001i move we accept the agenda all right we have a motion by doctor hemp street is there a second second by jane all those in was there any discussion first of all hearing none all those in favor please raise your right hand all right the agenda is approved dr swann thank you mr chair members of the board got some great updates to give everyone this evening one of the first things that i want to talk about is our lead remediation that we've been doing for the last several years within our county as you know several of our buildings were painted with lead with the lead-based paint over several years that we kept going over them and over them uh in order to get our uh child care facilities licensed um this the lead state inspectors
002come in uh and they have to kind of they they basically have a little a lead gun that points it at certain areas of our buildings and tell us which areas need addressed so happy to say that we are very close to completion of all our target schools right now and not only were we able to remove all the lead but we were able to make it look a lot more appealing and attractive kind of updated the campuses as you'll see in the pictures if you recall some of our oak hill elementary for example had the just the i-beams uh in our maintenance department they were able to cover those up and make it a lot more attractive for our students and our staff and our parents when they're on campuses um also another update
003i want to give the board november 28th or 29th we're going to have a group from north carolina department of public instruction in burke county for the week they'll be doing a consolidated title 1 2 3 and 4 audit of course the audit they're going to be reviewing documents at the school level documents at the county level as well title 1 associated with our elementary school program title ii is secondary title three is our esl foreign language program and title four is our student services so once again we have an audit team come visit us every four years the last one i was director of student services and we had a successful audit i don't expect anything less from our our team also next monday at our regular scheduled board board meeting you'll see up
004here principal of the year mr keith wrecker we went down and awarded him just a great honor to award mr recker he will be here next monday at the regular scheduled meeting to receive his award with his family and he is very close to being a father times two so hopefully that we can balance that out and make that happen for him that night also some more recognitions that will be happening next week as well if you'll see in the bottom left miss morgan smith first year teacher of the year her new teacher of the year she's a math teacher at freedom high school her father's also an educator so just a great first year teacher very happy to have her lucky to have her on board with us and also on the the other
005two photographs probably the board and the community need no names attached to this picture jim and susie tilly great advocates of the school system over the last several years they are they're retiring so if you recall i like to joke i have a 20 year old that still has his wells fargo piggy bank he keeps it filled up in his in his room most of our students within the county were able to get a lot of school supplies the tilleys did a phenomenal job of gaining getting free supplies donated to our teachers three ring binders money bags for our schools i still see them in use right now so once again this will be a recognition with a plaque attached to that next monday as well october we recognize our national it's national principles month
006so we're we'll be going out to the schools this week and next week delivering some surprises to our principals and also last saturday was a cust custodian appreciation day um you know if you follow me on twitter please do and you'll see a lot of this stuff as we take pictures of our custodians our teachers our students so that's that's a great way that we recognize our our custodians and our teachers throughout the school year as well so one other highlight that we've got coming up on october 22nd from 8 a.m to 4 p.m is the maid competition if you're not familiar with made made stands for the morganton art design and engineering competition it's been it's been held annually up until last year with covid in conjunction with the morganton historic festival but unfortunately
007after morganton cancelled their festival over those the extended weekends we had to postpone our maid competition but once again that is going to take place on october 22nd as you'll see on the bottom left there's a chair that the students made it's out of cardboard so it's a workable chair it's they they have engineering design challenges that they have to do in a certain amount of time phenomenal programs i encourage the board and any any of our community members to come for the maid competition on the 22nd um once again our global immersion program that we have um that'll as i mentioned earlier the title three budget some of the title three budget goes for that um we had several folks from north carolina department of public instruction come and review that program we've got
008another group coming in tomorrow that will be meeting with us very very pleased with our global immersion program as you know it's at mountain view elementary school we're in year three of that cohort right now so as you know each year we add a global immersion teacher to that program it doesn't retract any teachers from what's happening it's a pool of students that we mix in that program so very successful program that we've got um also board i wanted to update you as we as you recall last board meeting we talked about the pulled testing uh we did begin that last week we're in week two right now right now unfortunately we're experiencing some major hiccups with the pulled testing some of our sites we're not getting enough individuals to want to get tested our
009staff and our students and also some of the concerns that we've that our health director has shared with us as far as the the self swabbing we're not going as deep as needed and getting a false sense of safety with a negative test so once again we're going to give it this week as another shot and see if we can up those numbers a little bit if not we're going to back off a little bit and see what else out is out there dr hemp street with the pulled testing right now we've come up with some different ideas that we we've ran around with mr scalisi as well in order to increase um once again as you recall yes see you're going to be talking about esser funding shortly but yes sir but have we
010received funding for the pool testing yet we have received a drop down mr lawson 1.3 million dollars 1.4 million dollars yes sir so we were able to with some of those fundings mr hunt we were able to hire um nursing assistants to help with running the tests uh help with contact tracing so we have that currently in place right now okay so we are offsetting the contact tracing with those yes trying to give our nurses some relief thank you um also if you recall this past september um all of every one of our staff members were received a one thousand dollar bonus based on employment uh longevity of employment um leadership has discussed about possibly doing another incentive bonus in january with the board's approval same same criteria for that incentive bonus as well for
011all of our staff right now our quarantine numbers are slightly going down fortunately but back two three weeks ago our staff was covering classes on their planning period we're having a very difficult time finding substitutes even with our 30 additional subs that we hired so and we also have our substitute incentive plan that we've got going on for the month of november and december where our subs can earn up to 200 extra by subbing at least five or ten days within those two months so and all that is with esser funds as well it's it's it falls under that criteria of the incentive plan where we attract and incentivize employees once again as i mentioned dpi stephanie de chave with department of public instruction they were very interested to hear of our assistant principal leadership
012academy so they will be there that we invited them back for tomorrow so they will be here tomorrow morning uh just to kind of listen and learn about what we're doing how we're building growing our own assistant principles within the county regionally everyone struggles with retaining what we call trying to build the bench you know who's who's up who's up next who can do that job next so burke county does a phenomenal job in the event of a vacancy of a upper level leadership position we feel confident that our candidates that we're training ourselves are able to take those jobs um and also on october 28th uh the gentleman standing here is mr ted pedro he's one of our parent facil language facilitators over at mountain view if you don't know mr pedro he does
013he is a man of multi-hats um so just hearing the language of a parent educator is that's not synonymous across the state very few counties do that so right now we have three parent educators within our system so they're coming to look at that plan as well to see how they can kind of model that and duplicate those that plan throughout the state as well um in the food truck in downtown morganton if you are we're driving around last wednesday you know the street right behind its um oak hill um all right king yeah the king street grill the oak hill iron um so they they had that streak closed off for lunch uh as you know um a lot of food establishments are having a hard time getting wait staff cooks so the city
014in order to try to combat that they've shut down that part of the street and they have actually invited food trucks to come and eat set up so that vendors or folks can come and eat and root and vine has opened up their little cafe area as well for folks to come in there and eat so mr wall and our chartwells group were able to get in there and had a very successful afternoon serving up food to the community so doesn't like cheese on their hot dogs [Music] and it was kind of a rainy day that day as well very overcast but we still had a lot of local people from that area come out and eat so they wouldn't have to travel so as once i said that that was a great opportunity okay
015and also western piedmont community college dr joel welch came over to patton high school met with me last monday we toured several one of our ccp courses we also toured several of the ccp courses that we have and he's going to be coming out to all of our campuses and touring so that we can continue to build that strong partnership that we have with ccp um you know it's it's what's best for our students right now in order to get them that college education in order for them to take transferable credits to that institution that they choose as long as it's a state-funded institution as you'll see here in the background this is one of the class mr rudiso's classes they were building taking orders on a storage shed and they're pretty much selling that
016for material costs with a little inflation because it is student learning right now what's happening phenomenal buildings very well built roll down garage doors and if you'll see on the right this is one of our project lead the way courses that's this taught by mr clay nelson over at patton another update that i have for the bert the board uh we have began our podcasts again learning bert podcast thanks to miss shuffler and miss boback we've had three successful episodes already reflection on education through a pandemic our cte program highlights and highlighting the exceptional children's program so once again each week we'll have different groups within the school system on there and also this the superintendent snapshot that we've had on the morganton compass cable channel 2 that runs each month so after next week's
017board meeting we'll be recording that session again with another program and moving forward and highlighting those different departments so it's it's great to highlight the students the success that our students are having and the buy-in that we're getting within across the board also the the transit van update um mr gardner was able to work with a vendor out of ashville the organization here in town couldn't support what we were trying to do with with the um as we call an apple apple trade it was going to cost us a little bit of money out of pocket to get a four-wheel drive vehicle so mr gardner was able to negotiate so that we could get a four-wheel drive vehicle in exact exchange for our transit van once again this this van will it's we've got roughly
018400 miles on that van right now it's not being driven so i think it would be in the best interest of us to upgrade i guess not really an upgrade it's just making an even swap for a vehicle for our fleet and then mr henning we have to post that for 10 days it'll be posted next for the for the november meeting for approval from the board so we'll make sure that it gets posted in the local newspaper there's no upset bid attached to this it's just a general posting to let the public know that this is what's going to happen correct thank you uh also last friday we had a vaccination clinic one clinic at table rock middle school and one clinic at eastbourk high school clinics were successful once again we're still getting
019some students that are wanting to get vaccinated so that's kind of we're still going to promote those as the months progress we've just got to work with the health director and make sure that he's got available staff and our nurses are available as well so thank you for the opportunity to give you any updates is are there any questions that i can help answer for you anyone have any questions all right okay thank you ms michaels this michael's is absent today we were able to get a fill in miss summer crump is going to be giving the nurse update yeah it's okay can you all hear me okay so here are the number updates so for september the 20th to the 26th our current numbers for that week are 119 positives for students and staff
020572 student and staff exposures and of those 182 did not have to quarantine due to meeting one of the three exemptions to quarantine for the 27th until october the 3rd 67 total positives for students and staff 313 student staff exposures and of those 139 did not have to quarantine due to an exemption and of course that week is pretty much finalized but it can still change just a little bit right now so last week for the fourth to the through the 10th we have 26 positives for student staff 139 student staff exposures and 31 of those that did not have to quarantine due to exemption and of course we are really still working on that week a lot okay um so an update that we got on october the 5th was a little change in
021nc strong schools and it now states that both staff and students can be exempt from quarantine after they are identified as a close contact exposure at school as long as they do not have symptoms so our staff now will also have that fully masked exemption for them um that is on page 18 of strong schools in the bottom of the red box if you want to read it word for word i'm not going to read you all that any questions about three weeks ago four weeks ago we had an entire class after quarantine because of the teacher so right now that will not happen based on uh this new policy or the new reading in the healthy toolkit i don't have a question well i do have a question one of the i've noticed that
022the quarantines are down what are some of the mitigation tools we've been using to to reduce quarantines other than what's in this they school the revision and the safe schools toolkit for strong schools we've held steadfast to what we've we started last year things that we're doing um of course we our water fountains are heating and air units that we've upgraded throughout the year all of those are mitigation techniques that we've used the ppe the constant hand washing the sanita sanitizing that's going on within our schools the if you see there's um dispensers everywhere you walk our students they're always getting refilled our students have access to that so just a lot of mitigation strategies like that the separation part elementary schools the majority of our elementary schools are eating lunches either outside in their
023classrooms where they can social distance and not be considered a close contact as you know it's a little more difficult in high school in middle school because of the class sizes and in the time that it takes to get in there so um mitigation strategies like that as i said we're holding steadfast what we've done from the start of the school year i think mr scalisi has said that we are starting to see a downward trend but now now's the time to continue that steadfast protocols that we've got going on right now okay well i had heard that we thought you'd been moving kids during lunch snack breakfast trying to separate kids more so that you know because that's when your masks are down that's when your vulnerability is high that that has worked and
024it's starting to work well that's correct okay any other questions no i i just want to say that i'm glad that they finally changed the toolkit i have questioned that from the beginning you know the virus is the virus it doesn't matter what age you are it was silly so i'm glad to see that they did that because that caused a lot of our kids to have to go home it was ridiculous really it caused a lot of our staff to have to go home too yes because in elementary school it's hard to yes keep your distance from somebody yeah so i'm glad to see they change that great all right no further questions thank you miss summer you're welcome dr brumbaugh all right so this is not terribly easy to see board i think
025you should have received a copy of this in your um in your notes for this week so last month dr swann mentioned that i would be uh presenting some some data from this past year and so just for everybody in the room here to understand what we're looking at uh we test end of great end of course subjects in um all third third through eighth math and reading fifth eighth science then high school math one math three english two and biology courses and those courses and our students success in those courses helps determine our school uh performance grade now this year the state has suspended the school performance grade but we still will be receiving school report cards that are published in newspapers and on the dpi website and whatnot so i just want to
026do a little comparison between the 2019 and 2000 in the 2021 scores and it's just to look at us only i thought puts us in a little bit of a vacuum there because it's only it only makes sense i think if you compare how we're doing as a county with surrounding education agencies and also the state of north carolina so that's what i've done here on this chart and so you've had a chance to look at this uh during the week and i'll take questions in just a second but just as further clarification what these numbers represent is the percentage of students that the state deems on grade level according to the end of grade tests that they that they take so like for instance here this first one in burke county third grade math
027in 2019 66 and a half percent of our kids were considered on grade level by achieving a level three four and five so a lot of these parents in the room here tonight get individual student reports it tells them if their child scored a three four and five on this test as opposed this past year uh you can tell the proficiency percentage was down almost 20 points in in burke county so it's something that uh we're aware of it's something that we're addressing and and doing all kinds of things to help to catch up so to speak with some lost instructional time last year so as we looked through these as you all looked through these i hope you compared how we did versus the state of north carolina so even though we're disappointed that
028you know almost one in five kids that might have passed the year before two years prior didn't pass this year that's pretty much in line with how the state of north carolina does who the state whole state was down about 20 proficiency points in third grade math so if the question why does this happen i'm thinking you probably know why this happened right so since 2019 we we missed or in 2020 we missed the last two and a half three months of school and then of course last year we had a lot of days out dr honeycutt worked with me and we put together this next tab which showed how many days our students were actually out so face-to-face instruction last year you can see that we had a lot of remote instruction days and
029as hard as our teachers worked it's i think we all can agree that it's not going to be the same quality of education when they're standing in front of a classroom and working individually students and then even in our face-to-face days which are a little higher for elementary than high school of those days you have to remember that a lot of that was our a day b day schedule so really only two or five days in a week was a child getting face-to-face instruction so as a result it's not surprising that we did have some some um backwards movement in our proficiency rates but with that said is there is there any question i know you all had a chance i gave this to you i think last wednesday or thursday and you've had a
030chance to look over what are some things that you you might want to ask ask me about this well um i'd like to talk about the math one yeah that that's a deep deep cut it is um and i think i also brought that up when we looked at the fall yeah last you know at the falls yeah you did and we hoped there would be a big rebound and we didn't get it because i knew that the math 1 students who were just a semester math were taking the test then or most of them would be um so what are we going to do to remedy that yeah and i'll i'll speak in some general terms and and possibly we can um ask some of our high school curriculum specialists more specific term but
031right now each of our high schools has built into the day remediation time um where those students are able to to seek out math teachers english teachers there's different areas where they're and they have different names like paws and and oh goodness debbie jennings just gave me all the words today and i've forgotten half them but pride time so we have yeah miss lacroix too so yeah we have we have a lot of that built into the instructional instructional day now because you're right uh miss craven we we saw that only about a fourth of our kids last year that were taking math one now this is high school kids our our middle school math one kid still passed i think the count is around 97 98 but but those were you know the those
032are the math kids that were the best and brightest in our middle schools and so but still yeah we we need to that needs to bounce back this year and our schools are well aware i meet with each of the principals in the summer we sit down with school improvement teams too and kind of hash out some strategies and i think probably they might be more equipped to answer some of that i will say on some good notes um at the high school we do the end of course that i mentioned our um english two scores were not down much from the from the two years ago you can see only a five percent drop act scores are pretty stable our work keys for our seniors that are entering the workforce and have a cte
033concentration they are not down very far and then our graduation rate was actually up a point and a half from where it was in 2019 so there are some good things to take from it but i think everybody in this room is excited that we're back to face-to-face instruction now what was the overall north carolina overall what was it what did it look like so on the far right hand side um i did overall grade level proficiency so this doesn't include those last three boxes it doesn't include a ct work using and cohort graduation rate but we're about 46 percent on grade level whereas the state of north carolina if you see at the very bottom about 45 percent so we're pretty much right on par with the state averages there all right that's what
034i had yeah um one other thing that i wanted to mention um third grade's a big year in north carolina the state passed agreed to achieve legislation several years back that you know obviously the goal is for every third grader to be on grade level by the time they leave especially on reading we know how critical that is and so the states put a lot of assessments in place along the way to try to get kids up to up to snuff so in 2019 they track we we tracked this in first second and third grade first grade about 63 and a half percent of our kids are on grade level this past year about second grade about 73 this past year only 44 percent and then third grade we can see some similar numbers in
035third grade back in 2019 we had 65 students in the county that didn't hit the read to achieve uh standards this past year we had close to 260. so we can see that you know it took a toll now these kids are in fourth grade and so our teachers are well aware and dr wilson and i were talking today about mtss programs that are in place about the remediation about small group math and small group small group reading about differentiated instruction there's a lot that goes on we're hoping to you know gain some of those losses back this year but i'll show you i've compared the state of north carolina you can see i read this in an article on nc last week and i want to include it for you all that you know
036the state of north carolina we see the huge drops in their first grade in second grade proficiency rates and then in third grade so unfortunately it's it's across the state of north carolina one of the things that we did this past summer like all states of north carolina schools did was offer summer reading camp remediation for our first second and third graders which 57 percent of those are eligible did attend we'd love it for being 100 but we can't make it mandatory this is you know up to parents so 57 percent of our kids did a 10 in first and second grade the state of north carolina only had about 30 percent attendance rate 72 percent of our third graders attended you can see the state only had about 46 percent so getting the kids
037here providing bus service of course you know it's free daycare too that's not too bad right but a lot of good teachers doing a lot of good work this summer so across the county 36 first and second grader second graders that weren't on grade level before camp got to grade level in their reading and then 71.6 percent our third graders that did attend 21 of those third graders did then make the jump and then this week those fourth graders that are in this those transitional classrooms we had an additional 30 past the um read to achieve assessment this past week so another 30 got over the hump so to speak so we're plugging away we're pushing hard we're trying to trying to make up some of those losses and some of those gaps all right
038so any any other questions about this i know this looks like uh hieroglyphics sometimes but i have a couple of questions yeah and dr swann this is this probably includes you as well um i have the same question ms craven had is you know i understand the averages and i see the averages and all that uh but still i'm not very satisfied with where we are i don't i suspect no one is or i hope no one is and you know dr swan several times you and i have have spot spoken about various and sundry things and and and and my big focus on a lot of things uh is process so what do we plan on doing in terms of process to address this to increase our percentage numbers as doctor and to what
039degree will the board be involved in that as we go forward as dr rambaugh had mentioned our educators are aware of this he's been going around with data digs meeting with principals meeting with grade levels uh so they're well aware of where we are right now uh as we said earlier as far as the pride time that that that instruction that we're doing above and beyond high time on task those teacher observations are most critical right now we can't sit back and just let somebody sit behind the desk so our administrators are getting that same message from us to get out there be seen be visible make sure that our teachers are doing teaching the curriculum in order to get our students up to speed right now now we're we're not happy with this leadership
040team our principals our teachers are not happy with this um but here again it's what what we're where we're at right now and we're moving forward with this to continue as far as the board i can give updates um i can have our secondary and our elementary director give you updates um every other month on where we are those processes are going to stay the same each month we're not going to expect to see within a month of teaching we're not going to expect to see change we just finished our bog miss dr robot we don't have those results back yet do we the beginning of grade three we do have beginning third tests um do you want me to share anything we can we can set that up at another time mr hunt if
041unless you want to see him now no that would be fun okay so things like that that process moving forward that heavy high time on task to make sure that that's getting monitored and and here again just not making sure that we're our folks are just sitting on their hunches and they they don't as you saw the lack of time that we were actually face to face last year definitely had an impact on our students had an impact on our teachers as well um on on what they needed to teach so the kids too to follow in dr swan's point these kids that are moving on to math too they'll probably be some holes in their learning of course um i would tell you though that the state doesn't assess math two uh doesn't mean
042that we're not gonna work like the dickens to get those kids where they need to be but it's not assessed but we do one of the things we've challenged our principals to do is make sure that some of your veteran and stronger teachers are teaching at least one or two sections of math one um there's it's ms craven knows this she was it's hard to find uh math teachers right now and we have to to go far and beyond to try to try to find them and when we do it's it's imperative that we do what we can to keep them especially our bestest and brightest so um this is a new group of kids coming into math one like these kids took eighth grade math last year they have some holes okay so i
043don't expect this to bounce back up to 52 percent this year as you can see in the region we were pretty we're in a pretty good standing in the region 2019 with 52.65 of our kids passing that test because those kids come from eighth grade have a year and a half where they had some disjointed learning over those two years with covid so it won't balance the whole way back but we hope to to make some real strides with our new group of ninth graders and getting where it needs to be have you started thinking about the summer have you sat down and thought about what i mean because it is going to take us it really is going to take so so we we anticipate having um of course another summer school like we
044did last year uh we don't know if it's going to be a state directed uh if it's not then that's something that we as a county have already talked about moving forward with that that way we had a certain amount of so we had to do six weeks from the state that was required uh with this we might be able to be more flexible if we develop it our own so we have begin that process ms kramer we're going to plan two in addition to the reading camp that he's talking about um i'll i'll have a plan a summer school plan for you next year or next year next month or maybe december meeting that looks at doing a remediation and retesting opportunity for those teacher work days and i've just kind of mentioned to
045dr alton so she's aware of it but i should have a plan to you to have proven by december at the latest if it pleases my bosses over here mike have you had a chance to talk to anyone in leadership about what you and i talked about about the possibility of a calendar that's pro remediation yes we we have not letting teachers get burned out we have began that conversation mr armor about a possible to look at a year-round school and that year around school there's several different models and we you know piloted it possibly a middle school and a high school or middle school and elementary school that would give you know as we talk about teacher burnout uh the teachers we have miss reuters i'm going to call you on the spot four
046models where are you there's a 90 90 day model similar to what we have right now but throughout that 90 days those days are broken up um your our students are going to be going to school the same amount of school as everyone else is just they're going to be going different times with that so there's just some challenges that we're talking about as far as day care child care things like that new child nutrition they don't operate over the summer so we begin that conversation mr armor and looking at a couple different schools that might qualify for that to help combat learning loss well i'm very familiar with the 45-15 calendar which allows a teacher to see it down a nine-week tunnel instead of an 18-week time yeah and that's what we're up against
047right now we're trying not you know if we're really worried about our morale and about trying not to get folks burned out i think that that may be a at least one consideration for us to look at and we're we're in the process of finding counties surrounding counties that have a school that we can go visit that are year-round schools i know mcdowell i believe has has a year-round school as well so yeah we're that's on our list to do okay thank you any other questions all right thanks dr honeycutt so i'm here to talk to you tonight about a book challenge we've had a parent who presented a request for reconsideration of instructional resources at five of our schools currently to date four of the school's media technology advisory committees who are the committees
048that review this have carefully reviewed the challenge books and have made recommendations we have one school that the mtac committee will be meeting uh later this week and we'll have that information for you probably by the november meeting all the mtac decisions are guided by our two board policies these are in your packet as well board policy 3200 which is a selection of instructional materials i'm just going to hit the highlight it says the procurement of materials must be accomplished in accordance with the law including the first amendment of the united states constitution additionally including the library bill of rights of the american library association it also says in this particular policy to place principle above personal opinion and reason above prejudice in the selection of material of the highest quality to ensure a comprehensive
049collection appropriate for all users of our media centers then board policy 3210 allows for parental inspection and objection to instructional materials they have a form that they fill out this parent completed this form for all five schools eastbourk middle school has already returned their information currently eastbourk middle school has both titles dear martin and the hate you give and they have always been housed in the media center's professional collection which means students can only access those books at the middle school with a parent permission form after a thorough discussion the mtac committee decided unanimously to keep those books in the professional collection a letter has been sent to the complainant patton high school had dear martin the mtac committee discussed the content as a whole work in addition to inspecting multiple professional reviews of the
050book in accordance with our policy 3200 to provide resources representing various points of view on controversial issues and to provide resources representation representative of the many religious ethnic and cultural groups in our nation and the contributions of these groups to our american heritage dear martin meets those requirements the committee unanimously decided to keep dear martin as part of the media collection again the letter has been sent eastbrook high school dear martin although this book is not in the eastbrook high school media center collection the mtac committee still reviewed the title per request the committee voted unanimously that dear martin is an acceptable title in any high school media center collection they made this decision again by weighing the book's merits against the alleged weaknesses by considering the title as a whole and instead of certain
051passages and pages and by examining person professional reviews and age recommendations for the novel the committee also agreed that this title relates to the north carolina english language arts and north carolina social studies standard courses study although this is not taught in class this is simply a book in the media center that students can check out freedom high school the committee discussed the content of both dear martin and the hate u give as a whole work the committee's decision again based on our two policies the committee clarified neither novel is used in direct instruction for any class currently at freedom high school they are solely available by choice in the media center the committee also addressed the complaint specific concerns about the content of the title in detail unanimously again they decided to keep dear
052martin and the hate u give in the media center as an option for students again we are still waiting on one middle school to review the hate u give after considering recommendations from all these mtac committees authoritative professional reviews numerous book awards and school board policies the media department feels dear martin and the hate u give should remain in our middle schools with the signature and in our high school on the shelves students have the choice to check out individual books while we encourage parents to discuss expectations with their children about the books they check out removing these books from the media center takes that choice away from other students inside your packet are all the letters written by each of the mtac committees as well as both of the policies and two rebuttals to
053particular facts inside the letter that the complainant sent as well are there any questions well i read both of the books and um i see merit in the in the in the works i really do however there's some sexuality in the books that i think is very inappropriate for middle school um as a principal and a parent i do not think it should be in a middle school library um now i know that the parents have permission that to allow the kids to check it out some of the language is pretty rough in a high school the right students check it out i you know i'm not as adverse to it at the high school level as long as they really understand what they're reading and can see the whole picture and not just small
054parts of the picture however i really think it is inappropriate for middle school that's just my opinion so the parent does have an option once they receive these letters to reach out to the superintendent then the superintendent has the option to either present back to the board our mtac findings or create a committee to look at it as a whole at the district level so that would be the process from there and then it would come back before the board again that is if that particular parent reaches out after this any other questions comments thank you keith lawson sr funding good evening uh i'll try not to get into the weeds with this there's a lot involved and a lot to take in but dr swan had asked that i brief you on our master
055plan for esser funding and esser standing for elementary and secondary schools emergency relief funding provided by the federal government what i'll do is i'll go through the process for one program code and of course this same process translates through all the funds let's look at what i have highlighted across prc 165 will go horizontally what happens first is the state of north carolina develops a statewide plan that's submitted to the federal government for their approval when that approval is received the state board of education based on the framework in the master plan from the state of north carolina then passes a a state board plan that plan in turn is given to department of public instruction within that framework they allocate to us the various sources of funds based on that master plan for instance
056prc165 which is a program code we will receive from dpi and allotment what the intent of the allotment is which is digital curriculum in this case and the expiration of the funds from there we meet his leadership to develop the overall plan it is assigned to a person or persons responsible for those particular funds you can see this one in particular is see-saw saw that plan in turn is submitted back to the esther department at the department of public instruction in two forms one uh is is the budget itself to the uh scope or the narrative to accompany that budget when approved by uh the esser department at dpi then we implement and begin expenditures as you can see there's various program codes i'll hit on the highlights what you see highlighted in black the
057funds have expired by that point if you see it highlighted in gray that represents it carries through the first quarter of that particular school year oftentimes the funds are very pigeon-holed and specific we like to see this broad allowable use what we like about broad allowable use that allows us to curtail more to our specific needs in burke county and meet those needs for instance on this broad allowable use you can see that we paid for six of the 11 school nurses one of one of the areas of concern was to have a sufficient amount of nurses in the schools and to have one at each school so through this prc 171 allowing broad allowable use in prc 181 we've been able to hire 11 additional nurses fund them with the s for funds so
058that each school has that resource all esther funding has to be spent with the intent of in response to covid as a result of covid or the prevention of covet so that is what we look at that is what we think about that's the benchmark that we use that in other words would we need to make this expenditure if not for covet two areas of major focus outside of curriculum and education of course has been health and safety of the students and staff as a result two of those mitigations that dr swan was referring to earlier has been clean contact surfaces and clean air specific to that i'll take you to a more specific schedule prc 137 163 and 181 are the program codes from the state that have allowed us to pursue in particular
059air quality improvement projects as you can see we have expanded 1.7 million last year have in process and completed 4 million this school year 6.8 million is planned for the next school year and 5 million in further air quality improvement projects for the year after you might ask why wouldn't we spend all that right now we'd love to we'd love to have all these air quality improvement projects complete in every school building immediately but you know as we're uh facing all across the nation we're at the mercy of the labor market and the availability of skilled persons as well as a supply chain this schedule was provided by auxiliary services dr achar and mr i've highlighted three projects of particular interest ionization units we started and focused at the elementary level first the reason being
060that's typically our older oldest buildings least efficient equipment we also an isa ionization phase two was completed at the middle schools thirdly ionization projects at the high schools as you can see unfortunately on that particular project we're only 75 percent complete we'd love to be a hundred but as noted complete or not 75 complete due to parts shortage some of the other plan projects as you can see further down that equipment is already on order but due to the timing of receiving that equipment those projects are pushed all the way to the summer of 2022. otherwise all these projects will be going on in all these buildings right now immediately but unfortunately that's just not the reality of where we're at that being said any questions on our essar funding i think you're putting it
061where it needs to be we appreciate that thank you thank you thank you quick question to the superintendent though dr swan have we considered her are we looking at using any forced account labor for our hvac programs yes we're we're contracted uh currently well i mean the forced account labor in terms of using existing maintenance staff for some of these as opposed to contracting it out yes we have our own we have the skill set obviously to do these things we do our our folks are working the hvac um right now um i can get dr acred up here but more specifically they're doing they're able to do they they're doing the patchwork right now mr hunt they're not able to do the really large jobs the ionization machines are specifically installed by our contracted
062services so they don't have that skill set right now to do that they're able to do the the systems right now they're continually learning how to update the new units as well so they are definitely working around the clock to keep our units going and with this ever-changing temperature that we've got here in the south it it does take a toll on everything so they are at every campus uh doing everything they can to keep those things working i think one of the problems is availability of parts yeah you try to get apart from your refrigerator and they'll tell you yeah two years out and it's not a matter of workforce maybe it's just a matter of finding a bolt and a nut to put the thing together any other questions okay thank thank you
063for the quarterly financial report yes uh this report uh i have been presenting to the county commissioners for a couple of years now dr swans asked that i i began to share it also quarterly with you the board to make you aware at a high level of how spending uh is forecasted and our position uh each quarter moving forward our first two columns under annual is our annual previous revenues by funding source from state through special revenue funds and our current forecasted revenue levels i will point out local school nurses charter schools fines and forfeitures those are funds that are received from the county commission so just a little later i'll focus on those in particular because as you all are aware we expand state federal special revenue funds or either give them back at
064a certain deadline local funding of course we retain in fund balance or we use fund balance whichever the case may be in a given year so that is the area of particular interest to the county commissioners not just that they provide those funds but that that's the end of the line so to speak of funding and indicates overall health of the uh school system the next two two columns you have the september year to date as you can see states relatively flat in spending year to year through the first quarter federal funds are up significantly and i'm sure you all can guess why we just covered that that's the answer spending next the local again school nurses charter fines and forfeitures all provided by the county commission we are in our third year of the
065exact same level of funding from the county commissioners not to fault them whatsoever but given the influx of esr funding and in the spirit of being good stewards of the money provided us we have not asked for any additional funding from the county for three consecutive years next is our special revenue funds you can see those are down slightly special revenue funds are all other sources not provided by state or federal or local government such as our pre-k tuition programs you'll see that that's down quarter to quarter quarter year to year the reason being is that our daycare programs were also contained in these special revenue funds and uh we we no longer have those programs or manage those internally so that's what is resulting in that downturn in revenues the next schedule is suspending
066by source locally regular instruction instructional support etc you can see first quarter 3.9 million i will say that's about 400 000 or so uh better than we were first quarter of last year you all know we had a financially successful year last year contributed about a half a million dollars to fund balance i anticipate that we'll contribute to fund balance again this year i don't think we'll continue throughout the year to perform this well to the budget but we will outperform our our our budget and we will contribute again to fund balance but what's a resulting factor in some of this performance is the fact that we are purchasing specialized custodial uh cleaning equipment materials disinfectants what have you thus relieving our own local budget and maintenance is so focused on esser projects as we
067just discussed that their spending locally is also down as a result of that so that's the primary factors contributing to these uh great results locally and with that being said i'll entertain any questions you may have our commissioners understand why we're in such a good shape with their money yes sir our commissioners do understand that i present to them quarterly i stress that we're contributing to fund balance that we're relying on esr funds i also also want to point out not asking for additional funding for three consecutive years when we do ask for additional funding that's a compounding effect you know typically you get a a an inflationary factor increase if nothing else each year well each year that we're foregoing that annual increase makes that potential increase when we do ask for additional funding
068far greater than it would have been so i do try to stress that at every opportunity with them and make sure that they understand that we there will come the day that our needs uh for an increase will be there and will be far greater than just a typical annual increase so you've prepared them for sticker shock i hope so i certainly try uh i know uh the county sent sent dr swan an email the other day and and is asking for another uh uh planning group meeting between us and the commissioners so uh and there again i'll be covering uh this and stressing again what i just said well i think we've done a pretty good job of building up that trust level with those folks you know margaret and brian and i mean
069we've we've done everything we knew to do to be as up front with them and and as and as clear to them as to how we're spending money and particularly their money and uh to let them know that we're you know we take it just as seriously as they do absolutely and when we're in a good position uh we share the wealth with them and we and we hope and and i think can expect uh when the day comes that we're in need they'll be there for us me too thank you thank you any other questions now keith all right we're ready to talk about the college street update yes uh college street we've finally reached the end of the process of the 10 day upset bids we have a final and highest bidder broadway
070properties which has put an offer to purchase and contract before the board for a purchase price of 971 i think it's pretty much our customary contract as was discussed and as we utilize for the rutherford college process if indeed you all accept this offer to purchase and authorize dr swan to execute the contract from that point we'll begin a 120 day due diligence period for the developer to assess and inspect the property and at the end of that 120-day due diligence period to either complete and proceed and complete the transaction or terminate uh if for whatever reason they do terminate and not follow through with the purchase they will forfeit their 5 000 due diligence uh deposit set sum everything pretty well okay if they bothered to tell you what they plan to do with
071that property apartments broadway properties they own three apartment complexes in hendersonville as well as two apartment complexes in mars hill as a matter of fact one of their projects was a former school okay so they know this business it's my old junior high school i just kind of like to know what its fate is right thank you all right that brings us down to roman numeral five personnel report kim reuters any any questions about that report i hear none which brings us down to potential consent agenda items we have the open session minutes the closed session minutes the budget revision any questions about that particular revision apple tvs he was going to purchase all right do i have your consensus to put that on the consent agenda heads nodded okay then we'll put that on
072consent and then there's the board information report and we put that on consent all right and i always ask this question i think i know the answer need for a closed session yes we do all right okay all right so i will go ahead and read this and uh pursuant to north carolina general statute 143 318.11 subsection a1 and a6 for the purpose of considering confidential personnel matters as further defined in general statute 115 c 319-321 and pursuant to subsections a3 and a5 to receive information protected by the attorney client privilege i asked for the motion to go into closed session miss jane moves is there a second i'll second it second by wendy all those in favor please raise your right hand we're in closed session thank you thank you folks for coming to
073the meeting tonight you