001yeah yeah uh thank you mr chairman i appreciate the point of privilege not to embarrass him but i would like to recognize mr benjamin chatham who's here with us tonight he's a rising freshman at uh freedom and he's here tonight and uh for partial completion of his eagle scout uh badge so i'd like to acknowledge him and uh glad to have you with us tonight mr chapman is thank you mr chair members of the board always a pleasure uh to be in front of you speaking giving you some great updates that we've got going on in burke county schools i'd first like to update the board several years ago we began discussing a partnership with western piedmont community college in our fire training facility that's on the grounds of western piedmont community college if you
002know the campus of western piedmont and if you're standing at the site of the north carolina school of science and math it's over the hill up coal chute road so several years ago they began inquiring about some space on our campuses about relocating the burn building and making some classroom space over there on campuses within the last several years we've currently teach two fire training courses one at patton high school one at drone high school this would allow us the opportunity to create an academy at freedom high school as well and not only would it allow the freedom students to use that campus but all of our students that are in those programs i was had conversation with dr joel welch a couple weeks ago and he'd proposed this to us so currently there's 14
003million dollars earmarked in the state budget so what we're going to do is reach out to some of our local legislators and ask them to support this initiative with the governor's budget so there will be no cost to the school system just we find the property possibly on down near the driving range where we have the skid pad we have that whole bank that we could possibly utilize as part of the property so this is more of an information item for the board and as we progress through this process if we could get a consensus and possibly do a memorandum of understanding but this is more of an information item that we wanted to bring to your attention yes sir yes sir we've got other programs we're doing with the with piedmont absolutely yes we
004have welding people so they understand that there are a lot of neat things that are going on yes western people we've got a great partnership dual enroll it's western piedmont college and career promise where our high school students can enroll in high school courses on campuses as well as take classes at western piedmont and receive credits i attended burke middle's graduation back in the spring so many of their graduates had 60 plus ccp credit hours leading towards a four-year university and i know miss craven's daughter was one of those that attended she received her two-year degree from western piedmont as well so we have the welding we have multiple programs cosmetology that they offer that our students can take also in the next couple years they're building the trade solutions center on the grounds of
005western piedmont that'll that'll focus in on our workforce students roughly 25 maybe lower 20 percent of our high school graduates attend a four-year university and we've got 80 percent of students that are going to the workforce military so that's our target population where they'll be able to get stackable certificates in possibly welding hvac electrical plumbing on the campus of western piedmont as a high school student so yes great partnership that we have ongoing yes the next update i'd like to share with you is our summer learning update we had 1782 students do our summer learning our six-week summer learning camp it was a great success i want to thank our teachers and our families that brought their students into that summer learning camp i know it was six weeks out of their short summer already
006but it was very crucial to those 1700 students so we've composed a short video i apologize for the sound go without sound for a second but as you see a lot of hands-on learning a lot of outside-the-box teaching that went on during the summer summer camp [Music] so so as you see it's it the summer learning was it was able to get a lot more hands-on learning though with smaller class sizes that we had going on but once again i can't thank the teachers principals the families and the students enough for showing up for our summer learning camp okay another topic of information is the senior tar heel card that we've been discussing throughout several years many years as i was principal freedom high school so the background from my understanding and the research that
007i've done on the senior tar heel card governor easley many years ago produced this card and it benefited our seniors across the state at 65 you could go to your senior center and they would give you this card and there's been a lot of i guess controversy over the last several years as far as who accepts the card who doesn't accept the card for many years burke county has not accepted it based on the fact that all of our high school sports the revenue that's generated a lot of that comes from gate proceeds so if we have a large amount of senior tar heel cards then it makes it difficult for those programs to sustain so this is a screen shot that i took from just the other day from the high school athletic association
008website and here's what it says a scene tar heel card is optional for admission into regular season contests but is required to be accepted for playoff games so we've always adhered to that policy the optional part so that's something if the board would like to discuss that in further detail um so we're still trying to wait on conferences we're all four high schools currently are in four different conferences we're still trying to get feedback from those conferences they've not all met yet to determine their bylaws and who accepts what pass so right now miss simmons is working on those numbers for us as well okay any questions about the scene and and i will add several years ago when i was a student services director we we printed senior passes of our own and distributed
009them amongst the four high schools and we sold them to our seniors 50 age 50 and over for 50 dollars and that granted them access to any high school athletic event in all four of our high schools across the county it was more it was a fundraising event for those specific schools now we offered it for a while i know when i was at patton we had it and that's when it changed during my time there i believe mike okay yeah right i believe so i i can't answer that miss craven i want to say we were in different conferences for several years was that a conference it was our decision it was a conference decision okay yeah thank you yes any idea when we might know when these conferences they're they're meeting in the
010next couple weeks so we'll try to get some information for the board by monday as well with with hard numbers as far as what each conference and what their bylaws are saying yeah i know their scrimmage is getting ready to begin and the question is going to still be alive at that time so yes all right thank you you're welcome right good evening i just wanted to bring to your attention um an option that we have as a school district as far as testing in our schools through dhhs there's a if we off the end that's our just or your decision if you want to do that we could do screening testing or diagnostic testing for our students our staff athletes that all depends we would do our own testing plan and what that looks
011like for our county but as a county we need to decide if we want to opt into the state testing for our school system or we want to continue to use our local health department visions urgent cares testing sites that we already have in place in our county right now and there's a deadline of september 13th that they kind of want us to off the end but i spoke to the testing people this afternoon and they said that we could opt in after that time period as well they're still trying to work out the logistics of what that will look like in each county as far as testing goes and that also depends on what we decide as well and it would entirely be optional for families it would it is optional for families um
012and staff parents would have to consent to have their children tested at school so it's totally in the parents control of whether they want that to happen or not staff would have that option as well or we could continue as we've done this whole past year there's multiple testing sites in our county including our health department that families and staff could go to miranda what's your what is your recommendation i mean there's advantages and disadvantages to opting in and to opting out so it's just it's whatever the board decides we can often and then later choose to opt out or we can kind of write it out and see how we get started and in at a later time is this strictly for covid testing or about what about flu testing these are just coveted
013testing um i think mr scalise if uh correct me if i'm wrong but i know you all are getting a rapid pcr i'm testing and that one test for flu and covet blue a flu b and covid ours would not have that capability and i believe the mountain view urgent care has that capability as well i'm not sure about burp primaries another testing site they do what are the disadvantages of it it did our testing it would just depend on our testing plan if we use that as a screening option there's different choices as far as we could test a pool of people we could test individuals if we there's two options if we opt in one is using a state vendor to do the testing for us and that's end-to-end testing they supply the
014people to do the testing they submit it to the state and the health department and things like that or we could do independent testing where we have to contract out from that type of thing but there's just it's it's pretty layered in in depth so we would have to decide once we if we decided to opt in we'd have to look at what we wanted testing to look like in our county is that dovetail with the health department it's separate from the health department they still have the testing available there and then whenever they get there they are getting like i said the rapid pcr testing program which will have criteria for those that qualify for that test more than likely they'll have the results back within 24 hours correct the rapid test is sooner
015than that that the health department will have and that mountain view has 20 that's 25 minutes he's saying if we do the testing say we test a symptomatic student or staff if we test them rapid and they're negative then they would do a pcr and send that off to the state but we are a local lab but we would not know those results for at least 24 hours and so the other advantage is continuing as we've done is the health department and mount the urgent care in some places have the rapid pcr which is you know 20 25 minute results seems to me we would be at an advantage if we had testing on site and we would know whether to send a child home or who around them may have to be isolated you
016know i mean now we're waiting a day maybe more for that to happen so if someone is symptomatic whether they test even if they test negative on the rapid test or whatever they would still have to go home but for exposures then we would know that that kid is negative but they also send off a pcr test to make sure so sometimes that they've tested positive on a rapid test and the pcr comes back negative and vice versa so they don't they haven't released the details of what that would look like like if someone tested are symptomatic and they test negative do we have to send those exposures on home and wait for the pcr to come back or can we say they can stay at school they haven't released that information yet i think
017they're kind of you know working through this as they get questions from districts would it require additional manpower they it would to some degree they the vendor the option one with the indian testing with the vendor they say that they supply the staff to come in and do the testing and do the reporting but when i spoke with them this afternoon i just got out of a meeting and i think there were more questions raised in that meeting than were answered they said that they were meeting this week because so many school districts are looking at it as a diagnostic tool with symptomatic students and staff and i don't think they were prepared for that aspect of it so they're meeting this week to even see what that looks like now so there's still not
018a lot of answers to questions from them so we'll know more later possibly yes hopefully possibly this week but maybe maybe not um they're trying to work through it as quickly as possible well it's a it's an investment by the nchhs right and and we'll be getting a sort of like a grant from them am i right in that yes there's some funding um associated with the opt-in okay and that would help us at least cover some of the manpower issues yes okay anyone have any other questions thank you so so we are going to proceed correct for now we should until somebody tells us the halt i mean and i think one of the big halting factors would be nobody has any more answers and they're just flooded with questions that they can't answer
019then we'll stop all right i wanted to give you all an update on how how our students did with end of year testing at the high school middle school and elementary levels and when dr swan and i talked about doing this a couple weeks ago we hoped that the state board would have approved us releasing all that information they met last week but that just yielded achievement levels for the new reading test so unfortunately i'm not going to give you specifics i'm going to give you a few uh a few generalities since it would be i guess unethical at this point to release specifics okay until they approve those so in the summers i meet with all our principals i got a chance to get to all our schools in in in july had some
020real great discussions about how our students were performing we got the chance to look at the district level the school level the classroom level i think it helps really our principles helps drive some conversations with teachers with their professional learning communities about where improvement needs to happen and and like like a lot of schools across the state or almost all schools across the state we will take a hit this year uh our math scores are in english and i'm sure reading when those scores are returned to us the reading scores have been delayed this is a renorming year but we're going to see a hit to all those areas and the fellow testing coordinators i speak to four or five of them i speak to regularly they're experiencing the same thing some good things that
021have come out of last year though it looks like again i'm going to speak some generalities here but it looks like our cohort graduation rate for high schools will again be over 91 so that's uh that's really great considering everything we were dealing with last year and trying to track down our students and keep them engaged in their learning this summer with our summer learning program that uh we had mentioned earlier we had 30 additional third graders pass the read to achievement requirements so they will be moving on and that's a 30 is a really good number for those students that attended summer program looks like our math 3 and english 2 scores at the high school will not really be off that much we don't really have scores from 2020 because if you remember
022we were out in march and your testing did not happen but compared back to 2019 our both our math 3 and english 2 scores which are math 3 is basically an algebra 2 curriculum and english 2 is 10th grade english so those scores are looking really close to where we were pre pandemic which is great with our workkeys scores these are senior career tech ed students it looks like about two-thirds of those tests yielded proficient scores and those work keys are good when our students go out into the workplace a lot of times those employers will ask for those scores and two-thirds of the kids scoring proficient there is a good number as well um with the a.c.t it looks like about close to 60 of our juniors will have passed and again these are
023preliminary numbers we'll know we'll have the official releases here in a few weeks but again we're real proud that a lot of our juniors are are ready for college when that time comes and then it looks also like our our virtual academy students their score is very comparable to our face-to-face students the ones that got face-to-face instruction most of the year so some good things to take from from a real tough year some decisions that the board had to make in our in leadership and principals and teachers that yielded some results that we can be proud of so as uh the ela or the reading scores come back uh we'll if it pleases the board i'll come back again give you a more specified details to that to that data and take a look at
024what ours principals and our teachers are seeing as well just let me know get me on the agenda okay thanks any questions by the way before i sneak away all right thank you good evening chairman and members of the board of education as you're aware dpi revised the north carolina standard course of study for social studies for kindergarten through 12th grade in june the unpacking documents which were documents that explained the curriculum and compare standards for k-5 were approved and released in july the unpacking documents for 612 were approved and released however the planned summer professional development webinars were put on hold as these there are two current bills in our legislation right now that could impact the implementation of our new curriculum currently house bill 324 which could change how standards are developed and
025implemented could impact the implementation and senate bill 654 section 8 which could delay the implementation of the standards so dpi has communicated they will use august 2021 through april 2022 to offer district professional development around these standards dpi has encouraged districts to proceed with implementation although they are not currently offering any pd for implementation at this time since there is a chance the implementation could be delayed as a district we will share the unpacking documents with teachers and support them as needed but we will plan to hold off on any formal training and professional development for teachers until we receive further guidance from dpi in our state board of education changes in the standards at the elementary level were minimal and they will not require intensive training for our teachers however we want to be
026very clear and make note that critical race theory will is not embedded in these standards and burke county will not be teaching critical race theory we will keep the board and parents comprised of any changes that result from these two bills that are currently from our in our legislation good evening i'm going to reiterate some of what dr alton stated i want to re-clarify which she stated before that bcps is not implementing critical race theory into the social studies curriculum we are implementing the social studies standards like we would do any other subject that has changed from the department of instruction the department of education gives us guidance on the implementation of the social studies standards however i am going to quote dr mark nason he is a history professor at fordham university he stated
027critical race theory is a framework for viewing u.s legal history that is widely discussed in law school classes and has occasionally been used to guide anti-racism training in universities businesses and government agencies but it has never been used anywhere in the country to shape the development of curriculum in k-12 schools treating it as a threat to public education is not only disingenuous it is creating an atmosphere of panic that will discourage instruction in black history indigenous history and the history of race and immigration in the united states culturally responsive pedagogy is not critical race theory the standards are still concept based and encompass the topics that were included in the previous versions of the standards they are more explicit in calling attention to certain perspectives that have not always been addressed in social studies courses
028just like any implementation of any standards the process began two years ago and has been vetted amongst teachers additional educational leaders stakeholders and the department of education through surveys and additional resources social studies educators across the state have had an opportunity to weigh in on the subject matter and the material doing a total of five drafts a draft is revised if it isn't approved for draft 4 a public survey was opened from november to december 4th of 2020 over 85 percent of the 1600 that responded to the survey were in favor of the changes from draft 3 to draft 4. on december 2nd 2020 bcps secondary teachers reviewed draft four standard revisions and completed the north carolina dpi standards revision survey during a wednesday pd module we wanted to make sure that our social studies
029teachers had a voice and they had a voice during that pd module january 13 draft four was discussed with three word changes to make it draft five draft four those words were systemic racism gender identity and systemic discrimination spread across three courses eighth grade social studies american history and the founding principles of the united states of america and north carolina civic literacy for draft five the words systemic and gender were removed from those specific objectives in those courses january 27 2021 draft 5 was discussed at the state board education meeting february 4 draft five standards were approved by the state board of education the 2021 2021-2022 school year there is the implementation of new standards june 2021 the social studies k-12 glossary k-12 crosswalks k-12 stand maps and k-5 unpacking documents where approved were approved
030the support documents can be found on the ncdpi website and that is for anyone to review and look up july the state board of education approved the social studies grades 6 through 12 unpacking documents which can also be found on the north carolina dpi website today there's a webinar but it's pending the plans are underway to develop a state-wide webinar to support understanding and utilization of the social studies support documents in developing the local curriculum as dr alton mentioned earlier there are two bills in the house and senate regarding the social studies standards hopefully this information presented today stops the missed information that so on social media platforms and media outlets because burke county public schools is not teaching critical race theory but we are implementing dpi standards thank you any questions from the board
031for miss simmons i have a quick question too dr swan is there i mean are there going to be any forthcoming decisions that this board would be uh would be required to make regarding critical race theory from my understanding we're bound by the department of public instruction in the state board of education to teach what is presented to us as a curriculum by the state so no there should not be any decisions by the local boards to say we're teaching one curriculum over another i feel there's funding streams attached to that that's another question that we'll have with our attorney as well any others all right thank you mr simmons thank you so much thank you that moves us down to discussion items and the first one is is for me to bring up and
032it is uh uh i will read what we did back on the 29th said the vote that we took that is the position from us and that the position from the american pediatrics in cdc about wearing masks other board members shared their thoughts and concerns after discussion it was pointed out even if the decision was to make masks optional tonight that being the 29th the science might change by the time school starts and the motion for option one to make mask optional for all students and staff past five to two and so i don't know about you but i think i do a lot of folks have been calling me i had three today about revisiting the decision we made on the 29th and i told those folks what i'm about to tell you the
033reason it's on the agenda is that if we're going to take a vote of course it would be on the 16th and if we were going to take a vote on the 16th we would have to have enough people on this board a majority of the board four people two more other than dr hem street and myself to say i think this is something we need to put on the agenda i think this is something we need to discuss come next monday night and that's why i'm laying it out there for you i owe it to those people we owed it to the people that contacted us before the decision was made i think we owe it to the folks who have been contacting us since and uh and so there it is discussion you
034know did you all see the papers maybe we need to refer to mr scalise on this thing because what happened since our last meet uh i'm sorry so we're we're seeing compared to the last time that i was here a few more percent positive each each day as of today we um we're also starting to see uh young children so we had today um eight from age 10 to 19 tested positive and five from zero to nine that were reported to us so that's today that number was given to me today so we're at a um almost a 10 positivity rate when we cross that threshold is when there's a circuit breaker that we'll have to do some things with nursing homes because that's where everybody starts to get really scared i think the last
035thing any of you want to see is shut down i just think none of us want shut that and uh there again what what criteria do we use what happened with the two yes sir we had roughly 70 students we had to quarantine last week over jump start camp uh student tested positive and those students that were around that student had to we have to quarantine them also on a bus pardon me how many students and staff did that involved 72 students roughly in about eight staff we had to quarantine dr swan can you give us a little bit more information about that situation as far as the which which one the jump start so we had a student um from what i am gathering in our investigation uh family member tested positive at home
036uh the student came to jump camp uh anyway and that's that's the student was feeling sick later in the day got tested um and that's what happened so what i'm understanding is the parents knowingly that's what we're trying to find out well they know that they were exposed and they knowingly sent the child to jumpstart correct so my question is and it's a little bit of a sidetrack from what we're talking about but it's relevant because i feel like if we do stay optional that it's not only our responsibility to make those decisions it's also the parents responsibility as well to you know to if they know their child has been exposed or has symptoms to keep them at home now here's my question and it may be that we have to um write a
037new policy or we may feel that there's enough information or we have something in our student handbook mm-hmm um our disciplinary but we can we can definitely look at that and i'll be in contact with campbell shatley um because i feel like that we need to take a firm stand on this and i spoke to you a little bit about it and if we have people parents who are sending their children to on our campuses and they know they've been exposed or they know they're sick and i say we charge those parents and that's something we'll definitely look into on our end to see what we can you know extend um intentionally spreading covet i mean i know when uh with if you spit on someone that's a simple assault so i think what i'm
038saying is is this is not just about a math this is about people being responsible and us protecting our children as well i think we need to say you know you can't you you know that you shouldn't be sending your kids and so we need to take a stand that's how i feel well unfortunately most as i recall most of the quarantines and isolations that came about last year didn't necessarily come from inside school it came from the same sort of things that we saw for instance that happened at table rock and you know i think there's a word for it and it's called irresponsibility when you have parents ever so often that will give tylenol to the child send the child to school late in the morning tylenol wears off and you got a
039problem and then you're sending a pile of kids home so yeah i mean i i understand i understand all the angst and the anger and the confusion and the whatever about mask i don't see this as a masking issue so i think i think we need to be careful um so that we fully understand what we're all talking about i don't see that this was a masking issue this was an irresponsible act i have an irresponsible person sending a sick child what's that do to the rest of the children that i have a responsibility to take care of so i understand that but if this kid gets when a child gets on a bus and he's sick he's going to expose himself this is an aerosol thing i i realized the mascot the total answer
040but what it does it gives some protection the distancing does that the hand washing does that the numbers are going up it's not a matter if we're going to do it it's when we're doing doing i think the horse is out of the barn and we just i think if we could just do a masking situation until we mitigate it and the numbers start to drop or it's soft it holds but right now the numbers are going up aren't they well the state toolkit actually does not say that the state no i'm asking somebody i'm asking our health uh our health department head here yes sir all the numbers that we don't want to go up are going they're going up they're going up and you've made a recommendation to the board yes what was
041your recommendation would you repeat that i think that you should put a mask on every one of those people that's in the school and what does the academy of pediatricians say they would agree with that what does the cdc say they would agree with that too sir okay what are some you know like side effects of wearing a mess a mask for hours on end there are some people who have a developmental disability or they would need to talk to their pediatrician about that they may not be able to wear a face covering but that's an extremely small portion of the population if there are children in the school that cannot that's all the more reason for everyone else to be wearing them to protect those children that absolutely cannot for a medical reason and
042i agree with that there are certainly people that can't i where i go to work i wear a mask all day and you're right miss craven it's it's kind of it's hard it's hard but i say you know it's going to be harder than these kids putting into intubating them and putting in places you're looking if you look at florida and louisiana what's happening in those places it's scary and we're you know there's something we can do about it and all i want to do all we need to do is can we have this discussion openly in the meeting i think that's what mr armor and i vote for that he does that are there is there enough people on here to vote to make it an and adam a discussion when we come up
043monday mr chairman if i could make a statement sure i was one of the five who voted on option i've seen enough over the past week i can't see why in the world we would not revisit this on the 16th and i'm for it okay i'm for it as well i think we need to review it we need to continue to review it because every day this changes and i think we need to keep looking at it and make decisions based on what we have and i think that's the only reasonable thing to do i agree yeah right any other discussion i have one question before you finish discussing the bus incident mike i think is there anything you can reveal about that or are you still is it still under investment it's still an
044investigation okay all right i would encourage everybody on this board too if you've not legally read the toolkit you need to read it because it's very specific in that there must be in order for for masking to be effective you must take a layered approach it's not just about the mask and everything we have done up to this point is not in conflict and i'll repeat it with what the governor has laid out it's not i don't know that anybody on this board and i'll speak for myself the rest of you can speak for for your own there's i certainly i i support masking i support vaccinations wholeheartedly optional in my mind doesn't mean that you show up to school with no mass just because you want to that's not what my understanding and what
045my definition of optional is my definition of optional is that it gives it gives good well-meaning parents the responsible ones the opportunity to determine what's in their best in their child's best interest i will acknowledge too we've got an issue with the two or what i refer to as the latency age kids the two to 11 year olds i think that's a problem and i'm still trying to wrap my head around that since the vaccine's not been approved um but be that as it may we just we need to be really careful not to jump on the emotional bandwagon about a mask to solve everything when sometimes like in this case with these other kids that was not the issue right it just wasn't so let's be careful i do have just a few more
046things i'd like to ask um it even with adults it's hard to to um wear your mask correctly especially with children so how is effective is it going to be for them to wear a mask if it's not worn correctly your best bet is to wear them correctly but if most people are wearing them correctly it's better than no people but with children we know it's going to be difficult especially the little ones well can we also have to in preparation can can we have a composite of of numbers of last year of everybody and separate it from staff and students they were placed out on quarantine and isolation and let's see what those numbers show we can get some aggregate data some hard stuff to look at and and let's let's get away from
047the um anecdotal source of things well and i would like to point out one more thing you said you had several things go ahead go ahead because it could affect what i decide um i want to talk about the virtual school a little bit um when i i'll be honest when i made my decision i was and maybe i assumed um falsely but i felt like that the virtual school would still be an option for our families who really felt like they needed to do that and and i and i and so the information that i that i got was that that wasn't still available so i think we might need to clarify that where and i guess where did that information come from that you've got as far as when i read the paper
048well so i want to know i mean what i'm saying is i want to know where are we at with that so if we make a different decision right that we know that our burke county families have all the options they do they do dr edwards if you want to come up and present what you have for us every request we've had up until today we've accommodated those requests good evening board okay sure one second okay thank you for allowing me to share the information about the burke virtual academy at this time we have a total of 159 elementary and this is after the changes that have been made this week we have 159 elementary students which equals eight full-time teachers we have um 98 middle school students and that's four full-time teachers and then
049we have virtual high school school students and that equals 23 teachers that are have at least one section built into their day for this fall semester as of um said yesterday august 8th we had a total of 27 requests and that was from july 7th until august 8th up until july 7th whenever i received a request i worked with dr alton and the principals and we tried to accommodate that as quickly as possible for scheduling and up until as of yesterday we had a total of 27 requests for students to go back to in-person learning 18 of those requests have been approved and scheduled scheduled two of those are i'm waiting for a parent confirmation if that's what they really want to do and seven are awaiting review because they came in over the weekend
050and i have not reviewed those with dr alton as of yet as of august 8th we have had a total of 35 requests and that is from july 16th up until august the 8th and that includes the time when the board made the decision and voted for optional masks that we have had 35 requests for virtual academy 28 of those requests have been approved and are already scheduled three i'm awaiting parent confirmation because we are asking for the year-long commitment because it's very difficult for kids to switch back and forth and then we have four students who were not approved because they did not meet our eligibility criteria or they have a scheduling conflict at the high school and chose not to pursue the virtual of course we will continue to review requests i know
051i have a few that have emailed over the today and phone calls and i will schedule a time with dr alton and miss simmons to review what we can and make any accommodations on an individual basis thank you dr edwards so did the numbers went up after we went to the optional they're right the request went up a lot no not really um we have we've had 35 in in less than three weeks um that's not a tremendous amount i mean if you do 35 minus 27 that's about eight more virtual then yeah i know if i may say i think the newspaper some of the information that was presented we didn't we have to close virtual academy registration back in the spring in order to design our classes for the teacher size so excuse
052me like i said to open it back up we're going to take each request on a one-to-one basis and review it thank you and other districts i know opened enrollment fully but they did not have the program established that we did so i feel very confident in what we're doing and and how we're working with families as best as we can while also you know supporting the teachers and making sure that we don't have any too many last minute changes or changes during the school year anyone else all right i'm the only one that's anything so i guess i will but uh you know i said at the meeting you know i just quoted you you just quoted graduate that's pretty uh i guess that spoke for example i think we have to continue to
053look at it and i think i mean who knows between now and next week it may drop to zero it's good i wish we wish all right uh any more that needs to be said on this and i i believe we have a consensus that we will review it on the 16th with some of the things that that seth mentioned and one thing that i'd like to also add is that if i'm not mistaken we said last week that's in the toolkit that if you're an infected person with a mask and you are someone adjacent to that infected person with a mask and uh and the one has not tested plot that did not test positive those that that one does not what quarantine so it may not have been the cause of what happened
054at our middle school but we could have prevented quite a bit of the quarantines had we had a masking situation in place just wanted to bring that up according to the toolkit all right let's move on to your athletic transfer policy thank you all by the way for for the discussion um for several years we've we've always talked around about the school assignment we've had some areas of concern with our athletic transfer policy so leadership met i've spoken to miss dr ott and miss simmons regarding this we've kind of come up with what we feel is a good if you'll see in your packet policy code so one of the some language that we've changed once a transfer has been granted no subsequent transfer within the same year will be permitted barring extreme circumstances and
055if a second transfer is granted within the same year or a student returns to their home school athletic eligibility will be denied at both schools for the remainder of the academic school year from the time of transfer so we're just we're having some families bounce back and forth between high schools during sports it's been brought to our attention so we're trying to combat that of course each athletic denial or transfer denial would be up for a board of review as we've done in the past so this isn't necessarily a first reading if the board can review this this week and if you like this language we can make next week the first reading of this policy update i like the language from the minute i saw it but i'll let other folks comment yes the
056wording here says extreme circumstances um something that came off top of my head extreme bullying hazing something like that where that student could not go to that school and have a successful academic school year if i might dr swanson i know of a situation that actually happened like that sam where uh an entire family was was being i don't wanna it really wasn't quite bullying but it was worth and in order to protect everybody or in the in the whole subject area it was best to move that child and it wasn't fair to keep that child from playing a sport one of the children of playing a sport and wendy you might know who i'm talking about okay and that so when you have an ex that is extreme when you have a situation like
057that but it's rare but but it is it is serious in high school athletics and extracurricular is part of the whole high school experience school experience as a whole so it's important that we we try to maintain a balance with this okay um keith lawson property update good evening uh i appreciate giving the uh very important conversations and and considerations you've had tonight to consider and hear me out on some normal school business first item for discussion would be subject property number one which is our college street campus as you all are aware we listed that property originally on september 30th of 2020 for 2.4 million later on after no interest was generated reduced the listing to 1.4 tax value is 1.38 we do have a current offer from courthouse properties for 700 000 which
058is as a result of upsetting a previous bid we are currently in the advertised upset bid period which will end actually next monday just prior to this board meeting and i will certainly do my best uh when that ends at five to have an update for that monday night's meeting on on this property property number two uh is our rutherford college campus again listed on september 30th of 2020 for 2.1 million currently is listed at 1.5 tax value 1.9 million our current best offer which is an upset to a previous bid is christ classical academy for 367 the advertised upset bid period has ended for this property uh that expired on july the 12th christ classical academy due diligence period with the current contract pending your approval request due diligence through september 25th with the
059closing on or before october 25th i have been advised by our board attorney in your consideration of this particular property next week since the advertised upset bid period has ended that we also requested them in acceptance of this if indeed you do a five thousand dollar due diligence fee which would be one of two one credited to the final purchase price upon closing or two if we do not close would revert to the board and become board funds property number three chesterfield i won't go through all the specifics we have had some interest generated but no offers or serious considerations to this point kerksy drive property as i covered in our previous meeting we had an unsolicited offer on those two parcels from a local uh investor of three and four thousand we of course
060have been through the surplus process on these properties i did since our last meeting contact a local broker and got a broker opinion analysis on the properties and the values on those are 15 000 and 20 000 respectively the property one parcel does join the 911 center for the county i've shared this with the county manager and he has expressed the county may have interest in these two parcels he said that he he will plan to and in all likelihood but it's not a for certainty be discussing this with the county commissioners at their september board meeting okay west fleming drive property uh an update on that one that is 2.99 acres uh which adjoins the forest hill elementary school property it actually sets just i guess northwest of the football field we were contacted
061by an attorney an estate attorney and was asked to make an offer on this property given his proximity uh to our our our school and the fact that there it's landlocked uh so it is of little or no value to most anyone else we did make an offer to the estate attorney of four thousand dollars tax value on the property is two thousand twenty five thousand five hundred and fifty uh we the estate attorney was accepting in the estate of that offer and we are in the process of waiting for the clerk of court's approval for that offer she has uh indicated uh that that she will approve she's just awaiting some photos of the lot and then we should be able to close on this property again the only item that will require at
062least at this point any kind of action and consideration by you is the rutherford college property and when will we have to do that next monday i would ask that you consider the final offer of 367 which again is the final and best offer uh after the expiration of the advertised upset bid period uh with the contingency that they paid the five thousand dollar due diligence fee is advised by our attorneys uh which would either one again go towards closing the closing price on the property and if we do not close would be retained by the board okay the upset bid period ends for college street next week as well but we won't be ready at that point or or will we be ready to accept we could possibly be if there's not a further
063upset by five o'clock next monday and i will work with our attorney and broker uh to certainly have uh that information for you by the 6pm board meeting okay it'd be nice to get out from under those if we could just say all right you want to have any other questions to keith all right thank you for that mr lawson yes sir now we're up to check signers all right check signers is is customary each year at the beginning of the school year based on principal and assisted principal reassignments and turnover of bookkeepers etc i present to you and request that you approve the authorized check signers for each individual school that's on the list contained in your packet for this school year not to say that couldn't change at a future board meeting but
064as it currently stands i i request your approval all right can we put that on consent i was about to ask the same thing is it okay that we put this on the consent agenda it sounds like it is okay let's go we'll put that on the concentration same thing you were about to say all three oh like mine like mine okay uh all right that takes us down to the child nutrition contract amendment are you through with us keith yes sir i am thank you all right chairman armor and members of the board good evening and thank you for allowing us to be on the agenda tonight aaron props tall guy not able to be here tonight so we have amanda mendenhall she is the regional director for car chartwells k12 and she's here
065to answer any questions you might have i hope you've had a chance to look over the proposal in your packet regarding raising the pay for our chartwells associates as with many places within our county we continue to have trouble finding employees we feel this proposal will help us to fill our open positions and retain our existing staff allowing us to be ready to start the school year we are here to answer any questions i think it's a good mood anyone have any any questions then at all none all right that was easy that was easy that's the easy button um and i'll ask the question this time may we put this on the consent agenda i i think we should i would suggest we ask the attorney because this is a contract amendment to the
066chartwells contract chris what do you think well then let's do it separately thank you chris all right now it brings us down to potential action item the person that we our personnel report our action or board action report i assume you all have reviewed that one and of course if you had any questions you just you have to share the number and not the name okay i hear new questions then we'll move on uh to the consent consent items is everyone okay with the consent items listed so far plus the ones we're gonna we said that we would add i'm getting not that's good do i hear a motion to go in the closed session then let me move we go into closed session pursuant to me yes please pursuant to north carolina general statute
067143-318-11 subsection a one and six for the purpose of considering confidential personnel matters is further defined by north carolina general statute 115c-319-321 and pursuant to subsection a3 to receive information protected by attorney client privilege all right we do have a second right second by ms jane all those in favor unanimous we're in closed session thank you folks for coming you