BOE Meeting 1/10/22

001right here okay good evening everyone and welcome uh to the january 10th 2022 meeting of the burke county board of education at this time i would like the board members to review the agenda and make a motion to approve if everyone's in line with that motion to approve the agenda second all right all those in favor please raise your right hand thank you at this time i would like to ask for us to have to please have a moment of silence [Music] thank you please stand for the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all at this time i want to turn it over to mr aaron johnson well good evening it's time for our public comments section before

002we we've got six speakers have signed up to make public comments tonight before we get started i have to read something just bear with me a minute persons will speak in the order in which they have signed up to speak each speaker during the public comments section of board meeting shall have a maximum of five minutes for his or her comments at which point the speaker will be politely asked to bring comments to a close followed by thank you school board policies state law and federal law have established separate and distinct procedures and forums for the resolution of employee grievances employee complaints against individual employees pupil suspensions and appeals and political campaigns to avoid circumventing circumvention of those separate proceedings and ensure fairness to all parties concerned no person should speak regarding one a filed

003grievance two pending employee complaint filed with a school district or an outside agency a complaint against individual employees employee disciplinary action suspension or termination or people suspension or appeal which may ultimately reach the board of education additionally prior to elections no person who is publicly announced or filed as a candidate for public office may speak during these public comments concerning his or her candidacy the board chair or designate may terminate any presentation that is not in accordance with any of these criteria except as limited by the previous provisions public comments will be allowed during the public comments period on any subject that is within the jurisdiction of the board our first speaker tonight is miss angela shores mr swords you'll have five minutes and i'll if you go over five minutes i'll politely let you

004know my name is angela shores my pronouns are she her and i thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight about the topic of media selection policies and book availability in our school libraries i come to speak tonight as the mother of two daughters 11 and 14 years old as an active community member my husband and i choosing morganton 11 and a half years ago as a place we would put down roots and raise our children as a former college educator having taught the students who are leaving our public school system as the wife of a chief master sergeant of the united states air force my husband having served 22 years so far in our military a place where there is no gray area when it comes to the sacrifices his comrades and friends and

005their families make to defend our freedoms including and especially our freedom of speech and lastly as a local business owner where i make decisions about hiring current students and graduates of our schools i own adventure bound books a place that believes in freedom of speech and ideas a place that supports books and stories and thus libraries and education from these perspectives i want to specifically speak to the policies under consideration both policy 3200 and 3210 emphasize that material selection and any potential objection by parents to instructional materials must be accomplished in accordance with law including the first amendment of the united states constitution board educational goals and established selection guidelines including the library bill of rights of the american library association limiting restricting or removing books available in school libraries and infringes on the first

006amendment rights of students who wish to have access to those materials as frederick douglass said a few days following a mobbed and disrupted public meeting in 1860 with words that are still true today no right was deemed by the fathers of the government more sacred than the right of speech it was in their eyes as in the eyes of all thoughtful men the great moral renovator of society and government liberty is meaningless where that right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist there can be no right of speech where any man however lifted up or however humble however young or however old is overalled by force and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments equally clear is the right to hear to suppress free speech is a double wrong it violates the rights

007of the hearer as well as those of the speaker free speech includes the freedom to choose what books to read and thus what stories one will hear upholding free speech means allowing all books and ideas to be available in public spaces for consumption if one chooses because our students also have the right to choose not to read a book not every book is for every child but every child should have access to books that speak to their interests and experiences and that reflect and affirm them books are crucial to children's development helping children see themselves in the stories of others enhancing empathy and understanding differences the freedom of speech and the freedom to access speech both spoken and written and through that freedom the right to express one's self and to use one's voice is

008at the core of the books being challenged and criticized star in the hate u give justice in dear martin felix and felix ever after amanda and if i was your girl and brendan and freakboy have something in common they have something in common with each other as book characters and in common with the students in our schools who have the right to access reading those characters stories if they choose the commonality is the desire to express themselves to use their words and actions and their education to express themselves and prepare themselves for success in their communities and just like attempts to ban or remove these books from our school libraries or restrict these stories also restricts these voices these same attempts to ban or remove books from our school libraries restricts our schools and our

009board of education from achieving its mission and objectives and restricts our students from going out into the world affirmed successful and prepared i want to conclude with what my 11 year old said to me as we were driving away from last week's board of education meeting she didn't want to speak tonight in front of a crowd but she asked me to share this why are you taking away books from kids maybe they can't afford to buy books and so they go to their school library to read them if you take books away from the libraries then kids can't get books which help them learn and the whole point of school is for kids to learn so if you take books away from libraries you are defeating your purpose as a school and a school board

010thank you miss shores next we'll have malik harris again mr harris you'll have five minutes good evening board of education and those who are listening whether here virtually or present i'm going to take the opportunity to thank the board of education mike swan and the superintendent and those who work hard to keep burke county public schools safe effective and operating to give students their best possible education which is to prepare them for the future as informed citizens and for the workforce burke county public schools is blessed to have such a rich and diverse cultures backgrounds ethnicities and communities the diversity that is present is crucial for a thriving school that harbors excellent learners great citizens and future leaders but to keep this diverse culture active and robust we must keep representation in the literature that

011is available to us banning and censoring books is one of the first steps to getting rid of the diverse literature available to us and it will kick-start the downfall of the beautiful inclusion and representation that mirrors the students of bcps i would like to take a minute to discuss why it is important for books that talk about the sad realities of america to be accessible in our school libraries especially at the high school level racism is a sad reality we face in america and it's important for students to know that not everyone will be treated equally books that speak on racial issues not only allow the oppressed to see their story and be connected to the central message of the novel but it allows those who may not experience racism to see it through the

012lens of someone who has been racially oppressed we the students of burke county public schools do not make the assumption that all law enforcement officers are evil and racist when reading literature that is based on police brutality instead we take the narrative and we apply it to the real world if we continue to reap literature that only portrays a fake utopian society of what america was wish to be then we will never be prepared for what america truly is and sadly racism stains the american dream and while that staying hasn't blighted everyone there is still a mark banging books where the protagonist is a member of the lgbtq ia plus community goes back to representation and diverse inclusion whether you agree or disagree on the topic of sexuality what you cannot change is how many

013students are represented in alberta county public schools system students need to be able to connect with what we are experiencing they need to feel accepted what kind of message will you be sending to the students that identify in the lgbtq system if you ban these books remember that as you vote on this policy on the argument of banning books with vulgar language students in high school are not influenced to cuss because of the books that are provided for them in fact students who do use vulgar language starting in middle school and do it because of social influences in our schools and maybe even the influences of some of those parents at home vulgar language is used in schools to impress peers and to gain popularity and attention not because it was used in the book

014that they read in the school library i would like to conclude with this statement all of these topics represent a student in our school whether it be an african-american who fears of being oppressed or lgbtqia plus community member trying to find accepted when you censor these topics you are censoring our student body if you ban and center these books in schools you will be doing a disservice to burke county public school students who will be entering the real world when you cast your vote remember what you were elected to do represent and serve all of burke county public school students and make fair and equitable decisions that will benefit us all thank you mr harris next we have morgan shores and again miss george will have five minutes for me my library has been a

015place to discover there are endless books with more stories than you could ever imagine you can read a mystery a work of nonfiction a story about a dragon and a knife you can also read a story about someone like you books are something to bring people together and share ideas not to tear you apart there are many different kinds of people in the world some people don't look like you some people don't like the same kind of people as you but that is no reason why you shouldn't be able to read something about someone different than you i read the hate u give at the start of this year and i got the book from freedom's library i was reading the book during class one day and i came to the part where starr's best

016friend was killed while reading the chapter and a couple of the other chapters i started to cry i cried not because it was a horrible book but because i felt so bad for these characters they go through so much oppression in their everyday lives from the news from people in their lives and even other forms of media and this kind of oppression isn't exclusive to book characters ipod and lgbtq plus individuals experience so much hate from people and all we want is to express ourselves people want to tell their stories to as many people as possible not to harm them or spread propaganda but to help people going through a similar situation so when the board thinks about whether or not to ban these books think about the good that the books are doing think

017about the stories that get told and the effect that they have on people's lives for me none of the books i have ever read have damaged me if anything they have given me a desire to fight for people's stories and their right and stand out for others and when i can provide them a platform to which to speak thank you next we have amanda washburn good evening my name is amanda washburn media coordinator miss lawson was unable to be here tonight due to unexpected circumstances so on her behalf i'm going to be reading her letter to you good evening i appreciate you all taking the time to host and listen to everyone's voice tonight my name is whitney lawson and i'm the media coordinator at freedom high school i'm writing to address the concerns brought

018up in previous meetings about the content available for our students to personally choose from our school media centers throughout our county to begin during the board meeting a few weeks ago it was mentioned that books are capable of transforming people's lives and i wholeheartedly agree books have transformed my life in the best way possible and the love of reading is something i want to instill in my students tonight i want to specifically address a fictional novel that has transformed me that has been brought up continuously in previous meetings the hate u give by angie thomas this book has made me be more empathetic to the hardships struggles and challenges of people who don't look like me it's made me more kind and understanding to our students who are struggling to find themselves in the face

019of uncertainty tragedy and grief it's made me appreciate what i have and had growing up and helps me to know better to now know a bit better about what others are going through that i've never experienced but none of the above was mentioned in the previous meetings what was mentioned was the language the perceived violence and other sensitive issues such as drug use and sexual content and yes i understand these concerns but in comparison to what many of our students take in this is not unknown or unfamiliar to them specifically our high school students we have the most amazing students but you walk down our hallways and you will realize that these students are not unfamiliar with the issues presented in these novels but i want to point out these topics do not determine the

020value of these this or the other text obscenities and sensitive issues do not make a novel what we gain and how we grow from reading the novel reveals only just a part of its importance and relevance and it's important to provide students the opportunity to choose to read and grow my opinion as well as many others about the value and meaningfulness of this and other novels is different from the opinions of the people who want to remove text from our shelves and that's the point we have different understandings of what these novels are and it's a choice to read them and we as media coordinators we've provided students the choice to read these novels based on our professional education development and collaboration this is also why we encourage our parents to talk with their children

021about what they read and what the students choose to read from the media centers because if you do not remember this is not a novel that's even taught in the classroom we encourage parents to monitor students reading habits and discuss what they should and should not read so yes it is a parent's right to make thoughtful decisions for their own child it is not their right to impose their beliefs and what they think should be read on another person's child by taking away a book you're taking away the opportunity for somebody that really wants to read it you're taking away their choice and i will even say do i agree with every book in the media center no but i understand that others may want to read something that i may not agree with and

022i honor that choice and their right to read and their right to choose that text finally this is not the only book that some people have concerns about but this philosophy of choice applies to all the materials within our media centers we need to represent all perspectives viewpoints and the novels need to be read as a whole to understand their importance and value burke county's mission is to educate diverse learners nurture their potential and empower them to be competitive successful and productive citizens we are not educating diverse learners if we're taking away their freedom by not providing diverse perspectives and materials we are not nurturing their potential by taking away the characters that they identify with we're not empowering students if we take away their right to choose their own books a close friend sent

023the following to me the other day it's a quote by joe goodwin a truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone i stand by this and believe because media centers are a space to offer information not to take five minutes thank you thank you thank you miss katherine irvine [Music] good evening school board members my name is katherine irvin can y'all hear me okay yeah my name is catherine irvin and i thank you for your time and your consideration i can only imagine the time and energy it takes to serve in this capacity and so i truly appreciate all the work that you do to serve the students at burke county public school i am also here as a concerned citizen around the books under reconsideration including dear martin the hate u give

024and others recently brought to the board's attention highlighting transgender protagonists growing up in morganton i spent every summer break of high school just reading i was like that shy super awkward kid just trying to read books on the porch in the summer books allowed me to understand the world around me and they enabled me to empathize with other perspectives and lifestyles that i would not have otherwise encountered as a lifelong learner and in pursuit of a masters in theology it has become clear to me that embracing pluralism without fear unity within diversity and respecting everyone's right of freedom of speech in the public sphere are key for building compassionate democratic societies there are many difficult topics discussed in books provided by the burke county public school system however if certain materials are withheld from students

025especially those which deal with complex socio-political issues we miss a tremendous opportunity to have dialogue and i believe this is antithetical to the aims of education the library bill of rights states that the primary function of all libraries is as a forum for information and ideas this bill is directly modeled after the united states constitution and the first amendment in my interpretation of this bill books ban because of subject matter including racism gender identity sexual or sexual orientation do ultimately infringe on students access to information i am not a public speaker and i was quite nervous in preparing my comments for y'all tonight and i feel strongly that's that's even a reason why we have to come together when we have differences in opinion it's very just like uncomfortable to like voice them and so

026i think we if we can lean into polarizing issues we're going to be a better community all together we'll be able to listen to each other and we'll be able to like think about each other and our differences um so in a divided world we desperately need more of those forums where information and ideas from multi-faceted perspectives can be embraced and discussed and debated this is the joy and challenge of a public library and i think just a community at large i am so inspired by the mission of the burke county public school system and i hope that you all will consider books written for and by diverse communities as a vital component of a well-rounded education thank you so much for your time thank you miss carla kincaid good evening everyone um again my

027name is carla kincaid and i'm coming before you as a retired exception to children's teacher but now i am a certified substitute in the school system and i i hope tonight that i'm just talking and at the end of tonight's meeting by the end of the night's meeting my problem will be solved hopefully but on last week's meeting i tuned in from home and we already knew the forecast as well as the school board knew the forecast npr news had shared it with us along with the white house and governor had already prepared us for what to expect following christmas in reference to the mass mandate and i was almost certain last week that the school board would return with the vote to return to the mass mandate it was just a given for me

028last week i was kind of disappointed it puts in question a uh why and who are you representing in the community is it a political party is it adult peer pressure or sometimes uh talk with my students in reference to character education that peer pressure doesn't stop when you're young it continues to grow when you owe if you hang on to it is it just a personal position for personal gain for power is it tv exposure is it to feel important it kind of left me confused is it really about the students teachers the support staff families parents and the community what do you represent and who do you really represent as a certified substitute i have to wonder you can fight among political parties and win right now you can't fight against covet and

029win any version to come is coming you won't win by the way which are sure to come there's more forms of covet coming i had to wonder maybe you didn't have time on last monday to discuss it i admit it's not easy teaching with a mask it's not easy as a student either but it can be done as a board member do you know you have to be vigilant in watching the news around you not only in burke county can i suggest npr news how about the governor's office of education even the white house notification of clusters are no longer under the subtitle coven on the burke county website i used that tool to know what schools that um i would be able to sub at because i am immune compromised that's no longer there

030it hasn't been kept up since november the new covet omicron has no respect to person vaccinated non-vaccinated those have had covet those that have not had covet you can get still get copic i came forth in the night not sure about the decision you will make tonight as a substitute i've speaking on behalf of substitutes principals teachers support staff students and parents no not all only from those observations and those i spoke with in the community in the schools as i sub we can enforce covet prevention and interventions and i'm not sure about the temperature machines i've never saw them used and i know maybe that was funded through covet money but in the future hopefully we can get our ventilation systems prepared for future copic problems in the future as kovic would definitely be

031here for us for a while thank you thank you thank you miss kincaid madam chair that concludes our public comment section all right thank you everyone for speaking all right if i could call miss miranda michaels up to give us our latest updates good afternoon so i've been asked to present the data um for what is going on in our schools for the week of january 3rd through january 9th which was last week which is the only week we really have true data since we've been out for the holiday break so the data i'm going to present is as of 5 pm today and just know that these this data is not very accurate in the terms of showing the true picture as this is the minimum of what we know about because the positives

032symptomatic students and staff and exposures are coming in so fast that nurses are not able to get it on the sheet in time so for last week we had a total of 284 positive cases of students and staff and the breakdown of that is 223 student cases and 61 staff cases additionally the number of students and staff out sick with pending test results or have not tested yet is 209 in addition to those positive cases last week we had 1368 students and staff that were identified as close contact exposures and required to quarantine of those 1368 exposures 1258 of those students and staff exposures were in school exposures miranda do you have a picture of that graph can you can you put that graph up so people can see this can we do that can

033you project hey guys that's it is it off the chart here um yes a big yellow line is that real yes that is real i do better if i can see a picture that is the student exposure that yellow line that you're seeing everybody see that do you see that thing going what happens past 1600 it'll keep going like it's going to keep going yeah and as i said i mean honestly it's probably beyond that because like i said we cannot keep up with the numbers um for the students and staff that are coming in there's i mean some nurses are getting 10 plus positives in just a short amount of time during one day so all of those positives have to be contact traced in the classroom and when you think about middle school

034and high school i mean they have you know six seven in middle school teachers or classes and then in high school at least four in athletics and clubs and buses it just goes on and on so it's it's really tough to keep up with let me ask you this would you say you're overwhelmed yes that's i mean i've talked yes and i talked to the gal that just ended up one of the teeth started weeping crying and i couldn't finish the conversation with her and and it's not she says you know i'm getting paid overtime this but i don't want that i do we've got to have some help yes the nurses are working some of them 14 16 hour plus days all weekends they're missing time with their families i know teachers are experiencing

035that as well like it's just over it truly is overwhelming right now but we're doing the best we can to keep up with everything and try to keep everybody as safe as we can with with the toolkit we've been given and the guidance that we're required to follow absolutely you guys are just doing that and ms michaels you know our our nursing staff they i mean initially that job wasn't set up to sit around and um contact trace for the numbers that they have in the schools that was not what that was intended we needed them there if you know say that elementary school jenny fell down on the playground and skinned her leg up to be there to help with that to help educate families and to help educate students contact tracing was not

036you know especially on this scale was not thought of and so that is very overwhelming it is and it's across the state i mean school nurses have stepped into this role across the state just like other school staff have stepped into many other roles roles that you know is not their assigned role to step up and try to help out during covet so the whole school system is is trying hard it's um you know it's overwhelming for parents too i'll tell you a little story one of those exposures up there is my son i got a call last night at 4 30 that zane had been exposed on january the 5th that's last wednesday so january the 5th he went to school january the 6th he went to school january the 7th he went to

037school and i get a call on sunday night that he's been exposed on the 5th that he'll have to quarantine and today was his fifth day if i could get him a test to test negative which is i guess required by our guidance for burke county public schools but not necessarily required in the guidance for the toolkit so that's kind of you know it's pretty hard for one um you know i've spent most of my morning today calling around looking for a place to have my son tested at um table rock pharmacy is our test family doctors will not get you in if you are asymptomatic and have no symptoms if you have no symptoms they will schedule you an appointment maybe four four days out friday cvs walgreens their tests are not acceptable as

038by our guidance is what i'm understanding the ones that are rapid tests because evidently they hand you the swab through the door and you are to self swap so therefore those are out the window but if you are lucky enough to find an at-home test you can purchase that test and from what i understand take it to the school to your nurse and your nurse welcome if they're available at that time those tests which i have a receipt for are about 25 apiece that's not accessible for everyone in our district or all families especially families with multiple children i'm not sure you know why that guidance is on for burke county public schools when it is not a requirement through the through the strong schools toolkit it says if possible which to me says an

039option and from my understanding correct me if i'm wrong the toolkit itself is not a legally enforceable document but rather as strong recommendations for schools on how to reduce the spread of covet but there are parts as mr campbell hadn't mentioned before that as far as the quarantine and that sort of thing is there a way that we could get um the requirement for that negative test on day five to be lifted if so what's the procedures for that okay um just a couple of things so i want to go back and explain um not just your child but any child we may not be notified until sunday that that a child was positive yes and i appreciate it from 48 hours prior to symptom onset or they're asymptomatic positive 48 hours prior to the

040positive test so that sometimes is why you're not finding out until later because we simply don't know right there's a lag in the testing yes and then for the part about the toolkit on the table just above that's in read on pages 15 and 16. it says exclusion from school for positive coded cases and closed contacts is required unbolted and underlined following the specific criteria and exemptions listed in the table below so that is where we're bound in that and one more time that's on page what that that statement is on the top of the table on page 15 in red mr scalise can you help me with the required testing which part were you asking about from from the way the toolkit reads i'll um where's my exposure i have it up do you

041want me to read it um it says if a student or person under exposures for someone who's asymptomatic person must be excluded from school for five days after exposure person may return to school after exclusion if asymptomatic but must continue to wear a mask for an additional five days for a total of ten days after exposure the five days of exclusion begins on the day after the last known close contact with the covid19 positive individual they should test on day five if possible however our guidance states that if someone has been exposed they have to quarantine at least five days from the last date of exposure test negative to return to school and wear a mask for the the additional five days so what's happening with ours is that that negative test is required for

042them to come back on day six even though it's not necessarily a requirement within the toolkit yes whose decision was that sir are we like we we pick parts from the tool kit differently or where do we come from that i mean what what's your background on on being able to to put or you know wanting to put that in my background as far as needing nina put that in yes sir we're the reason that tests are hard to come across at your physician's office is because physicians just like your nurses are overwhelmed our staff is overwhelmed we do tests every day hundreds of them every day and everyone's overwhelmed we feel it is in the best interest that those tests come so that we can determine whether those children can come back or not

043because some people stop shedding the virus close to day five some go a little further and to be honest i don't know that you're going to be able to police that masking of the next five days so we're a little worried about the kids just coming the biggest solution to all of this is to put the masks back on the kids and right i understand that that's where all this this push is going um especially with the new updates let me just read something to you within that toolkit and so everyone is aware this is part of the exposure with the exemption to test to stay in a mass required setting individual in a mass required school setting which means if the mass are mandated do not need to be excluded from school after close

044contact including unmasked exposures meaning during lunch extracurricular activities recess any time or even if they're not wearing it correctly if they have no symptoms individuals with unmasked exposures in a mask required school setting should get tested on day five of no notification but basically it's saying even if they're not wearing the mask correctly not wearing the mask at all if our district was labeled mask mandate those kids wouldn't have to go home for quarantine right i i keep coming back to this i mean just look at the line now we can talk about whatever we want to do but we know this there are things that we can do to slow it down i mean this house is burning folks if you don't think it is talk to a nurse talk to a teacher talk

045to somebody that's home and the things we can do we can vaccinate we can test and those are tough ones right now but the one thing we can do as a board is mandate masks yes sir if we can only get one of the three it's going to slow it down we're not going to stop it it's like putting your finger in the dike but we got an opportunity to do something to mitigate this thing and give people a break one thing buddy that i have talked to has asked please please we've heard it tonight get the mass back on for a period of time we we're gonna we'll get by this it's not like it's forever but right now we are in a dangerous time and the thing we need to do i need

046to do is the board members keep kids in school virtual aluminum just you can ask out there it just doesn't work and if and if we shut down schools are the safest places for the kids we need them in and we need them safe as we can get them and masking will get us there i do believe yes help us get us there it's not the total thing but it'll help get us there i agree yes sir the testing and as we've heard it's really tricky but one thing we can do and we can do that you know it is the exposures that are quadrupled you know it's the exposures and having to to send home everyone in that six foot radius around that one positive case we were looking as far as the statistics

047you know we're sending home what ten to one right now as far as exposures on that and like like miss michael's mentioned you know or i you know was talking with her our nurses were never intended to to sit and and contact trace all day they were intended to be there to attend to the needs of our students to help educate students to help educate with the staff as far as you know health care situations we don't have the manpower to do that with it being required is that something that would be available for the county health department to contact trace the state has contact tracing that you often use let me ask this i'm not i'm not entirely familiar with it but they have contact tracing that you all can use it's not people

048that's in the classroom so they're a little uh a little hampered by that but um well well let me ask you this man if they're wearing masks and they're exposed they don't have to go home dude do you have a mask if you have a masked mandate yes they're exposed they don't have to go home if both children are wearing masks you have a mask mandate on yes sir so a lot of these kids except meal times yes yeah except me and i i agree i mean you know when you're out playing ball or doing those things but i mean you know i think everybody in here ought to have a mask right now this is this this stuff is rough and so i'm just saying that's something we need to consider if you're masked

049you're exposed for instance like richard's son if he'd been mad and i'm not saying but if we consider doing that that'll keep the kids in class to me we got to keep them in class if we absolutely can if we absolutely can i have a question we're running out a test according to table rock pharmacy they contacted me well someone there did and i think a couple more of us saying they just don't have any more tests and and i know my daughter i started appalachian state today and she had to be tested last week and it was 75 so i mean a lot of our just like what miss taylor said we we just a lot of folks don't have that kind of money you know to do that especially if they have several

050children but um so in my research i've i've found that you know the n95 and the kn 95s are really the best math to use how many of those i i know dr swanson that does but i know miranda you've tried you've asked for from the governor's office to get us more tell us a little bit about that process if you don't mind so we do have n95 masks for the nurses the assistants and that are doing the testing seeing the sick kids things like that dr swan did share an email with me that you had probably seen as well and dr akert ordered um i forgot how many he ordered to cover staff and all the schools that's what it's for for any staff that wants an n95 so we do have those on

051the way as soon as we got the email from dr swann we ordered those right away for all staff that would like to have them okay what's the effectiveness of i mean just a regular cloth mask versus a surgical mask or n95 or that type of mask with the filtration system versus something i could just take my shirt off and put a string around my ear and you know put over my face that's a great question mr johnson and the the ladder that you mentioned taking your t-shirt it's still going to let a lot of stuff go through cotton like that is gonna let us stuff go through what we've recommended is the surgical mask like i'm wearing which is similar to what your surgeon would wear if you went in um because of the

052way that they're made if they fit up to the standard they're gonna be fine if people decide to wear a cloth mask we recommend that they wear like something that's a three ply or has one of the filters that's built into it to filter anything that's either coming in or going out that just cloth can let particles go through one way or the other the n95 is a respirator it's going to be it's going to be the best bet if people can do that it's great this is what i wear all day i have n95s as well as access to them and this is what makes me feel comfortable this is what most of my staff wears in the health department and we've had our masks on for some time do we have enough of

053those the n95s or kn95s too for all the teachers and everyone do we have enough of those um dr aker was just updating we've ordered 2 000 which was the max um that we could get on this order that they allowed us to order so we'll keep i know previously when i was ordering them for the nurses they would let me order every three months so i continuously every time i could order i ordered um so i'm assuming that this is similar and we'll keep ordering but we wanted to get some in the hands of our staff members that wanted those as quickly as we could okay have you ever scrubbed in on a uh office surgery surgery yeah no i've scrubbed in in the or before do you have to wear that n95 mask

054when you were in there yes and i'm just a little concerned with wearing that for eight hours because you know our you know our max time was like two hours for surgery on that right and it is up to the teachers um the nurses are expected to wear those when they're doing testing or something like that they can take those off right switch back to yes like what danny has on but um it is up to the teachers if they want to wear those but it is it is tough in in 95 mass but it's the best protection um right but any covering is better than none right do you agree with that mr squeeze well i i heard you talk about yeah aaron was talking a t-shirt i see that i understand that but

055yeah but i do think i mean within reason uh you know yes sir yeah go ahead i have the floor for a second go ahead all right so i i've been receiving calls emails text messages facebook messages from nurses various opinions on the matter so ears are open and i'm hearing what's going on and with that i wanted to make sure that i was diligent enough to do my research before tonight's meeting and looking at the numbers from september 13th august 30th august 23rd those numbers are pretty high i mean we're we're just a few few above where where that was and at that time masks were mandatory so i'm seeing similar numbers even when masking was being done universally in our schools similar numbers even though the omicron variant is more transmissible than the

056delta variant however the cdc the white house fda all of those acronyms have all attested to omicron being less fatal so that's something that i'm also looking at surges are bound to happen so we see this high [Music] bar a graph here the surges are bound to happen at the onset of a new variant coming back from break and after holidays looking at the numbers presented um as of today looks like around 2.3 percent tested positive while we have over 10 percent in quarantine where those children and staff may be symptom-free asymptomatic fine just sitting at home so that is of concern do we track how many students are placed that are placed on quarantine isolation and how many come back testing positive versus how many have tested negative upon their return so we just

057started with this um the five bringing them back five days previously before christmas they were all staying home for ten to ten full days so last week is the very first week that the five day coming back after five days and testing was an option i do know that i don't know the numbers like because we can't keep those understood but we do know we have had some asymptomatic positive tests that would have normally come back into the classroom unknowingly and continue to spread but we don't have those numbers assumed as of right now no worries no worries i know you guys are busy so i'm not gonna put that on your plate but i just as the kids say nowadays the math isn't matching so i'm seeing 2.3 percent testing positive but over 10

058percent and growing in quarantine i just that's something that concerns me and looking at comparable counties in geographical location and population the surges are occurring despite whether that county has masking policy or optional masking so that's something that i've been keeping an eye on as well i am a well aware that our teachers administrators staff and parents are being spread then a thousand plus calls a week explaining to families quarantine measures etc when if at all do we look at if we're doing a disservice to all involved allowing for a margin of error it appears that our quarantining numbers are an astronomical amount compared to those testing positive again we're having kids missing school that could be symptom-free don't have covid and and healthy i i just cost benefit analysis here um and for my

059knowledge and i think this is for mr campbell for my knowledge and reiteration purposes how binding is the strong schools toolkit quarantine guidelines a state statute passed by the general assembly and this was prior to the onset of covid both isolation and quarantine authority rests with the state health director and the county health director so the quarantine and isolation sections of the toolkit are law and what about i think this is for you too what about the continuation of contact tracing thank you what do you mean by the continuation of contact the continuation of contact tracing by burke county public school district okay um i'll see what you're saying i think the there is no legal requirement that w-2 employees of burke county schools actually do the contact tracing it does beg the question well

060who would do it then but no it's not legally required that our employees actually do the training okay thank you i digress yeah mr scalise i'm sorry just i just wanted to go back to that test so you're saying you you're not going to consider anything other than having a negative test on day six to return for anyone who is asymptomatic regardless of the situation within our county for not being able to get adequate testing and for i guess the affordability for the ones for the families that can't yeah mr i've considered that and it was asked today to reconsider it and i don't feel that it's safe for the students and i keep coming back to the point that if they're mass that's not a problem yes sir if they're masked that won't be

061a problem will it because here we are i mean really that's the polit i mean the mask when you look at the numbers as what we just said the statistics and you match the positive cases with what's going on right now with what was going on in october the positive cases are about the same when we were fully we were mass mandate then so either way the problem is with the quarantines right now and the exposures you know that's there and so when we say you know well that's fine we're going to be into doing a mask mandate that i mean that's that's just jumping through a political hoop i'm not just i'm not jumping through any political cue if anybody knows me i'm not jumping on any political hoop but what i'm saying is

062that we can just mask if we can mask we won't have this problem i don't care what you are in the spectrum it's going to let these kids stay in school just like your son if we have these kids masked and they're exposed then they don't have to go home we don't have to test we don't have to we're going to do it testing is hard to get we're not going to get that for a while the one thing we can do is mask we can mask for a period of time i mean we're this thing's going to peek so that six weeks or is it's going to go away but right now we're getting killed the kitten i don't mean why i take it but what i'm saying is we are really under fire

063right now and we can we can mitigate this if we'll just mask for a period of time i'd say try it for a month and we'll look at the numbers i mean look at what's our what was our positivity rate back here and what is it now i don't have the school's positivity rate but hours uh as of today was sit at 24.53 and our benchmark was five when we came off of the to do the mass because when we made the vote to come off the mask it was right around five now he's been on anything a little behind the rest of the state the rest of the state was it about 32 when i looked at this yeah i think ours will increase a little more as well yeah you know we can

064do something for a short period of time i i listen lord have mercy i don't like wearing this thing i don't want to you know but i'm just saying there is something we can do for a period of time you know and then revisit it and when that number drops let's take them off i'm all for that you can play with all the numbers you want but look at the yellow line follow the yellow brick road i suppose it is to some people all right well no comments please please no comments that this is a very difficult situation and we're trying to take all the data and look at it rationally so thank you well basically we don't have enough tests right right now is that what you're telling us so we're kind of backed

065against the wall it looks to me i mean and you know what dr ham street's saying is right i mean you know their mask and everything's okay well it doesn't matter if they're improperly masked and they're still spreading it as long as they're masked well that's not the answer either johnson do you have some insight well just researching the mask issue itself uh and looking at the types mask and that's why i was asking the questions about the types of masks because looking at the the data here and stuff that i found in a couple articles from usa today and a few other places the national institute of occupational safety and health and other issues they look at the n95 as defined as a respirator like you were saying being the the thing to wear

066and that the percentages for face mask filtration efficiency using surgical face mask at the 44 percent um niosh says it's about 54 percent to 88 percent effective the cloth mask um it has at zero and the n95 at 98 to 99 and you know i guess that's what i'm looking at is and why i was asking that question is if we if we go back to say okay well you know grab anything you can and put it on your face are we going to slow this thing down any and at 3 30 4 o'clock in the afternoon when school lets out or i get out of school and i take it off and i throw it in the floorboard and it sits there then i go to walmart and you know i go to the

067birthday party i do all these things and at 7 15 the next morning i put it back on to sit in school for a little while or are we really doing anything to slow this down or stop it other than giving everybody a false sense of hope that's i guess kind of where i'm trying to you know decide on what you know what do you do so um and with the n95s the issue there um you have to if you know anything about respirators and feel free to correct me if i say anything that's wrong those particular masks are are fitted and you know you're supposed to be properly fitted for them to work effectively we can't fit people we don't have the time or the resources to do that so again is that going

068to be something that's a false sense of of hope and i don't want to give out false positive thinking hey look you got this on you're fine and nothing's going to happen when we know well there's some few steps we should have done to make sure this mask works properly and i mean that's just kind of that's where i'm at right now and i'm trying to decide what's the best thing and certainly just like you were saying and i'm i'm a 100 percent we don't need to be doing virtual learning we need to be in person i've said that from the word go i don't need to be at home teaching my child because they're not going to be very successful if their their education's resting on me so that's that's you know we've got

069to have that but at the same time good lord our teachers and nurses are getting killed here like you like dr hempstreet was saying i mean we're wearing them out there's no um there's no help for them they're having to go through all these different this testing these quarantines there's no tests for people to get out here to take to say come back to school with depleted staff we're killing the staff that we do have that's that's currently working and if there's no budging on this five days you know i got exposed i'm out for five days and when i come back i still have to have a test in order to come back if i can't get a test in five days then i'm probably going to be out for 10 days which is

070where i was going to be at originally without this added part in the tool kit and we we've we've run out of covered time so we're we're going to force our employees to burn their own sick time if i'm i'm am i i'm correct on that right uh dr alton but that if they haven't used any hours of it they still have it but if they've used it already for previous quarantines or stuff then they got to use their own time for this period so mr just can correct me if i'm wrong but i think as of january 1st it all renewed for the employee leave and everyone has five days is that correct but it doesn't but if they use if they've if they've had an exposure or used that time then that's when

071they have to start using their owns all right okay but we we and we don't want to get to that point because i don't want people to have to start using their time for for something and i guess that's where you know i stand mr scalise is that if there's no no way that you'll even consider not having that test in there i know like right like i said right now we don't have the test out there for them to take so they're kind of they're their backs against the wall also um and i think that's kind of where if i'm not mistaken not speaking for you but i think that's kind of what miss taylor was asking was you know any way to to um to do that and i certainly won't want to

072put the burden back on the the teachers of being mass police either so um i don't think that my math believes if we the board just give him a little wiggle room i'm just saying give a little wiggle room a small amount of time let's give it give it a month or let's check it in two weeks i mean whatever we choose to do let's just try it to get there that's something we can do the testing is going to be a problem right now it is irregardless of whether we do it five days or whatever but we do know that if these kids are masked and they're exposed they can stay maybe we i don't know miranda what what is the recommendation i i listen to recommendations from that tracing the the experts here

073put it to the county and i'd like to know do you miranda do you have a recommendation that you'd make to the board at this particular time and mr scalise and and i'd like to hear from the administration too uh miss dr alton if what do you guys you've talked this over you've taken it to the principals and teachers dr swann has done that maybe he ought to get in on this do you are you going to ask this board for something so dr swan's actually um on the call right now so he may want to address this hey good good afternoon dr m street i i do apologize i can't be there in person um i am finishing up some quarantine time myself from sickness um so um have been working all last week

074and this week of course checking the pulse of our county talking to ms michaels talking to our administrators our assistant principals our teachers our nurses our athletes our athletic coaches um and and i i will say big consensus of what i'm hearing right now dr hempstreet is a recommendation from myself from the superintendent uh and from our leadership team we met this morning uh we would like to see masks on for a short period of time whether it's two weeks three weeks we actually have a a metric system that several counties have used that we we have shared with y'all if that's something that you guys would like to consider it's been very successful in surrounding counties to keep the masks off but also keep the masks on when necessary so that's kind of what

075our recommendation is right now dr hemp street is is just until we can get a hold of it and uh you know i can't thank our our nurses enough um and our staff and our students um for for everything that we're going through right now and uh to piggyback off what mr johnson had said uh regarding the the mast yet absolutely there's unfortunately until that toolkit has changed as far as the quarantining um whatever the kids when they come home my seven-year-old's the same way she takes that mask off the minute she walks through the door gets in the car um but that's that's those toolkits aren't governed students at walmart they're only unfortunately governed students right now at our school and that's what we're in charge of [Music] my job is to educate our

076students along with all of our teachers and we can't do that when we're quarantining 12 15 1800 students so did you did you hear that karen how you feeling thank you dr salon i have a letter from john zimmerman that i would like to read john is a teacher at patton high school and he sent this letter to the board of education on saturday and it was forwarded sunday morning to the board members from wendy craven dear board of education and administrators the last week of school was perhaps the hardest since the arrival of pandemic education with more children and staff out of school than ever before some of us at patton decided that we needed to share our frontline experiences and concerns with you about the crippling losses of instructional time due to the

077number of quarantines that could have been prevented if we but had a requirement of for masking the extent of which the removal of the mask requirement is is sending more students home than before is clear prior to this past week the average number of students and staff on quarantines from okay average okay who were covet 19 positive was 24 that's 1429 students and staff was of c19 was 6076 total quarantines from week of august 9th through week of december 27th numbers taken from the burke county public school covid 19 dashboard this week that percentage fell to just 14 percent at the time of sending the attached letter on behalf of my colleagues 141 students and staff of 1029 total quarantines per week beginning january 3rd which i'm sure will also be outdated by the time

078you read this as the numbers are just climbing and climbing as data entry is being facilitated to the dashboard the simple math calculation shows that the removal of the mask requirements has resulted in 58 percent more students and staff going into quarantine this week alone than all previous time this school year against covet 19 cases indeed this week alone accounts for 17 percent of all quarantined staff and students but accounts for only 5 percent of the school year so far if you consider similar weeks of total covet 19 cases and resulting quarantines the data is even more haunting by comparing apples to apples consider the week of august 16th through september the 20th a period of surging activity in the nation and state and county during that time there were 889 covet 19 cases against

079three thousand six hundred and five total quarantines during a similar time of surging cases when we had a mask requirement coveted 19 students and staff represented again of those quarantined whereas this week covet 19 students and staff represented just 14 percent of all quarantined individuals the data is crystal clear the removal of the mask requirement is resulting in 58 percent more student and staff quarantines than before and is unnecessarily sacrificing valuable and student learning hours in their classrooms with their teachers and peers before the removal of the mask mandate each covid19 case was sending about three other people home to quarantine in burke county public schools with the removal of the mask requirement each covet 19 case is now sending over six more people home this is preventable and could return to a much less

080educational damaging and fragment fragmentary environment in burke county public schools where to decide were to decide to follow the guidance the universal guidance from the federal level the state level and our own health department director who all with one voice say students and staff should be masked at school precisely to keep kids in school activity active actively choosing not to follow this guidance is having devastating effects on our ability to teach children as teachers we are asking we are asked daily to make data-driven choices to improve student learning we are simply asking you to do the same by masking the data driven choice on monday please find the attached letter for my colleagues now i did have permission from john zimmerman to read this letter this evening and there was another letter attached from several

081people from several educators at patton high school i do not have permission to read that letter this evening because they're all homesick with covid so i'm unable to read that letter i can tell you my husband i was not in the meeting last monday january the 3rd which was scheduled um before in any way i was not able to be here because my husband was in the hospital having major surgery we were in the hospital for three days and i can tell you that staff is overworked and they are short at hand and they worked considerably hard all the time and they're understaffed at the hospital and they're having to do a whole lot more than they've ever had to do before because they can't get people to come to work and some of them

082are even home with their quarantined children so i think that that alone i saw firsthand being in the hospital for three days that they are overworked and just at at fragile pieces themselves and working in a hospital and health care facility they're not only putting themselves in danger coming to work every day but then they go home at night and they're putting their families health at risk thank you well here we are so we've all had time to say how we felt about it and obviously we don't have enough tests um to get the kids back in school um this is worse than anything that we've dealt with dr hempstreet you know i've been here the whole time and this is we've not seen anything like this so would somebody like to make a motion

083of how we want to move forward i just don't feel like this corn this quarantine number this yellow bar that's way up here that's not positive cases that is quarantines contact tracing is what put those numbers up that high our our staff our nurses are overwhelmed with contact tracing and i think that needs to be alleviated off their shoulders and if there are routes available through the county health department or state health department maybe we ought to look into those options but those that bar that yellow bar is not due to mask it's due to contact tracing and if they were masked that would not be the yellow bar wouldn't be there right well according to august 30th 898 people were in quarantine during the mass mandatory well i'm i'm just saying we've heard from

084the we've heard from the administration we've heard from the staff we've heard from the teachers and and i'm just saying as a board maybe we could come together for instance and say let's let's we're not going to do this forever we're just trying to get over the hump and for safe a month go back to masking and then reevaluate the thing and look at it it's not saying people that were against it i'm i'm against it you're against we we're just trying to come together and do something and at that time and then have some parameter maybe it's the uh positivity rate or what would be a good number mr scalise i mean what do you think the rate of positivity once we looked at five percent it's 21 now when you see that number

085start to drop irregardless of what's going on masking or what then then we can start thinking in other direction but we do know masking can do something i believe that it cancer yes yes and what what would you think is a good number that you could maybe suggest to the board that we could watch to use as a measurement to decide what we want to do i wouldn't use a metric like like the percent positivity to say okay okay you can turn it off yeah what would be a good one i don't know that i would have a good one um can i say something. no something um i remember when we had to make the decisions about when to even open school back up because we we had to do that and it was

086what 0.05 wasn't that what it was not one of the metrics we had to look at what was the metrics miranda wasn't it dr what was the question again i'm sorry when we had to make the decisions whether it even come back to school wasn't it 0.05 what not one of the things we looked at positivity i think it was the county positivity it was the county positivity and one more concerned i think with our staff and our students our positivity rate i know in caldwell that's what they do and and i think that's if if that's some the board wants to go into that direction that's very simple way to look at it yeah what would that number be is it well you gave us numbers with the 0.5 so i think calhoun county

087uses 0.5 as their threshold from asking yeah and we're weird like at one point nine eight is that what i read time miranda and i were looking at the data today i'm sure it's changed since that time i think we were approaching two percent two to two percent so if we could get to that point five that would be at least a benchmark of something we could shoot for and and is is that correct i just clear possibly is that fair do you think miranda that would be good would the board agree to that would it be to look at getting close to what these others are doing and using the benchmark that they've got yeah it's 0.50 i'm sorry yeah instead of 0.05 yeah so we're excuse me i just wanted to clarify really

088quick um the 800 and whatever you said that's on the dashboard those were total um people that identified as exposures those were not the ones that were quarantined at home so the actual ones for that week of august 30th that quarantined at home was 591. the other ones met mask exemption completely vaccinated things like that that's that total quarantine number and we take out of those who meet exemptions and that's the numbers that i gave you thank you and clarify that do we know the what's the total number and dr altman this might be a question for you what's the total number of percentage-wise or total number of staff that we have currently out including teachers um uh cafeteria workers everybody what where are we at just staff or students and staff we could look

089at the breakdown i can figure that out for you we calculate today including students and staff that's where we got the two percent but we didn't break it down but i can break that down and get you that total so wendy are you asking for a motion i'm just wanting us to think about that we don't have to make a decision about that tonight you know about our metric that we want to use right but we need to make emotions well we have to make it every month yeah we have to do something every month yeah i think that be something i think we all try to figure out something that we're all comfortable with but i'd make a motion that we just mask for another 30 days and revisit it and by that time

090we'll have our metrics that we that we're all comfortable with that we think is going to make it safe to pull them off again are you making the motion i think the dr swann had said whenever he called in there i think he was thinking something like two weeks or so yeah that's correct i think that's what just based on what the school administration was was saying was that was that correct i think you did mention two weeks and answer your other question um we currently have 50 not filmed this is as of 154 today we had um a total of 59 staff that's been quarantined and so that's about three percent of our total staff okay so madam chair just real quick for the board your action item comes later in your agenda but

091if there's no objection i think you have been can we go ahead and diligently discussing this so there'd be no problem with you going ahead and taking connection i was gonna ask you if i could we could do that all right thank you dr hempstreet did you make a motion for the mask mandate to go back on yeah and i think but there he mentioned two weeks i mean i think you know viruses it it's a two-week time in which they start showing up again a good example is dr swan he was just exposed and i talked to him last week he said i'm great yeah i call him a week later and yep this is a sick man so i'm i air if you're comforted at the board i'm i'm comfortable with whatever you

092want to do but we i guess we if we're going to do that we got to have some measurement so that we can see what are we measuring it against does that does that make sense to you i mean if we go with this 0.5 which we're at 2 now and we see it sliding to 0.5 but if if we don't then i think we need to wear the mask if it's coming down take them off but right now you hear what the staff is asking us everybody's asking us they're worn out they're worn out and every day we keep getting more and more emails and phone calls every single day yeah all day long and this didn't make breaking a promise to anybody it's doing what's right for the kids to get back where

093you can get to the promises doing that you want to do i want the mask off it's great we could really look at this i'm sorry um i'm sorry i i jumped in um ms craven what i was saying we could we could get this metric system that was shared and really um you know what we did was a kind of just a i think karen said a point five percent uh and we can look at different metric system uh it's worked really well for called welding they just went back into masks this week up last before christmas they were maskless of course with the spike that they saw similar to us they went masks required this week and if their metrics decline over next week then their masks will come off based on their

094average so it's just that three-week rolling average that we could definitely look at and implement that if you guys would like to give administration um the ability to do that okay all right aaron with three weeks three weeks three months i was want to clarify that what he said okay i couldn't hear you too good sorry all right i'm a are you come you all comfortable with three wheat are you comfortable with going back to mass is that well yeah i guess the thing about it is i'm not comfortable know about going back but at the same time it's it i think we've been pushed into a wall and it backs up against him we don't have with no um no ability to on our end well we can't do anything about it but without

095the the requirement of the test being lifted um after uh the five day period and there's no test out there we're kind of getting forced into a corner because once again we don't have the staff here we don't have you know it doesn't do us any good to have a classroom full of kids and no teacher and we're not getting from what i'm understanding we're not going to be there's there's no way to get away from this um five-day negative test from from the health department so [Music] uh um i would in interest of what's what's right for for the kids and being in school and for the staff um a period of of time wearing them i'm not um i am opposed to it but i'm willing to to um to compromise depending on

096the time frame and i'd like to to look at you know what you're saying about looking into this more on a regular basis i don't like looking at it you know going from from one meeting to the other because sometimes we go a little bit beyond that 30-day window with or meetings this meeting here was moved to to tonight in other words it wouldn't have been until the 31st and that would have been um quite a period of time there so i do like a little bit of the idea of this matrix but uh i think it's a uh if i heard dr swann correctly looking at it in two weeks two weeks um i think he's been evaluating it yeah i think he said there yeah i said a month you said two i

097think he said three two he said two originally but we would look at a three-week rolling average oh three yeah yeah last week yeah this week yeah because that gets a little tricky yeah um i also think that and maybe identifying some of these particular schools that are i guess identified as a cluster and maybe there's a way that maybe we could use that individual school for for a mask and for a period of time and not the whole system two something to look at um i think mr campbell's gonna correct me on something real quick no no no provide some clarification i'm not going to correct you at all yeah part of my job is to just kind of help you craft where it sounds like you want to go procedurally it sounds like

098there is some desire if the motion pass for dr swann of the administration to look at some matrix and some criteria they would need to come back to you to report that so it sounds to me like a potential middle ground for a motion again whether it passes or not would be to have a two-week time frame with a board meeting next week so that you can both take a look at your math decision and consider any criteria from the administration so you see in a meeting next week on the 20 the following week i couldn't hear you ask me that again she was asking were you saying a meeting next week or the following week um that's up to you but it would seem like you would want to come back and look at

099the criteria while the math mandate was still in place yeah so you could make a decision as far as emotion all right so meet next week just really really really quick it's up to you yeah okay really quick question how if at all can we discuss as a board i don't know if that needs to be in open session closed session how our adherence to contact tracing here in burke county and whether that will remain a bcps thing or if we can pass that off to state and local health departments how would we go forth i think that should also be something your administration should look into because that's going to require some phone calls so that could be something else miss sims you'd ask the administration to look into and report back to you

100okay thank you sure absolutely mr campbell i'm sorry and for you know to look into it is that something we would have to like put on like an action on to discuss and then look at possible voting on or i guess how what was the process on that like if we're looking to make a you obviously want to get the information before you can vote so it would be up to you as whether you ask the administration to let you know as soon as they find out or bring it to you at a meeting you can do it either way okay thank you all right would anybody like to make a motion dr hempstreet was your did you make a motion that we go back to the mass mandate time and i think mr johnson

101and i will i will second that motion i think what do you think i'm leaning that two weeks like dr swann originally said i think that uh for clarity's sake probably restate the motion and let's make sure it covers the points you wanted to cover before you get a second all right i'd say the motion is to re-mask for two weeks okay and then reevaluate the situation and to look at the new metrics or the metrics that are provided for us to decide whether we continue with that or not and do you also want to add and look at alternatives to contact tracing yeah and look at alternatives to contact facing yeah okay i second that motion okay all those in favor please raise your right hand all those opposed all right motion pass all

102right now if i can ask dr melanie honeycutt to please come forward sorry i have to put my glasses on h is catching up with me here so i'm here to talk to you about the selection of library materials our policy and our standards i want to thank the board members for allowing me the opportunity to share with you information about our selection of library materials policies and standards so this is just a quick look at the agenda as i go through the process first of all i want to talk about our presentation purpose our purpose of this presentation is to provide you as board members context for the media policy in burke county public schools so when we first start talking about it children's literature is about selecting materials that are representative of a

103wide array of diverse students in our school community nation and world students need to be able to see themselves in books it is equally important for them to not only have a mirror of themselves in that book but to also have a window offering views of the world that may be real imagined familiar or different sliding glass doors are also important as they allow our students to walk through and become a part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author literature transforms human experience and reflects it back on us and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience on this slide in particular we're talking about our disciplined data at a district level why include that punitive discipline is a factor that

104can cause students to be disengaged from their school community making them feel alienated and devalued likewise removing access to inclusive texts gives traditionally underrepresented groups the sense that they do not matter having inclusive texts that mirror students lives languages and identity is another method of engaging students in school and making them feel seen heard and valued so why do we choose the books we do diverse books can help us foster the development of self-discipline empathy and rational judgment some of the most valuable skills that managers look for in employees are often difficult to define we hear that quite often as we talk with career and technical ed and some of the other areas so it's let alone easy for them to evaluate and quantify self-discipline is one self-awareness creative problem solving empathy learning agility adaptiveness

105flexibility positivity rational judgment generosity and kindness are among those so empathy sorry my slides are a little slow here books with diverse characters serve multiple purposes in children's hands they allow them to the opportunity to resolve conflict feel empathy and problem solved school librarians called the miras rational judgment books are sometimes windows offering views of the world that may be real or imagined familiar or strange reading them becomes a means of self of affirmation and readers often seek their mirrors in books recent research in neuroscience suggests that you might look to libraries for a solution reading literary fiction helps people develop those skills empathy theory of mind and critical thinking so we're talking in particular about our board policies board policy 3200 which is the selection of instructional materials this was adopted on june 26

1062018. the board policy 3210 is the parental inspection of an objection to instructional materials and it was adopted in a revision version on january of 2018. both of these policies cover all instructional materials not just supplemental which is what the library is considered so we felt like it was important to give you a crosswalk of those policies and standards based on all of our stuff not just our board policy but our north carolina boe strategic plan bcps strategic plan the social emotional learning teacher evaluation instruments media coordinator evaluation instruments north carolina academic standards and saks cassie as well so if you click on it you get the crosswalk which is right here and as board members you can see the entire crosswalk but i just want to hit the highlights of the first line here

107so across the top you'll see burke county board policies 3200 and 3210 the procurement of materials must be accomplished in accordance with the law including the first amendment of the united states constitution board education goals board purchasing and accounting policies and established selection guidelines including the library bill of rights of the american library association the objectives for the selection of materia supplement supplementary materials we have a set aside parents may submit an objection this is 3210 in writing to the principal regarding the use of a particular instructional material the principal will have the media advisory committee review the objection while input from the community may be sought the board does believe that professional educators are in the best position to determine whether a particular instructional material is appropriate for the age and maturity of the

108students and for the subject matter being taught it aligns with our social emotional learning the abilities to understand perspectives of and empathize with others including those from diverse backgrounds cultures and context this includes capacities to feel compassion for others understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings and recognize family school community resources and supports inside the teacher evaluation instrument element 2a teachers provide an environment in which a child has a positive nurturing relationship with caring adults teachers are encouraged teachers encourage an environment that is inviting respectful supportive inclusive and flexible standard two for the media coordinators school library media coordinators build a learning environment that meets the instructional needs of the diverse population of their students school library media coordinators establish a learning environment that facilitates access to resources addresses the learning

109needs of all members of the school community community the library media coordinators create a welcoming accessible physical space that facilitates active learning promotes participation collaboration teamwork and provides flexibility to accommodate multiple learning styles school library media coordinators include incorporate a global view and multiculturalism in all their library services programs and collection development to meet the diverse school population cognia which is now are saks cassie which is now cognia standard 2.1 learners have equitable opportunities to develop skills and achieve the content and learning priorities established by the institution this crosswalk also goes into detail for four other alignments of the board policy so we were also asked to look around these are regions six seven and eight everyone in these regions the policies are very similar we were unable to locate online versions for rowan salisbury

110county schools it could be to the fact that they were a victim of ransomware too so that's a possibility but i do want you to be aware that region 6 7 and 8 that is every single district west of winston-salem foresight they all have policies like ours so the school mtac committee and roles and responsibilities i want to hit the highlights of this because i think this is important so our media technology advisory committee which is outlined in the impact model which is part of the north carolina department of public instruction these are what they suggest so suggested committee members principal or principal designee sometimes it's the assistant principal instead of the principal school library media coordinator technology facilitator in our case our facilitators are spread across schools however they all participate at their schools

111representatives from each grade level are department representatives from resource areas parent representation and student representation only at the middle and the high schools in burke county we have traditionally kept the student student piece at the high school only each member contributes to the mtac committee the media coordinator tech facilitators serve as co-chairs they're the leadership group they provide the expertise in the evaluation selection and management of resources equipment and technology related issues teachers then add their knowledge for the curriculum and content their instructional needs their learning styles the principal provides information on the budget the curriculum special projects students provide information related to personal needs and preferences of the student population parents represent the community's concerns morals and standards district level technology facilitator and media personnel lend as an advisory role and all members serve

112as the liaison between the school staff students and the community some of the functions i'm going to hit the highlights basically they comply with the established system policies and procedures they establish media programs short and long-term goals based on the local school plans they follow the school improvement plan as a district we follow the strategic plan as we look at pieces as well they establish and apply decision making processes for discarding materials within the system policy and they recommend procedures to ensure accessibility to media services for all students and teachers so we also have a recommended guide for school mtac reconsideration complaint checklist i am only going to hit the part in bold the rest of it is more of the detail but you do have a copy of this in your folder so when

113a piece of material is considered or wanted to be reconsidered a parent or guardian expresses to the school about a concern about the educational material the media coordinator gives the reconsideration form to the parent or guardian they receive the completed reconsideration form from the parent or guardian then they sit down and have their first mtac committee which the media coordinator reviews the objections that were sent in they distribute the copies every committee member is required to read the material the media coordinator continues to seek professional reviews as they're waiting for the second mtac committee meeting and she will re or he will review those in the second mtac committee with the members then a written report and a decision letter is submitted to the media coordinator submits it to the to the complainant and then

114if the complainant disagrees they can pursue it to the next level which is the superintendent for us so the next piece that we want to talk about is our selection process or procedures some of the media selection procedures some of the things we look at is we want to make sure it meets high standards in literary artistic and aesthetic quality technical aspects and physical format it's appropriate for the subject area for the age it's emotionally developmental it's ability level we want to represent different viewpoints on controversial issues school media centers follow these selection procedures our media personnel do take recommendations from student and staff however the media coordinator will let the requesting person know that they'll order the book however if it is found that the book is not relevant to the grade levels of

115the school it will be explained to the requester why that book could not be ordered all books ordered for the library are ordered from reputable vendors and publishers who have been involved in education for years i would also like to mention that our 23 media coordinators all hold master's degrees with a command combined years of experience of over 200 years in the classroom or media teaching their main objective is to choose materials that help our students become lifelong learners and readers books to them should always represent the last two bolded pieces i have there differing viewpoints on controversial issues and provide a global perspective and promote diversity by including materials by authors and illustrators of all cultures so some of the tenants of the school leadership the first amendment this is taken directly from the

116first amendment congress shall make no law representing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peacefully to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances so i've included a link to the library school of rights but bill of rights i'm sorry and i also included a link to the school library piece but i'm going to highlight a few pieces of that school library the school libraries are charged with the mission of providing services and resources to meet the diverse interests and informational needs of the communities they serve services materials facilities that fulfill the needs and interests of the library users at different stages in their personal development are necessary part of providing library services and should

117be determined on an individual basis the school library plays a unique role in promoting protecting and educating about intellectual freedom it serves as a point of voluntary access to information and ideas and as a learning laboratory for students as they acquire critical thinking and problem solving skills needed in a pluristic society school librarians assume a leadership role in promoting principles of intellectual freedom within the school by providing resources and services that create and sustain an atmosphere of free inquiry school librarians work closely with teachers to integrate instructional activities in the classroom units designed to equip students to locate evaluate and use a broad range of ideas effectively intellectual freedom is fostered by educating students in the use of critical thinking skills to empower them to pursue free inquiry responsibly and independently through resources programming and

118educational processes students and teachers experience the free and robust debate characteristics of a democratic society it is the responsible responsibility of a governing body to adopt policies that guarantee students access to broad range of ideas these include policies on collectional collection development and procedures for review of resources about which concerns have been raised such policies developed by persons in the community provide for a timely and fair hearing and ensure that procedures are applied equitably to all expressions of concern it is the responsibility of the school librarians to implement district policies and procedures to in the school to ensure equitable access to the resources and services of all students i've also included what is censorship i'm not going to read this whole piece to you one thing i would like to make the board aware of

119as we discuss the policies is the repercussions of censorship censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons individuals groups or government officials find objectionable or dangerous we don't want to be accused of censorship the policy should address the developmentally appropriate needs of the students there's a careful careful balance between that and censorship so some questions i just included this for your own information that we ask when we're looking at reconsideration is this library book representative of our students interest that's first and foremost am i actively reviewing this work through a neutral perspective what impact what will the impact be if we limit access to this book what message do we send to our students if we limit access to this book and how does this request for reconsideration fit into a larger

120political and social climate so a final thought as educators we always want to encourage parents to play an active role in their child's education including managing their child's reading choices however as one parent may object to a particular title another parent may choose to allow or encourage their child to read it and both parents have legitimate valid reasons for deciding as such by removing titles from a media center simply because of a singular perspective of objection to the content of that material we remove that choice from every other parent and child who would seek to read the book so i would be remiss if i did not thank the 23 media coordinators who work diligently to ensure that every student has an opportunity to read a book that mirrors their lives opens their eyes through

121windows to other walks of life and pulls open the sliding glass door to allow our students to see the world from many perspectives i am thankful i've had the opportunity to share this with the board and our thoughts as the board moves forward we want to give every student every opportunity to grow and learn so that we as a county can continue to grow and develop jobs and opportunities to ensure that our students become productive contributing citizens of burke county we thank you for your support thank you dr honeycutt i'd just like to make a few comments as we go through this process to the board and to the public at large in general please keep the following in mind as we work through this process first the school district does have wide latitude to

122determine if a selection is educationally and developmentally appropriate for students in a given grade level and also second under the first amendment to our united states constitution which we all swore to uphold the board cannot remove a selection for political or partisan reasons or because we simply disagree with the viewpoints expressed so if you can just keep those things in mind as we move forward in evaluating our policy do any of you have any questions that you'd like to ask dr honeycutt dr honeycutt does the first amendment um does it inc i mean if a book has profanity and vulnerable places in it you know um sexual places um does the first amendment protect that and keep that in the book for the schools i am not sure but that is something that maybe our

123lawyer can ask i i do know that in one part that i've read it talks about developmentally appropriate for that age so the precedent that we have from the supreme court the intent of the school district the intent of the board is incredibly important if the intent so the answer to that question is there is no absolute there are plenty of books that are in school libraries right now that contain profanity in them so there's not an absolute to that question the question for the first amendment is is the board removing the selection because of a disagreement with the viewpoint or is the board removing the selection because they don't believe that it's developmentally appropriate so that's going to be different for a lot of different selections and the intent of the board is real

124important in that process mr campbell can you stay at the mic thank you for reiterating purposes does the first amendment protect child erotica in pornographic child pornography i don't think that was the question that was asked earlier no the first amendment does not protect child pornography including illegal acts i know some states have tried to define child erotica that is that's new it's still in process there's challenges to some of those so certainly though if something is a crime then the first amendment does not support the commission of a crime uh but i will say and i think of the board members notice they're even at the at the college level other places there is disagreement as to whether some works of art or pornographic or whether or not they have literary merit folks disagree

125and it takes a district attorney to want to prosecute a crime so again there are no easy answers to to this and i think dr hunnicutt's presentation did an excellent job of reviewing that the other thing that i think your chairman has already spoken to which you just got to keep in mind someone has to review all of these selections and it's a lot of material and i think it's real important for the public to know that unless this board is going to try to take that on themselves you as individuals i don't think have the time and the energy to read and review every selection to try to make a decision as a board as to whether or not you think it's appropriate so policy is incredibly important and giving your staff direction on

126how to look at things and criteria and it's very difficult in this area of the law to have any black and white requirements as all as far as what is permissible and what's not permissible it's very difficult chris let me ask you a question i what generated this for these two books i mean this didn't come up till suddenly the or these this group of books and uh dr hunnicutt said that all of the coordinator of the media coordinators and people had read it i encourage the board to read these books read them both or read all of them i'd encourage you to do that i've read all of them and uh have you read them all that i i've read all yeah good and i just hope everybody because i i remember initially when

127i saw this list i thought whoa but when you suddenly read the book then and it's not what you see it's how you see it that's a vast difference in what a list of words and then suddenly expanding this thing and listening to it in a very eloquent you know demonstration of that was made by a young man that stood up here yes and i'm just saying please read the book read them both yes and i'm not telling you what it's going to do to you but i'm going to tell you how it changed the way not what i saw but how i saw it so i just encourage you to do that we also need to keep in mind what happened back in 2009 when banning of books was brought up at that particular

128time and sachs and cassie considered taking our accreditation away from us that year and we were within 30 days of having our accreditation taken away so we need to remember that our history is here for a good reason and we need to keep that in mind yeah and i think it's a good thing to educate the board on yes what sacks cassie is and and it's nice and i don't mean that in a bad but i'm just saying they can do some yeah really cockney and now but it was saks and cassie back in oh no whatever their what's her name now cognia i think for me when i read the books those two books and i'm reading um felix ever after now for me i did feel like some of the content was developmentally

129inappropriate um for some of our readers particularly middle schoolers and so i thought a lot about it and in the classroom when we'd show videos or snippets of videos there are certain videos you can't show because they're rated a particular rating like r so the teachers can't show them and over the internet we block certain things so that the students can't see that that means they can't work around it you know how they do but we try to we try our best to block those things but then when we read the books it's there and i think that's where i have issue is what are our boundaries with that is there a way that um we could have a rubric something that we could go by our own pg-13 ratings exactly i mean because real

130really and truly some of this stuff is is you wouldn't want or a high school student might could handle some of it um some of our our middle schoolers couldn't and and and if we can't if our teachers can't present something like that in the classroom and if we are not allowing it through our internet or trying not to allow it to our internet how can it be in our books that's my that's my question i'm not i mean i'm fine with talking about social issues i'm fine we need to if we don't we're going to keep repeating but i'm talking about sexual things that are in some of these books so we would have to take a look to it at lots of things but i mean creating a rubric is something we could

131look into but you're also going to be looking at shakespeare you're also going to be looking at some of the content that's taught in the classroom as well if you take it off of the media shelves then you may be affecting it in the classroom and i mean i don't mind trying to research it for you in that aspect but i do know that our media people choose the books and put the books based on the level that is recommended for those books right and i also know that if you as a parent came in and said i don't want my child reading this book media coordinators keep a list and they won't check that book out they have digital capability to actually look at stuff and see so i mean there's those possibilities so

132maybe we need to as a group of media get together and make a recommendation of what we think may uh help with the board decision in this i mean i think this is going to be i'm sorry i don't mean dinner i think this is going to be a lengthy process because we need to make sure that we don't cross the line right but i also understand that we need to make sure that our students have developmentally appropriate material right so if it would be pleasurable to the board miss dell and myself will work with the media coordinators and look at some of the things that we could uh possibly move forward with would that be all right what do you guys think i think we should um did you make those notes ms dale

133thank you all right any other questions for me anybody else thank you again for your time thank you thank you all right let's move forward with our board vacancy applicants all right so you we have 19 folks um that have applied to be on our board how would you all like to proceed forward that would just repeat that what you just picked up the last part we've got 19 folks that have applied how would you like to proceed forward [Music] with our process i i think with the way that we have done things in the past each individual selects five people out of the 19 that have applied and we select each of us select five people and we move forward with that okay mr campbell well i do want to have to say real

134quick that's certainly permissible the only thing i was going to remind the board and for the benefit of the public that when you're selecting a board member it is 100 a public process so the board cannot discuss folks behind closed doors you can't have a closed session things like that whatever you do you have to do in a public session so i was going to remind the public of that and you and then also was going to remind you too that if you're going to be looking at the board vacancy you also have a need to look at the mask policy and the recommendations of your administration both of those things could be combined into a single meeting right for your convenience right that would be great so um you'd like for us to look

135at take our top five picks and then we can vote on those and come up with a list that's what i'm recommending okay are we thinking about five folks to interview is that part of me are we thinking about five folks to interview i mean we'll pick five of our own and then take the top yes are we thinking about picking five what do y'all think about that what number which because we're not going to interview all 19 of them no no though yeah do you have any recommendations sure similar to when you selected you know superintendent in terms of narrowing folks down you could each select five names and you would then agree that the top five note getters would be interviewed if there is a three-way tie for fifth position or a three-way

136time for fourth visit you might end up interviewing eight people or even nine people just mathematically make sure you understand that but i think for each of you to submit your top five names to the board chair go ahead and set the meeting those folks could be invited to come and to give interviews again just know the email you send to the board chair with your top five that will be a public record yes right okay but i think that's an excellent way to do it is for you to think through it submit your top five names and then interview the top five and if there are ties and you've got to interview a few more than five you all know that or if we came through and one guy or a girl or a

137woman man or woman came up all five well i know well that's what i'm saying you would you you would you would interview the top five now one of them or two of them may have a vote from all of you but it's going to be the top five vote getters when you combine all the votes yeah right okay sounds good all right we good with that all right so i went on to ask would you all like to meet next tuesday and i would do that in the form of a motion okay we'd like to do that right you're done i'd put it all in a single motion okay it's all right miss rutasel if you come forward good evening members of the board we have several things we'd like to talk about tonight

138as far as our calendar goes you'll find in your packet actually the first item is this school year's calendar the 2122 calendar as we've been looking at our calendars we first wanted to review the one that we're currently working under and we felt like this would be a great time to revise this year's calendar and to add a teacher workday so if you'll look at the calendar our recommendation is that we make next tuesday january 18th a teacher work day this would allow a four-day weekend with the current quarantine isolation period being five days we're hoping that on wednesday january 19th we would have a majority of our staff and students back so that's the first recommendation we would like to ask the board to consider okay all right would anybody like to have any

139discussion about that or would you like to make a motion motion to uh approve that vision to the teacher for to add that teacher workday on the 18th of uh january as proposed i second that motion all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right there you go thank you the next item in your packet is a proposed calendar for the 2022-2023 school year you can see when you review this calendar the first thing we do is we put down the first student day and we don't have a lot of flexibility in that date that's the date that we can officially start school after we come up with the first day we proceed to put in the 11 holidays then we add the 10 vacation days and you notice we try

140to put those around christmas and spring break so we can give our students and staff an extra long vacation so i'll be glad to entertain any questions about our 2022-2023 calendar that's in your packet i have a question regarding i don't have the date as to when the election is in november do you have that date yes ma'am the november election would be on november 8th and that is a teacher work day so there will be no students on our campus because we've had we have three schools at the present time that are holding that elections are held at and and i think that that is not a good i mean we didn't used to do that in the past and i think that needs to be taken into consideration yes ma'am when our leadership

141team met that was one of the things dr swann discussed and so we made sure that election day would be a teacher work day so no students would be in our buildings thank you very much mr rudisol as a parent and having students it was so nice to be able to wrap up the second nine weeks this last year right before they went out for break and my understanding of reading this right is just the way that the the days fall with what we were able to do on the first day that was our directive as of when we could start and that's why i didn't fall within that that time frame this time you're exactly right so the state says that we can start school on the monday closest to august 26th and unfortunately

142this coming year the 26th is on a friday so that means the first day of school is august 29th and while i love to be able to finish first semester by christmas and i think most of our high school teachers do as well in high school students this coming year that's really just not going to be possible to have good quality instruction in the number of days so maybe the next year we'll be able to get back to that but for this coming school year the 22-23 school year we will not be able to finish first semester before christmas and we meet often with different leas in our region and really region seven which where we file very few of them if any are going to be able to get first semester in i know

143just in talking to watauga catawba and some of our neighboring counties they're not going to be able to get first semester in next year thank you um just just kind of wondering how that's going to work too you know the end of the year um that ends and the fourth grading period ends on the ninth and that's the last day for kids and and half day does that cause any problems or any issues with um you know getting information back home to the kids to the families and and all that actually it will not we've had many years where we've had to go all the way up into the middle of june so i think we've sort of gotten spoiled over the last few years i know there's been some years where we've even been

144able to finish in may but with us not starting to august 29th then we're not going to be able to finish before june 9th but but we've had to do that before and i think we'll be fine okay are there any more questions all right someone like to make a motion to approve the 2022-2023 calendar motion to approve the bcps calendar for 2022-2023 do i hear a second all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right thank you mr rudisol i do have a quick question before you leave um i've just had you know several members of staff kind of reach out to me are we still doing like the committee like the calendar committee um you know as far as having representatives from the schools where you guys discuss and

145talk about we do have a committee our leadership team meets and we discuss the calendar what you'll find though is if anyone wants to develop a calendar there's not a lot of flexibility in it if you just start penciling it in okay we have to start august 29th so you put that date in your calendar then okay i've got to add the 11 holidays so you add those then you have to add the 10 vacation days so really the only flexibility we have is where to strategically place those teacher work days and our leadership team and other members that give us advice on the calendar we've got people that's been teachers and principals so we sort of do get a wide spectrum of who gives us input on that but as far as the old

146calendar committee that gets together and meets six seven and eight times and hash it out we do not do that anymore but we do bet this calendar with a wide group of people including teachers and principals as well as leadership team thank you still learning thank you okay [Music] dr abernathy good evening board so you'll also find in your packet a proposed calendar for burke middle college just a little information and background burp middle college is our cooperative innovative high school in the district and we are not under the same quite the same guidance that regular schools are just because of the flexibility that we need to align with our community college calendar and so we do try really hard to work with the burke county public schools calendar and have some of common dates

147especially with vacations holidays the work days we try our best to align but they don't always align perfectly but you'll also see in your calendar that we have i have highlighted the start date for western piedmont community college first day last day of each semester in the fall and then in the spring and then also we have to still be have students enrolled the first day of summer session in order for our students to continue one more summer for free tuition so i'd be happy to entertain any questions that you have you'll notice that we're starting on the 10th august 10th which is a little bit later than what we normally do because burke county's starting a little bit later so we tried to push that back a little bit it gives us three days

148to get students in get orientation done before their college courses start on monday any questions all right someone would someone like to make a motion to approve the burke middle college calendar for 2022 2023 i make a motion that we accept the burke uh middle college calendar all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right there you go thank you all right thank you right mr wall chairperson craven members of the board good evening good evening i want to talk with you a little bit about some uh food service considerations um as we move in and through this coveted time uh our first consideration would be using uh prc 174 which was money given to us about 82 thousand dollars by the federal government as a bonus to our chartwells associates

149currently they are not getting the same bonuses that burke county public schools are getting employees are getting or the state bonuses that our governor has given us and so we are proposing giving the chartwells employees 200 a month or february march april and may which would be a thousand dollars for each employee as a way to recruit and incentivize and also to make things a little more fair um and so be happy to answer any questions about that or entertain a motion does anyone have any questions okay all right i'd like a motion to authorize the superintendent and administration to use funds under prc 174 to bring chartwells employees up to the retention bonus amount received by burke county schools employees the amount recommended is 200 per month for the next five months using applicable

150federal funds eligible months are from january to may of 2022 employees would only receive pay for months worked the previous procedures used for the prior retention bonus for chartwells employees will be used for eligibility the superintendent is authorized to execute appropriate agreements to effectuate this action so one second second all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right there you go thank you all right a third of the way done inflation is hurting us inflation is called has caused our food cost and supply cost that chartwells provides for us to go up substantially about 2.1 percent since our last renegotiation which was the end of may usually we do not negotiate with chartwells mid-year but with this huge increase to be a good partner with them we would ask the board

151to please consider an increase of 2.1 percent of the per plate cost in order to be a good partner with chartwells and to provide our kids the best food we can get them that still meets our nutritional requirements be happy to answer any questions or entertain a motion any questions all right make i make a motion to increase the per plate charge under the board's contract with chartwells for school food service by 2.1 percent or a nickel per plate this increase is reasonable to adjust for the uncontrollable inflationary escalation in the cost of food purchased by chartwells under this contract the superintendent is authorized to execute appropriate agreements to effectuate this action would someone second the motion i second the motion thank you all those in favor please raise your right hand there you go

152thank you two-thirds of the ways done all right lastly is a little bit of a change to the board goals um in the past we are trying to move away from having any burke county public school employees who work for food service and all work for chartwells that has not worked well during these coveted times and we're asking the board to consider allowing all managers of our food service cafeterias to become burke county public schools employees this will help us retain and attract better employees we'll be able to offer more competitive benefit packages and our per plate cost will only change by about it will actually decrease by 0.0621 [Music] um this is a big change from the board goals but we ask that you consider this and i'd be happy to answer any questions

153all right any questions is keith uh in on all these you know yes sir i mean you know where is he i brought him up we told a lot of stuff here i'd say where is the money man doctor the money man all right he's my backup okay okay okay you know what was coming next no these are all good things yeah they're all good things all right i'd like to make a motion to amend the agreement with chartwells to allow managerial employees to be hired directly by burke county schools to improve employee retention rates for these critical positions the superintendent is authorized to execute appropriate agreements to effectuate this action do i have a second second all those in favor please raise your right hand all right there you go thank you thank you

154no more changes dr hamstring but i do have i need to brag a minute if you let if you'll allow me just a second absolutely my folks are working incredibly hard um and we're very short-handed and we appreciate the board members that have reached out and offered to help this week i also want to point out that our program is doing exceptionally well financially um even with these changes we anticipate making over a million dollars this year in child nutrition and you can probably remember the the years where we lost two to three hundred thousand dollars a year and so chartwells has been an exceptional partner for us and uh we look forward to continuing that relationship thank you for taking the time let me speak thank you mr walker right let's go to our

155open session minutes three questions all right i'd like to make a motion to approve the open session minutes for december the 6th 2021 and december 6 2021 the special called meeting and december 13th 2021 regular meeting do i have a second okay all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right let's go to closed session meetings any questions i make a motion to approve the closed session meetings for january 3rd 2022 special called meeting do i have a second second all those in favor please raise your right hand all right personnel report all right i make a motion to approve the personnel report a report board action for january 2nd excuse me january 10 2022 do i have a second yes second all those in favor please raise your right hand

156right i guess we need to make a motion then don't we uh i do not believe there's a need for a closed session just put on the agenda in case there is but i think you do need to now circle back to the um the board appointment in a meeting for next month um i believe that i'm trying to remember madam chair you may remember how long your interviews were the last time you did this process mrs hovich may remember whether they were 30 45 or hour long it was they started at 4 30 in the afternoon i know right because mine was the first year they were 15 minute interviews okay so that would be the first question for you to decide if you're gonna interview anywhere from five to seven folks depending on

157where the numbers fall do you want to do 15 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes and then multiply it by 7 to be safe and that's up to you so that'd be the first question for you to discuss so when we meet next time with our five candidates that's basically all we can do okay right they won't know that that's right you would just interview them at that night and then it's your next board meeting we would interview you you'd have a motion to appoint right right when is that meeting now that's what we're going to talk about oh when we're going to we haven't yeah and we also need to look at uh metrics for the mask and that would be the same meeting at which you'd consider the administration whoever we decide to interview

158so we're looking at the 21st that's a meeting yeah look at me i was i think um mr campbell feels like we should meet next week and i agree um what day is there any day next week on monday's um martin luther king holiday so that's out but any of the other days next week that you guys wouldn't be available so we can talk about these two topics i'm available available on the 18th i'm sorry i am not available on the 18th what day is that tuesday what about wednesday 19th wednesday's probably you don't like to meet on wednesday nights wednesday during the day oh could you no no about thursday evening would that work for everybody thursday thursday evening yeah thursday thursday i am available thursday evening okay five o'clock six o'clock what are

159you up what would you like six o'clock swine with me and thursday six o'clock thursday okay i'll rearrange i got ball game but coaching on a thursday thursday what i can i'm sure you arranged i'll get myself okay the other coach to help january the 20th at six o'clock and you want to stick to 15-minute interviews yes well we've got a lot to accomplish that night i don't want to it's up to you but we won't be interviewing them you will be interviewed i think the thought is that by a deadline such as friday of this week at the latest you would submit your top five choices and uh to make it easy you could just submit them directly to miss hoffman and then she can you know the administration can let you know who

160the interviewees are and they can make the phone calls to line up the interviews i didn't know if we had to pre vote no you can send an email it'll be a public record all right right okay so next on january 20th at six o'clock we'll have a special called meeting and we will presume with our interviews and is everyone okay submitting your top five choices to ms huffman by thursday that will give them an extra day to line up the end of this third correct okay okay or the five you'd like to interview is the better way to say that what time on thursday i think just by the end of business thursday that'll give them do you all think 15-minute interviews would be about that's what we did last time it was about

16115. okay and while you just take a motion to adopt the selection process the board just discussed that would be sufficient all right i'd like to make a motion um that we will meet on january 20th 2022 at um 00 pm we will interview our top candidates our top five candidates that we submit to miss linda huffman by thursday we will do 15 15-minute interviews and we will also discuss um metrics on moving forward with mask second all right all those in favor please raise your right hand all right pat all right and being that there is no reason to go into closed session i need someone to make a motion to adjourn emotion we adjourn the meeting all right i'll second all right all those in favor thank you