with the virus it's hard to really tell because a lot of the virtual learning went on and um so i know they were out of the classroom a lot so it's hard to really it's hard for me to really make any statement on that because i think the way the counties went with the board and the central office i think is the biggest issue that we needed and it's going to come into fruition now that that everybody's in the positions that they're in i think that was the biggest problem for a long time so now that we're that way you know we gotta go back and fix the things that were broken so um but i'm happy about the way the
068county went so i think that was the biggest problems what i was trying to get to but we got some good votes on the board and we got some good people in central office and i know a lot of them were formal principals and so i believe we were headed down the right path that's going to change most of the issues all right thank you sir thank you mr blanchard for being here this evening um my question would be in regards to what can you what do you think that the bull the board has faced constantly with having to make decisions on the mask issues some of the things that you're talking about with covid and some of them are popular decisions and some are not you're not going to you when you serve on
069a board you know that you're not going to make everybody happy how would you deal with the controversy that the school board has had on some of the issues with the mask mandates and so forth how would you feel about that making those types of decisions because we're in we are responsible for about 12 thousand students and two thousand staff members so how would you feel that responsibility and how would you take that making those decisions that may not be very popular today um i mean you know i when i ran for county commissioner i stated a lot of things that weren't real popular people didn't like but um you know we all each individual thinks differently each individual knows what they want to see for my 19 month old coming up in the school
070system future i want to i want to make sure that you know these kids have an opportunity for sports um i know sports is a big thing around here and i know there's some kids if they weren't in there they wouldn't be they just they would stay in trouble and i think the mask a lot of kids are not wanting to play and things based off that because i mean i played football if you're wearing a helmet and a mouthpiece and everything on top of this i mean you cannot breathe you can hardly breathe while you're out there especially the position i played you know we were the big we were the chubby guys so we couldn't breathe anyway so uh [Music] and you know i had mike helms as a coach so you really
071couldn't breathe but uh we just i mean i it's just like anything else i mean i made a decision on who i voted for for the board and i made the decision on who i made important i mean we all make important decisions every day in our life and i guess you just make it on how you feel and i mean but i'm gonna i mean i can take uh yeah if you watch my county commission rates i can take a lot of heat because i got it and you know if anybody i just i feel like i would make decision based off me i'm not going to vote just because the people i voted for on the board or making that vote or whatever that's just not that's not the way you do we
072got to be ourselves so i think i would just i mean people got a problem with it it's kind of you know i'll hear whatever you got to say everybody's got an opinion so thank you hi mr blanchard hey how are you i'm all right how are you sweating yet huh you sweating yet no i just can't breathe all right my question for you is what differentiates you from the other candidates and or board members um i'm not going to tell you guys what about you guys now uh i mean i saw these kids uh when you coach started out seven eight-year-olds went down to went to nine and ten and five and six that's a big drop but when you're out there every day and coaches are a big impact on kids and i
073think it's just my transparency you know i'm not scared to say what i need to say but i'm not scared to you know you know grab a kid and let them know treat them like they're mine but also still love them because i love everybody and um you know i think me being able to get in the classroom relate to all the younger people is and i don't even know i mean i'm just going off i mean i guess i'm trying to make up my own life you know if the board members are out in the classroom but my goal would be to get in there and ask them because you can't see from the inside out so we may think that we know all the problems and we may think that but the kids
074are the ones who deal with these problems and these teachers and you know it's hard to get through every email and every phone call about what's going on and what needs to happen and what's happening so i think you know maybe to encourage you guys too even if i don't get on the board but getting in the classroom with these young kids is where we're going to find out where the problems are and what needs to be fixed and i can relate to that because i mean i go out there first day coaching and their dad's coaching they love me more than their dad that's saying something i mean and i don't like the most about myself at all but when your kid tells me you're more awesome than my dad i wish i could
075have you as that you know and their dad's sitting right there beside me i mean i'm like yeah you know but i don't want to boast you know but i think it's just my transparency and i just uh they know i love them they can see through me like a gla like a glass window and they know as soon as i walk in i love them so uh i think that's an umpire and i mean i don't know if you've ever been to a t-ball game but when you don't pirate a t-ball game the umpire is another coach and i mean just my patience someone power's like get over here get over here and i'm just like come on buddy you know and i teach them how to swing and so it's just my love
076for the kids i think is what's going to make me you know i'm not in this for anything but the kids and that's why i tell my coach you know how much you want to get paid to coach well man i'm coaching like five and six-year-olds i mean they only keep score how you gonna pay somebody for that and uh so you know i'm like uh no pay i don't care it's about the kid's life and if i change one kid's life my whole time in this county that's my goal so i mean that's just who i am i want to be there for them and i love them so i think that's my my gift that i would bring let's be able to communicate at that level that some people may not be able
077to thank you well that was just a perfect segue into my question what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make our board better i think my greatest gift is um gab no uh yeah you may get tired of hearing me talk already but uh i guess it results in just my gift of love i mean i love everybody and i'm a team player i mean i work at a plant that supplies 70 of the world with iv bags and i'm a leader on my line and um once again i'm the favorite pt out of four of us so i mean you know it's just how you relate to people and um my gift it's just i guess gift to love and you know the gift of
078gav is my salesman part but that you know um but the gift of love just to love people and to know that you know we're all in it together um but just because you vote one way and i vote one way don't mean i'm gonna hate you um but now i'll probably tell you i disagree verbally because i'm pretty outspoken but but my gift of love i just that gift is a gift that everybody says they have but some people just don't implement it like they should and uh i mean if anybody in here doesn't love a kid then they need to leave that's that's the way i think and you know you might say you do because you're an opposite but i mean really coming down to it i've never been a teacher or
079anything but you gotta love the kids because i was one of the kids that had to babysit i was in dr brett wilson's office a couple times and you know i know some of these people just because hey i uh i had to go in his office that's how i really got to know him and so i called him swann i should probably call him dr swan but he was my principal and you know so like i seen the love that they put towards us and it inspired me to love these kids when i started coaching at glen alpine and went to table rock and went all the way up to drone i mean high school kids are hard to get to they know everything and i know because i'm 25 and still think i
080know everything but you know uh they they know absolutely everything and to to be able to just get them down break down their level because you may be able to scream at one kid but that this other kid may be screamed at home and the love that the harsh love and the soft love you've got to be able to vary and that's where me getting in the classroom going to sporting events to seeing these kids i'm going to know how to relate to them on a personal basis and that's what we're about school systems about kids i mean teachers are cool but i have like one favorite teacher out of 80 000 years in school however many years we had to do and uh i had one favorite teacher so i mean you know right
081now i'm about the kids we got to change them little lives so i can be great leaders here so my love my love for them okay thank you thank you mr blanchard for coming and being willing to make sacrifices that it would take to be a board member my question is i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing our educators and our administrators is in discipline in their schools and classrooms how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in-discipline within the school district uh i don't know if we make this decision but i know larry putnam was an assistant principal at oak hill and he laid that piece of wood to
082my backside that changed my thought of wanting to get in trouble and wanting to and i'm telling you i really think that the discipline i don't think you can be too harsh because that's part of that love i mean as parents you're going to ring your kid up and you're going to love them and you've got to love the next kid the same way and i really think i would support just because i was paddling i want other people to be paddled i'm kidding but i support that um 100 i don't know if we make that decision i mean but you know it would be cool if we did because i'd vote for her but uh i think this discipline level was uh you know kids want a way out of school you give them
083oss you're feeding their video game playing time i mean they want that and things like that so i think the discipline just got to be more of a thoughtful process on how how can we do stuff that they don't like to do without having to i mean not it's not like the movie matilda where they put them in a torture dome or whatever but you know um what can we do because they they hate it when we do something and take away something that they don't like my little girl for something a dad does and i take it she has a connection i'll take some of my mama she don't care so i try to take stuff of mine to tell her that she cannot touch my stuff so i think it's just based off
084per kid but of course you gotta treat everybody equally but i think writing their name on a paddle would be a great way of discipline but that's just me um that's kind of hard because i mean the discipline level that's a hard question because the football players like i said they're all different i mean you know i don't ever remember swan being a yeller but i mean if he would have yelled at me i'm like yeah i got to get better you know he yells at the next kid they're just going to break down it's going to make them worse so i think it's like i think it's like if you uh you just got to know the kids but that's being transparent getting to know them and you know that's going to be just
085something that you've got to make off we've got to spend less time in these areas and get in the classroom and getting the school i think to really see what we need to do all we think's best thank you very much well you know it's plans the gift of gab isn't bad no you're a gabber and that yeah that's good i think that's good because you kind of answered my questions because i see that you felt that the students and the children you put them first and you see the value of the child or the individual person that way and i think that's a gift and that would be my question what did you bring to the board i think you've answered that that these children are safe and they're valued individually that way and
086uh so how do you handle that you got the kids out there and there's a bunch of little guys standing over here that's not involved what do you do with this on a as a coach you and i think a coach understands yeah the the sense of value that that person has and how important that is how would you do i think you'd bring that to the board but how do you feel about that well i think no opportunity is a negative impact and you know i was one of those kids i mean i played jv football i never made it once i got to 11th grade i was gung-ho on the military and rotc shooting gun j you know explosion yeah you know uh and i quit football and but i was always a
087kid that was 190 pounds and played against 350 pounders and it was just it was not a fair match um but i wasn't athletic enough to play anywhere else and i never got a chance i think i could have but i play without my glasses and i can't hardly see the numbers on my phone so no wonder why they quit making me be a linebacker but um but uh you know i think the uh like you know you see this little kid over here anyone gets to play kickoff you know i tell the head coach you know what are you out here for you're not uh vince lombardi or you're not these people making millions of dollars you're going to negatively impact it's about these kids um thinking process like you you can negatively impact
088the queue and you're just like oh you know they hear you talking yeah he's not that good we're just going to put him on kickoff because who cares you know the kids can't even kick a ball at that age you know whatever and shoot they can barely kick in high school now but i mean it's like you know you don't give this kid an opportunity and that could be the greatest kid i mean i always take this story and this is a controversial story because everybody dislikes tom brady but you have to respect his athleticism he was a seventh-round draft pick he never played high he never played football until his senior year in college and look where he's at now so you never know what anybody can do and you've got to give them
089the opportunity opportunity opportunity opportunity i mean they gave me an opportunity to come here and they gave me the opportunity to run for county commission board and when i ran and i tell you what the opportunities made a different impact on my life and matured me and allowing me to realize that where we live don't take it with a grain of salt and who [Music] watches over us i'm gonna take it with a grain of salt because that's the end the leadership the way i describe it kids are not the kids of tomorrow they're not the leaders of tomorrow everybody says that but they're the leaders of today because we got to put it in their mind that they're ready to eat today and we've got to encourage them because i mean you look at
090the commission board and you look in a lot of churches and you look at a lot of places when they die off who's going to come on we've got to have them ready and i think it's opportunity in school you know you may have a kid that doesn't have the gift of god like me but you encourage him and you put him with a bunch of people that have the gift to get he's going to learn to talk and he's going to learn to maybe do something that that gift together maybe his career he may go make 200 000 being a salesman off his gift together we thought he would never have i think it's opportunity given opportunity where opportunities do i mean you probably never thought you'd be on the school board that long
091if they didn't give you the opportunity you know i mean it seriously i mean they gave you the opportunity and you've done well with it so opportunity i gave mike swan the opportunity to be superintendent which you know i told him this earlier but i'm very outspoken so i think it's one of the best choices they made in bird county in a long time and that just excites me just uh that just excited me when they got that so i was like okay and brett wilson's over the the young kids education we got this account covered now so uh so uh in education so um but i'm just thankful to be here and uh you know hope i answer the questions but i always just base it off one thing that's kid's lives matter thank
092you very much thank you parents comfortable i have to get up thank you thank you so much good evening thank you mr camp for being here with us i'm sorry what thank you for being here with us um mr johnson is in the phone right there okay he's with us via bone and so he's gonna start the questions okay okay all right mr johnson you're on all right uh what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues okay good question um yeah i of course in looking at the district the district has so many good things going for it um but there it's being a sale from all over the place and some of the places that it's
093being assailed from is those who um those who want to rewrite history and uh and i want to ascend really what i want to do is help protect the district if i were a school school board member to protect the district from those who want to rewrite history and um and denigrate america and i believe we should be teaching to um to value america and to be proud of america i want to protect from the critical race it's not even a theory really a critical race philosophy that teaches that america is hopelessly racist and uh and to uh to look for those materials that are there teaching that stuff make sure those materials are not in the district i would oppose the liberal agenda that says that males and females is an antiquated idea and
094that boys who want to think their girls should be able to play girls sports and go in girls locker rooms and restrooms i want to pose the sexualization of our children through the materials that are out there that are sexually explicit and see to it that that is not anywhere in this district i would oppose the attacks on the morals of our of our kids and our families through literature videos that encourage profanity lewd behavior those kinds of things immoral acts i would encourage the involvement and empower parents and families in their kids education of course another thing i want to would want to do is to support teachers and support administrators and and by lessening their load by making sure they have quality materials by looking for ways to help lessen fiscal waste in
095the budget um those are some of the things i think i imagine and i'm i'm sure you're all doing all of that but those are things that are matter to me that i imagine that the district will be facing okay thank you sir thanks aaron mr cam thank you for being here this evening um i noticed that you have not lived in north carolina or morganton for very long you came here from california that must have been a real culture shock to you from that area to this area um there's was something that you had stated in your information that you provided us and i'd like you to expound on that please i intend to learn about and help the district overcome the various intellectual and moral assaults that are being leveled at our children
096and families could you please explain what you mean by that yeah again that's some of the assaults are some things that the liberal government is trying to push on us again the salts that uh want you to and to um to not love our country and saw assaults about our history when we're rewriting history assaults about um [Music] such as the 1619 project assaults about um the liberal agenda that's um sales boys and girls in school assaults that um about the attacks on our morals and um and the the difficulties that uh some parents face sometimes with having a voice i i don't i don't believe it's really so much true in this district no no it's just it's there in other districts having a voice in their kids education and i want to empower
097parents to have a voice in our kids education those are things that i would want to to make sure i'm on top of so it sounds like you've got a pretty lofty agenda thank you hello mr camp [Music] all right my question is given all of the issues that arise some of which were mentioned how can the board stay focused on student achievement okay yeah i think i i think the uh the district is doing a really a great job with students achievement uh i've seen the the graduation requirements i've seen their emphasis on both uh preparing students for a four-year education for a university education but also an emphasis in preparing students who are not looking for a university education be able to go into a community college be able to go into technical
098training uh the district really has tremendous cte programs i'm really impressed and i recognize that about 35 percent of of students really end up at a 35 percent of the the jobs and careers out there in society use students who graduate from four-year year university but about 65 percent uh take students who get a technical education and um and so i am uh so i'm i and i think the district is doing a great job with that requiring some of that within students graduation requirements and then they have a a graduation course that is more specifically for technical and for community college and so um i think the district is doing a great job with that i would highly support it thank you okay mr kent here's my question what is your greatest gift and
099how can you bring that gift to the board and make it a better board okay um [Music] i overall i am i i believe i am an intel i am an intelligent i am a hard worker i stick with things i'm organized and i follow through on things that is one of the other is is i'm compassionate i love kids i spent you know 40 years working with kids and various situations from middle school to high school to college and in fact also in social work and i've also got the time i'm retired and looking for looking for some place where i can serve and help and so i would want to learn everything i can learn about um how to how to help a school district be great and how to help and work
100with kids and help them to to get a career for themselves help them to become career-minded and to achieve that thank you mr camp i appreciate the fact that you've um decided to put your name in and use your talents or you know for the betterment of burke county kids so welcome to north carolina too but my question is i feel it's important for our schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their schools and classrooms how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in-discipline within our school district that's a good question one thing is is some some teachers uh just have an amazing ability to to get students
101to go along and do what they're supposed to do to be on task and all the rest of that and some teachers have a much more difficult time uh honestly my my daughters are amazing as teachers they have got both my daughters and teachers as well as my wife was was they've got a way to keep kids engaged and on task they just have a natural ability which they got from my wife i never really had that quite so much i think those who struggle with that i think it's a important thing for a district to bring good resources to teach teachers to be exceptional teachers to teach them how to there are there are definite steps to disciplining kids to keeping kids on task to dealing with with behaviors before they become real problems
102to deal with private behaviors privately instead of making the public to uh to know good ways to deal with public behavior and a lot of that some of the schools are teaching that the teaching schools that teachers come from some are not and they could use some help so one thing would be to have good continuing education kinds of things on the part i know there are two uh teacher days where they are um they're not just work days but they are uh where their training days and those are great days to do that another is to use particularly effective teachers to help those who are struggling to help those who are having a hard time with discipline in their classroom and those teachers are out there and definitely willing to help i know that
103from again family experience definitely willing to help those who are struggling and so those are two ways one is to have good in-services to teach them another is to use teachers who are really doing well to help others who are struggling thank you very much well mr camp this is about students and we got about 12 000 of them how do you make them feel valued how would you do that all of them feel valued to some degree as a board member yeah the students feeling valued the first place it comes well the first place that comes from from most kids is with their teachers and with the secretaries in the office and uh a a good morning of meeting them at the door instead of sitting at your desk um showing interest in who
104they are uh showing actually another part that the that the district can do is show interest in their parents uh because you show interest in their parents their parents are going to send them to school with a sense of uh this is a good place to go you need to go and learn and and i support them and i support you so really it starts with appearance and it starts with parents making the parents feel include included involved and an important part of the kids education but in the schools it starts with the secretaries it starts with the teachers you can start with the principal but the principle is only one person and and they can only impact so many students at a time in upper schools it includes the uh includes security and includes
105counselors and of course counselors i was a counselor for 32 years and uh and i uh and so we've you you've got to love the students you can't pretend you can't you can't act like you do you've got to and if if teachers are not there for the students they need to be um shown how to be in there for the students or they may maybe need to be shown that there's other careers there for them because teachers should be about loving their students and helping their students and so i would encourage teachers to make them feel good in their job and to just show real concern for their students did you a board member can you value them i think yes certainly board members um and that's i i think it's a wonderful thing
106for board members to get out into the schools and uh and and and to let the kids know let the teachers know that they are they support them and they believe in them it starts with sure from boards members setting the tone to to the administrators to the teachers the setting of the tone that this is about students this is all about the students we want to support the teachers but this is all about the students education without the students there's no point in even existing and so we want them to be successful and we want them to be to be as emotionally and and mentally well as possible and to do everything we can to help them do that thank you is everything else okay i will show you a couple things if i
107can comment for a moment a lot of people interview and interview well i'm i'm an educator what can i say a lot of people interview and interview well and uh and i know that some people interview well and they don't really follow through quite as well as their interview so my wife encouraged me to do this it's her fault um i have a couple things to hand you i show you i'm not just talk one was a an article from the school paper or welcome school from the uh newspaper the town of the city that i was taught in another is a t a parent and a student thank you brad thank you so much i know you have a tough job and it'll be a long night so i should let you go thank
108you sir thank you mr cam thanks so much good evening thank you for having me oh thank you for being here um mr johnson's in the phone right there so he's going to start with the first question and we'll go around this way all right mr johnson you ready okay so um first question is what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues um one coveted um i just got my first taste of virtual learning this last week with the snow um and with a preschooler you can't do it um now it's not the fault of the teachers you know they're doing the best that they can but it's with a small child you know it was very
109short but on the other hand you know your alternative is masked i have done a lot of you know looking into my ass and stuff like that but with her i just give you an example i'm sorry it says with my preschooler you know she comes on every day with a mask soaked you know in her spit mucus and she's breathing in all day um which leads to obviously possibly bacterial infection so you gotta know you've got to weigh out everything so it's just trying to find that medium looking at stats analyzing what's going on so it's a hard thing to do but i think that's one of the main things the second thing is you know obviously books media policy i think that there is a way to fix it um i think some
110of the things will be you know we've looked at we're talking about consent stuff um i think one of the things to be in a consent form for parents that wish their child to pick out those kind of books instead of the opposite you know i know you can but you're you know have a parent send in a note or whatever saying that they don't want their child to look at those books he flipped around and the parent wanted their child to look at them then let them be able to take responsibility for it sign a waiver uh just stuff like that i mean there's other things but i think those two issues are some of the major issues going on [Music] thank you thank you [Music] thank you for coming this evening mr white
111coffee thank you you had several people send in uh several letters of recommendation on you it looks like you went on a campaign to to have several letters written for you i was i i have a question that might be a little bit uncomfortable but i'm i'm i don't understand why you would have contacted the icard family after dr iger passed and asked for a letter of recommendation can you please explain why you would have done that i haven't contacted the awkward family you have not no okay all right thank you mr wykoff hi mr wyckoff how are you good you i'm well thank you for asking my question is what is the best way to address differences of opinion on the board and or between the board and the administration we always going to
112have differences on the board i mean for example the mask you know obviously um but i think it's okay to have differences that's part of a board you're going to have differences you can plan on it but i think everybody's got to remain respectful listen compromise if you're able to you know sometimes just a little bit of compromise on both sides will come up to a resolution that both sides is happy with um so i think that you know compromise um and then i like where both sides will make little if if you have a decision where you know it's obviously split up um not making that decision permanent this is like you guys did the two weeks for the mask you know come back in a short period of time i think that's the
113way to do it too but there's always going to be differences thank you thank you all right my question is what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to the board and make us better probably commitment i'm faithful to family friends and groups for example i've been with the police department for 21 years i had chances to go other places but i stayed with those guys because 21 years ago they saw some me in me and took a chance on me and i stayed with them i want to see my groups grow like church i do everything i can in my church to make it grow take on responsibilities i'm a treasure of the church you know do music whatever i can to make that organization better i'll try to do
114it so commitment is probably one of my strong gifts thank you thank you thank you mr wyckoff for coming thank you for taking the time to bring your concerns and interests to the board as you've had over the last few months as always it's important to me it's important to this board that the public be involved in the decision-making process and we appreciate your time you've put into that and appreciate the willingness to to make the sacrifices to be here so my question is i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their classrooms and schools how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in
115discipline within the school system discipline is a whole lot different what it was when he was in school [Music] i remember mr richie but um school's different what it used to be um now i've heard you know young people who who come to work for me they tell me stories of things that happen and i said i cannot believe that kids are that disrespectful i think the majority of it starts in the home i think to correct it i think it has to start early in the schools it's like for example i got my preschooler have a nap every time she gets a mark you know we find out about it and then you know obviously we take care of it when she gets home with whatever punishment she needs but i think um being
116proactive when they're younger definitely helps thank you thank you well mr wyckoff this is a big system and 12 000 kids in it and all colors and sizes and shapes and how would you as a board member work to make these children feel valued well valued they'll feel valued yes and uh with diversity anyway [Music] i think one thing that's good is to make try to make as many extracurricular groups as possible that every kid will try to like um i think when the kid is part of a group that's they're more apt to be a whole lot happier um and involving more teachers in those groups you know one thing i'd like to see and i think it kind of died off maybe a little bit was the explorer program i think you guys
117used to have with the police officers i used to be involved in that in caldwell county it's a really good organization you get a lot of confidence between kids and law enforcement officers they get to see that type of work and with everything that's going on we need that right now there needs to be some sort of bond with kids in law enforcement and and those guys are all for it they'll do it i think that's one organization that would help do that thank you thank you for having me is there okay if i pick this up yes you can let's see him stepped out just for a moment we'll start up when she comes back okay and mr johnson's in the phone and he's going to ask you the first question okay all right
118mr johnson you're up all right my question is what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues certainly thinking about major issues worldwide because of the impacts of the pandemic i think first and foremost retention of highly qualified teachers um knowing um what our teachers are going through it seems like the burnout is just unbelievable and the retention of our teachers and keeping them in our classrooms should be first and foremost what we can do as a board to keep our teachers in place so developing a plan for retention and recruitment for new teachers fulfilling vacancies for our retired teachers i think should be at the forefront of what we're doing going forward thank you ma'am miss wilson
119thank you for coming this evening um i would like to ask you what to have you found the most challenging in the work that you do in your teaching career because you have selected a challenging path in education so what would you find to be the most challenging in your career as a teacher certainly education is my career that's what i pride myself on is is my my current i'm just enrolled actually to pursue my doctorate in education so it's not um continuing that but it's diving in and encouraging others just as i was saying keeping our teachers motivated preventing that burnout i love working with kids i love working with adults adult learners but it's keeping that motivation going and finding a team of other people who are who are like-minded in that and
120have those same ideals and passion to continue that learning and and motivation thank you hi miss wilson my question for you is what differentiates you from the other candidates and or board members i think i bring a fresh unique perspective having worked in a neighboring district i think that i know that i can bring that perspective from another district and know what's going on in the trenches there and provide that here in burke county having been born and raised in burke county and a product product of burke county public schools i have a desire to see burke county schools perform do well see our students grow graduate do go on to do things in community colleges workforce development i just have that passion to see burke county schools do great things and my perspective in
121my role as a compliance lead i think i have the the policy under my belt where federal federal state local policies where most people shy away from that i'm a nerd and i like that case law for exceptional children i'm a weirdo our ec director and i we we like to dive into what we call the ec bible and look into um case law studies and and learn from what other people have not done well from and grow from that so i think those weird things about myself i think i can provide a fresh perspective to this board thank you okay right so what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to this board and make us a better board my passion for kids and specifically students with special needs my
122entire career has been built around students with special needs i love all kids but those specifically have my heart i've taught elementary high school i currently am as i said the compliance lead in catawba county so i'm working with teachers of all levels of education as well as district leadership so just my passion for kids in general and and adult learners as well i love coaching teachers seeing them learn and grow so i think that's my gift just seeing people learn and grow okay thank you thank you miss wilson for sharing your talents with kids and for being willing to share your talents here in burke county i appreciate your time i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem
123facing educators and administrators is in discipline in the classrooms and schools how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in discipline within our school district ensuring that the framework is built in the schools to support administrators and teachers for the in-discipline in the classroom we have to be sure that that's there first and foremost while also acknowledging that while we may see maladaptive behaviors occurring in the classroom we also have to support our administrators and our teachers through that process so we while students may have those acting out behaviors we also have to recognize what's going on at home what are those environmental aspects that we may not see at school so while we have board policies that we have to implement we also have to recognize just
124like in the exceptional children's world what are those outlying factors that we need to recognize thank you well we hope you become dr wilson i know you want to be dr wilson i i i know for the experience it sounds like you've had you hear stories that never many of us never hear relationships with kids that none of us never hear that even their parents don't hear how would you as a member of this board react to teaching us or doing carrying out the fact to let all these kids every child in the system know they are of value ensuring that we have social emotional processes in place within our schools whether it's a program i know in catawba county we have programs such as teach town second step providing [Music] information bids whatever it
125may be as a board for our administrators our faculty to ensure that kids are feeling the love at school to know that they are quality citizens within our school system that they may not feel when they're at home but when they're at school that they are feeling love and support when they're at school with us thank you good thank you so much thank you good evening it's good to see you good to see y'all okay um mr johnson is going to be he's in the phone there and he's going to ask you your first question and then we'll move around this way all right mister johnson you're ready all right sir good evening um my question is what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you
126like the district to deal with those issues well i've watched a lot of the meetings lately i know that you're dealing with a lot of different things uh i think the book ban is one thing that you're dealing with also the covet is another thing that certainly you're dealing with so there are some issues that i think this board is going to have to address and has addressed in the past all right thank you sir mr gary mr ogle thank you for coming this evening and thank you for contributing 37 years long years in teaching and being in administration as principal how uh what are your greatest streaks from i'm sorry i'm having a hard time okay i'm having a hard time here what are your greatest strengths that you bring to the board throughout
127your career as a teacher and principal what strengths do you bring and also how has that prepared you to serve on the board of education well i think the greatest strength that i have is treating kids fairly all the way through my career i always kind of give the kids the benefit of the doubt a lot of times or the students that's that's one thing that i prided myself in to make sure that they were treated fairly and the second part of that question was what ma'am how has that prepared you to serve on the school board if you were selected well i think i think that's what we've got to do as a board is to make sure that we are in the business of students and kids and that students are being treated
128fairly for whatever reason it may be that you're treated fairly and i would like to see this board make sure that they do that that they're treated fairly treated with respect uh i don't think you can do anything more i think that's the test that the board of education has is to make sure that students are treated fairly thank you [Music] hello hey there how are you good how are you i'm well thank you very much again it's warmed up a little bit today yeah yeah just a little bit um my question for you is what should or could we do as a district to better prepare our students to be citizens that's a broad question but i think i think the thing that our schools have to do and you as a board have
129to do is to make sure that we have the right teachers in place the best teachers in place i think we have to retain teachers i think paying teachers more would get the best teachers in place and and his second part and repeat that question again how can we better prepare our students as citizens okay well there's there's a couple things i think we can do uh i think we've got to track them as far as career goes i know that probably the cte program in the schools is very very important and i think we've got to track those students prepare those students then also you've got to prepare students from college i don't know what the percentage is of burke county students that are going to college right now or i don't know how
130they are going to technical schools but i think we've got to prepare them for one or the other either go into the workforce or continue their education thank you yes all right can you hear me okay what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to this board and make us a better board what is my greatest gift and how can you bring that to us and make us a better board i think i think my greatest gift is caring for people and in the board of education and in the realm of burke county public schools i think caring for students staff administrators teachers i would care about them i think that's a gift that i have that's something i've always tried to do is to care for people to treat people
131fairly and that's what i would want to do thank you mr ogle thank you for your service to burke county thank you i am a product of your investment i appreciate you yes i remember you well and i i can attest he um he did care he always cared he stood at the door he knew you by name it's not forgotten i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character i'm having such a hard time hearing that i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in their schools and classrooms how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in discipline within the school
132district well i think it goes back miss taylor when i was working in the school system as an administrator we had a we had a very clear discipline policy that you had to follow and i think i think you've got to do that as an administrator i think that's what you've got to do uh you know strike one let's document it strike two let's document strike three let's go a little bit farther so i know if leslie taylor came into the office it was the first time it may be a warning second time parents third time we need to go a little bit further but i think you've got to follow the discipline plan and the discipline policies but there again you've got to be fair about the thing but i think i don't think
133there's any question about administrator or teacher if you follow the discipline policies thank you very much yes you're welcome what i want to know did miss taylor ever get paddled uh i don't remember her but i will tell you this i have some students that come up to me every now and then say you paddled me and i said well did you deserve it and they said yes i said end of story i appreciate you've answered my questions i i i think mr ogle because you certainly you talked about being fair and respectful of the children and uh and and as a board member i'm convinced that you'd bring the fact that they are valued that each child is valued no matter what they are what color they are what that city they are that
134there's value to that uh would you bring that to the board i think so i think you would i think i would yeah you've come out of the trenches and i thank you for what you've done thank you i i just uh you know the only fairness i think a lot of the kids would get is fairness from the schools many times i'm not sure the home always is fair to students grandparents sometimes aren't fair to to the grandchildren but in schools i think we really really need to be fair okay and not only to the students but i thank the staff and and teachers uh i've always tried to be fair and honest and open and you feel you could be open to the needs of those children you have i think you have
135you've showed that thank you thank you thank you [Music] thank you i'd like to say that i appreciate your time and i know that your job is not an easy job and i wish you the best in what you do you're facing a lot of different circumstances and situations right now more so than we did 20 years ago in the schools and uh i think i think the thing that you've got to do we've got to do is to make sure that we are fair to all of our students and we're doing the right thing for them and i think that's the bottom line that's what we're here for that's why you're here that's why people have jobs because we have the students there thank you all for your time thank you [Music] good evening
136hi hi we're glad to have you with us glad to be here thank you you're welcome mr johnson's in the phone and he's going to ask you the first question okay thank you all right mr johnson you're ready all right here um my question is what are some major issues that you believe our school district is currently facing and how would you like the district to deal with those issues well i think the the elephant in the room is coveted 19 and i hear a lot of folks say we're going to get back to normal we're going to return to normal and i really think that's impossible we're going to be entering a new normal and burke county just like every other school system in the country is going to have to figure out what
137new normal looks like for burke county what makes sense for our students and parents and families and teachers so that's issue number one i think issue number two is figuring out how we as a school district respond to the growing needs of our citizens i've been the department of social services board chair for the last six years and i see exponential growth in the rate of foster care and the rate of children coming under care adults coming under care and so all of those sort of social issues that affect our communities are running right through the heart of burke county schools as well so let's say those are the top two for sure all right thank you sir good evening dr jolly thank you for coming tonight and being interested in serving on the board
138of education i have to say uh your phone call to me that one day was took me back there's not a lot of people that call you up and say i want to serve on the school board so i appreciate your interest in asking about the position that dr uh dr eichard had was open through his death you've had a long career and education and i know you mostly through grace episcopal church i actually probably know a whole lot more about you than a lot of folks in town i'm going to keep that secret right pardon me we're going to keep that secret no it's all good i be serving on the discernment committee gave me a lot of background because you were my candidate to vet so i know a lot about your background
139as well and spending hours on the phone with bishops and other folks gave me a wealth of knowledge as to what kind of individual you truly are when you look back on your education and your career what would you say are your greatest strengths and assets that you bring to this board you know i have either attended in person or watched online every meeting you've had virtually for the last year six months or so and and i think the the thing that really gave me pause and and said this is something i want to be a part of is the work that you all did at your last board meeting when you had a a long and thorough presentation by dr honeycutt when you were talking about um the do's and the don'ts around wearing
140masks and those sorts of things and the ways that you guys are able to work together as a board even though you disagree even though you're public about your disagreements and come together for the future of burke county and our students and parents and staff that's something that i think i would bring to the table as somebody who's able to hear a diversity of views if you've never been a a pastor or so in front of a congregation you always encounter a diversity of views and they will take time out of their busy day to tell you those diversity of views and so that's something that i've had to to live with all of my professional life as well as in my academic work i was also an ncaa soccer official and have refereed a
141national championship tournament so i know what it's like to make the right decision when people disagree with you thank you dr jolly hello dr jolly hi how are you i'm well very good my question is given all of the issues that arise you've mentioned two of them new populations coming in diverse populations as well as cloven 19 how can we as the board stay focused on student academic achievement well number one is listening to the students listening to what their needs are and i was blown away by the two great public comments that happened at the last four meeting from from burke county students i think also is as a board as we have to do in all of our schools is to do our homework you provided a wealth of information really to to
142dig in and ask those good deep hard questions that you guys do i think really really is important to to familiarize yourself with the various and sundry needs and concerns that are going on across the county thank you all right dr jolly what is your greatest gift and how can you bring that gift to this board and make us a better board well again i think that my life experience has put me in a lot of situations where i've had to work together with with people and i think one of the things that i've come to learn in my personal and professional life is that no one person can do it all that's why there's not just one seat on the dais tonight it takes everyone it takes a a real team and a sense
143of working together and i think that i bring the gifts and skills not only from my my professional and personal background but also in in thinking about the work that i've done in the community here in morganton and in burke county over the last many years to work together to work as a team okay thank you thank you dr jolly for coming and thanking and taking interest in the school board like you have the last last few meetings we appreciate your time i feel it's important for schools to foster and build good character a core attribute of sound character is self-discipline and a core problem facing educators and administrators is in discipline in the schools and classrooms how would you as a board member plan to support administrators and teachers to address in-discipline within the
144school district well the first thing i would say is what's discipline for is it you've done something wrong so i'm going to punish you or there's a better way forward and let's work together to create a better way forward i would really want to equip and empower educators at all levels both in the classroom and at the principal level even superintendent level and issues that come before the board to think about discipline as a way that we can work together in a corrective action to do what's best for that particular family thank you well uh father doctor you got a lot of titles [Laughter] but i'm the doctor of his cat so yeah but um you're sort of in the business here but how as a board member do we bring to this collectively to
145assure that every student in this system is safe and above all valued valued as a person irregardless of many different aspects that that can bring before us yeah that is the question right that is the question is to make sure that every student is valued i think that that works at all levels we make sure that every teacher is valued every teacher's assistant is valued every principal is valued and and and that continues to kind of create a culture of where every person is seen for uh their personhood and what they bring to the table i think that we have to work as leaders to foster others in that way and and to set expectations and hold people accountable to that standard thank you dr jolly thank you okay yeah yes okay if it's okay
146with the board can we call a five-minute reset yeah we'll come right back thank you okay no we're going to vote we're getting ready to vote and then after that we're going to go into place is all arresting closed all right thank available i believe we're ready miss campbell yeah thank you all right good evening board members you have now completed the interview portion for the appointment to the vacant board seat and now the next item on your agenda is how you'd like to proceed with that and you have several different options the first option is you do not have to take by law any action tonight so if you wanted to to think about it until your next meeting that is certainly an option that's available to you the second option would be to
147go ahead and take action tonight and that second option has two possibilities the first is that this board previously used a procedure in which you voted by ballot now certainly anyone who is appointed to fill the vacant seat has to have the affirmative vote of a majority of the board so that would still be four votes so it's if someone got three votes and they were the highest vote getter that would still not appoint them to the board it's going to take four formative votes affirmative votes of this board the other thing about the ballot process of course under north carolina law this is an entirely open session proceeding so you would sign each ballot with your name and once the meeting is over those ballots the actual pieces of paper would be public record
148as you know mr johnson has had to join by phone this evening so if you choose to go the ballot route he will be emailing his ballot to the board secretary and his vote will be available just like all of the other ballots after this evening for public inspection the other way to do it would be simple motion and second in a majority vote so certainly under the law too one of you could just simply make a motion to appoint a certain person if they got a second and if they got four votes that person would be appointed to the board and that would be the end of it so now madam chair just up to the board how you want to proceed among those three options okay is there some discussion about how you'd
149like to proceed i think maybe this is the ballads yeah it was that you know okay it was the president already said so i think we should feel more i think it worked well all right is that right with aaron i'll just move up here yeah that's a problem so aaron you heard that you okay with ballot yes i'm just a few seconds behind y'all but yeah i hurt you okay and you would be emailing your ballots to ms hoffman yes sir thank you okay all right so we need to make a motion to do that i think it would be appropriate for you to be in motion second and the board to vote on that procedure okay i think so too all right okay go ahead go ahead no that's all right okay that's
150fine i'd like to make a motion that we continue with our selection process by ballot vote do i have a second i second that thank you all those in favor please say your name jane sahovic yes tiana sims yes wendy craven yes leslie taylor yes yes aaron johnson yes all right thank you that passes we will proceed okay so i think at this time this huffman has ballots said mr johnson if you will go ahead and email the name of the person that you would like to appoint to the board i believe the process is that board members will put one name and one name only on the ballot okay sir thank you and sign your name [Music] and miss craven while miss huffman is tallying the ballots you can either have her read the
151result or she can provide it to you and you can read themselves whichever way you'd like to see she will need to obviously check her laptop and mr johnson's so okay we have four individuals with votes would you like to look at this mr campbell uh yes i think it would be appropriate you can announce which individuals got votes and how many things okay all right um seth p hunt jr three votes gerald hyde one vote bradley camp one vote and marshall jolly one vote okay so board members as i said no one received four votes so you'll now need to proceed to a second ballot and just you now know who was received the vote you are free to change your vote this is a brand new vote you can vote for anyone you
152want but we will continue to vote until someone gets four affirmative votes of the board so now we'll proceed to the second ballot thank you mr campbell how many times we have not discussed how many votes we're going to have this evening miss uh you would vote until someone is elected okay because i know the last time it was a certain number and i just wanted to clarify that the board will need to appoint someone so if at some point you decided to stop voting by ballot you would need to take a motion but by law you just have to continue to vote until somebody gets four votes and i'm glad you asked that question because it's important that the public understands that no one will be appointed to this board until they receive four
153affirmative dates this is like a filibuster it could go on for two days again dr hemp street it will go on until someone receives before a forward event all good people [Music] okay we're down to three seth p hunt jr three votes gerald hyde two votes and marshall jolly one vote madam chair again the board will need to vote again since no candidate received four affirmative dates so we'll proceed to a third ballot thank you so hmm okay we still have the same three people seth hunt with three votes gerald hyde with two and marshall jolly with one so madam chair the board is deadlocked at this point your choice is to have another vote or to wait until your next meeting and try again let's try one more time thank you linda [Applause] so
154all right seth hunt with three votes gerald hyde with two votes and marshall jolly with one so so again madam chair i think at this point uh it is the pleasure of this board you can proceed again or you can let everyone think about the candidates and try again at your next meeting what's your wishes do you like to try one more time or do you want to wait till the next meeting i think we move for the next meeting okay how [Music] do we have to stick to the same method as we've been doing or since we we're in a gridlock it apparently appears can we mostly just do a verbal vote or although yeah again it is the pleasure of the board if the board would like the board there can be a
155motion naming a person if it receives a second and that if it receives four votes then that would end it you're regardless it has to be four votes write it on the paper or raise your hand that's right so i mean if we seem to be stuck we might give it a little particularly no you can keep going i mean is there a motion that we can narrow it down to the top two vote getters and then we decide as a board from there this next room [Music] never been asked that question can narrow it down to the top two there is no statutory process for how you select a board member other than there must be a majority vote for the person elected so on that basis yes i think if the board wanted
156to say that you will do one more round to determine the top two and then a round after that to determine the person that would be acceptable because again the law only requires that four of you in the end vote for the same person okay so you could do that yes and that's a good idea all right we need to decide something i agree somebody like to make that motion i'd like to make the motion that we narrow it down to the two top vote getters that we have now which is seth hunt and gerald hyde and that will be the choices that we have available okay anyone want a second that a circuit okay all those in favor please say your name [Music] jane sahlwich no sims yes wendy craven yes leslie taylor yes
157don ham street yes mr johnson can he hear me aaron johnson yes okay all right so that's so we'll do a final ballot then would you like to do it by ballot again okay we'll do a ballot with those two names and i think mr johnson's hearing great he just has that about 15 seconds okay um [Applause] so hmm so madame sure if you don't mind i'll just read the results so mr hunt received three votes mr hyde received two votes and one board member uh did not vote so legally again no candidate received four events okay so again this ballot did not result in the appointment of a board member and again your choices now again are to wait and try again at the next meeting or see if someone wants to make a
158voice vote and obviously the board is still deadlocked i have a question how long can we have this deadlocked how long can this be deadlocked again there is no statutory time frame and the problem is that the board has to there have to be four votes so as a legal matter if you stayed deadlocked i do not know of a legal way to satisfy this the statute does not talk about appointment by the superior court judge the statute says this board will appoint so the easy answer to the question is someone is going to have to change their vote so that there will be four votes otherwise this board will stay a six member board until that happens thank you you're welcome [Music] y'all wanna try one more time or do you just wanna wait
159to the next meeting one more time all right dr him street says one more time i suggest one more time [Music] thank you [Music] all so [Music] we have mr hunt with three votes and mr hyde with two so i guess we just need to take this up at our next meeting i will bring some good remember we'll put that on our agenda at our next meeting madam chair would you like the motion the statutory site for closed session yes okay the motion would be for the board to go into closed session pursuant to gs 143 318-1183 to discuss matters covered by the attorney-client privilege i'd like to make a motion to go into closed session right second second all right all those favorite james yes tiana sims yes leslie taylor yes yeah okay and
160then i need to hear from aaron and mr johnson aaron aaron johnson yes that's the majority in closing we're in closed session thank you so we're doing c e d f all right at this time i would like to ask miss michaels to please come forward and give us some updates good afternoon or night i've had a long afternoon so just wanted to share some of the data for you all in my monthly update so going back to the week of 110 through 116 we had 597 total positives for students and staff and then 1 568 total quarantines for students and staff that was the week where we went mass mandate for tuesday through friday last week 117 through 123 there was no students on campus with limited staff on campus so the numbers are
161not accurate at all it's only the parents and staff that reported in to the nurses and so recorded there's 148 positive students and staff and 204 quarantines for students and staff and those were mostly non-school exposures obviously with a few staff exposures at school so that is the data update we move on talking about the alternatives for contact tracing i know we discussed several times this year about trying to lighten the load on our school nurses we met with contact tracers back in the fall and after consulting with ms michaels and some other folks with the contact tracers that group was not willing to be flexible with us and in fact it was going to put more work on our nurses so with some guidance from miss michaels we chose not to do contact tracing
162with an outside group back in the fall we reached back out to the agency about two weeks ago and miss michaels has made some great strides with this group by taking a lot of the work off of our school nurses we still are required to provide some sort of assistance to the contact tracers but they will be remote getting information from our school nurses so miranda i'll let you kind of talk more about that so i've had three meetings with the cctc which is the group that comes in and do it it that does it in collaboration with the health department so um we've kind of come up with a plan where the nurses would handle the positive students and staff and the symptomatic students and staff and then with the help of teachers identify
163any close contact exposures to those positives and then we would hand that list off to the cctc staff members and they would make all contacts with the families they would let them know if they would determine exemptions to quarantine as well as give them return to school dates and then they would share a spreadsheet back with us that has the return dates for students and staff and that would be shared with the data manager the principal and the school nurse any questions that would be related to exposures would be directed to the cct staff and not the nurses or the school if with this possibility we would be just turning everything over to them and be on their timeline for working with the families are the nurses happy with that i haven't haven't discussed it
164and with them some of them were included um and looking at this plan but at this point um it like we discussed last time is just more than we can handle right now so it would be a huge help to get this piece off of them yeah and you know our nurses are very dedicated the hard thing that our nurses are having to do right now is to let go of something that they've worked so hard to maintain so that's that's something that miranda has worked hard to try to get them to understand and this isn't we don't think that they can do it we're just trying to lighten the load for the nurses i mean they're they're doing an amazing job trying it's just it's taking away from their own health and emotional stability
165and time with their families and we've tried for a long time our goal has always been to keep students healthy and safe and in school and covet has thrown all that though because it's making us send home um just about everyone but i mean the nurses have really tried to keep the school a safe environment and that's why they i mean they care so much and knowing that there's kids in class the next day that shouldn't be there and potentially you know spreading it that's what keeps them working to 10 and 11 at night so taking this piece off of them knowing that someone else has taken the reins on that where we can focus on the positive students and staff and those that are sick and some adding back in some school nursing duties
166um would be most helpful yes definitely because i know and i think i'm speaking for all of us we've been very concerned about our nurses because we know we hear that you know they are so they are so overwhelmed and i mean they can't keep up with it i mean we could keep up with this and when the guidance changes three times in a week or in a week and a half and there's just little direction to follow so do you have like a flow chart of how the information would flow so that we kind of have a like just a just a picture of it so where you know you get the information of the positive case it goes to the nurse or then it goes to cc tc yep cc so the nurses
167would be identified of a positive case and then they would reach out to the teachers and get help you know who was within six feet for 15 minutes and meets that definition um and then that list would be input into a spreadsheet and that's where the cctc staff picks that up from this from the spreadsheet and they um and i haven't seen it yet because we're they're trying to build that based on we still have to have this pro plan approved by the health department and mr scalise does have it and he said he would get to it tomorrow and get that back over to us and so once we get that it'll be one to two weeks according to cctc to get it implemented in our county but the spreadsheet would have basically if
168they were exempt when they make first contact with the family um if they determine an exemption and then if when their return date is from what i understand but what it takes off of them is making all those calls yes the calls really yeah still kind of tracking what names come across that spreadsheet but the only thing that's moving off of them is really the cause it's really just a call center and then forcing of the calls and that's why it has the plan now is a lot better than what they presented in the fall because in the fall they wanted us to do all of that and enter a whole lot more information on that spreadsheet than what we're entering now and then they wanted us to go into their cctos which is their
169system that they document in and try to read the notes from the conversations to know when the kid was going to come back to school and just i mean that was going to be more time than the nurses could just do it themselves so with this and we can always tweak it if it's not working but at least this takes it off of the nurse trying to make multiple phone calls to families to determine you know should they go home should they not when can they come back what's going on with the family and then trying to police that when they come back i think we're still running into the issue of lag and test results and when we get the information you know our nurses were doing all they can as far as contacting
170families they didn't get retest results on a positive case until like five days later and so by then is the weekend you know quarantining and exclusion from school was intended to help slow the spread of the virus when you're getting a call on a sunday night that your kid was exposed eight days earlier that's not helping anything it's just like we're just running around in circle and just trying to grab and pick and pull what we can and that's nothing on it's just the whole system is not supporting what's going on yes we understand that's the frustration is not fight you know waiting i don't even know that really that the ccti i mean yeah the calls will come off of them but it's just it's just really a call center we do feel that
171it they're willing to tweak with us as we do this for a couple weeks and if we have some areas that we see that we want to try to improve on this group's willing to work with us more so than the other group was i don't think we're able to take contact tracing completely away um we have to right we can either turn it over to the health department or to the cctc and i know the health department is really behind um in calls and that's wonderful i think the health department because i'm not sure how much i guess my next question is expense how much would this cctc cost us nothing it is free yes because i know you know our health department and which dr swan if you don't mind to look into
172this you know they receive funding back august the ninth they sign for a grant for and fifteen thousand dollars and it's the 361 elc reopening of schools um liaison and it went to the burke county health department but this grant was specifically for um you know screening [Music] testing all that money and after checking with margaret pierce all of that grant that's been used from the health department is fifteen thousand dollars now that might be our liaison person that's um that's going between helping collect numbers but um you know if there's not plans for that other hundred thousand dollars you know we could we could work together and make sure that about that and that could be their call center or something yeah okay yes ma'am say aaron mr say that again mr johnson i'm
173sorry if i cut someone off there what's the amount of that grant that miss 115 000 and 15 000 of it has been dropped down so far since august that's all it's been used since august and they've got five more months to use that they have five months to use that the remaining funds pardon me is any more questions mr johnson okay okay okay so to kind of follow up with with what leslie was saying i understand believe me i do that the health department may be you know bogged down with making calls and doing tests and everything like that but we cannot leave i don't i don't feel right leaving this on our nurses when we have kids who have disabilities need medications and things of that nature and according to the cdc contact
174tracing in its in its entirety should be left with the local health department so is there any barriers legal or otherwise as to why we could not pass this solely off to the local health department not saying not to collaborate but this being housed under them completely because we would you know if they identified someone within our school systems then i mean sure we can let them know right you know but and and i will investigate into that but i would say that where our nurses whoever takes over the contact tracing our nurses are still going to have to do as much as what they're going to have to do with the ccit cc yeah so i mean that's something miss sims i'll definitely reach out to mr scalise to find out but as i
175think mr campbell you want to address the contact tracing so again it is a matter of reviewing the details which the board is asking some wonderful questions about this right now the law the book ends of the law is that you are not required to actually perform contact tracing and we've said that before the other book end is that you are required to cooperate and provide information that is needed for contact tracing so the hard part is where do you want to allocate time and resources in the middle of those two bookends and i think that's what you're trying to work through right now but you do have to provide information and i think the sims are asking well what is the absolute bare minimum that we could provide right yeah don't make me laugh
176i know that gleam in your eye so we would need to look into that again the you know the law again is almost has to be a little vague on this because these laws were all written long before covet and each pandemic is going to be different the severity of each pandemic is going to be different i mean if you took something with an incredibly high mortality rate then i don't think frankly we would be having this conversation and i think reasonable people kind of agree with that so these are all excellent questions we would need to look at what is the bare minimum i think what your administration has brought you is what their best recommendation is but they would have to provide information to these folks well and see the reason i asked
177was because i i just i looked on the cdc website right i actually went to cdc.gov and got this information word for word that health departments are responsible for leading case investigations and contact tracing if the health department learns a person is confirmed or probable probable that's the word case of covet 19 and it was in this setting they would contact the school the employer whoever it is to let them know hey we have this person who has came into our office we've confirmed they are a confirmed case of cobit or a probable case of covid can you check into that that seems more feasible than us identifying possible probable and then sending out 2 000 kids sure i feel should be housed at the health department especially if we have a hundred thousand dollars
178that needs to be spent in the next five months right and the layer that you've got to add everything you've just said obviously is correct the letter you have to add to it is the state of north carolina again has something called control measures and exclusion from school is a lawful control measure so you must cooperate with the control measure so the cdc is not going to speak to that at all right so you not only have to look at the cdc's guidelines you also have to look at north carolina's guidelines and that's what your administration is trying to figure out what does it look like for us to cooperate with the control measure and the cdc is not going to answer that question so if we that's a north carolina okay so with us
179having a control measure right so that's that exclusion so if we were to get a call as burke county public schools that johnny has tested positive or probable case of covid from the health department from there we would cooperate and collaborate with the health department to identify who little johnny has been around within that perimeter of 15 minutes and six six feet and stuff like that right but all of that still would be housed with them identifying as opposed to our nurses having to do that correct correct but we would still have to take that principals and schools have certain duties in north carolina so we'd also have to look at those duties it's not always a one-way street sometimes there's a requirement for the schools to report the positive case rather than the schools
180just receiving the positive case so i guess you know step one was does the board want to look at this other group doing it and then kind of looking at those details so very good questions thank you absolutely miranda how do you how do you feel that the nurses would take having this responsibility taken off of them and given to another group to manage i think you know anything they would be appreciative of anything we can do to help lighten their load at this time to get back to school nursing at the same time i think it will be a struggle for them um just to know that um you know not they're not controlling in any way it is it's a nurse thing and we want to keep everybody as safe as we can
181so and they all have big hearts and amazing nurses so that piece is going to be hard for them i think but at the same time we have fought hard for a long time and i mean honestly when that bell rings it it it's whatever in the community so you know we're we're trying to control school but you know people are still going everywhere during the 14 16 hour days they're working all weekend you know i'm i'm afraid we're going to start losing nurses either through health risk or we're going to start losing nurses because they're going to start leaving because they've just had all they can take yeah yes that that is my concern if that happens it's ours too miranda have you pulled them and asked them i mean have you sat down
182with them all and come in here and have a meeting and say what do you this is what we can do if you ask we have not because the plan's not approved yet and we had to bring it here tonight so um if we're going to pursue this piece of it then you know we can have a meeting with the nurses i did invite an elementary middle and high school nurse to the cctc meetings so they could kind of give a perspective from each level what that would look like for them and they were thankful it's just hard to kind of picture how it's going to work um because we're still having to turn over that information but um we can't you know police that once we turn it over it's there and we try
183we could try it if we didn't like it we could always back off of it you're not signing a contract on or anything all right right no i'd hate to you know try and not like it and try something else and i like it i mean you think about that and from a health care perspective after you've you've turned 360s and two another 90 degrees and then you turn it around a different direction and it gets to be a lot too you're not in any better shape if you do that i mean you know you know what i'm saying yeah going back and forth see what they find out about you know a little bit you know it keep taking us completely out of it but um before we jump into the contact like i
184don't want to start it and then we find out we don't have to do it like the guidance has changed so much and i mean they're all confused i'm confused i mean and if you recall the pulled testing that we started back in the fall that was a something that was we had grant funds for it we tried it and then within a few weeks it wasn't working our pool wasn't large enough to even constitute good numbers so that was something that we had to abandon it's like it was just like within the last you know few weeks that you it's mainly the lag intestine too that we're we're finding in the lack of rapid tests yes the health department does have the clinic going on now for four weeks starting today the next four
185weeks yeah it's monday through friday i believe it's nine to four and but it's pcr testing rapidly so it's two days they're saying two days two days is what they're guaranteeing i guess with the lab that they have um but that's it's not wrapping in were you able to get the masks the k you know they did come in today we ordered as many as we can i want to say it was upwards around three i'm not mistaken okay uh we also ordered some extra testing kits um with some funding that we had and we already have distributed thousand masks that we already had um we had seven thousand kn 92s 90 95s and then we had about 2 000 and 95s yes all right so what do you need from us all right give
186me a little time i'll do some the research that y'all had requested um that might help with getting some extra testing and stuff like that i'll report back and go from there yep always supportive thank you you're welcome thank you yeah go ahead thank you all right um in my absence last week we the board talked to administration about coming up with kind of a metric system to look at um so dr ogten myself and miss michaels we kind of looked at different counties cumberland county i believe was one and you'll see a model from caldwell and a model alexander and caldwell both use the similar models so each one came up with a similar type of metric system to use so over the course of a week two weeks three weeks we looked at
187different things running numbers and then every sunday if the board chose to go with a metric system there would be a call out from burke county public schools telling the parents this week the upcoming week would be mask optional or mask required so dr ogten is going to kind of talk more about some of the more specific models that we have we outline pros and cons of those models so that the board we can we can talk about each one so like dr swann said we did some research with some other districts and tried to look to see what it is they're using to help inform their masking decisions so the first option we put together is modeled after cumberland county it takes into account account four different data points i'm sorry three different data
188points for the week um two of the data points look at a more immediate trend and one of them looks at a more of a long term trend so the first data point would be the percent positive students and staff for the previous week the second point would be the number of positive cases in burke county schools in the last three weeks and then the third point would look at total students and staff quarantined the previous week so just to give you some examples of what that would look like at different points if we had this in place back in the week of october the 4th through october the 10th you can see that we had .36 of our students and staff um positive and so that fell into the green zone and these are
189just the thresholds that cumberland county use so those can be adjusted by the board if you like we i talked to some colleagues in different counties and they they talked to local hospitals doctors their health department thresholds started at 0.3 went up to as high as 0.7 most of the ones the models that we looked at agreed on a 0.5 and if you think of burke county over the last two years our threshold to get the masks or actually getting back into remote or going on remote was 0.5 so that's kind of the threshold that our administration felt was a good model to follow and as dr otton said it definitely can be tweaked to meet the needs of burke county and so that same week you can see the positive cases in the last
190three weeks which is the long-term data point was in the red so that makes me think the previous two weeks before that were significant in number they had 240 total and then the third data point was the total number of students and staff quarantined and they're 1.89 which fell in that yellow zone and so if you look at this kind of metric what we would suggest is if two of the three are in the green or the yellow mass can be optional if they're in the orange or the red the mass will be required so you can see in october that that for that week for the following week october 11th those masks would be optional based on those data points and what we would do we would plug in the new numbers for that
191the week of the 10th or the 11th and then update it that following sunday all the numbers will be calculated sunday night and we'd send a call out to families on sunday night another example is in november when things were looking much better in burke county you can see that we had all three data points in the green and yellow zones so mass would be optional based on that data in november moving on into january you can see when things really got a little hairy for us around here our numbers really spiked and everything ended up in the red so if we had this in place we would have had the the ability to go mask required at that point without a monthly vote this is something that could ebb and flow each sunday the
192other option is one that's used i know for sure in caldwell county and alexander county and it's based off of one data point but it's a three-week rolling average so it takes into account more of a long-term trend um so bert county would calculate um that should actually be sundays when we start looking at our tracking sheet i think it'd be much easier to calculate on sunday versus wednesday um again the three-week rolling average and we would recommend it the threshold of 0.5 but again that's something the board could consider to to um manipulate a little if you'd like so looking at those same weeks like the week of october 11th looking at this metric system again mass will be required under this system um the following week of october 18th they would have been
193optional so you can kind of see how it would ebb and flow from week to week as the average changed moving into november when things were good again again mass optional we look at the total percent positive we average those three we're at 0.14 percent week of january 10th when things again were getting a little bit crazy you can see that we were at 1.16 total positive with students and staff so at that point mass would be required so you might be thinking so what does it look like if we had looked at if we had this in place for this week what were we looking at so just to quickly take a glance you heard me into earlier say that last week's data was a little bit sketchy just because we didn't have students
194and staff in the building so we did calculate that week however um you can see that there were two in the yellow zone and one in the red but again we felt like it'd be more more conducive free to look at the previous week when we had everybody in school so if you look at the previous week you can see that have we had this in place 4.3 percent of our students and staff were positive which was in the red we had 1269 cases in burke county schools um in the last three weeks and then we had 15.9 percent total staff and students quarantined which again put them in the red if you look back at the other metric system what would january 24th look like again it's a three week rolling average so it
195really heavily weights the two previous weeks and not so much the immediate week so that one data week when we had a little bit of a catch in our data a little hiccup in our data there it it wasn't as impacted as it would have been if we'd use the other metric system so we would still be at 3.07 and mass would be required what questions do you have thank you for doing this absolutely so so cumberland county this was cumberland counties right the the very first the uh two three four and five were cumberland county yes ma'am the other one was caldwell okay but this wasn't like a three-week rolling average this was just the week prior because it was interesting it will change a little bit uh our our recommendation we we really
196like the the second one the metric but here again because with the cumberland county model on 10 4 to 10 10 and i know that they're we're different we're different places and different data but this was our data right yes live data so that was our live data we would have been mask optional that week and if we went with a three-week rolling average we would have been mask required [Music] you can see more of a trend um with those numbers in that that model similar to we you almost could see we all knew what was coming that month of january when our numbers skyrocketed we we all read the news um so we knew it was coming but you can almost kind of predict a little bit of that yeah well the three-week rolling
197average gives you a little bit of wiggle room doesn't it i mean this hits it and at least looks to me like if you got a three-week rolling average you've got a little bit of time there to see which way a thing is going to go i mean you know this can be wham and then you check it in a week and it could be all over the place but there's a mitigation period in there that maybe the thing's slowing down it looks like to me on the thing because if you just hit one number and say well we're going to take the mask off and then wham you're going to be right back back up again next week again i think and if you guys like that three week rolling it sounds like uh
198miranda you come what do you what is your feel on that um i i we met today and so that's what we went with this um the second model um and one of the factors that we liked about just looking at the positivity rate was the fact that quarantines is included in this one and if we're going to turn that over we probably are not going to have that data or have it very accurately and then the toolkit always seems to change surrounding quarantines like how long who's going to quarantine who's not the definition changes so that was one reason we felt like the just looking at the positives um may be more beneficial for our county the three-week rolling average yeah correct and and the board once again we just wanted to present you
199guys with some information some options and you can choose to do these or not so we got to do something don't we yeah well you you have to either you could select on one of these or you would go back and make the vote to stay masked optional until the next board meeting i make a motion that we go with the three-week rolling average that is recommended by the administration is there a second on that motion i'll suck at that is there any discussion madam chair before you discuss just to clarify since the statute says you have to vote monthly on whether or not to modify it will still be on your agenda each month but it would be to stick with this plan or change it so you'll still have to take that i
200think we decided that once we have to take it you have to take that vent every month right right but you'd be committing to this plan no no i agree i think we decide to do it every month yeah a lot of this is for the benefit of the public too because i know this can all be very confusing for example again the the terms isolation and quarantine we're not talking about an isolation order or a quarantine order from the health department we're talking about exclusion from school for being a close contact or for being symptomatic um that's a that's a control measure so when we speak of quarantines that's what we're talking about is the control measures i know it can all be very confusing a lot of terms during discussion mr johnson did
201you hear that i just got to the part right there and i just asked if i heard it did you have it do you have any comments any comments so this is just for the tracing so to speak of the cases right yes positive student positive staff positive and then the total percentage of both so as we mentioned if the other one as we hand over the i or the contact tracing we will not no longer have those numbers to go on as solid as our own nurses longer have those numbers to go on see good you good mr johnson okay mr um mr campbell if you would just in our discussion here if you would please explain about the masking and the quarantines just one more time for the public sure again part of
202the control measure of exclusion speaks to whether or not you're a mask required or a mask optional district and in a district that is mask required if a student is a you know excuse me in a mask required district there is no need for a student who is a close close contact of a positive student to go home or be excluded from school at all as long as they're not symptomatic if you are in a mask optional environment then the exclusion rule says that if a student is exposed to a positive student and they're not wearing masks that student is going to have to go home for at least five days now under the state's rule if they are not symptomatic they can return on day six wearing a mask that's the state's role and
203that's the rule i understand that burke county will be following but that's the difference between a mask required district and a mass optional district okay all right right well the motions on the floor y'all ready to take a vote okay mr johnson we'll start with you mr johnson you've got the first vote um so mr johnson the the the motion was by mr doctor hem street to go with the second option of our metric system which was a three week rolling average of student positives and student staff positive and then the total percentage which would dictate the masks for the following week with a call out going to our families on sunday night so and that was second by missa hovich so that's the motion on the table right now date night okay i'm sorry
204i'm trying that on the second floor of what i'm seeing okay did you vote mr johnson i didn't hear that i'm sorry can you let me know that i didn't hear that you have to know i'm sorry let me know yeah i hear i can hear you okay yeah i can hear you yeah mr johnson you're getting feedback maybe turn off your computer and um i'll communicate through the phone okay are you there yeah is that better now yeah that's that's much better so did you hear what the motion was mr johnson the motion was for the three weeks average and going forward on based on that whether or not we would go back and forth correct wearing mask and not wearing left yes yes sir okay um right now i'm gonna know them i
205vote for the three-week rolling average yes jane sohovich tiana sims no i couldn't hear what mystery mr johnson voted no okay i'm gonna vote no as well leslie taylor no oh i vote yes okay so the motion uh does not pass and therefore you will continue to vote monthly on the advanced policy and i believe that is the next topic on your agenda i'd like to say something though before we go on the reason i voted no is because i really for me i really like the data that the other metric system shows um and i know about the quarantines and all that but i still think that the more data points we use the better and we could even incorporate the three-week rolling average in it the the i think the more data points
206we put in the better decision-making we will that we will make um i don't mind doing a three-week roll on average but i think we should look at more points instead of just the three-week rolling average i don't want to get anything really complicated but there's just there's more to it than just the three-week rolling average and that that's why i wanted people to know that's why i voted no i want a little more information so what information do you think i really liked and i and dr ham street i think you're right about the three-week i think that's a good point but i also want to know about the number of positive cases um you know it's active yeah active positive cases yes because with our burke county health department there is you know
207your your total cases and your total test and then total total cases from those that have been tested and then over here on the left side of their dashboard they have the active cases just what's currently active so we we would run off the dashboard of the the county's dashboard then i think we're trying to give that yeah you know i'm trying to give staff some or some point that we can make it yeah somewhere we got to draw a line say this is where we can take them off and this is where we can put them on right now we're just yeah we're not making a decision on that but if we were to hand this information over to cctc or the health department we wouldn't have enough information to even formulate this metric
208correct not on the quarantine correct okay so that that's the reason for my note that's where i think it should be housed somewhere else so but we're just kind of shoving the thing down the road we need i think and with what tiana was saying if we do that that still would alleviate the work off of a nurse's thumb right yes that would be correct they still would have to do some of the the contact tracing mr johnson okay i'm just making sure on that because i do need to get them a break for sure yeah i hate to see us put more work on more work on the nurses and i mean the health department has a great metric system on its own that they regularly update so i mean it's not bcps specific
209but it is county specific but if we're wanting to have all of these data points that's asking our nurses to keep this data in-house and i just i don't know how much longer we can we can do how much so is there is there another data point that we could plug in there rather than the quarantines that would give us substantiated information to make that decision we can plug the county data in there i'm afraid the county down to might yeah yeah yeah now i want to keep it for us for vcps i'm just saying i'd like to do more you've got to see this this one here it's got the number of positive cases in burke county public schools in the last three weeks i like that as dr hempstreet's right it kind of
210gives us a predictor but i also like that it has the percent positive students and staff for the previous week so that kind of also keeps us you know up to date and if you don't think we are in a couple weeks if you don't think we're going to be able to get the correct amount of quarantines we will for the next couple weeks because we're not handing that over to the company for at least two weeks so the percent positive two to three weeks before we hand it over students and staff does that mean we're keeping track of who actually tested and then from who was positive from those that actually tested can you answer that the percent positive for students and staff percent positive for students and staff does that mean that we
211are keeping track of who tested and from that number that tested who was positive from that there's the ones we're made aware of that tested positives it's not the percent that tested it's the percent out of all 11 586 whatever that denominator is that i was using as the percentage of all of our students so it's the total like the percent that was positive per total number of 80 of adm right so could we agree to do the percent positive for the previous week and then the rolling average as well and use both of those data points we can do quarantines at least for a couple of weeks we could always drop that point if we needed to but i just feel like we need a little bit more information that's just me i'm just
212one of y'all because the reason i said that is because that one week there we would have been ma if we would have gone just for the rolling average we would have had masks on if we'd have gone with more data points we would have been masked optional in in what they've showed us so i guess what i do is i look at where we are now yeah what's happening now right and we can look back and see but you know this thing is really taken i think in another five six weeks we'll be out of this thing hopefully over the hump but i think we need some measure a metric that we can at least in the three week average will allow us to act quicker yes and it's in there it's in there
213and i agree with dr hempstreet and january i think that's important yes but i'd like to see that the actual how many positive kids a week before and staff we actually had say that again the positives i'd like to see that too i would we have that yeah what's in here yeah i mean could we agree on that at least those two points the three-week ruling average and the percent of the positive percent positive and look at both of those i i can go did that put more work on you moran or the staff is that a big i'm going to defer this could you repeat your question dr hempstreet i said is combining the two is that going to put more work on on the staff like when go ahead what do you want
214to hear what do you oh about the positives the weak prior is that going to be any extra work so what he's asking we will have the positive data okay um for the positive cases that we're made aware of so we will have that so that's not a big deal then no so i think that i think we go with that yeah i think that's a good idea the three-week rolling average and then the positive tested positive from the weak part i mean it's good data yeah okay all right would someone like to make a motion so does that put us to look in that so so to clarify next week miss craven to clarify both metrics need to basically be over the threshold or below the threshold is that correct if we use both
215the different metrics you're going to have they all need to be over the threshold or right below the threshold to either put masks on or take masks off yeah i just want to look at more than one thing and i think though i think if we look at what's the week prior that that point you know i think that that's going to let us know what direction we're going into you know and the rolling average will too so we've got threshold numbers for those points for those two yeah what would be you what would those no excuse me the question point five and hold on so for here you can see that 0.5 put you in the green 0.5 to 1.0 puts you in the yellow if you still want we can change that we
216don't even have to have four zones we could have three if you'd rather and we can adjust those data points if we need to and this and then the orange is one percent to two percent and then red is greater than two for the percent positive and the second data point is number of positive cases but we could change that to percent of positive case well that's the first one really so would this make it to where it could possibly flip from mask optional to mask mandatory week by week yeah that's a lot that's that's that's them as a parent you know what i'm saying that's that's a lot i mean one week where you know make sure you have your mask on next week no mask it's just like so chaotic parents aren't you
217know going to be confused we're going to be confused i just i my answer is still no and it would be hard to get back and forth um as far as the mask required like mr campbell spoke versus mask optional i did want to remind you though on the positives um remember like miss taylor that you mentioned we don't get those results right sometimes until the whole next week but we always put the results in as the week affected so just because we're notified this week that a kid has a positive if their actual test or their symptom onset was last week it goes in last week's data so then how would that affect if it's doing them i mean that's i just um yeah one of my nurses just pointed that out so um
218because we know when i'll give the data i always say the week that i'm reporting on it isn't a true reflection to the end of the next week so that is an issue we can only report on tests that we find out about when we find out about them there's just no easy answer so the way to do it on a one time per month basis is to do the three week rolling average well to do it on one time month per basis you just go back to vote mass cops or mass mandatory okay to do it on a rolling weekly average you would follow one of the metrics and then that would the mass would come off either on that that's monday after the call from burke county schools yeah rather than waiting on
219a vote that's gonna be a lot you know waiting on test results and then running back and putting daddy in well i mean and even keeping up with are we mask optional or mandatory this week i mean when i wake up at 6 30 in the morning and take the kids to work i'm barely human so that's just hard to know and if we have data still coming in you know days after how accurate is our information you know what i'm saying it changed even when we were updating our numbers as of this morning we looked at it we looked back and it had gone up so the numbers definitely do change i mean having the information just to have the information that's great but i don't think we should be basing our information on
220it on a rolling period that's just me [Music] well then we go back to the way we have been doing it and we vote every month we vote once a month on whether we're going to go mass mandate or optional what will be the criteria we base our vote on i'm sorry what will be the criteria we base our vote on whether we well we would miss michaels would continue to give you the updated information we would be in contact with the health department as well as far as right now burke county the positivity rate was 34.5 this morning i believe um if that might be off by a fraction or so but it was around 34 this morning initially when we did all this we looked at five percent or less correct five percent
221or less that's what we wanted we're at 34. it just keeps going up yep so that there again it's just it's continued data that we'd be giving you guys based on uh clusters that we've had throughout the school uh school closures that we that we're notifying everyone of that's the information that you would further your decision on and we will continue to invite uh mr danny scalise too as well right yes all right then i make a motion that we go back to the way we've been doing it we do it once a month we take a vote on it once a month and get the data from the health department and do as we have been doing second all right all those in favor please um vote by name mr johnson we'll start with
222you he may not have heard that mr johnson can you hear me yeah the motion on the floor by ms hovich was to go back to the way the board used to vote on masks which was once a month based on information provided by the health director and miss michael's updates as well to the board did that get your promotion is that legal mr campbell okay okay is he what did he vote yes to that mr campbell said that okay that was legal and just yes and i vote jane sahovic votes yes yes wendy craven yes leslie taylor yes diane m street yes so mandatory all right i make an uh emotion that we keep the mask on we do a mask mandate until next month and we meet what in two weeks in the
223two weeks i think we have a board meeting february 7th i think that's two weeks i know we have a meeting on february the 7th yeah i think that's two weeks where is that's the work session yeah that's yeah okay so we'll make it we can make it special called or whatever we need to all right so what when is the what was your motion my motion is that we go back to the we stay with mask mandate until the next board yes until the next mr johnson miss hovich's motion was that her she recommends that the board stick with masks up through the next board meeting which was february 7th and 2. that mr um can hear the discussion so he can hear everything and just confirm that okay worried about that i think
224with the delay if you should go ahead and let everyone else do it first okay all right i need a second all right dr hempstreet seconds okay now we'll vote mass mandate jane salvage mask mandate okay time assumes no wendy craven yes leslie taylor no donaham street yes mr johnson it's your vote excuse me aaron johnson i'm sorry i didn't hear him okay we got you thank you so the lord had voted to go mass mandatory which is an affirmative action of this board until today and then it expired today the board vote and the vote to continue that in place has just failed if you wanted to firmly go on the record you could now take a vote for mass to be optional and i think that would be a good idea but legally
225there is no mask requirement as of tomorrow in the burke county schools but again taking a vote for mass to be optional until your next meeting would certainly make sure that there was no misunderstanding whatsoever so that's up to you but as of right now legally i just think it'd be a good thing to do to clarify the record is to have a vote on mass being optional um tiana sam is going on the record to make a motion for mask optional effective tomorrow a second leslie taylor second any more any discussion i vote against the mask optional optional may i say something before i vote uh typically it would be after the vote yes madam chair so but if you're asking my legal opinion it would be the way to make a comment after
226the vote which is typical and any board member can make a comment after okay i was just making sure um did we have any discussion on it before we did the vote well no one wendy asked if there was a discussion and no one had any discussion on it all right i'm going to have to vote no leslie taylor mask optional um i vote no on it yes no no i i want to stick with the mask yeah and if you'll say your name for the record sorry we have to do that mr johnson okay it's i mean we went in for two weeks to try to do this the quarantine period everything school was out the positivity rates have hurt correctly i believe lower we're going to have another meeting again in two weeks
227so i'm going to stand with the option for now to see what these uh numbers do with this extra battle so your vote mr johnson for the record is in favor of mask optional as of tomorrow correct correct okay miss craven the meeting is yours all right so i want to clarify myself because i've been drugged through the mud about my opinion and my opinion hasn't changed at all about masks i personally don't think they work very well however this toolkit says that if we ask our students and our staff they can stay in school if they've been exposed a year ago i was the i think i was the only one [Music] who was voting to put the kids back in school most of the other board members wanted to be remote [Music] dr
228hamstring and i had been through this the whole time i will do anything to keep these kids in school and if i have to put an ass on them and the faculty and staff that's what i'm going to do because they we have to think about the greater community at this point and i'm going to save the majority if that's what i have to do that's what i'm going to do whether i like the mask or not and that's where i stand and i hope in a couple of weeks i can go back to mask optional and know i'm not a liar but i'm going to do what i think is right for children and that's where i stand and we're going to make a decision tonight i don't know how much more data we
229need than where the numbers are at now to make a decision to keep the mask on our children and keep them in the classroom i i agree we got to keep i don't get this i truly don't get it i think when you look at the positivity rate it's just off the wall well this this one here is affecting the children this barrier is affecting the children [Music] and we have to make a decision we have to do what's right we have to put our biases aside we have to follow that toolkit whether we think it's ridiculous or not and i personally think it's pretty ridiculous but i'm going to do what's right for these kids that's why i'm here that's why we were all elected was to do what was best for twelve thousand
230kids and two thousand staff that's our responsibility as part of the board of education and that's where i'm going to stay on it as well that's my job as a member of the board of education no fear people we have to do what's right now let's go with this who wants to make them who wants to make a motion i make a motion that we keep the mask mandate on do i hear it until the next meeting two weeks it's two weeks wait a second is there any more discussion mr johnson there was a motion on the floor by mrs hovich to keep the masks on for an additional two weeks until the next meeting second by miss dr hemp street uh there's open for discussion right now i thought we learned made a promotional
231and voted a few months ago but once again you know we went with two weeks of math um you know we tried that we're going to go two weeks again let's try two weeks of the option you know our biggest influence was these quarantine periods and i think we've heard from mr campbell uh we've heard what he said about what we are required to do when it comes to the end of the five days and going back and testing not just one day speaking being able to return wearing a mask um we heard that we heard the locality class from him and um i think that's where we're at i think that's what we need to do and um in two weeks we'll be right here to discuss any more discussion i just want to
232go on record mrs tiana sims to say that regardless of how we vote tonight we all care about the kids your vices and hang-ups may not be the same as mine but i don't think we should be trying to down talk or constitute or put in put words into people's mouths about why we ran and why we were elected i'm going to respect your decision i would hope and pray that you respect my i do respect your decision tiana i appreciate you okay then we can go ahead and make a motion i have something to say at some point we've got to get back to managing education and putting the health care back in the hands of the families and their medical doctors there's a toolkit deciding what's sick and what's not right now not
233the parents not the doctors a kid's telling them they need to get vaccinated a toolkit a piece of paper that you know you go to my i take my kid to the doctor and he says well he's he's healthy he eats good you know he does well vaccination's not for him for this and it's so left and right as far as on a piece of paper it's not what's healthy that decision of health care and managing kids health needs to go back in the hands of the families and the doctors that that manages for their family and we tried that leslie before you came on the board we tried that and we had parents we had parents sending their that had coven sending their children with coven to our campuses okay but we cannot manage
234those parents and we can ask them not to send their sick kids to school but that is the most that we can do we also need to have discussion about how there are certain students in our current school system i being a parent of one where masks are sensory overload for them there's many of them like that so this is more than just a a how many people are being out in quarantine and things we have to focus on are diverse that's what we just heard our candidates say tonight we have a diverse population and not one shoe fits all and when we were looking at those charts last two weeks we were talking about the quarantines we weren't even talking about positives we were talking about how high the quarantines are so i think
235if we're going to have a focused discussion then we need to be talking about how we can bring these quarantines and isolations and exclusions down and the covert down yeah and the kobe down but we're going to catch it jane i can guarantee you the best chances it's not our job kids out here we can have them nest all day long in school but as soon as they get in the car as soon as they get into walmart as soon as they're out in the community as soon as they're at church they're not wearing a mask so i mean how much mitigation are we really doing here at burke county public schools but we're not responsible for what takes place after they leave our campus diana but we're sending them home eight days after they
236were exposed to a positive case there's that does nothing to mitigate a virus but the bottom line is and i agree everybody i'm telling you i see it being being a special educator i know all about sensory and all that stuff i get it but the bottom line is right now we have this toolkit and this toolkit says if you mask you don't have to send all those innocent children and adults home and i mean we we're not the medical police i know we're not but we have to make a decision it doesn't say we don't have to send them home let's because even when we were masked mandate we were still sending them home we had 800 and some like the first week in september september they were still going home under mass mandate
237the only one that that applies to is if it was we were enrolled in the test to stay program which we're not doing so there's still quarantine even when you're in the mask but you're not quarantined if you're vaccinated and boosted you're not quarantined if you're vaccinating and listen i i listen to this and it's hard it is hard what we're trying to do just just look at this board by itself one-third of the people on this board have had covet in their families one-third of us and and it's going to keep coming that's we'll get over this hump in about another five six weeks yeah we see the advantage of mass it keeps the kids in school and that's right that's got to be hard on a child that struggles with that that's hard
238i agree with her that way but i do think that if we can get these increments just to get us over the hump do it every two weeks read it and see where it is that that that gives us a little bit of wiggle room and then we can look at the charts and positivity rate but golly we saw what happened last time wham yeah it just went up and and i i i i don't know how many teachers and how many people contacted me saying thank you so much exactly nurses call me teachers calling i see a number of them during the week in the practice just saying thank you guys thank you for giving us a break and i've got the same thing on the opposite end yeah well and we're going to
239you know but the bottom line is how what is the best way at this point whether we believe in it or not because i i don't like the mask i hate wearing this thing i can't breathe good i can't imagine having a child sitting there all day long in it but we've got this we've got this book this toolkit we've got to go by we don't have a choice people how what's the best way to keep the children in school that's the question that's all we got to answer that's it it's that simple and just wear a mask and get vaccinated those two things slow it down don't get rid of it it'll slow it down and then that's our promise is the last thing i'm gonna say y'all cause i know we tired i
240have a huge hesitation with just two weeks that's how we started this entire pandemic off it was just two weeks to slow the curve then last month it was just two weeks now here we are again with just two weeks and so i forgive me for having a little bit of hesitation on the just two weeks and i'm meeting from the bottom of my heart i'm not being selfish it just trends in patterns i pay attention to it and even though it may be a small segment of our population we do have some of those babies out there that are struggling even though i mean masking save the masses i get it but there are some kids that are just struggling to make it through we've already lost two years of education would you feel
241better with the longer period of time i think we we've compromised with on a shorter period of time no i don't know and that's just me that's tiana's vote and in good conscience i just can't do it that's that's not anybody talking in my ear no political vices none of that that's just me and what i see in my home and what calls i get from nurses and teachers and parents and kids surprisingly messaging me about how they feel about all of this and how some of them are you know so much is suicidal behind it i just i tiana cannot go to bed at night doing this i just can't i support them pandemic for a lot of kids in this district than this virus right that's true i'm sorry what did you say
242i said the mental health that all this has brought has been more of a pandemic than the actual virus for a lot of kids in this district yeah so well what are we going to do this this is incredibly difficult i understand that i think everyone understands how incredibly difficult this is just a procedural matter because that's what you look to me for mr johnson did correctly point out that the board has already voted that mass would be optional but mrs hovich did vote for that motion and then made the motion to go mandatory which means that is in effect a motion to reconsider so i didn't want anyone and if there's an objection to you taking this vote say so now but it is legal for you to reconsider your action in the same
243meeting and this is a yes vote for mass optional and now she is making the motion for mass required no the second vote you voted yes i don't know if you meant to but you voted yes on the second i meant correct oh she did not oh i did not i apologize on the second vote i thought you voted yes yes okay three three okay i voted mandatory mask so the second vote did not pass at all right so nothing has passed thank you very much i'm going to go back and sit in the lawyer chair y'all can go ahead and vote so wendy what are we going to do well we've got to do something yeah it's 10 o'clock now yeah i mean somebody we've got we've got to do there is no right
244there's no right answer okay that's where i met with this and i see every side of it but i'm i'm to the point where i have to do what's best for the majority that's what we have to do and if there's individualized situations the principles deal with those you know those parents and those principles they work hard and they work together and we can get through this but this is the children are just falling they're getting this this this variant of it and we got to keep that in mind and we've got to keep our teachers in the building and if we don't have our teachers we're going to be closing schools and that's what's happened yes and we've got to keep it going y'all whatever we have to do to keep going that's what
245we have to do whether we don't like it we don't like the vote or whatever i don't want to have to vote for mask but if that's how we keep the train on the track and that's the only way we can according to that two-bit tool kit and keep as many teachers in the building as many staff in the building and as many children in those buildings as we can then we have to make the right decision that's why we're here we are here to look out for them whether the masks work or not because you know i don't think they work that good i've been very honest about how i feel about it but if that toolkit says that if i do that i can keep the most amount of people in that building
246if that's the only option i've got then that's what i got to do if you lead a big school or a big organization you have to look at things at a bigger picture and right now we got to look at the big picture dr swann what's your recommendation waiting for this uh it is tough um i don't i'm not i've never sat here and said this mask works um i lean on the side of miss craven how can i keep my child in school i just had covid um hit me pretty hard my child had coveted didn't hit her as hard okay when she wore the mask when she was exposed she didn't have to come home she's seven years old i i judge what's good for my daughter i try to use her as
247my litmus test with a lot of things and it's difficult and i don't always have the right answers but i do feel we do have to follow the toolkit and the toolkit says if we wear these we're keeping more kids in school and and i'll go on record too and say i can't adamantly say these work i don't think any of us can it's the they're not n95s what i wear and and i get that but here again the toolkit does not distinguish delineate between what masks we should wear or what masks we shouldn't wear a face covering is what it says so recommendation from administration would be to wear masks for at least two more weeks just to see what that looks like with our numbers we don't have a true picture with snow
248from last week our numbers were through the roof before we had the snow on sunday had we been in school this past week we might have been shutting campuses down and here again by no means am i in support of keeping sick kids at school i do feel we need to keep our sick kids at home if we're sick ourselves we stay at home parents need to do the same thing for their children so ms craven to answer your question the masks is the tool kit says we in order for us to keep our students in school and you know i was on the phone with mr wall the other night we had a parent that missed the lunch meal because of the the snow so we were able to get that lunch to them
249that's what we see when kids aren't at school they're struggling how how can i feed my family a lot of times that's the only two meals that they get a day and if they're quarantined because they didn't have this on then they're not getting those two meals a day so you know we got two empty chairs here folks two empty chairs where's one of them yep all right i make a motion that we go mask band-aid for till february the 7th okay would anybody like to second that all right so we'll start voting if there's any more discussion i i think we're good okay all right miss jane i vote mass mandate for two weeks okay i'm sorry yeah yeah mr johnson did you hear the the motion by ms hovich yeah i just did
250if you'll give me a second and bring me in at the end there i'll be calling up with you okay all right good deal miss i'm sorry in a row no that's okay i've i vote for the mask mandate until the february seventh meeting tiana sims no mask optional wendy craven i vote for the mandate for two weeks leslie taylor mask optional i vote for the mandate for two weeks don ham street okay mr johnson that's on you so madam chair again the motion fails and the last action of this board was to make mass mandatory until today so with a deadlock mass will not be required tomorrow because your previous action expires today so there will be no mandate of this board as of tomorrow because of the deadlock okay well we'll meet back
251in two weeks on february 7th we'll call it'll be a special call meeting no it's already a work a board meeting on the calendar so we don't need to make it special called but it's a work meeting and we're going to have to vote again because that's the only meeting we have it's the only meeting yeah we don't vote in work session meetings so it's just a regular meeting it's just directed to a meeting yes okay i'd like to make a motion that um the negative test to return for exposures on day five be optional that it follows what the toolkit says and that if it's possible to take the test on day five for the ones that are exposed then they can take it if not they return to school with the with the
252mask on for the remaining five days after they've been you know excluded from school for five days prior so if i understand your motion your motion is simply to confirm the control measure which is reflected in the toolkit and that taking a test on day six would be optional yes and that we could inform families that that is something the health director would like for them to do but it would not be something the board is requiring to come back to school is that correct right okay but also if as i understand if if the test is available is that correct if the test is available okay that's what i understand right i think i just want to be clear your motion is to basically follow exactly what's in the toolkit yes sir okay i'll
253second all right we'll take a vote i've lost track of where we're at okay it's on the testing okay yes okay i'm i'm fine with the testing yes jane zahovic yes tiana since yes wendy craven yes leslie taylor yes yes mr johnson it's on you right and just to clarify one final time the the toolkit itself is not law but it reflects what the control measures are right which are law and in fact i think there's a letter from the secretary of the department of health and human services that's been circulating that was said to a state senator and it has that sentence that the toolkit itself is not law that's true but the very next sentence says the toolkit does contain statutorily required control measures and that's what exclusion from school is so i
254just always like to repeat that so there's no confusion so i do have a question about you i said it was my last one i promise you this is my last one so with us meeting again on the 7th with that being a work meeting we're going to have to discuss again the vacancy and we're no oh yes yes so would that need to be amended into a special the agenda it will be a it will be a work meeting or excuse me it will be a it'll be a regular meeting because you will need to take action awesome thank you and if you don't mind pointing out the obvious if you could break the deadlock on a new board member it's a lot more efficient for the board to have votes rather than ties
255yes so but i think that's obvious give it again well i think we need to make it yes it is 1005. i would hate to call our families this late in the night so i'll get with miss scheffler and plan a call sometime before school begins tomorrow morning if that's acceptable with the board about the masks that's fine i'm fine with that would someone like to make a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn a second i second all right guess we'll miss jones what's your vote a jury yes did john cristiana terrorism wendy craven yes leslie taylor yes yes mr johnson uh your vote to adjourn oh please yes thank you sir thank you i'm going to hang up now all right take care see ya